Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

plus.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 459 posts

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#121

Post by Jyaif »

dhughes wrote: post #29
rbanffy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you pick your PC carefully with the purpose of breaking Linux, it mostly works out of the box. That said, installing Linux on a Mac seems offensive, like replacing the dashboard of a Maybach with the one of a race car. Macs are a beautifully designed combination of hardware and software that may work for you. Or not. I like Lion better than Snow Leopard, but neither works for me for work. Casual browsing and p…

Like a teenager before a date Mac seems to be entirely about looks, oh everything works well both OS and hardware but sometimes it seems looks come before function. No separate delete or backspace keys, no multiple desktops, breathtakingly expensive hardware and software, awkward layout of files in the GUI, closing apps frustrating X doesn't close the app it minimizes it but you also have a minimize button (??), am I…

FYI: multiple desktops are built in OS X (and in my opinion it's the best implementation there is).

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#122

Post by antiterra »

tptacek wrote: post #13

I prefer Lion to Snow Leopard. I find myself appreciating the more controversial changes, like reversed scrolling and hidden scrollers. I followed Gruber's advice and suppressed the impulse to switch the defaults back to Snowpard behaviors and find that I'm less happy when I have to use Snowpard now. Meanwhile: * Mail.app under Lion is the best mail UX they've ever shipped. It's not a small improvement over Snowpard;…

I was ok with hidden scrollbars at first, and then I started running into websites with scrollable areas that were padded by non scrollable whitespace. Without a scrollbar, there's no indication that the area is even scrollable, unless you're lucky enough to see some partially cut off text. Even then, it's hard to know where the scroll pane begins and the padding ends. Maybe web designers should either stop using seamlessly pad scrollable panes, or indicate scroll ability some other way, but in the meantime I've turned scrollbar visibility back on.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#123

Post by vertr »

js2 wrote: post #75

Re: "maximize" button that is being complained about in this thread. It's not a maximize button, it's a zoom button, and while I don't like its behavior, it's always been this way in OS X. From the current HIG: Your application determines the initial size and position of a window, which is called the standard state. If the user changes a window’s size or location by at least 7 points, the new size and location is the…

Hold shift while clicking the zoom button to maximize the window. Edit: in Chrome only.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#124

Post by pat2man »

When Apple release System 7 in 1991 people everywhere started complaining about the new changes and how it was worse than System 6. For instance it required a hard drive and couldn't boot off a floppy.

Meanwhile the end users adopted it imediately and never looked back. Most of the complaints in the article are about features that we as developers love but that end users could care less about.

As a developer I love getting in to my Library folder and changing stuff around. I love backing my computer up manually and not using Time Machine. I love having complete control of my windows and applications.

But most users don't care. Most users never touch their Library folder and don't need to. Thats why its hidden. Most users don't need to back up their mail because its all on Gmail. Most users love the app store where they don't have to search all over the internet for a simple app.

Mac OS is an end user centric operating system and it always has been. Developers and hackers will have to make some tweaks to the basic OS to make it work the way they want. Honestly looking up a few keyboard shortcuts, enabling hidden folders and installing homebrew isn't that hard.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#125

Post by lurker14 »

rbanffy wrote: post #20
slig wrote: post #15

What about a paid GNU/Linux distro that runs perfectly on recent Apple hardware? No drivers bullshit, just works?

Unless you pick your PC carefully with the purpose of breaking Linux, it mostly works out of the box. That said, installing Linux on a Mac seems offensive, like replacing the dashboard of a Maybach with the one of a race car. Macs are a beautifully designed combination of hardware and software that may work for you. Or not. I like Lion better than Snow Leopard, but neither works for me for work. Casual browsing and p…

That's not true. Power management (sleep/hibernate) is very flaky in Linux, and when it fails it crashes the machine.

You need to pick your PC carefully for compatibility with Linux.

Linux is great for workstation/server-class hardware and use cases.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#126

Post by pat2man »

ZipCordManiac wrote: post #113

Apple should at least give people the option to put an older operating system on a newer system. Similar to how PC vendors offer XP or W7. I tried to install my Leopard family pack on a computer that shipped with snow leopard - no dice. With the way things are, I'll never buy a new Mac, as I refuse to "upgrade" to Lion.

Apple has never done this and probably never will. Not having to support older OS releases helps dedicate developer time to the new software.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#127

Post by ugh »

fiblye wrote: post #116
ugh wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Save as doesn’t make sense if the app auto-saves.

"Save as" is usually used when you want to save it as a different file somewhere else, and most people have cmd-shift-s ingrained in their mind. This no longer exists and there's no excuse. Autosaving doesn't even do the same job.

I don’t think you understand. This is about paradigm shifts.

Here is how it used to work: You open this old document because you want to create a new one and use the old one as a template. You either Save as right away or (much more likely) you edit for a bit and do a Save as at some later point.

If you do this with auto save you are fucked. (Well, not really. There is now Versions, so starting with Lion this is finally a recoverable mistake.) Editing your document for a bit before doing a Save as with auto save is the same as mistakenly saving your document – overwriting your old document – instead of doing a Save as. That mistake is catastrophic – I know it, I used to make it often enough myself – and users would make it all the time had Apple left Save as in.

Now when you open an old document you will be asked – as soon as you start editing – whether you want to edit the document or duplicate it, thus avoiding that catastrophic mistake. You can also duplicate documents at any time.

The transition period will be painful, that’s for sure, but the end result is pure bliss. It’s worth it.

A lot of changes with Lion are just like this. Sometimes some pain while transitioning is the price for awesomeness.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#128

Post by megamark16 »

jodrellblank wrote: post #84
megamark16 wrote: post #39

I came from a windows background, tinkered with Linux for a few years on and off, and when I started my current job I was given a Macbook Pro. After a few months of using it I as so frustrated, and found myself spending more and more time in my Ubuntu virtual machine, that when they were ordering new MBPs for the design team I offered to give mine up to a designer and buy a ThinkPad, thus saving the company over $1,0…

When I click the Maximize button on OSX, it doesn't actually maximize the window 99% of the time, it just picks a seemingly random size. I saw an app a while ago that would let you control how your OSX apps are resized when you maximize them, but if I have to buy an app just to make my OS do what it should do anyway, there's something wrong. If you're going to judge it based on your existing preconceptions, of course…

If you're going to judge it based on your existing preconceptions, of course it's going to come up short.

Guilty as charged. I used a Mac for about 9 months, and I never got used to it, I never stopped being frustrated by the things that were difficult, annoying, or just plain Fisher Price dumbed down by default. I'm a developer, I could (and for a lot things I did) figure stuff out, tinker with stuff, but I just wasn't that in love with the whole package, so I didn't put forth that much effort to make it my home. If I had been moving from Windows, maybe I wouldn't have had as much of a a problem making the transition, but I found that I had been so spoiled by Linux, and fallen in love with the whole idea behind it, that I just couldn't cope. Is that the fault of OSX? Surely not, it was a personal thing, but I really love Linux, and I think I'm going to stick with it.

With that being said, the hardware is stellar. If I hadn't run into so many problems trying to dual boot I might have held onto the hardware.

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#129

Post by mgkimsal »

ugh wrote: post #63
megamark16 wrote: post #39

I came from a windows background, tinkered with Linux for a few years on and off, and when I started my current job I was given a Macbook Pro. After a few months of using it I as so frustrated, and found myself spending more and more time in my Ubuntu virtual machine, that when they were ordering new MBPs for the design team I offered to give mine up to a designer and buy a ThinkPad, thus saving the company over $1,0…

OS X obviously isn’t for you. OS X doesn’t have some features you would like it to have or you need. Looking at the features you are missing it doesn’t seem like they are central for most users. If a feature is not there you simply can’t use the OS. That’s fair enough. It just doesn’t seem like that’s really a problem OS X has. Especially when you are coming from a different background it also can be hard to understa…

Alt-Arrows - is that a Lion thing? Opening up a stock iterm, and hitting...

hrm... well "alt" is above the 'option' label, so I'm not sure how to invoke that. option arrows don't move by word. fn+option (which I'd assume give me 'alt' mode) doesn't work. What's the magic invocation to make that happen? Or is it Lion only? (snow leopard here).

Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.

#130

Post by cjfont »

ugh wrote: post #71
adbge wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, wtf is up with removing "Save As"? I had to copy the text from a file I was working on and paste it into a new file because the "Save a new version" option wasn't doing anything. One you missed: really horrible auto-correct feature Apple added. It will replace a word when you're in the middle of typing it. Completely broken and totally transparent. At first, I thought that WriteRoom was just buggy. Oh, and…

Save as doesn’t make sense if the app auto-saves.

Sure it does, it just auto-saves to whatever your last "Save As" was.
Post reply on HN