His complaint does seem minor as does mine for Windows, can you scroll non-active windows yet?
Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
211–220 of 459 posts
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#212What 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 said, installing Linux on a Mac seems offensive, like replacing the dashboard of a Maybach with the one of a race car.
It also works less well than just installing it on PC hardware. Apple hardware isn't meant to work well with any other OS, and oftentimes, it doesn't. Even if the drivers for other vendors' hardware aren't perfect, in my experience, they usually work work better than the Linux drivers for Apple's hardware.
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 was…
I share your sentiments. Me too couldn't get used to OSX even after months of trying. While, with its underlying unix philosophy, it is close to Linux, it's never quite there, and what bothers the most is the obviously intentional decision to disable all kinds of UI customizations. Put a proprietary codebase on top of that and we, as regular Linux users, feel stuck and helpless most of the time.
What I do right now, as I didn't want to refuse the company's MacBook Pro, is dual boot Debian on it. Except for the fact that I couldn't get integrated GPU to work instead of the discrete one, I haven't had any problems with them working together. Excellent OS on excellent hardware (I wouldn't call it stellar though, I have few complaints there as well).
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think some of the points are valid; there may be solutions but they are so obscure that people obviously never discover them. I've had a MBP for nearly a year now and never knew that Fn+Left/Right substituted for Home/End (thanks for the tip, btw). I can't see myself guessing Cmd+Shift+G to type paths into Finder either... They're valid solutions but normally Linux is (not unjustifiably) castigated for requiring ob…
One handy thing is that because OS X uses Command for most of its window-management and application hot-keys, control + key is almost always unmasked by the application. Why is this important? Control-A and Control-E work in almost any text input! They work in Adium, they work in Chrome for the location bar and this textarea, and I'm sure many others. I was pleasantly surprised because the Windows/Linux systems tend…
All native text inputs support Emacs keybindings. The only rub is that you need to use Ctrl + Option to Meta.
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing about mission control is that they could easily have left the old expose intact as an optional alternative, but nooooo they had to remove it completely and fuck up thousands of users' workflow habits. I mean you have to admit the way mission control stacks windows on top of each other for each application is pretty ridiculous. Other than that it's fairly useful. But there was no good reason to remove the 'a…
> But there was no good reason to remove the 'all app expose' feature, leaving only the within app expose. They either just overlooked it or want to brainwash users into some sort of app centric paradigm. Do you mean the "Show all Windows for the current app"? I'm pretty sure it's still there. Might have a different gesture tho.
No I mean there used to be two forms of expose - show all within app, which I almost never used (it would only be useful if you had a truly ridiculous number of windows open, really), and show all windows across all applications including the finder. They've taken away the latter, which was the useful one.
Most times I hit expose in the past it was to go to a window of another application. For instance switching between the code I was editing in Coda or Textmate to the webpage I was building in Safari, or the graphics I was manipulating in Preview. In fact I did this constantly. Now it's a two step process: select the app in mission control, and then do expose once you're in the app. It wouldn't be so bad if the way Mission Control stacked the app windows wasn't so useless - when you expand them they should at least fill the screen so you can see everything, instead they become just slightly less bundled together, forcing you to footer about with the pointer to get what you want.
Expose was one of the best GUI innovations ever, IMO, and they've bloody ruined it.
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s no less obscure than other operating systems in this regard. I can’t see the difference.
Are you sure? On a windows box, there's a key with "End" written on it. Much more guessable than fn+right arrow.
There are home and end keys on a full-size Mac keyboard, too. They're not there on the compact keyboard layout, but many Windows laptops have home/end mapped to other keys, as well. Granted, that's usually is indicated on the keys, whereas it's not on the Mac, but you still have to go hunting for them the first time you need them and one time is all it takes to learn their location.
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is quite curious... though can you really blame the operating system for a program running on it? (Presumably SW:tOR)
I can certainly blame Microsoft for Microsoft libraries that don't install on its own operating system cleanly, and requires a Microsoft-issued fix.
I don't know, but maybe SW:tOR didn't do proper checks and so it was trying to install something antiquated, and modified the registry beforehand?
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting to juxtapose your excerpt from the HIG with megamark16's comment below ( "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." ) What this should tell us is that a UI strategy can be "optimal" -- in the sense that the HIG passage you quoted likely emerged from a lot of intense debate between some very bright, motivat…
Yes - I think you're talking about the Principle of least astonishment , which states that: "when two elements of an interface conflict, or are ambiguous, the behaviour should be that which will least surprise the user" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment
Adherence to convention is important, but so is quality documentation. I'd argue each of those virtues are on the downswing right now. Lots of new devs, faster platform feature additions, Apple failing to lead by example...pick three and add three of your own.
TL;DR: Put thorough doc under the Help menu. Every time.
Someone mentioned Photobooth hotkey weirdness below. There's definitely a (low, low) threshold at which the presence of mystery-hotkey functionality moves from "easter eggs yay!" to "your doc sucks." Dogcow moof was all the easter egg I needed, really.
The "apps should be obvious from first launch" maxim has had awful consequences here. Are people thinking "if it needs doc I did it wrong"? Because hey kids, it needs doc whether you think it's obvious or not.
Curious whether you'd consider this to be evidence of platform doc erosion:
I develop a pretty simple Mac application and market it through the MAS. It ships with thorough instructions that are available through the standard Help menu.
Aside from the odd feature request, the only question I ever hear from users (maybe 1% of them?) is: "I launched your app and it doesn't seem to be working at all. I went to your website and there's no PDF user manual to be found. Is it broken?"
My responses to that have morphed over time into a very polite text wrapper around a screenshot of the Help menu.
Are these isolated cases of people just not thinking to look for help under the Help menu, or has the overall quality of content under the Help menu declined to the point where a subset of users just never expect useful information to be there?
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They changed that in Lion to every corner, every side. And you don't have to press ALT to do it. You don't have to hold down ALT - you can do it without, holding down ALT increases the window edge hit area to make it easier to resize it. > There's now a full-screen mode that takes care of that. And makes using multiple monitors even more pathetic on OS X by effectively disabling other outputs - on top of the age-ol…
> And makes using multiple monitors even more pathetic on OS X (the menu for a window on a secondary monitor being displayed on the primary monitor, etc, etc)... Yes, that's one of my gripes too. Note that I didn't say OS X was perfect . I took issue with this pompous litany of faux issues.
> I took issue with this pompous litany of faux issues.
(If it's the later, then I view this as the Mac version of the Linux literate telling new users to 'RTFM' instead of being helpful.)
Re: Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X.
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure? On a windows box, there's a key with "End" written on it. Much more guessable than fn+right arrow.
End? What does that mean? Does it quit the current app? Does it shutdown? I’m really confused! And this strange Home key, what’s that for? Going to my start page? Showing the desktop? Start menu? What’s going on?!
It's pretty easy to push a key and find out what it does compared to imagining a key combination and trying to figure if that key combination even does anything