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

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

#241

Post by randallsquared »

wes-exp wrote: post #194
kylewpppd wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how anyone can recommend homebrew as a viable solution to package management on OS X. You have to compile everything. Coming from apt-get or yum makes brew, port, and fink look like a joke.

I'm using both Linux and OS X regularly. Apt is awesome, without a doubt, particularly for the breadth of software available. And on the whole, I agree that Homebrew is considerably inferior. But there is one aspect I'm liking better about the Homebrew/Mac approach. With Homebrew I can have the latest software without a problem, because the OS itself is not so hooked in to the web of package manager dependencies. In…

In many cases on Linux I just wait until the next OS release to upgrade software - because toying with the huge dependency graph is not worth it. Maybe I should switch to a rolling release distro? I haven't tried that.

When I most recently used Linux on the desktop, in 2010, I finally grew frustrated enough with Ubuntu's screen management setup (there was no way to get it to respect my wishes for it to turn off the screen completely, until I finally killed the power manager entirely) that I switched to Arch. That was superficially better (stuff mostly worked as advertised), but the rolling release means either keeping up to date and dealing with constant breakage ("Oh, look, the new kernel has a broken driver for my audio card", or "Oh, another update, another few hours troubleshooting Wine. Yay"), or waiting a while and having the update become riskier and riskier.

Linux will be ready for the desktop when updating doesn't mean near certainty that something breaks. I realize that things used to be more broken, but when I used Linux as my primary desktop back in 1998-2003, my expectations were lower. Being a Mac user for 5-6 years seriously reduced my patience with troubleshooting random problems just to get all the functionality that the system I'm using claims to provide.

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

#242

Post by gourami73 »

kellishaver wrote: post #216
jasonkester wrote: post #133

Earlier 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.

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.

...those home and end keys unfortunately don't take you to the beginning or end of a line like on Windows or Linux...they take you to the top/bottom of the document! one of the more painful parts of my switching process was un-training myself to hit home to get to the beginning of a line (these is no way to remap system wide either, you need to do it on a per app basis)...you're almost better off without having those keys.

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

#243

Post by jasonlotito »

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…

6 paragraphs, complete with 7 points, multiple states, and not messing with the almighty Dock. No wonder Apple can't figure out window management, and is resorting to the "Maximize everything!" approach.

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

#245

Post by zamfi »

HSO wrote: post #58
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…

Suum cuique but some of your concerns really aren't: > In OSX you can only resize a window in the bottom right corner, in Ubuntu I can resize from any corner, or I can hold Alt and middle click anywhere near a corner of a window to start resizing it. No more hunting for the resize sweetspot. They changed that in Lion to every corner, every side. And you don't have to press ALT to do it. > When I click the Maximize bu…

I count myself as a Mac power user, but I definitely learned something from your post.

Perhaps there should be a "power user FAQ", one that covers "how to make Mac OS X 10.X more like Max OS X 10.(X-1)".

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

#246

Post by Periodic »

anigbrowl wrote: post #231
Periodic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was pleasantly surprised because the Windows/Linux systems tend to mask Control-A for select-all. Linux maybe. I have never had it fail in windows and think you may be misremembering how it works.

I mean they mask control-A to select all instead of moving the cursor to the beginning of the line.

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

#247

Post by Periodic »

pyre wrote: post #214
Periodic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To me I think of it as Bash bindings, because that is where I learned them. For text editing I've been using vim bindings, but I never found the vim mode to work quite like I want it to on the terminal. I should look into that more.

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

#248

Post by nitrogen »

kamechan wrote: post #238
kisielk wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares about the justification. The major problem with it is that the behaviour is unpredictable. You have no idea what is going to happen when you push that button for a given app. In some apps, they'll go full screen. A browser might resize to fit the current web page. iTunes actually shrinks down to a mini control window. So now in order to use this button if a useful manner the user has to remember exactly wha…

i tend not to use it for this very reason. i've wished, on more than one occasion, that a user could customize this action to be a "maximize vertically", as one could in gnome2. maybe i'm one of the few who actually used this, as it seems to have been phased out in gnome3. but i found it very useful.

You're not the only one to use vertical maximization. I really liked being able to middle-click the maximize button for vertical, or right-click for horizontal. It seems that's no longer the case in Gnome-3-hacked-to-look-like-Gnome-2-in-Ubuntu-11.10. I suppose it's replaced by Windows 7-style border dragging, but that's less flexible as you can only do maximize, left half, or right half.

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

#249

Post by __david__ »

archangel_one wrote: post #74
HSO wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suum cuique but some of your concerns really aren't: > In OSX you can only resize a window in the bottom right corner, in Ubuntu I can resize from any corner, or I can hold Alt and middle click anywhere near a corner of a window to start resizing it. No more hunting for the resize sweetspot. They changed that in Lion to every corner, every side. And you don't have to press ALT to do it. > When I click the Maximize bu…

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…

Yeah, the only reason I knew about Fn-arrows was because my old MacBook actually labelled them: http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/15837.jpg For some reason the labels are not part of the new design (no numeric keypad emulation either). I guess they thought it was too busy a design?

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

#250

Post by prof_hobart »

xentronium wrote: post #170
archangel_one wrote: post #74

Earlier 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…

Actually, I liked text manipulations shortcuts in native text input fields. They are very consistent and easy to get used to. Option (Alt) means "word". Opt+Left — move one word left, Opt+Right — move one word right. Cmd means "all". Cmd+left — move to beginning of line, Cmd+right — move to the end of line, Cmd+up — move to the beginning of the text, Cmd+down — move to the end of text. PgDown/PgUp/Home/End mean the s…

As a relatively recent Mac convert, the whole "Option (Alt)" thing still gets me. I regularly see shortcut hints and then have to sit there for a few seconds thinking "Which one's the Option key again?"
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