Tim O'Reilly: I am really starting to hate Mac OS X. • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by greggman » Sat, Nov 12, 2011, 10:05 PM UTC

pedrolll wrote: post #44

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…

>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. In Lion it's possible to resize from any window border. I don't know what these other complaints are. Personally, coming from Windows & Ubuntu, I just fell in love with the way ever…

"everything just works". haha. I like your sarcasm

I hear that so often from Mac fans,... just after they get done telling me about their latest problem.

As an owner/user of 4 macs, 3 windows machines and 3 ubuntu machines my personal mac experience has had no more or less problems than my windows or ubuntu experiences.

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

#262

Post by idspispopd » Sat, Nov 12, 2011, 10:07 PM UTC

I find it hard to take these sorts of rants seriously. It's a user who wants to do things their own way, but not bother learning how exactly that is done. I call this mixed-level behaviour - e.g. users who won't use the built-in functionality, but not understand or correctly use the alternative more technical methods.

Take the mail example, Mail.app already lets him export his mail box, delete his mail etc. He never needed to rifle through ~/Library to get at it. However if he's tech savvy enough to want to do it the manual way, then he should know how to fire up the terminal to access ~/Library, or more simply by holding the option key and choosing "Library" from the go menu. I don't this is breaking osx.

While I can't vouch for why he has a magnitude of locked files, given the mail example I have a fair idea of how he's gotten in that situation. While os x does give him the option to gloss past certain locked files. He's likely seeing the error because he's removed files which are "spoken for" (i.e in use), these are often located in ~/Library and it's kind of the point of why ~/Library is hidden. Again, if he wants to be tech-savvy, he should just rm the files, or rm the contents of the trash folder. (Or if it was mail.app responsible, just originally remove the mail from inside Mail.app)

OSX certainly has some way to go in addressing this kind of mixed level behaviour, but it's not going to stop you from shooting yourself in the foot.

About the other features: while I don't appreciate the iOS-ificiation of mac os, it's trivial to turn these learning-curve reducing features off, and on laptops I find they make more sense than they do when using a mouse + keyboard.

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

#263

Post by webspiderus » Sat, Nov 12, 2011, 10:08 PM UTC

cpeterso wrote: post #199

neetij wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or install a utility like RightZoom.

Thanks for the tip! I didn't know about RightZoom. Here are some little known Mac utilities I like: * MutableCode's Breakaway let's you configure separate audio volumes (including silence) for with and without headphones. * Stereopsis' Flux adjusts your display's color temperature to match the type of lighting in your room (e.g. daylight, halogen, fluorescent) to avoid the blindly blue glare in a dark room.

F.lux is actually available for all platforms! I've been using it on Windows for a while, one of my favorite small utilities.

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

#264

Post by Raphael » Sat, Nov 12, 2011, 10:09 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #141

WayneDB wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there are a couple of subtleties that are being addressed, that maybe need to be said better. 1) Mac keyboard shortcuts are confusing and inconsistent compared to other OSes. They're not as discoverable. Maybe this is why it seems like there are more of them or that they're harder to learn. When I say they're confusing, I mean that they use those funky characters instead of the words Ctrl, Alt or Shift. Those c…

Um, have you ever actually used a Mac? Like, since 1987 or so? Mac keyboard shortcuts are: 1) Not confusing at all, the common ones date back decades and are largely similar to other platforms. 2) No, they don't use "funky characters". Command is a word. Do you have difficulty recognizing what "Command-S" means for save, or "Command-P" for print, etc? 3) I beg to differ. Command, control and option are on the keyboar…

He's referring to "the modifier key symbols you can see in Mac OS X menus". http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343

Only 1 out of 5 appears on the Apple keyboard. http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB110LL/B

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

#265

Post by greggman » Sat, Nov 12, 2011, 10:10 PM UTC

ugh wrote: post #127

fiblye wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 fina…

And what if my workflow involves making multiple files based off the same document? Say I making png buttons in Photoshop. I change the test to "Order" pick save as, type "order.png", change the text to "Cancel" pick save as, type "cancel.png", change the text to "Help" pick save as, type "help.png".

It sounds like that work flow just got massively tedious.

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

#266

Post by __david__ » Sat, Nov 12, 2011, 10:11 PM UTC

ahlatimer wrote: post #168

mgkimsal wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

iTerm != Terminal. The alt-arrows works in Lion's Terminal; I just checked (although I use iTerm, where it doesn't work). iTerm appears to be the only app that doesn't respond to ctrl/alt-arrows. I use them quite frequently, and it always trips me up that iTerm works differently than essentially every other app.

That's because alt-arrow isn't a ANSI control sequence. What should it map to? You can see what your terminal is sending with this command:

    stty -icanon -echo; od -c

Hit your key sequence then hit return a bunch of times until the line comes out. You'll see some sort of ESC sequence.

When done, control-c then type "stty sane" (it will not echo).

For iTerm I get "\e[1;9D". Terminal, interestingly is giving me "\e\eD". When I turn off my "Use option as meta key" preference in Terminal it gives me "\eD". Which is the same as plain left arrow.

Also, neither of those escape sequences does anything in bash for me.

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

#267

Post by vacri » Sat, Nov 12, 2011, 10:18 PM UTC

ugh wrote: post #138

cjfont wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s possible to do but it would confuse. It doesn’t make sense conceptually .

I've not used lion so am not familiar with it, but going from what someone else is saying above, you need to 'duplicate' then 'save'. If it's autosaving, this doesn't make sense conceptually either. Why would the app not be autosaving once the duplicated document has been created? Why do you need to save separately?

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

#268

Post by sycren » Sat, Nov 12, 2011, 10:19 PM UTC

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.

I think I use tools like Divvy http://mizage.com/#macdivvy more than I use the zoom icon, it makes it so much easier to position windows..

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

#269

Post by vacri » Sat, Nov 12, 2011, 10:20 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #193

georgieporgie wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But very, very few apps ever get it right, and most people seem to just want minimize and maximize.

Have you ever used a 30" display? Maximizing windows does not make a whole lot of sense there, especially considering the difference in window contents on Windows vs Mac (ie. self-contained menubar, etc).

What proportion of OSX users use 30" displays?

Hell, what proportion of them use desktop-variety computers?

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

#270

Post by WayneDB » Sat, Nov 12, 2011, 10:20 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #141

WayneDB wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there are a couple of subtleties that are being addressed, that maybe need to be said better. 1) Mac keyboard shortcuts are confusing and inconsistent compared to other OSes. They're not as discoverable. Maybe this is why it seems like there are more of them or that they're harder to learn. When I say they're confusing, I mean that they use those funky characters instead of the words Ctrl, Alt or Shift. Those c…

Um, have you ever actually used a Mac? Like, since 1987 or so? Mac keyboard shortcuts are: 1) Not confusing at all, the common ones date back decades and are largely similar to other platforms. 2) No, they don't use "funky characters". Command is a word. Do you have difficulty recognizing what "Command-S" means for save, or "Command-P" for print, etc? 3) I beg to differ. Command, control and option are on the keyboar…

Should I upload a picture of my Macbook Pro keyboard? Because the funky characters are not on there. Just the words, Fn, Control and Alt/Option. Command is the only one that has a symbol as well as a word.