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What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?

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Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?

#61

Post by GHFigs »

The Cut/Paste in Finder issue comes up a lot, because in people that use the GUI for file management the basic action becomes a deeply ingrained habit with a specific mental model.

Windows-style "pick up here, drop there": - make selection with mouse - cut with keboard - navigate to destination with mouse - paste with keyboard

Mac-style "carry from here to there": - make selection with mouse - drag with mouse - navigate to destination with mouse - drop with mouse

You can learn to use the other kind, but if you have to switch between them often you'll likely grow frustrated with one or the other. With the Finder for lacking Cut and for others lacking spring-loaded folders and Expose.

Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?

#62

Post by ghshephard »

mr_cheese wrote: post #34
kleinsch wrote: post #18

The green button has inconsistent behavior by application - firefox maximizes to whole screen, safari sizes to the window, iTunes goes back and forth from mini-Player No cut and paste between windows - But I use the command line for most things, so it's not that big of a deal

Firefox and iTunes are the broken ones. Most other apps handle the zoom button correctly -- they resize the window to be just big enough to fit the contents.

Terminal.app - if there was one app that I wished would resize itself to handle the widest possible line, that is it. Alas, it just zooms to fill the entire screen - which is somewhat comedic at 10 pt Courier on a 2560x1600 30" Monitor whose longest line in the scrollback-buffer is 75 characters.

Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?

#63

Post by miles »

GHFigs wrote: post #57
miles wrote: post #41

I wrote this back in early 2007, and it still applies: Four things OS X can learn from Windows 95 http://www.tinyapps.org/weblog/mac/200703210700_four_things_... You would think that after all these years, Apple would have copied these simple yet essential abilities from Windows 95: 1. In Spotlight's search result window, files should be able to be deleted, copied, moved, renamed, etc. 2. Spotlight should offer an "I…

1 & 2 are both in Leopard. Apple ditched the weird Spotlight results window in equally weird but more functional views in Finder windows. 4 is in Snow Leopard.

"1 & 2 are both in Leopard"

Sorry about that - you're right about the deleting and copying in Leopard. As with the Finder in general, files cannot be cut/moved, and renaming is not available from the Context Menu or by pressing Enter (though it is available by clicking the file names).

As for #2 ("In Folder" or "Location" column in Spotlight results), can you please tell me how to display such a column?

Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?

#64

Post by ams1 »

cpr wrote: post #50
stonemetal wrote: post #24

Apple has Balkanized their OS's API. Most software out there only supports the latest release. The rest only supports two releases back. In fact with 10.6's release imminent it is hard to find software that supports older than 10.4 anymore.

What's the point of running older OSes?

i'm a fan of newer hardware with older software for speed reasons.

Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?

#66

Post by djehuty »

tsuraan wrote: post #17

Running linux on a Mac laptop is a bit of a pain, mostly because of the keyboard/touchpad. The control and alt keys are in strange places (at least on my powerbook), and having only one button on the mouse is pretty irritating when you're not in OSX. I actually replaced my powerbook with a Linux laptop primarily for those two reasons; I'm always working in a terminal, so not having reasonably placed control and alt k…

You'll find that with only a little practice using tap gesture for button press becomes second nature. From there it's only a 5 minute learning curve to double-tap equals right button. So if you're serious about putting Linux on there, and frankly I think that's just silly, don't let the touchpad put you off.

I'm perfectly happy with Coda for web development, although I wish it had function collapsing.

Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?

#67

Post by weaksauce »

cliffdickerson wrote: post #38
kleinsch wrote: post #18

The green button has inconsistent behavior by application - firefox maximizes to whole screen, safari sizes to the window, iTunes goes back and forth from mini-Player No cut and paste between windows - But I use the command line for most things, so it's not that big of a deal

Not to keep pushing this software, but SizeUp allows for a keyboard shortcut to do full size windows (for any window) and then snap back to previous size, plus a whole mess of other great features. Its literally the app that kept me using OS X after switching from Linux. And its name your own price licensing. http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/

That looks like a great piece of software! I have been bugged by the lack of maximize for a while now. This looks like it will fit the bill nicely.

Out of curiosity, what is a typical "donation" to the developer in this style of licensing?

Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?

#68

Post by romulob »

The mouse speed algorithm. I'm using an iMac for three days and want to throw it out off window. I just keep missing the clicks! Or the mouse go too fast and pass the controls, or too slow and don't reach them.

But the worst thing is that when I switched to my Dell Notebook (ArchLinux), I was too used to the iMac's mouse =\

Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?

#69

Post by weaksauce »

GeneralMaximus wrote: post #30
dmlorenzetti wrote: post #10

One thing I miss from Windows-- the ability to easily access any menu item from the keyboard (not just items that have a defined keyboard shortcut). Yes, it can be done, but not "out of the box" using individual keystrokes to navigate each level of the hierarchy.

The best way to quickly access a menu item is to hit CMD+?. Then just type in the name of the menu item. That, IMO, is a much faster way of accessing the menu than the ALT+foo shortcuts from Windows-land.

Great tip! I wish firefox behaved like a good OS X app. just tried it in firefox and it brings up a help tab.

Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?

#70

Post by teilo »

I have two:

1) The new Macbook Pros moved all the function keys around. I can no longer control the volume with one hand, because the Fn key is too far away from F10-F12. (I want my F-keys to be F-keys, not Fn-F-keys, because I use Windows via Fusion all the time, and use F-keys in Mellel all the time as well).

2) When opening a Finder window, Finder starts to create thumbnails of all the documents it understands, and replacing the default file icons with the thumbnails. Nice feature - except that every time it creates a new thumbnail it refreshes the window. Consequently, if you are trying to rename a file, you can't do it in the window. Every time you try, the window refreshes, and you lose focus on the filename! You are forced to do a Command-I just to rename a file. There is no reason this has to happen. Why can't Finder refresh a thumbnail without stealing focus? Idiotic.

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