Mac OS X Annoyances
Posted February 12th, 2006 @ 02:04pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Yet another dope has seen fit to call out Mac OS X's annoyances. Let's have a look.
- Separating Menu Bar from Window Is Stupid. No, you are if you think the Windows way is in any way better. Location consistency doesn't trump having something infinitely high. Usability studies and common sense tell you that.
- Apps Don't Really Close When You Close Them. Some do. The ones that don't either take little or no processor time and/or memory or may run tasks in the background. And if you're gonna nit-pick on "annoyances," don't say "when you close them." Say "when you close all of their windows. Duh. And command-Q isn't dangerous, as nearly every Mac app will let you save or cancel if there's a modified document or if it's performing some task.
- Maximizing Is Broken. No, you're just used to the MDI or whatever it's called on Windows. Apps that need to be full-screen on Mac OS X are full-screen.
- Alt-Tab to a Minimized App, and It Stays Minimized. Because you may want to make use of cmd-N to make a new window (or cmd-Q, or any number of other menu items and commands. Still, this is the most valid point he's had this far.
- Too Many Option Keys. It was only ever called "open apple" by dumbasses like yourself. Which ones do you use to right-click? How about the right button on your mouse. Seriously, "too many option keys"? Don't use 'em!
- No Dedicated Page Up, Page Down, Home, or End Keys. He must be using a laptop, in which case he can simply press the function (fn) key to get page up/down/etc. Or plug in nearly any USB keyboard.
- Only One Desktop. Uhh, can you do this in Windows? Not that I know of. You can add this - if you'd like - via shareware. I'm fine with Apple keeping this one out of their software. Imagine the number of calls tech support people would get when some mom somewhere can't find that document she was working on because she switched desktops.
- The Clock Sucks. I guess he hasn't found "View in Window" yet. But c'mon, if "the clock sucks" is in your top 100 annoyances, let alone your top 10, you've got a pretty darn good OS. Especially since, with 30 seconds of research, you can figure out how to change this.
- iPhoto Sucks. Uhh, okay. That's got nothing to do with Mac OS X. So not only does Mac OS X not annoy him so much he has to talk about the clock, but now he's talking about apps that aren't even part of the OS.
- Safari Sucks. Not part of the OS. Bzzzzzzt. Sorry, try again.
If I made a list of Windows annoyances, you can darn well bet things like "the clock sucks" wouldn't even come close to making the top ten.
Donate Life
Posted 12 Feb 2006 at 2:17pm #
'Stick to what you're good at'
…would be something fitting to tell Chris Shiflett. Out of his 'Top X Mac OS X Annoyances', one doesn't even have to do with Mac OS X (but with the hardware he's running it on, or, more specifically, the keyboard he…
Posted 12 Feb 2006 at 2:29pm #
Nice post. Actually he uses Linux, so comparison to windows is not the best way to tell him he's wrong 😉
You should by the way check the comments and the rest of his post, because he says that are the things that annoy him - hey, I have 25 unfixed bugs in my Apple Bug Reporter account and could talk about things that annoy me until your ears begin bleeding ... but anyway, Mac OS is the best, by far!
Btw I posted that last sentence over there at Chris already in the comments where I also wrote he's wrong ...
Posted 12 Feb 2006 at 2:30pm #
Regarding this:
I'd disagree. Remember, it's not the app that stays minimized, it's individual windows. I often hide windows in Safari or mail messages in Mail and I don't want the web pages or messages to pop open just because I'm switching between that app and another program. By contast, when you hide a program, all windows pop open when you switch back to it, which again there seems to be proper behavior.
Of course, given the other complaints, it probably is "the most valid point he's had this far." 🙂 Number 2 is also silly, and unimportant, because for the most part it doesn't matter whether an app stays open or closed, and I'm windows I'm always annoyed that when I close the last web page in a browser the whole browser shuts down as well.
Posted 12 Feb 2006 at 2:51pm #
Actually, on Windows you can use the Power Tool (I forget what it's called), but it's laggy and hardware-hungry. And there's the free Desktop Manager (I think it's free) for OS X.
Posted 12 Feb 2006 at 3:14pm #
Oh, my goodness! I'm no Mac zealot and don't *mind* criticism. But let's have some useful criticism. That was just a load of rubbish from that guy.
The very first one is daft. Since the controls on the menu bar are, in most cases, relevant to the program not to any *particular* open window, it only makes sense to have them separate from particular windows. As I understand it, the Windoze way goes back to the days when, owing to the limitations of the operating system, you probably only had one window per program open anyway. And shame on Linux for copying the Windows way. The Mac way makes far more sense. It was the NeXT way, too.
Microsoft has made even more of a pig's ear with IE7. It obviously realizes, even if this clown doesn't, that a menu bar on each window of a program is in the way.
So what does it do? It *hides* the menu bar - which is even stupider - you need to go into tools to switch it on:
http://rentzsch.com/suck/stopStopStopHurtingTheInternet
Incidentally, speaking of NeXT, one NeXT afficianado did tell me that NeXT actually had three window states, which is more logical, but that was dropped as being too difficult for Maccies. That's another pointer to the expectations behind NeXT, on which OS X is built: it's multi-tasking and you'll have plenty of programs running and plenty of windows open. Goodbye objections 1, 2, and 3.
And the other objections ... well, it's all downhill from there.
No, he can kick OS X as much as he likes, as far as I'm concerned, but those objections are just stupid.
Posted 12 Feb 2006 at 3:18pm #
iPhoto and Safari are not technically part of the OS, but they do come with all Macs.
Then again, I disagree with his reasoning re: Safari because you can enable full keyboard access in system preferences.
Posted 12 Feb 2006 at 3:52pm #
I've never seen someone who failed to understand the OS X UI paradigms that badly. Extended use of Windows seems to melt people's brains.
This list could also be called "things I first considered strange because I just switched and then started to love them that much so I will never ever switch back".
Posted 12 Feb 2006 at 5:55pm #
I'd have to disagree that his point is valid at all... I'd say that he;s just used to Windows silly idea of minimizing applications, which i would say is more closely related to "hiding" applications in the Mac OS. Minimizing windows makes sense, but minimizing entire applications is simply a way to "hide" them... and when a hidden application is brought to the foreground (un-minimizing, or alt-tabbing to it) it does work exactly how you'd expect; it becomes visible.
This is just a misunderstanding of the purposes (and differences between) Hiding and minimizing, to someone who's been raised on Windows funny idea of "sensical"
...and the rest of this list is pretty brainless, so whatever.
Posted 12 Feb 2006 at 6:30pm #
Well, those of us who used to use an Apple ][ used to call it the Open-Apple key, because we had two of them -- What's now labeled as Option / Alt has a Closed-Apple key in its place. Just a bit of history.
I hate it when people assume that Windows is the right way, and everything else is wrong. A lot of these, if not all of them are design issues where Apple went one way, and Microsoft went another.
Posted 12 Feb 2006 at 6:36pm #
Matt, agreed, they're not part of the OS. They're bundled apps (though iPhoto's position as a "bundled app" is even quite tenuous as you do have to pay for upgrades).
Software developers tend to be pretty picky about things like "part of the OS" and not. Lawyers, too, or Microsoft would have had an easy time saying that IE was not part of the OS when the truth that it was tied just a bit too tightly to the OS.
Posted 12 Feb 2006 at 8:06pm #
The difference between IE/win and iPhoto is that IE offers a service to the system (MSHTML.DLL), which many apps use (for example, WinAmp offers a browser built-in for some reason), comparable to the WebKit. iPhoto does not offer any services to the system, so no app depends on its existence.
Posted 12 Feb 2006 at 8:57pm #
I normally don'd mind commenting without reading an article, but did *anyone* even bother? He claims to use Mac and Linux, not Windows, and he likes Mac so much that he is thinking about using it and nothing else.
Criticism is good, and it's silly to pretend that everything is perfect.
Oh, and I'm a "dumbass" who remembers it being called open apple, too. I guess anyone who's been using Macs for a long time is now a dumbass?
His list was OK. This commentary is braindead.
Posted 12 Feb 2006 at 9:52pm #
You say 'consistency trumps infinitely high' but consistency with what? Windows? A Mac isn't Windows, it's a Mac, and it's consistent with Macs. And I don't buy your usability studies and common sense BS.
Posted 13 Feb 2006 at 8:39am #
Richard, it was never - on a Mac - called "open apple." People mistakenly called it that.
Jesse, you've misquoted me. Consistency and infinitely high trump whatever he thinks he has with menus on ever window. On a Mac, the menu is both in a consistent location and infinitely high.
Posted 13 Feb 2006 at 3:54pm #
I actually think Mac OSX is cool. I've had no problems with it.
Anything is better than Windows anyway.