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Awesome Mac features...that you don't use?

D

DaveF

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 29, 2007
851
63
NoVA
There are threads on Mac features you love and Mac features you hate. I'm curious what Mac features you think are really cool, yet have no use for? What tools or Leopard upgrades looked great at the Apple store, but really, aren't something useful to you?

I can't fathom a use for the iSight camera. I wish I did, it's such a neat little thing. But it's just wasted plastic in my Mac. Maybe if I had someone to iChat with, but when my wife's Mac is on the other side of the office from mine, it's another nifty gadget I don't get.

I haven't touched FrontRow since the first week I had my MBP. And finally, as neat as it looks, Finder's Cover Flow remains collecting dust on my system, ignored as I use Column View.
 
Yea Cover Flow and the touch features on my new MBP. It's a very uncomfortable motion to "expand" two fingers on the touchpad. Who came up with that?
 
I agree with the iSight comment. The truth is that I'd really like to do video chatting with my friends, but they all either have no camera or use various incompatible protocols. I wish videoconferencing "just worked." sigh.
 
Exposé. . it never occurs to me to use it, and I don't feel any need to integrate it into my workflow.

I don't use Front Row either, or iWork.
 
karenflower said:
Exposé. . it never occurs to me to use it, and I don't feel any need to integrate it into my workflow.
Click to expand...

Really? This is surprising. The old days of collapsing menu bars, shuffling, minimizing, and closing multiple windows will not be missed. Hot corners with the mouse make exposé essential to me.
 
Hi,

here goes a counter-post....I actually use Front Row and Cover Flow.

Front Row
I use Front Row for watching movies from my laptop on the TV. Front Row because it has simple navigation, so I can use my mobile's bluetooth capability to control Front Row.

Cover Flow
It's nice and everything. Although I have a real use for it as well. A visual web history. Really great, to find a webpage, you could identify by its look by can't remember the name. There is a tutorial on my site, explaining how to create a visual web history.


/Rupert
 
karenflower said:
Exposé. . it never occurs to me to use it, and I don't feel any need to integrate it into my workflow.
Click to expand...

I don't really use Expose either.

HostaDesigner said:
Really? This is surprising. The old days of collapsing menu bars, shuffling, minimizing, and closing multiple windows will not be missed. Hot corners with the mouse make exposé essential to me.
Click to expand...

Yes, but then I never do any of those things, either. I just use the keyboard commands to Hide applications I don't want to see, and then Command + Tab to ones I want and Command + ` to the right window. Perhaps Expose would be faster if I used my mouse a lot, but my hands are mostly on the keyboard. So I just use the keyboard. I did use it a lot in the Tiger days of downloading things to the desktop to reveal the desktop, but I don't need it anymore. There are a few times I use it just because. Same with the Spaces "birds eye view" Expose-like feature. I just Ctrl+# to the one I want.

Hmm my other ones...

-Don't use Front Row much, either.
-Don't use Cover Flow for anything but my Movies folder. Even in iTunes...I only have about 20% of all my albums' cover art! It's nice for Movies, though.
-Automator seems cool, but I've only tried to use it once, and then realized I could write a shell script instead.
-Applescript also seems cool, but I've never had to use it. I use XCode a lot, though.
-The Speech pref pane is fun to play around with, but it's never been practical for me to use it.

That's all I can think of right now.

Oh, and I happen to be someone who actually uses iSight and Photo Booth fairly often.
 
HostaDesigner said:
Hot corners with the mouse make exposé essential to me.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Drag'n'drop + Exposé = can't live without. It's just so natural and fluid that when I use a Mac without hot corners set up, I just sit there banging the pointer into the corners with nothing happening and me going "ARRGH!!!!!!!" (Well, not really, but almost. ;) )

I don't use iMovie myself, but I don't think that counts since it's not part of the OS; iLife is a separate add-on and you have to upgrade it separately.

--Eric
 
karenflower said:
Exposé. . it never occurs to me to use it, and I don't feel any need to integrate it into my workflow.
Click to expand...
My wife's the same way -- which baffles me :) I find Exposé to be a Mac "killer app" and almost reason alone to switch. Especially on a 15" MBP, it's a super feature for juggling apps. I really miss the Expose Desktop command at work on my WinXP system. It may help that I have mouse buttons mapped to the Expose features, so it's not part of a normal control scheme to use it.

This is one feature I suggest you give another try. :)

mackindergarten said:
here goes a counter-post....I actually use Front Row and Cover Flow.
...

Cover Flow
It's nice and everything. Although I have a real use for it as well. A visual web history. Really great, to find a webpage, you could identify by its look by can't remember the name. There is a tutorial on my site, explaining how to create a visual web history.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, that requires Safari. So another one for me: Safari. I use FireFox instead; its extensions, Tab controls, and Search are still better for me than what Safari offers.
 
Exposé. I don't tend to multitask with numerous programs at once. Maybe two or three at a time at most. As well I have a 24" monitor so it's easy enough to have the windows overlapping in such a way that I can easy get whaichever one I need into focus.

Spaces. Again I don't multitask much. Multiple desktops is a great tool, but one that I really don't need at all.
 
Wow! Exposé is like marmite, you either love it or. . are ambivalent about it. :D

Personally I avoid the clutter by having one app in each space, and moving to an empty space to reach the desktop. Totally love the swooshing. :cool:

Also, I've never used Safari or Time Machine.
 
Never use Safari, Mail, iCal, iChat, iMovie, iPhoto or AppleScript. Don't like Safari, always seems slow and the interface isn't appealing. Mail is unattractive to me. No need for iChat. Use Google's calendar. Don't shoot video. iPhoto is lame. Never have and never will write scripts.
 
Automator, Front Row and Spaces; will eventually use Time Machine (when I get an external)-- only started using iCal regularly when I got my iPhone. Have used iDvd a few times, and only use Garageband to make ringtones.
 
Spaces, Frontrow. They are cool but I dont use them.

I dont use coverflow either but I wouldnt call that awesome, its rather stupid and difficult to use, I hate everything about it.
 
iCal (iStat has a nice calendar)
Mail (Thunderbird is a lot better for me)
Safari (Don't like the interface and prefer the extensions in Firefox)
Exposé (What's the point of this, if you have Spaces? I use Spaces *constantly* - I love it!)
Photo Booth, iChat, iDVD, iMovie (No use for any of them....*maybe* iMovie in the future....)
iTunes (I've never liked the interface, even on PC...I *wish* there was something a lot closer to Winamp...right now I play my mp3s through VLC.)
Front Row (What's it for? I already use the DVD player for movies....)
iPhoto (kinda lame, and I already use Adobe Lightroom to manage my images)
Coverflow - hardly ever use it - I prefer icon view most of the time.
 
Quite honestly, I use spaces all the time alongside expose. I couldn't imagine my Mac without them. I guess I never really caught on to coverflow in Finder, nor have I ever used Automator, Front Row is used sometimes, but not a lot, Time Machine is almost never used (due to me using way too much space. I can't really think of much else, but overall I use the majority of my Mac's features.
 
haven't used garageband once but it seems so awesome...
hate spaces.
i LOVE expose and iCal for managing schoolwork.
 
1) Time Machine. I have an external drive (80 GB minus 10 GB for old Windows partition) but my internal is now 250 GB, and I'd rather use those 70GBs for extra space, not for a total copy of my Mac. I do backup my Aperture library, my university work and other important stuff, but I do it without Time machine.

2) iSight. Just no need to video chat. I use it only to make an occasional avatar for Adium.

3) Front Row. I can't imagine it being useful on a laptop, a laptop with a 13" screen. I think its only useful on a Mac mini connected to a TV in your living room.

4) iCal. I even forced myself to use it, but just no need for this kind of organization. Only used it (VERY occasionally) to put texts in russian on my iPod, as Notes stopped working properly with russian language afte some iPod update.

5) DVD Player. I never watch DVDs on my computer. I watch them on my TV and if I like this movie or want to see it on the go, I rip them with Handbrake.

6) Automator. I used it until Leopard made it impossible to create a script I created during Tiger days. Sigh...

iPhoto is cool, but I use Aperture so it doesn't count. Same for iMovie (FCP)

All I can think of atm.
 
eXan said:
1) Time Machine. I have an external drive (80 GB minus 10 GB for old Windows partition) but my internal is now 250 GB, and I'd rather use those 70GBs for extra space, not for a total copy of my Mac. I do backup my Aperture library, my university work and other important stuff, but I do it without Time machine.
Click to expand...
Excepting budget limits and crazy people with 500+ GB of data, I honestly can't understand why anyone would choose not to use TimeMachine.

But I've been burned, having lost photographs from a hard drive crash, and I had put off doing a manual backup of "other important stuff". Hopefully you're more diligent than I was with your backup process.

But for $130 for an external 500GB drive and you're good to go. After losing irreplacable vacation photos of my dad and me, I've got to evangelize Time Machine as a great and effortless backup process for the everyman.

To my original question: Parental Controls seem like a great feature for families, but I'm not a parent... :). The Webclip Dashboard tool is really neat, but I just can't find a use for it. The Leopard-provided Movie Showtimes widget was the last widget I really needed. (Though my wife uses it, to track CD rates at our bank.)
 
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