This website lists some of the annoyances of Mac OSX. Don't know about you guys, but it really hits the points for me. Wish Apple can fix them in time!
http://macosxsins.com
http://macosxsins.com
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Mac OSX Sins - Very true for me
- Thread starter livecn
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#2 I've only just noticed this actually. That does seem pretty stupid.
#5 Agreed, this is pretty irritating. The date modified should be the time and date of the download finishing.
#6 If you have that many windows open at once to not be able to see the one your looking for, then Windows Taskbar would put it into one tab anyway, so you have to search for it under that list anyway.
#8 What's the problem with deleting things from the trash all at once? Why would your files be in there if you didn't want them deleted?
#9 That's subjective. I find the keyboard commands to be simple enough to remember and have no issues with them.
#11 Green light bubble? As in, Maximize? How does it never work as I like?
These are nit-picky problems with OSX, and tbh do not warrant a whole website just to state them. How pointless.
#5 Agreed, this is pretty irritating. The date modified should be the time and date of the download finishing.
#6 If you have that many windows open at once to not be able to see the one your looking for, then Windows Taskbar would put it into one tab anyway, so you have to search for it under that list anyway.
#8 What's the problem with deleting things from the trash all at once? Why would your files be in there if you didn't want them deleted?
#9 That's subjective. I find the keyboard commands to be simple enough to remember and have no issues with them.
#11 Green light bubble? As in, Maximize? How does it never work as I like?
These are nit-picky problems with OSX, and tbh do not warrant a whole website just to state them. How pointless.
Agreed. All systems have quirks. But so far I haven't experienced the same level of frustration with Windows. (The Mac kills productivity for me on a daily basis...)
How do you guys deal with the lack of Cut+Paste and Replace folder and lacking of "Home/End" keys?
I have Home/End keys on my Apple Keyboard, and I just open two finder windows and drag and drop with there being no cut and paste. Admittedly, cut would be a useful tool but I can live without it.
If you're used to the thing you use primarily you won't be as used to something you don't use as much.
I'm not sure what you're doing that is preventing you from moving files ("cut and paste") or your cursor.
No need for home / end when cmd+left-arrow / cmd+right-arrow do the same thing (and cmd-up, cmd-down on web pages).
The way Finder replaces rather than merging folders is more intuitive to me, but I can see how merging would be useful. And, well, I drag items between Finder windows. Don't need to do it often enough to be too much of a pain.
Haha yup!
It's why I got a dell, dude!
Ok, seriously, it actually is part of why I switched back to windows.
It's why I got a dell, dude!
Ok, seriously, it actually is part of why I switched back to windows.
1. Cut/Paste. Most of times when I find myself needing to move some files from current folder to another, the most intuitive thing to do is to select the files, mark them as to be moved (cut), then go to another folder, and paste them. Because the files are the first thing in my mind, before the destination folder. However, in Mac OSX, I have to open the destination folder first, then select files and drag. It breaks the work flow in my mind.
2. Home/End/PageUp/PageDown. For example, in TextEdit, if I press Page Up and Page Down, it moves the page without moving the cursor!!! That's useless because when I touch the arrow key again, it jumps right back to the original place, losing the whole navigation.
Another example, with a small keyboard, in TextEdit, press fn + Up/Down to PageUp/Down (without moving cursor!), pressing ctrl + up/down is the same! But pressing command + up/down moves the cursor to top and end of the whole document! (Strangest thing: pressing fn + home/end does the same!)
The stupidest thing is that it's the standard behavior for all Cocoa editors such as the XCode editor... How can a programmer survive without proper PageUp/Down...
3. The green light bubble. Some calls it "Maximize button". But it really doesn't maximize anything. If you try it with Safari and Finder, you will see what I mean. Basically you never know what it does.
4. Replacing a same-name folder. I can agree that replacing is intuitive than merging for some people (not for me though!), but I can't agree that it should totally delete old files instead of putting them in the trash bin. Imagine thousands of Windows switchers discover this in pain.
5. Exposé totally kills muscle memory. Normally on Windows, the same window will always be at the same place on the task bar. Your muscle directs you to the window if you use it a lot. But Exposé's random window organization doesn't facilitate that.
2. Home/End/PageUp/PageDown. For example, in TextEdit, if I press Page Up and Page Down, it moves the page without moving the cursor!!! That's useless because when I touch the arrow key again, it jumps right back to the original place, losing the whole navigation.
Another example, with a small keyboard, in TextEdit, press fn + Up/Down to PageUp/Down (without moving cursor!), pressing ctrl + up/down is the same! But pressing command + up/down moves the cursor to top and end of the whole document! (Strangest thing: pressing fn + home/end does the same!)
The stupidest thing is that it's the standard behavior for all Cocoa editors such as the XCode editor... How can a programmer survive without proper PageUp/Down...
3. The green light bubble. Some calls it "Maximize button". But it really doesn't maximize anything. If you try it with Safari and Finder, you will see what I mean. Basically you never know what it does.
4. Replacing a same-name folder. I can agree that replacing is intuitive than merging for some people (not for me though!), but I can't agree that it should totally delete old files instead of putting them in the trash bin. Imagine thousands of Windows switchers discover this in pain.
5. Exposé totally kills muscle memory. Normally on Windows, the same window will always be at the same place on the task bar. Your muscle directs you to the window if you use it a lot. But Exposé's random window organization doesn't facilitate that.
In most cases it is the "Maximize to fill" button. In other words, it will expand or shrink a window to fit all or as much as possible, the contents in the window.
So for Safari, it will size the window to fit the contents of the browser. Clicking it again, in some apps, will restore the window to a user defined size.
This isn't always the case, iTunes for example. Some applications will just fill the screen, such as single window apps like iPhoto, Transmit, etc.
I prefer this behavior to maximize. I don't need my entire screen to be taken up by a Safari window. Of course, this is personal preference.
It resizes a window to the dimension necessary for viewing its content. It does not expand to the full screen. It seems to resize to the necessary width first, and the height is proportional. A second click expands the height to the maximum.
1) I seem to recall different versions of Windows having varying behaviors in this regard. OSX took the UNIX default, I forget if that was the System 9 behavior too.
2) Interesting, but it makes sense. "Copy" on a Windows machine doesn't do the same thing for files it does for most other content. For example, copying text puts a copy of the text in the clipboard; you can change the content and not affect the in-memory copy. But if you copy a file, all you did was copy a REFERENCE to the file. So if you copy a file A.txt, and then you change the content of A.txt, you'll copy the changed version, not the original.
If the meaning of copy is "make an in-memory COPY," copying files isn't the same as copying text. The only reason you expect it to work is because it does in Windows. Then there are scads of things you can copy in OSX you can't copy in Windows (as copy relies on each application being able to handle the specific OLE content of the clipboard, versus the common handlers of OSX).
If you do a lot of file copying to the same location, add the location you copy to the left pane of finder OR add its folder to the Finder toolbar. No more two window interface.
3) Drag to the dock and drop on the desired application. Or, hover over the app's dock icon (you'll get expose, and then you can click through).
Oh -- one thing I commonly do is click and hold on some object, then I use CMD-Tab and CMD-` to select the window I want to copy to. Less mouse mileage.
4) Yeah it's a little obnoxious you can reopen closed windows but not closed tabs. Firefox and Chrome have quirks of their own in this regard (such as Firefox maintaining separate histories for closed tabs, windows and unclosed content) so let's not pretend this issue is solved.
5) I must say -- I love this feature (inherited from UN*X). I recently downloaded a bunch of files and couldn't remember what version I'd got. Luckily, I could compare the timestamps. Although I do say "Date Added" should be a first level data item, something i could search on...
Anyhow, the main idea of this function is that if you download something for the purposes of changing it, you can instantly tell the files you changed from the files you didn't. Merging them back to the server is much easier. And if you use FileZilla you have the option to choose whose dates to use (system or server) when creating the file.
6) Option-` until you see the window. If "spatial consistency" is your bag, use virtual desktops.
7) Yes, and you are only supposed to use that widget for modal functions unrelated to the content of the application. Print settings and the like. It's in the UI guidelines. I much prefer modal dialogs in OSX to those in Windows (as they only block the one content window, and not ALL content windows), though it sounds like you've encountered a bad one.
8) Sure you can -- I believe it's CMD-ALT-Delete. Or delete through terminal.
9) Navigation keys work the way they are intended to -- on a mac, going back 26 years. They're a little different from how they work on a PC, but PC-like behavior can be gained by adding the right meta keys. And aside from Adobe apps -- which ignore Apple UI guidelines and instead shoehorn the PC behavior of their apps into OSX -- they tend to be fairly consistent, as those behaviors come for free when using Apple's UI objects.
10) You use the mouse to do pixel level operations? Modern displays have such a dense dot pitch that that's got to be an annoyance...why not take advantage of zoom? You don't need to change your mouse settings or strain your eyes. If you don't have a decent zoom functionality in your application, you can use Ctrl-scroll wheel (assuming that's turned on) to zoom the viewport itself.
11) The green bubble is a surprising little ghost isn't he? He's ill defined, sort of on purpose as OSX doesn't really have a concept of "Full Screen" windows (e.g. every window remains the same kind of window regardless of size). He's supposed to switch you between an "optimum" view mode and a "last used" view. Since this will change by application, the behavior of the button changes per application -- assuming the developer did anything with it at all!
2) Interesting, but it makes sense. "Copy" on a Windows machine doesn't do the same thing for files it does for most other content. For example, copying text puts a copy of the text in the clipboard; you can change the content and not affect the in-memory copy. But if you copy a file, all you did was copy a REFERENCE to the file. So if you copy a file A.txt, and then you change the content of A.txt, you'll copy the changed version, not the original.
If the meaning of copy is "make an in-memory COPY," copying files isn't the same as copying text. The only reason you expect it to work is because it does in Windows. Then there are scads of things you can copy in OSX you can't copy in Windows (as copy relies on each application being able to handle the specific OLE content of the clipboard, versus the common handlers of OSX).
If you do a lot of file copying to the same location, add the location you copy to the left pane of finder OR add its folder to the Finder toolbar. No more two window interface.
3) Drag to the dock and drop on the desired application. Or, hover over the app's dock icon (you'll get expose, and then you can click through).
Oh -- one thing I commonly do is click and hold on some object, then I use CMD-Tab and CMD-` to select the window I want to copy to. Less mouse mileage.
4) Yeah it's a little obnoxious you can reopen closed windows but not closed tabs. Firefox and Chrome have quirks of their own in this regard (such as Firefox maintaining separate histories for closed tabs, windows and unclosed content) so let's not pretend this issue is solved.
5) I must say -- I love this feature (inherited from UN*X). I recently downloaded a bunch of files and couldn't remember what version I'd got. Luckily, I could compare the timestamps. Although I do say "Date Added" should be a first level data item, something i could search on...
Anyhow, the main idea of this function is that if you download something for the purposes of changing it, you can instantly tell the files you changed from the files you didn't. Merging them back to the server is much easier. And if you use FileZilla you have the option to choose whose dates to use (system or server) when creating the file.
6) Option-` until you see the window. If "spatial consistency" is your bag, use virtual desktops.
7) Yes, and you are only supposed to use that widget for modal functions unrelated to the content of the application. Print settings and the like. It's in the UI guidelines. I much prefer modal dialogs in OSX to those in Windows (as they only block the one content window, and not ALL content windows), though it sounds like you've encountered a bad one.
8) Sure you can -- I believe it's CMD-ALT-Delete. Or delete through terminal.
9) Navigation keys work the way they are intended to -- on a mac, going back 26 years. They're a little different from how they work on a PC, but PC-like behavior can be gained by adding the right meta keys. And aside from Adobe apps -- which ignore Apple UI guidelines and instead shoehorn the PC behavior of their apps into OSX -- they tend to be fairly consistent, as those behaviors come for free when using Apple's UI objects.
10) You use the mouse to do pixel level operations? Modern displays have such a dense dot pitch that that's got to be an annoyance...why not take advantage of zoom? You don't need to change your mouse settings or strain your eyes. If you don't have a decent zoom functionality in your application, you can use Ctrl-scroll wheel (assuming that's turned on) to zoom the viewport itself.
11) The green bubble is a surprising little ghost isn't he? He's ill defined, sort of on purpose as OSX doesn't really have a concept of "Full Screen" windows (e.g. every window remains the same kind of window regardless of size). He's supposed to switch you between an "optimum" view mode and a "last used" view. Since this will change by application, the behavior of the button changes per application -- assuming the developer did anything with it at all!
The Mac has fulfilled my educational needs from grade school through my M.S., it has never "killed" my productivity. Some of those gripes have merit, but to say that any one of those is a productivity "killer", i.e.: a show stopper, is admitting the user doesn't know how to properly leverage Mac OS X.
Why call it Windows if everyone runs everything full screen?
The green button maximises the window to fit the content in it, it does not maximise to screen. Some developers like Mozilla have made clicking it maximise to screen, totally ruining the consistency. All the Windows switchers *cough* noobs *cough* want OS X to behave like Windows.
The green button maximises the window to fit the content in it, it does not maximise to screen. Some developers like Mozilla have made clicking it maximise to screen, totally ruining the consistency. All the Windows switchers *cough* noobs *cough* want OS X to behave like Windows.
Step 1 is to forget about HOW you want to do a task, and instead isolate WHAT you want to do. There's always a way and it's probably a pretty good way...but it's not always the Windows or UNIX way. There's a lot of places where freedom of workflow is traded for consistency of metaphor, and you kind of need to have faith in the designers' devotion to the OS philosophy (oh jeez first Steve goes off on "magic" computers and here I'm treating the OS like a religion) -- that they may not do what is obvious to you, but what they did does in fact make sense.
I use Windows 9 hours a day, and OSX about 6. Neither is perfect, neither is truly limited. I tend to enjoy OSX workflows more -- little things like columns view, springloaded folders, Spotlight, and the ability to drop work onto an application icon (whether in the dock or on a toolbar window) to open the work in that application build up to major efficiencies when selecting work and moving it between applications is your primary task.
I have wondered that for years.
Few things annoy me more than seeing someone on a 27" iMac with a Safari window pulled to fill the screen that has more empty white space on it than text - but hey, it's full screen - LOL!
Here's how you use cut & paste for files on clients that support it (Windows, pathfinder, etc):
1) Select what you want.
2) "Cut" it.
3) Browse to the folder you want to copy to, or open a new window
4) "Paste" it
Here's how you do the same in Finder:
1) Select what you want
2) Open a new window
3) Browse to the folder you want to copy to
4) Drag the selection into the new window.
5) Close the window you don't need any more (source or destination)
or if you use Columns view:
2) Drag the selection to the left. You'll scan back to the root. You can now drag the files along the file system to the right, and drop exactly where you want.
(you can do similar with the tree view)
or if you prefer single folder view:
1) Drag to the disk you want, don't drop
2) Hover over it to open a new spring loaded window
3) Hover over root of the folder you want, and keep going until you find the destination
4) Drop the files. The spring loaded folders disappear.
Other ways to handle this:
- Add your target folder to the left bar, or to the task bar, then drag to it.
- Add your target folder to the folders area of the dock, drag to that
PS: Add the ALT key before dropping to switch from cut to copy mode.
Notice there's the same number of steps -- or fewer? We "deal with it" because we haven't lost the ability to manage files and we maintain a consistent meaning for data in the clipboard across the OS (e.g. if there's data in the clipboard, you can paste it -- anywhere -- even if you closed the app that made the data, and it won't have changed).
Just copy the contents sideshow bob. (Note: if somebody in Cupertino wants to give me a ctrl-alt drop to "merge," I'd use it. On occasion. If I do media merges, I use Media Rage, which goes way beyond directory names)
We have those. The behavior you likely want from them can be achieved through meta keys. But I tend to use meta keys plus arrow keys, since I'm a laptop cat. I forget which is the same as Windows home, but it's either CTRL left arrow or CMD left arrow.
Hope i'm not starting a flame war again. Not intended to do so.
"Green Light Bubble": I don't always use full-screen windows in both Windows and OSX, but the green bubble button (note i'm not calling it "Maximize button") in OSX never does a job at all (its current "fit the content to the screen" behavior is totally broken. Try with Finder and Safari and you will see how funny it extends the window vertically to "fit" anything.). At least the Windows "Maximize" button indeed maximizes the window. Talking about consistency...
"Delete File": CMD-ALT-Delete doesn't work for me (just tried, the file still went into Trash). Using terminal is really not a good choice for most users.
"Find a Window": Still, there is no way to maintain the spatial consistency of a window. And Alt+Tab/`/Hovering on dock icon etc simply add another layer of complexity.
"Timestamp": Talking about 80/20 rules. I don't really think 80% users use Safari+Finder to manage and keep track of files with a server.
"Copy/Cut/Paste": I guess normal users won't think about the "copy of the content" or "copy of the reference" (same for Cut). We only want to move a file from a place to another..., and in an unbroken workflow.
By the way, I'm really disgusted by the spring-loaded folder feature, because if I accidentally release the mouse in a non-destination folder, the folder closes immediately after putting my file into it, and it will be a real pain to find that folder. In fact, I dare not use this feature most of the time. I think the penalty shouldn't be the user's.
"PathFinder": Thanks.
"To (ruthlessly) criticize OSX's problems is admitting not knowing how to properly leverage it": Reminding me about "The Emperor's New Clothes" - only the smart ones can see it; those who don't see it are hopelessly stupid.
"Green Light Bubble": I don't always use full-screen windows in both Windows and OSX, but the green bubble button (note i'm not calling it "Maximize button") in OSX never does a job at all (its current "fit the content to the screen" behavior is totally broken. Try with Finder and Safari and you will see how funny it extends the window vertically to "fit" anything.). At least the Windows "Maximize" button indeed maximizes the window. Talking about consistency...
"Delete File": CMD-ALT-Delete doesn't work for me (just tried, the file still went into Trash). Using terminal is really not a good choice for most users.
"Find a Window": Still, there is no way to maintain the spatial consistency of a window. And Alt+Tab/`/Hovering on dock icon etc simply add another layer of complexity.
"Timestamp": Talking about 80/20 rules. I don't really think 80% users use Safari+Finder to manage and keep track of files with a server.
"Copy/Cut/Paste": I guess normal users won't think about the "copy of the content" or "copy of the reference" (same for Cut). We only want to move a file from a place to another..., and in an unbroken workflow.
By the way, I'm really disgusted by the spring-loaded folder feature, because if I accidentally release the mouse in a non-destination folder, the folder closes immediately after putting my file into it, and it will be a real pain to find that folder. In fact, I dare not use this feature most of the time. I think the penalty shouldn't be the user's.
"PathFinder": Thanks.
"To (ruthlessly) criticize OSX's problems is admitting not knowing how to properly leverage it": Reminding me about "The Emperor's New Clothes" - only the smart ones can see it; those who don't see it are hopelessly stupid.