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Command-J? Why is that "particularly easy"? There are dozens of keys on my keyboard. How should I know that's the magical combination to change the icon sizes? If I was a Windows user, I'd right-click on the desktop. That doesn't work. Next, I'd try Finder --> Preferences. Nope. System Prefs --> Appearance? Nope. Desktop and Screen Saver? Nope.

Back to Finder. Oh! There's a View Menu. Ah! "Show View Options!"

Why not put it under preferences? Or allow me to right-click on the desktop to do it?
 
wordmunger said:
Command-J? Why is that "particularly easy"? There are dozens of keys on my keyboard. How should I know that's the magical combination to change the icon sizes? If I was a Windows user, I'd right-click on the desktop. That doesn't work. Next, I'd try Finder --> Preferences. Nope. System Prefs --> Appearance? Nope. Desktop and Screen Saver? Nope.

Back to Finder. Oh! There's a View Menu. Ah! "Show View Options!"

Why not put it under preferences? Or allow me to right-click on the desktop to do it?
Yes, but the thing is... that's precisely where the view options are in Windows. Explorer:View:View Options
 
Article has been updated - she's now in (almost) full retreat:

(11/7 update: A number of readers inform me that you can adjust the size of icons and type on the Mac desktop, in any of three ways:
...

My correspondents are right: this isn't difficult, but I don't believe it's intuitive. I would expect these controls to be located in the Display System Preferences. But this information is available in the Mac Help, so I guess you can chalk this up to obtuseness on my part.)

So, she simply expected it to be somewhere and when it wasn't she stopped looking.

A
 
greatdevourer said:
Yes, but the thing is... that's precisely where the view options are in Windows. Explorer:View:View Options

Really? To change icon sizes on the desktop? Boy. That's stupid.

Is that what Macs are shooting for? To be not quite as stupid as Windows?

No one has explained why View Options isn't in Preferences.
 
wordmunger said:
Really? To change icon sizes on the desktop? Boy. That's stupid.

Is that what Macs are shooting for? To be not quite as stupid as Windows?

No one has explained why View Options isn't in Preferences.

Because the options are related to the current view, not the Finder in general.
 
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