What do you like and dislike about Mac OS X?

[DoFoT9]

wow i was about to reply to chirone, but two others already did it better and more efficiently then i could have. nice work guys!

 

[zync]

i just hate expose
it's ok when you have only a few windows open, and when the window you want to change to is ages away from an alt tab
but tbh, i usually alt tab between the last two windows most often, and you can't do that in a mac if the two windows belong to the same app.
it's really annoying, esp since the windows keep changing placement when you switch to a third window. Even with two 17" monitors it's still unfavourable

It's better than anything Windows has.

i hate the one button thing, ok it was fixed to three buttons, but seriously, i plugged in my 5 button mouse and the back and forward buttons did the whole expose thing. UGH. ok might have been solved if i get the driver, but i'd prefer it to just work

That would probably be solved with a driver.

the whole lack of text edit navigation thing gets to me too.
in windows you can just hold down ctrl and hit the arrow keys and it moves the cursor over whole words. In a mac, outside of xcode it just makes the speakers beep. Sooooo annoying having to keep pushing the arrow keys to get the cursor to where it's meant to be or having to take your hand off the keyboard to get to the mouse. Both methods take sooooo long compared to just hitting to two keys

Try using option. Also, unlike Windows, on the last line, you can hit down to go to the end of the line—which is one of the things that I hate about Windows. You can also use up on the first line to go to the beginning. I love that. It's especially useful in search bars. Pg Up and Pg Down are too hard to find that quickly.

The lack of click drag copying between windows is a pain in the ass. In windows you can just pick up a file, alt tab between windows and drop the file in the folder now with focus.

Option will copy drag. It's not exactly the same, but it's not bad either.

one thing i really don't like is the lack of a task manager equivalent where you can actually kill a thread
today a program crashed and it wouldn't force quit
neither by right clicking it on the dock or through the activity manager
i told the mac to restart, but it never did
i hit the power button on the mac and it shut off, but when i pushed it again it woke up in the same state... so i think i just put it to sleep
so i just pulled the plug and it solved everything

It's called Activity Monitor. You can kill any thread or process. To hard reboot, you have to hold the power button for like 10 seconds like most computers. Force quit may not always work on the first try, but it eventually works, unlike the Windows task manager which rarely works on the first time.

also... i hate not being able to change the default save location for firefox. There's no option to tell it to default to somewhere else... so my desktop gets all filled with trash

This would be Firefox's fault.

oh yeah, and also i hate how when you double click a zip file it just unzips it and you don't get the option to see the unzipped folder, and that you can't just look inside the zip file... what if it's so damn big it takes forever to unzip and you find that what you want isn't even in there? it's a pain in the ass... most certainly it's fixable

There's a QuickLook plugin for that. Google QuickLook plugins.

i hate how grab doesn't let to change the file type the screen shot gets saved as

Don't use grab. Use one of the key commands that just copies the buffer and paste it into Photoshop. If you have ZBrush, you have Photoshop.

i hate how you can't change the file type that you save something as in most apps

That would be the app's fault. Usually you can. What app are you talking about?

i hate how each window's menus are at the top of the screen instead of being attached to the window itself. I keep clicking on windows behind by accident every so often and then i have to find it again amongst the hundreds of windows i have open.

This is one of the fundamental differences between Mac OS X and Windows. Personally, I like Mac OS's implementation much better. The menu is always quick and easy to get to. Why do you have so many windows open?

i hate the lack of keyboard shortcuts
command + delete is fine to put something into the trash, but what if i want to get rid of it completely right there and then?

Shift+Command+Delete (then enter if you have it configured to ask you). As noted before, you can make a keyboard shortcut for nearly anything you want, even in programs that don't support such customization. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts.

i hate how you can't just delete certain files in the trash.

If it's in the trash, shouldn't it be ready to be deleted?

i do however like how when you have two monitors you don't need a third party app to allow for different backgrounds on both monitors

that's about all i like about macs...

That's sad.

also, i hate xcode, motion, and finder

oh and the lack of up-to-date zbrush (although i think zbrush 3.12 is out for mac now...)

That's Pixologic's fault. X Code works great for me. I don't use motion, and I never get anyone's gripes with Finder. My only gripe as far as that goes is that you can't rename in dialogs.

Honestly, you sound like a recent switcher that complains instead of trying to learn the differences. You wouldn't even have to go further than the original thread. All of your complaints were addressed there. If Windows was so great, why did you leave it?

wow i was about to reply to chirone, but two others already did it better and more efficiently then i could have. nice work guys!

Make that three. Also, I forgot about kill. And I thought Firefox had a way to change the default downloads folder in the prefs, I just didn't want to look! It takes so long to load!

I misunderstood the trash issue. If it can't be deleted, it's probably locked for some reason. Some apps don't behave correctly and lock the files. Also QuickLook locks the last item you viewed.

 

[zync]

What I don't like, is how an optical medium can't be ejected simply by pressing the eject key or the symbol in Finder. That's sometimes a pain in the asymmetric photons.

What do you mean? I've never had a problem with that.

 

[Chirone]

hah, least i got the grab complaint right

i had alt + arrow assigned to spaces, so i didn't notice that you could just alt arrow through words...

Tosser: you make me want a danish keyboard now 😛

funny.. the option to change the default location of saved files was there then it wasn't then it was...

Spinnerlys: currently using a mac, i think the fact that it's an old G5 made me not accept it so easily 😛

DoFoT9: they did do a good job

zync:
I was sitting there for about 7 minutes waiting for activity monitor to force quit, but yeah, window's task manager doesn't force quite programs very well, and in fact, in vista task manager itself stops responding. but you can kill the thread. such ability wasn't in activity monitor, but as was pointed out, you can do it in terminal

if they are in the trash they still exist on the HDD and are in a recoverable state, they aren't then they exist on the HDD but you can't see them by normal means

I never left Windows, i just use Mac at work and windows at home
don't get me wrong, i hate everything, i hate windows just as much as i hate mac, they both have their different flaws, but i hate/love them equally

and you're right, Tosser and Spinnerlys did a better job than you at telling me i'm wrong (except about grab)

*goes to get onyx*

 

[Tosser]

Tosser: you make me want a danish keyboard now 😛

No, no, don't get me wrong, I think it's the same key on an american or UK keyboard, but it's just printed with something else. It should work for you too 🙂

 

[zync]

I never left Windows, i just use Mac at work and windows at home
don't get me wrong, i hate everything, i hate windows just as much as i hate mac, they both have their different flaws, but i hate/love them equally

and you're right, Tosser and Spinnerlys did a better job than you at telling me i'm wrong (except about grab)

Actually, DoFoT9 said that, not me, so thanks...I thought I did a decent job and gave some extra responses.

Anyway, it's OK to hate both. Just remember that they're pretty similar. If there's something you can do in one, you can almost always do it in the other. You just need to figure out how. Also, some apps do allow you to tab through the Windows. You just need to know how. For instance you can tab through documents in Photoshop with Option+Tab.

 

[Chirone]

nope, it just opens preferences or closes it

although, i did find that i can switch to specific tabs in FF by holding down cmd and pushing the number keys at the top

 

[zync]

nope, it just opens preferences or closes it

although, i did find that i can switch to specific tabs in FF by holding down cmd and pushing the number keys at the top

You can Ctrl+Tab in Safari. Shift+Cmd+Left or Right also works, but only in the same window. Actually they both only work in the active window.

I think I used to know a way, but I can't get Tosser's shortcut to work.

 

[Tosser]

I think I used to know a way, but I can't get Tosser's shortcut to work.

Apparently it's still the "<" ("Tilde" is its name, apparently):

http://revision3.com/tzdaily/2008-05-12command/

 

[Chirone]

oh yeah, i knew about ctrl+tab, that was obvious seeing as how alt+tab windows switches (or app switches in mac's case)

i just didn't know about the cmd + number
(not having alt+arrow assigned to spaces is sooo much better)

Tosser: "<" is known as "less than", "~" is tilde (at least here it is 😕)

 

[DoFoT9]

Actually, DoFoT9 said that, not me, so thanks...I thought I did a decent job and gave some extra responses.

i thought it was a very good and informative response.

oh and + "~" will let you go through windows.

if you hit + "Tab", let go of "Tab" and press "~" it will let you scroll backwards 🙂

 

[Tosser]

Tosser: "<" is known as "less than", "~" is tilde (at least here it is 😕)

Well, it looked like "less than" in the video just like on my keyboard, although it was somewhere else. Anyway, the shortcut exists (even though american keyboards have one less physical key than european keyboards).

 

[Chirone]

i thought it was a very good and informative response.

oh and + "~" will let you go through windows.

if you hit + "Tab", let go of "Tab" and press "~" it will let you scroll backwards 🙂

it was a good response, i didn't meant to imply it wasn't, i just thought the other two did it better.

cmd+shift+tab lets to scroll backwards to
cmd+shift+~ lets to window switch backwards
cmd+~ lets to window switch forwards
thanks Tosser

 

[zync]

i thought it was a very good and informative response.

oh and + "~" will let you go through windows.

if you hit + "Tab", let go of "Tab" and press "~" it will let you scroll backwards 🙂

Right tilde!

Really? I usually use Shift+Cmd+Tab, but using tilde is much easier!

Oh and thanks!

 

[DoFoT9]

Right tilde!

Really? I usually use Shift+Cmd+Tab, but using tilde is much easier!

Oh and thanks!

haha yea its a lot easier using two fingers instead of 3 🙂

 

[Syrus28]

Pros:
-Self-contained applications
-Spotlight
-Expose
-Spaces

Cons:
-Dashboard
-Incessant little bouncing icons on dock
-Finder
-Boring/non customizable UI
-Where's the cut-paste?
-Worst of all, the onslaught of foreign symbols Apple uses to indicate shortcuts. I've had my Mac for two years, still don't know what half of them mean.

 

[Chirone]

what's wrong with dashboard?

 

[Moses]

I don't like how unpredictable the System Preferences can be, particularly when it comes to locking a particular pane.

You click the lock to lock the pane (preventing changes), exit prefs, go back to the pane....and the lock is set to open. I've also noticed this behaviour with specific preference settings, where it doesn't remember my network settings, for example. Annoying.

I've just yesterday formatted my HD and reinstalled the system, so perhaps these errors will go away....my previous system had 3 years on it, including an upgrade to Leopard. It's definitely snappier, for one.

 

[DoFoT9]

Cons:

-Dashboard

seems fine to me

-Incessant little bouncing icons on dock

better then the application coming to the front of everything, its just waiting patiently for you 🙂 like the oil warning light in a car

-Finder

perfect 🙂

-Boring/non customizable UI

its plenty customisable with 3rd party applications, the reason why leopard is so successful is because you dont notice when your using the GUI, thats [part of] my criteria for a good system

-Where's the cut-paste?

good point

-Worst of all, the onslaught of foreign symbols Apple uses to indicate shortcuts. I've had my Mac for two years, still don't know what half of them mean.

eh, you get used to them 😛

 

[Chirone]

better then the application coming to the front of everything, its just waiting patiently for you 🙂 like the oil warning light in a car

but they stop bouncing after a while and you forget they were bouncing sometimes... well i do anyway
it's better than baloons (like everything) but not as good as more subtle flashing lights

eh, you get used to them 😛

he's had two years, do you think he will anytime soon? 😛

 

[DoFoT9]

but they stop bouncing after a while and you forget they were bouncing sometimes... well i do anyway
it's better than baloons (like everything) but not as good as more subtle flashing lights

true, im using growl notifications and + Tab so often that i normally always realise it straight away.

he's had two years, do you think he will anytime soon? 😛

nah not for another decade at least. i have grown up on macs. im now 19 and i consider myself very knowledgeable with the shortcuts. however i wouldnt know 50% of them.

 

[shakenmartini]

Pros:

-Very stable. The amount of crashes, memory leaks is severely dimished
-The transition to OSX and forcing Cocoa has trimmed away a lot of old crappy software products and forced developers to update their apps, generally for the better. I cannot believe that there are so many $40-100 apps our there of extremely high quality that do really great stuff. This whole market doesn't even exist on the PC (high quality useful apps, reasonable cost)
-Drag and drop to delete apps, no registry and most apps do not have installers. If the app has an installer, it mostly just copies stuff to the apps folder.
-OSX does not have so much annoying "window" overhead on the screen. I.e. cocoa has 1 px window borders, most apps use very petite window controls etc. It annoys me to no end that so many Windows apps waste so much screen space for no reason.
-Spotlight is about the best implementation of desktop search I have used yet.
-Multitouch on Macbooks (sorry that this is partially hardware too, but going back to a Windows notebook just sucks after having multitouch)

Cons:

-The green button works so great except when the developer is too lazy to program it properly. I love the green button right up until an app violates the rules of how it works. I don't know what the solution is, but it is annoying
-Finder is non Cocoa. Seriously, this will be way past due
-Apple needs to get on developers who do not use standardized UI components. MS office is a huge violator of this one as is adobe. 99% of the problems I have with spaces is due to developers doing UI stuff that isn't the "proper" way to do things. Worse still, this happens with two of the biggest suites used on Macs. It is also annoying dealing with a non-standard UI element.
-"Services" only available to Cocoa apps. Very annoying


This last isn't OSX specific and more the SW industry in general, and very specific to the Bioinformatics industry...
-Cross platform apps that use Java and a Java UI. Cocoa is really easy to program the UI for. Wrap your java functions up in a Cocoa UI. Also your app is not special and does not require a 1 GB reserved block of memory.

 

[Chirone]

oh yeah, the fact that you can't resize windows from any side or corner
you have to get the mouse all the way down to the bottom right hand corner... it's a real time waster and bloody annoying

oh and, i hate the imac's glossy screen (i hate ALL screens that are really mirrors)
the last thing i want is to be distracted by myself while working at the computer 😡
work efficiency--;

oh, and to adress an earlier question of why i have lots of windows open
because i use a lot of windows at the same time. sure you can only see and work with two at a time, but knowing that you don't have to go through a whole lot of finder windows or scroll through a lot of classes in xcode is nice when the window can be accessed within 0.56 seconds

also, who needs multi touch when you have portable wacom
http://www.slashgear.com/lenovo-thinkpad-w700-intel-quad-extreme-integrated-digitizer-1113699/

although multi touch is still somewhat nice

 

[prostuff1]

I'm sure i will think of more later and if i remember i will add them to this post but for now:

Pros:
no viruses
easy to use
it just works
no excessive right click, this tab, advanced, then another tab, then advanced again to get to the option that you want.
keyboard shortcuts seem to be much easier to remember… for me anyway
the fact that Apple does not try to cater to backwards compatibility; it keeps things moving forward.
spring loaded folders is great and so are folder actions.

Cons:
Finder - not Cocoa and it still crashes on me. It does not handle the dismounting of smb shares the way i would like. If i disconnect from my home network and forget to unmount my server Finder bitches about it. And then when i come back home it refuses to find my server on the network (and it will not appear in the sidebar unless i restart)It is just a little buggy for my liking right now.
resizing of windows - as other have said i do think that something could be implemented that would allow a window to be resized from any side.
Dock - I love it and I hate it. It could use some updating (take some of MS's ideas on the window preview and the like)
Ribbon UI (probably going to get flamed for that) - I actually quite like Office 2007 on windows and I wish that more of its UI would have been incorporated into Mac Office 08.
Right click and create a new text document - this may seem petty and silly but i find myself using it quite a bit at work on the windows machines there and I know it would come in handy on my Mac. I have a work around for this but it is not perfect.
I wish widgets could be placed on the desktop similar to how amnesty widget browser allows you to.

 

[Gloops]

I've never liked the dock. I preferred my apps in the Apple menu. There's nothing more annoying than moving your cursor to the bottom of the screen and opening a random application instead of doing what you intended.