The concept of cut/copy 'n paste isn't rocket science. You don't need a degree to figure it out. Even a n00b would learn how it works fairly quickly. To not have a useful feature in order to "protect the n00b" is stupid (just like the caps lock issue). So what if you make a mistake and lose a couple of sentences? It's not the end of the world.
Good interface design is consistent. My point is that it is not always possible to get back to square one. One can set their undo level too small, or do things like purging history in Photoshop. Also, if you'll notice, the destructive form of cut and paste is not what is missing from OS X.
Take a look at some magazine covers. Plenty of caps on Golf Digest for example:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=golf digest&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
For anything more than a few letters that's not very efficient when 1 finger is holding down shift. Doesn't matter how fast you are. 10 fingers is faster than 9.
For those cases, I don't even use caps. I type it as normal in case I want to quickly revert it without retyping later. In Illustrator, and I believe InDesign as well, I go to the character palette, open the flyout and check "all caps." If I want to restore it later, I uncheck it. The kicker? You can do it to as many lines as you like. If a creative director decides that all caps only works on the headlines, I can change it instantly. Piece of cake. I can similarly make it all lowercase, or small caps, without changing a thing. But I can't make it properly formatted text if I make it all caps to begin with. It's a stretch, but like I said, that's how little I use it.
I appreciate the need, but I don't run into it. I don't make magazine covers and I don't make architectural notes. But I can see why it could be useful to you.
Adding one button doesn't suddenly open the floodgates to 20 more buttons. Full screen is probably in the top 5 requested features from switchers. Adding one more button for full screen would help the switchers and still keep the Apple loyalists happy with their way of doing things.
You make a request and Apple honors it. That sets a precedent. Users see that that request was allowed and other requests follow. I think windowshade mode was cool. I make a request to Apple, and they honor it and add another button. Thousands of others make requests daily, and Apple ignores them. Out of the user pool enough requests let in by Apple lead to two buttons. Now we have five buttons. Five buttons that don't have a lick of explanation as to what they do until you hover on them. It's bad design and already takes up too much screen. It doesn't have to happen with tons of buttons as I stated. My point, that perhaps wasn't clear enough, was that even one additional button was too many.
I mentioned that each additional button took up roughly 23 pixels. On my Safari 4, which I keep at around 900 pixels, that equates to 2.5% of my title area. With each successive button, that removes an additional 2.5% of my title area. So, with only two buttons, 5% of my viewable title area is gone. Each successive button limits my viewable area. We don't need to reach the bottom of the slope for this to be problematic.
Also, you state that it's probably in the top 5 complaints of switchers—which if we're to be fair, you also fail to provide proof for that claim. I quickly Googled the install base of Mac OS X and the Guardian estimates 22 million. Apple 1Q 2008 was approximately 2.3 million Macs shipped. If we assume that all those are Switchers, and extrapolate that for four quarters, we get 9.2 million. Even though the Guardian article was old (before 2Q 2007 I believe) 9.2 million is not even half. Switchers are obviously not the majority. Apple has other paying customers that didn't buy a new Mac this year who would, I'm sure, be annoyed at us making Mac OS X like Windows.
I use both Windows and OS X. Features that I like in Macs I want in Windows and vice versa. Options and efficiency are what I desire in an operating system. Why does it have to be either/or, us/them? Some people like that OS X and Windows are different. I, on the other hand, wish they were combined with the best traits from one another.
The best traits from one and the other are your opinion. Personally, I'm glad that OS X's missing full screen "feature" weened me off of needing to use full screen with everything that I did. I didn't like it at first, but it's helped me work faster. I was practically OCD about full screening apps back then.
I wouldn't cursor back just to forward delete. I'd use back delete in that case.
I usually use forward delete when I'm adding something (sentence or word) in the middle of an already written paragraph. I do this a lot in emails where I write something, re-read it and the wording is off so I add and/or remove words/sentences to clarify. Sometimes it's back delete, sometimes it's forward delete depending on where I need to add and/or remove the words/sentences.
Fair enough. I think this is a good question though, which I'm curious about. They only have so many keys on the keyboard. Which one would you rather them change to forward delete? Is there another key you could leave out? I'm not asking to be an ass, I'm genuinely curious. I think it's clever that they at least made it Fn+Del.
