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The menubar doesn't really have anything to do with it. The app that implements focus-follows-mouse simply has to be smart enough to do the right thing when your mouse is headed up for the menubar, in the case that it might cross another window on its way.

And if that were a problem in some way — if you're nerdy enough to want focus-follows-mouse, you are certainly nerdy enough to control the menus with your keyboard.

There is also an app called CheatSheet that you activate by holding the Command key down for 2 seconds, and it explodes the menus into an overlay window. Probably a great addition to MondoMouse, which provides focus-follows-mouse.

CheatSheet

MondoMouse | atomicbird

> focus follows mouse

There is an app for that.

MondoMouse | atomicbird

Plus if you buy a 3rd party 3-button mouse, it may have its own driver that includes focus follows mouse.

> Because Apple shows you the only way (or the highway).

No. Apple includes only the features that almost everybody needs. Everything else, you add via an app or driver or script. Focus follows mouse is a very traditional old school feature that is only popular with advanced users who have the skills to install a 3rd party mouse driver and enable focus follows mouse.

And others don't. Opinions differ on merits of different desktops; story at 11. "Desktop A rules, desktop B sucks" is, absent data from a broad population of users, a personal opinion, not a statement of fact

Yes, but what IS a fact is that some desktops allow users to configure their desktop the way they like it, with focus-follows-mouse, click-to-focus, and other properties. The problem is that most desktops do not; the designers think they know what's best for everyone, and refuse to allow any configuration at all. If all or most desktops allowed users to set these things, you wouldn't see all this complaining.

Yes, but "more configurable" and "less configurable" are't ipso facto statements of objective merit.

"More configurable" is an advantage to the people who don't like the default configuration, and may be completely irrelevant to those who do.

As for "less configurable", at least when it comes to click-to-focus vs. focus-follows-mouse, some question are:

• whether introducing a vendor-supported focus-follows-mouse option would require work on the GUI code that takes away resources that could work on other parts of the GUI - it's quite possible that it would;
• whether it would add a point of potential confusion for users - I personally don't think an extra knob, especially under an "advanced" pane, would be a problem here);
• whether it would cause problems for existing applications - I have the impression that the focus-follows-mouse tweaks may break some Windows apps, although, apparently, Vista has a configuration option that gives focus-follows-mouse+autoraise, so perhaps those issues have been fixed; I don't know whether similar issues exist with OS X focus-follows-mouse+autoraise tweaks such as the one in MondoMouse, or whether it combines poorly with the single menu bar model of OS X; I don't know whether focus-follows-mouse-without-autoraise would be harder or have other issues on either of those platforms; note also that the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines speak of some issues that app developers have to worry about with focus-follows-pointer:

  Note that point-to-focus places a number of restrictions on GNOME applications that are not present in environments such as MacOS or Windows. For example, utility windows shared between multiple document windows, like the toolbox in the GIMP Image Editor, cannot be context-sensitive— that is, they cannot initiate an action such as Save on the current document. This is because while moving the mouse from the current document to the utility window, the user could inadvertantly[sic] pass the pointer over a different document window, thus changing the focus and possibly saving the wrong document.

  so I'm curious how Windows or OS X apps handle that case if focus-follows-pointer is turned on - autoraise might make that inadvertent focus change more obvious, but not everybody wants autoraise.

I'm a click-to-focus user myself, these days (I went that way when I had a Windows machine on my desk, even if most windows ended up being terminal emulators sshed into a UN*X box, as I figured if I got used to it I'd have fewer problems switching between different desktop environments, given that I could always turn it on for UN*X+X11), so I personally am fine with OS X in that department; people who like OS X and, presumably, don't mind click-to-focus shouldn't confuse that with "OS X IS THE BESTEST UNIX DESKTOP EVAR FOR EVERYBODY!!!!!!11111ONE!!!!!!!".

Somebody who loves focus-follows-mouse may want to ram his or her fist through the screen when using OS X, and that's a perfectly legitimate response for them - as long as they don't confuse it with "OS X IS TEH SUXXXOR FOR ALL UNIX USERS!!!!!111ONE!!!!!!".

The rest of the OS and developer tools seem ok. But, since I have the choice I'll stick with a window manager I can configure properly. I'm probably in a minority (and yes, I know about mondo-mouse

Check out http://www.atomicbird.com/mondomouse/ for both of your issues.

For Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -string YES

For every other app:
http://www.atomicbird.com/mondomouse/
There are other, free apps which provide the same option.

Personally, I find it amusing that people often thing that Mac OS X is not configurable. It is, it's just that not every option is exposed in the UI. Which is a good thing, by the way. Insteade of offering thousands of options, the OS should provide sane defaults, and only expose things in the UI which most people actually need to configure.

It's like complaining that Ubuntu is not configurable because the UI doesn't expose ever option Gnome provides.

It's not the OS which is at fault here. You're just inexperienced and possibly unwilling to learn.