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Look man, you just don't know how to use your operating system. Perhaps you need to go on a course. All the things you're complaining about aren't problems, once you know your keyboard shortcuts better. Windows alt-tabs through everything, which doesn't scale well with large numbers of windows. Mac alt-tabs through applications, and alt-backticks through windows within that application. Different approach. Being a mac, of course, there are loads of really nice tools that you can install to customise the behaviour of your system (contrary to popular belief). In your case, I suggest that you install Witch (Here). Yes, it costs money. The horror. It's nearly the price of two beers. Explain to me again why the hard work of software developers should be available to everyone for free, again? I forgot the details on that one. If you don't like the maximising behavour, there are tools to sort that out for you. I use BetterTouchTool myself.

It's ironic that someone who wants to install Linux, which pretty much entirely consists of little plugin tools to make stuff happen, hasn't bothered to go looking for the little plugin tools that can customise OSX for you.

Regarding your broken MBP, that's a shame. However, computers do break occasionally, and since you haven't bothered to look it up, you can hold down Cmd+V for a verbose boot, or Cmd+R for the recovery console, which will actually download an entire OS install from the internet and re-install your entire machine for you if you want - including pulling in your time machine backup (you have a backup, right?). Or, if it's something less drastic, you can start the mac in single-user mode (Cmd+S), or try some of the other tools from the recovery mode.

I mean, I get you don't like OSX, and that's fine. But nothing in what you wrote is actually correct, and so I hope I was helpful, and not too patronising, in correcting you. And what exactly don't you like about installing stuff on a mac? Sure beats windows installers - and apt-get on Linux just craps out half the time (I guess I'm doing it wrong... touche...). Android follows more of the OSX model, which is that everything lives in the application package, and you don't bother with sharing components between applications because it causes far more problems than it solves.

Check out http://manytricks.com/moom/, gives a lot of resizing options that can be keybound.

I can offer a couple solutions that might help you solve a couple of those frustrations:

Quicksilver: http://qsapp.com/ - glues your shit together in various, sometimes unexpected, but very powerful ways. I hardly ever use the Finder or Spotlight anymore, opting for customized Quicksilver interactions.

Moom: http://manytricks.com/moom/ -- resize your stuff using a grid layout or hotkeys; Nice for larger screens too, since you can do various split-screen arrangements easily.

I'm curious as to what you're looking for that OS X doesn't allow? It's not that I don't believe you...I've had plenty of instances where I wanted to do something that the OS didn't allow me to do. However in almost every instance I've found some hidden setting or third-party tool that allowed me to do what I want.

OS X offers a lot of configuration options that have no GUI and very little documentation. But there's a bunch of online articles (like this one) that offer some possibilities. Some Google-Fu can yield a lot of ways to customize OS X.

And when that fails, there's always the third party apps. My two favorite are witch, since I never fully got used to the ALT+TAB behavior in OS X, and Quicksilver which gave me the UI that I never knew I wanted and now cannot live without.

I'm sure it won't.

I tried upgrading to Leopard on my G4 iBook. Tried it for a couple months, then downgraded back to Tiger.

Some of the UI decisions they made in Leopard, like folders in the Dock that display as all of their contents stacked in a pile instead of a folder icon, were completely brain-dead. There was enough public outcry (and third-party workarounds) that Apple added options to fix the behavior in newer versions, but they still go with the stupid options by default. Did they forget to do usability testing, or did they simply ignore the results? Did it not occur to them that when you've got four dozen items in your Applications folder, making the folder look almost like the Address Book is confusing? Or that a distant star shining through a transparent menubar looks like something's wrong with your screen?

Other problems I noticed:

• CUPS browsing is disabled by default
• Editing multiple items in iCal is more awkward; they fixed part of it, but the details appear in a popup instead of a sidebar so they're always in a different part of the screen depending on what you're editing
• Spotlight's "Show All" function doesn't group the results by categories
• The selected tab in an application like X-Chat turns gray whenever another window has focus, so you can't see which tab was selected

Also, I think getting rid of the rounded corners was a terrible choice. I found a hack that brings them back if you want.

I also ran into driver issues - I couldn't get my Canon scanner to work, and couldn't communicate with my Nokia phone over Bluetooth. It reminded me of Vista users complaining about their driver woes.

Then there are UI problems with Tiger that Leopard simply left unchanged:

• FTP still doesn't work (try ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/ for example)
• Windows like Spotlight's "Show All" search results window aren't associated with any application, so Cmd-Tab won't switch to them; in Leopard the "Add Printer" window has this problem too

I don't see how Snow Leopard could be worse.

Hence I use Witch - it gives me a choice between window switching, or application switching. I set alt+tab as window switching and cmd+tab (default OS function) as application switching. Works lovely.

http://www.manytricks.com/witch/

If you minimize a window on OS X, it goes down to the Dock, period. If you want it back, just click on the window in the Dock.

This was the one thing that I hated most when I switched to using a Mac. I'm very used to not using a mouse for as few things as possible, so when OS X made me take my hands off the keyboard to switch between windows, it was very inconvenient. Thankfully, I found Witch. It gives me the best of both worlds. If I just want to switch applications, I can use CMD+TAB, but if I want to switch to a particular window, I use option+TAB. That discovery alone made using a Mac palatable.

And then I found Quicksilver and the Mac became the most keyboard-friendly platform I've ever used (including Linux).

Slightly more on topic, I have found my development environment drags sometimes, but it's almost entirely due to the applications that are running rather than the OS itself. I do primarily Java development and SWT (the foundation for Eclipse) has been heavily optimized for Windows environments. It works fine on OS X, but IBM just doesn't devote the resources necessary to make it run as well as it does in Windows. And Apple has basically written off Java, so their support of the VM and the tools that Java developers use is almost non-existent. I wonder if Apple realize just how many Java developers there are how many of those developers would gladly switch to Macs if there was some expectation that Apple cared about things like releasing the VM relatively soon after the Windows release (I get that they need to make Swing look native, but that means that OS X releases should lag by a month or two, not a year or two). And, like I mentioned, it would be nice if they'd work with IBM to create a Cocoa-based SWT implementation that performed on par with the Windows SWT implementation.

So it's my belief that the article is partly correct, though it's not inherently a problem in the OS. It's just that the Mac is a minority platform and developers that write cross-platform applications won't support it as well as they do the Windows version of their software.

There are some third-party virtual desktop solutions. You're right, Spaces isn't as useful as some Linux implementations of the concept.

I prefer application-switching to window-switching, but if you want window-switching, there's witch.

There's not really any lack of control on Macs. It's just that most preferences aren't exposed in the UI. You typically set them using the defaults command. As for your particular case, keeping Mac notebooks running with the lid closed is a bad idea, since they can't cool themselves properly that way.

Can't help you with the package management, though. I use MacPorts, and I'm quite happy with it (it's better than Fink, imho), but if those two aren't what you're looking for, you're out of luck :-)

I've also heard nitpicks about the top menu bar having (gasp!) square corners on top instead of rounded corners. Oh for the love of all that is good in this world, are you going to let THAT bother you?

Well, square corners slightly bothered me for all of the two minutes it took to find Displaperture.app, which restores the roundness and lets you set how much roundness you want. :D

But, yeah, I do find some amusement with the ultra-super fanbois who simply lack the ability to get over it or find another solution instead of bitching and moaning.

FWIW, Witch can handle unminimizing a window. It's also quite useful in its own right when you've got many windows of a certain application open and want to switch to a specific one. Having been a convert from Windows 2000 (work) and Linux (home), Witch was perfect for me since it replicated the Windows ALT+TAB paradigm that had become so natural to me. The Mac CMD+TAB behavior was a nice add-on ability that has since become natural as well.

A few comments:

First and foremost, if you haven't seen it already, check out the mod someone did to the dock to make it "rainbow glass". (The rainbow effect might not be your thing, but you can use slight variations of what they did to change it to any color of "tinted glass" you like, making it much easier to see.)

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=516253&posted=1

If you want a non-transparent top menu bar, see here:

http://www.manytricks.com/blog/?id=10

I agree on Time Machine.... It's very cool, overall, but needs a little more work. (For example, Apple's solution to incompatibilities with their Aperture application is to exclude Aperture's photo database from your backups. Great... so if I'm a pro photographer, Time Machine can't even back up the most important data on my whole system for me?) It also needs a fix (supposedly coming soon) to allow using a shared disk off an Apple Airport Extreme router.

I upgraded an iMac at work and, after ensuring that the VPN client is compatible, a MacBook at home. The iMac at home stays on 10.4 until I have a Leopard-compatible SuperDuper. Time Machine looks cool and all, but I really like having a bootable backup.

In my case, OSXPlanet, GeekTool, MenuShade, and Butler have various levels of breakage. In the case of Butler, I'm trying out Spotlight as an application launcher (much faster than in 10.4), and I'm looking into System Events with AppleScript for keyboard macros. SSHKeychain seems to work, but 10.5 has a similar built-in feature that I'm trying out. Think still works, but only within a single virtual desktop. I'm not sure if that's a bug or a feature.

Second, window switching is abysmal. In fact, you can't switch between windows. You switch between applications. THEN, and only then, can you switch between windows with Command ~.

Try Witch to fix that. It has options for working with minimised windows, too.

Not sure what Safari you're running, though — mine uses Cmd-D to bookmark a page ;)

As for the MS Office shortcuts, that's Microsoft's fault — just about everybody else uses the Mac standard keys. Hopefully they've fixed this for Office 2008, but I'm not going to put money on it.

Try Witch, a freeware application downloadable from here. It gives you a fairly Windows-like alt-tab. I'm not sure if it works on 10.5.

There are also other shortcuts besides alt + tab like command + `.

FYI...

"Witch" allows you to easily switch between windows of any application. I use it instead of the CMD-Tab function all the time.

http://www.manytricks.com/witch/

the complete absence of any alt-tab equivalent is horrid

Personally, I've gotten used to Cmd-Tab on the Mac (and I love that it works in tandem with the mouse), but you might be interested in Witch, a donationware utility that lets you Alt-Tab your way through the windows of all applications.

That's a fantastic post that accurately describes my feelings on my recent switch to OS X. Despite some initial discomfort, I, too, have quickly grown to love my new Mac Pro.

I hate Finder almost as much as I the Dock. They're both useless for any sort of development environment. The Dock is quickly overwhelmed by sheer numbers, as you must mouseover the icons to get any sort of textual description. Worse, you only get 1 icon per application, regardless of how many windows it has open. The result is cumbersome application switching. Finder, on the other hand, just comes across as a bit half-assed. You'll probably prefer the shell for anything but the most basic of file operations. (No cut & paste for files? C'mon, you're going to make me open a second Finder window, browse to the other folder, then come back here and drag the files over?)

Fortunately there are some fantastic pieces of shareware and freeware to (mostly) fix these issues. I almost never even see the dock any more.

If you haven't already, get QuickSilver, NOW. ...seriously, go get it. I'll wait.

...good.

Now get DragThing. This will replace the dock. You can make sliding drawers, floating panels, or something in between that can hold icons and folders. It also provides panels for a list of all the windows and/or apps that you currently have open, with or without text. I bought DragThing without thinking twice.

Witch is free and crucial for application switching, too.

With these two apps, I'm just as fast moving from one application to the next as on windows. Also, PathFinder seems to be okay as a semi-replacement for Finder. I'm still in the shareware trial period...haven't decided if I'm going to buy it yet though.

You can watch system resources with Menu Meters. I find that OS X does a fantastic job of splitting work up among my 4 processor cores; much better than windows.

Oh, and if you still have to administer windows machines, Microsoft makes a Remote Desktop Client for OS X. Also, Microsoft Entourage is good (maybe better than Outlook) if you still have to use an Exchange server.

If there's no defaults write command, just make the top part of your background image a solid color, or use one of the thousands of utilities that will appear (and have already appeared) doing something like this.

"What we may expect is additional settings and [some] user interface polish[ing]. Among the most criticized parts of the new user interface [are] the new menu bar and Dock."

Okay, I was wondering what the "new menu bar and Dock" were referring to. Here's Apple's page on the subject. Damn, I was really hoping they were bringing back NextStep-like vertical menu bars a an option, but, nooooo, they're making the menubar transparent. Useless. One of the most key UI elements transparent? Why? For a few extra pixels of the desktop that you won't usually see behind windows anyway? What is this? Windows Vista? Thank goodness they are apparently leaving the window border transparency alone.

It's a bad sign when the OS isn't released yet and there's already a patch to remove this new "feature". Please, Apple, at least make it optional in Preferences.

Launcher apps. like Quicksilver and Launch Bar aare very customizable, and I'm sure I could get used to any of them. The one I've gotten comfortable with is Butler. On Windows, I launched programs by navigating the Start menu with sequences of keystrokes that were ingrained in my fingers. Navigating the Dock or the Applications folder felt glacial by comparison. Butler's abbreviations are better than either approach. It's kind of like the WIndows Vista Start menu, except that it recognizes initials; for example, if I type "qp," one of the matches will be "QuickTime Player."

Another nice feature of Butler is the macro facility. I TELNET or SSH to dozens of Unix systems using a variety of accounts, so the terminal isn't always configured the way I expect. I have a "bash" macro that execs bash and sets TERM, and a "ksh" for machines without bash that execs ksh, enables emacs mode, sets TERM, and sttys the delete key.

If you're remotely a power user, I definitely recommend spending an hour or two with one of these launcher apps. On the flip side, if you want a launcher even simpler than the Dock, consider Docktop. If you've seen the desktop icons on the demo systems at an Apple store, Docktop is kind of like that. It puts big, single-clickable icons on the center of your desktop that even your Windows-using house sitter can understand.

For more tabbing options, check out Witch.

(donationware... damn, I should really donate):
http://www.manytricks.com/witch/