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For me, instead of minimizing, I just hide the application. CMD+h will hide the application and all of its windows. Then, when you use CMD+TAB and tab back to the application, all of the windows will reapear.

If you want to be able to tab through windows, I highly recommend Peter Maurer's "Witch" software. You can customize it but I believe the default is OPT+TAB and it will pop-up a window where you can tab through all open/minimized windows. X11 applications don't work with this, however.

Not that it isn't somewhat valid to critique OS X usability based solely on Apple's offering, but it's a bit disingenuous to criticise OS X for things that become incredibly simple when you install Quicksilver.

The rare application example is made incredibly simple in Quicksilver. I've basically removed everything from my dock because I can launch applications through Quicksilver. This allows me to use the dock similarly to manage only applications that are currently running.

Similarly, people often criticize OS X because you can only switch between open applications, not directly to individual windows of a running application. But Witch makes this task trivial.

There's a ton of these little utility programs that don't have Windows equivalents that contributing to making the OS X experience more enjoyable. I wish some of these critique articles considered the entire Mac experience with these commonly installed utilities rather than just the stock OS X install.

quote:
The only bad thing is that I haven't found a way to pull minimized windows out of the dock with the keyboard.

answer:
use witch.

Can't you just apple ` through your browser windows? Or, use witch? That still doesn't get you to a particular tab in a tabbed browser, but at least will get you to the window you want. Maybe there's a quicksilver widget out there to bring focus to a particular tab in a browser (or if there isn't one, maybe someone will write one!)

You may want to check out Butler - among the many things it does for you (for free, no less) is let you bind the common iTunes controls to keys - I have F1-5 set to set the star rating of the currently playing song, other keys for next/prev track and play/pause.

Don't even get me started on the Finder's utterly, utterly useless "alt-tab" - what a pointless piece of crap. You simply _CANNOT_ switch windows with it, only applications!

Others have pointed out Cmd-` to cycle windows within an application. There is also a third-party utility called Witch that allows you to switch to any window in any open application. It's what Cmd-Tab wants to be. Strongly recommended.

Has nobody heard of Butler, for heavens' sake?!

Butler: [key combo of your choice] + [first few letters of the app you're after] = app launches.

I find it hard to believe that anybody would be running OS X and -not- have Butler installed. It's even free (although anyone who doesn't donate $18 deserves a week locked in a church with nothing but mormons for company).

http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?thema=butler&sp rache=english&kopf=labor

What's *wrong* with you people?...

Don't forget about "Witch":

http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?thema=witch&spr ache=deutsch&kopf=labor

which (heh) lets you use Option-tab to switch between all windows. Very nice.

Same with me. I don't even use Exposé much, when I want to to get access to the desktop, I simply click on it while holding down OPTION, this'll hide the current application (I rarely have other windows than the current app displayed). It doesn't look as fancy as Expose(r), but it does the job and has done it since ye olde Mac days.

When I switch apps I usually either do it via CMD+TAB (no hiding) or I click on the dock wile pressing OPTION that way the current app gets hidden. Keeps the screen clean. I have most of my windows hidden most of the time as I mentioned above.

Also I started using Witch, with this app-switcher you can switch between any window, even the ones minimized in the Dock.

I've tried Desktop Managers, but it somehow never worked for me. Having two real desktops however I found quite nifty, mainly because you can see both of them at the same time.

If I have to switch from one desktop to another I might as well hide one window and show the other. Same difference.

some software to allow you to view _all_ windows, even Dock-minimized ones:

Witch, by Peter Maurer

I found it on this site macskill.com

Well, I can't help with the focus follows mouse problem but there are a few good applications that I can recommend that might prove useful for you. Witch (http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?thema=witch&sp rache=english) will allow you to maximise from the dock and to switch between open windows. Making use of a good launcher like Butler (http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?thema=butler&s prache=english&kopf=labor), LaunchBar (http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/) or Quicksilver (http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/) to quickly open applications or documents. Another interesting application is GeekTool (http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/) which lets you display text files (i.e. logs), terminal output, or images on your desktop. Finally I recommend that you try out TinkerTool (http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html) for changing some of OS X's less apparent settings.

Well, I can't help with the focus follows mouse problem but there are a few good applications that I can recommend that might prove useful for you. Witch (http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?thema=witch&sp rache=english) will allow you to maximise from the dock and to switch between open windows. Making use of a good launcher like Butler (http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?thema=butler&s prache=english&kopf=labor), LaunchBar (http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/) or Quicksilver (http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/) to quickly open applications or documents. Another interesting application is GeekTool (http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/) which lets you display text files (i.e. logs), terminal output, or images on your desktop. Finally I recommend that you try out TinkerTool (http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html) for changing some of OS X's less apparent settings.

Although I love being able to alt-tab through the individual windows of an open app under XP (requires F10 on the Mac, still drives me nuts),

Install Peter Maurer's Witch and you'll have your alt-tab back again.

Please, the Mac shareware developers practically invented this genre:

Launchbar (the first)

Quicksilver The current favorite, and free.

Butler About the same as Quicksilver, more features but not as slick.

Could someone tell me how all of these Desktop search tools compare to things like Launchbar, Butler, and Quicksilver?

Thanks.

iTunes + Butler on the Mac -- iTunes doesn't do it on it's own, but with Butler (free* at least, if not Free) you can assign global hotkeys to anything, including iTunes.

*it's begware, but not nagware

You can probably set up a dedicated key combination for it (maybe not 'Cmd' + '=', if that's what you meant, but at least something like Cmd+Option+'=') using Butler.

Hierarchical filesystems rely on users being able to organize their own data, remembering where they put it, and being able to navigate to it quickly. In reality, this has turned out to be a pain more than anything else. Not all files are easily categorizable, and not all users have their own schemes to keep their files in relevant places. Further, some files can easily fit into two or three different categories, but hierarchical filesystems only allow the file to exist in one place.

There have been numerous hacks to get around this problem: aliases/shortcuts, application and file launchers, the start menu, drawers, etc. Each way is essentially trying to overcome the limits of a hierarchical system.

When the internet was developing, top-level domains helped distinguish different types of content. Domains and sub-domains further helped. When those became too many to deal with, Web directories like Yahoo! became popular in an attempt to categorize and separate content. This is essentially a hierarchical filesystem for the internet. Then Google's innovation was that you didn't have to use a filesystem, you could just search the content and its relationships to find what you wanted. No filesystem is needed: you don't really need bookmarks or directories if you have Google, you just search for whatever you want.

Now, computing companies realize that the same idea applies to the desktop: the hierarchical filesystem is badly broken, and has been ever since people had to start inventing hack after hack to make it more tolerable. File searching was always a kind of last resort for OS writers. Microsoft focused all its efforts on making IE its filebrowser, instead of making a filesystem that's actualyl usable. Now companies realize what the next stage is: Apple has Spotlight, Launchbar, Quicksilver, and Butler; Windows has Google Desktop and Copernic; Linux has the always reliable grep.

It may take one of two more iterations of OSes, but I predict that when you boot up your OS, the first thing you see will not be a desktop of icons and a hierarchical filebrower. Your OS will have one simple interface: a search field. Just like Google's internet search, the OS will have one simply interfact. Only on the desktop, the OS can make the search results appear in realtime, categorize them more efficiently with metadata (which won't be spoofed in the same manner Web metadata was), and be able to launch or alter the files from the search results.

Things to look for: Apple's 10.4 Tiger OS now features Spotlight, but that finder search tool takes an auxiliary position in the UI. By 10.5, look for Spotlight to take the central position away from the Finder/Dock and become the primary instrument for using the OS. Launchbar has already done this to my computer-use habits, and I'm still using 10.3 Panther. If an when WinFS ever surfaces, look for it to transform the Windows desktop in the same manner.

You don't have to wait until next year to have this type of application on your Mac actually. Check out Launchbar, Quicksilver and Butler. All do exactly what the Google Desktop does, only they are able to search through more types of files and items, and are better integrated with the filesystem. It's nice that Google threw Window's users a bone though. I may use it at work.

nobody asked, but that won't stop me from answering :)

For AIM: Adium
For a tweaked OS: Cocktail and TinkerTool
For a better OS: my collection of haxies for Unsanity's Application Enhancer (ClearDock, FruitMenu, Metallifizer, Mighty Mouse, ShapeShifter, SharedMenus, Silk, WindowShade X)
For privacy/security: NetBarrier, PeerVanguard (not because I trade P2P, but because I wear a tinfoil hat), Little Snitch
Helpful apps: Butler, QuickSilver, DragThing
For everything else: VLC, SBook5, Transmit, Path Finder, Apple Dev Tools

it's more than 10, but those are all put almost instantly on every fresh OS X install I touch.

Have you seen Butler (aka Another Launcher). It's free.

How about AnotherLauncher? It's similar, but with more features (menubar widgets, etc) and free-as-in-beer. (LaunchBar is commercial, with a demo.)

1. A lot of users have gone either of two ways for Apps:

a) create a Folder of Aliases to your Apps (you can also do subfolders), then drag that Folder to your Dock; a right-click reveals the hierarchy; downside: manual adding.

b) use a utility like LaunchBar or AnotherLauncher that enables you to get to Apps (or anything else for that matter) with a couple of keys.

2) This is what the new Expose feature in Panther is designed to do. Pretty spiffy.

I never used OS 9; I pretty much went from Desktop Linux to Desktop OS X so that I could run some apps (like MS Office and Warcraft) without a lot of muss and fuss.

I've been using OS X for about, oh, 12 months or so now. Never saw the OS 9 tabs and the like - went straight to Finder and Dock world.

I use Another Launcher 99% of the time - Control-Space, type in a few letters, and I'm done. The Dock hardly ever gets used, but I've never really hated it - if anything, I liked it more than most of the other "Windows Application Line" solutions I've seen.

Combined with Expose, and I can get to pretty much any window on the screen I need. Now, I do agree with the gentleman in his article about how it would be nice if the Dock featured a way to have more unique displays for files.

But I can't help but wonder: How much of this is "Well, we liked OS 9 and it did it this way, and now you change it!" Not to say he doesn't have some good point - but as a guy who uses his keyboard a lot more than his mouse (Terminal and Another Launcher get a huge workout from me daily), maybe I'm just missing a lot of the complaints.

I use this program on the Mac:

Another Launcher for OSX

I also use a program called iPiano for Mac OSX to turn my keyboard's unused keys into a MIDI keyboard and sound bite launcher.

One can buy new key cap stickers or just go to an office store and get a sheet of clear translucent sticky paper and print their own keycaps.