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15 Things Apple Should Change in Mac OS X
richi writes "Two of Computerworld's top operating systems editors, a Mac expert and a Windows expert, compare notes on what Apple should reconsider as it develops Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Mac OS X 10.4, or Tiger, is (in their opinion) a noticeably better operating system than XP or Vista. But it is not perfect. OS X has its own quirks and flaws, and they set out to nail down some of the 'proud nails' for the next release." From the article: "7. Inconsistent User Interface. Open iTunes, Safari and Mail. All three of these programs are Apple's own, and they're among the ones most likely to be used by Mac OS X users. So why do all three of them look different? Safari, like several other Apple-made apps such as the Finder and Address Book, uses a brushed-metal look. iTunes sports a flat gun-metal gray scheme and flat non-shiny scroll bars. Mail is somewhere in between: no brushed metal, lots of gun-metal gray, and the traditional shiny blue scroll bars. Apple is supposed to be the king of good UI, and in many areas, it is. But three widely used apps from the same company with a different look? Sometimes consistency isn't the hobgoblin of little minds."
Can't put widgets on the Desktop? Um, you can actually - but you need a widget to do it. The Devmode widget for one.
And that solves the whole "no date on the desktop" one - and probably some of the others too.
"2. Renaming Isn't Easy. The process of renaming files is highly mouse-centric on the Mac. There's no F2 option (as there is on Windows) that lets you select the file and press F2 to expose the filename-editing mode. The mouse process requires very precisely timed mouse clicks. Anyone who has ever been forced to rename a long list of files under both Windows and Mac operating systems will likely agree that the Windows way is easier. --Michael Cullison"
Well, pressing the 'Enter' key does precisely that.
Regarding the beachballing of death: Give your Mini a real harddisk if you still have the stock drive in it. The stock drive at least in the first series G4 MacMinis is an atrocity. Put in some faster 2.5'' drive and it will be a new machine (at least that did it for mine, before it was excruciatingly slow, now it is really fine).
Hold option while you click the zoom button, and the window goes up to full screen.
-mkb
I guess this specific one is "reader-contributed", but it's still increadibly daft:
2. Renaming Isn't Easy. The process of renaming files is highly mouse-centric on the Mac. There's no F2 option (as there is on Windows) that lets you select the file and press F2 to expose the filename-editing mode. The mouse process requires very precisely timed mouse clicks. Anyone who has ever been forced to rename a long list of files under both Windows and Mac operating systems will likely agree that the Windows way is easier. --Michael Cullison
Hey Mike - arrow key until the file you want to rename is hilighted - and push enter. Wooooooo, scary hard.
I find this is mostly a complaint either from those who haven't quite gotten how the Mac UI works yet, or people who are using poorly-designed apps.
Why, in general, do we even need to resize windows? The answer, 90% of the time, is that the window is the wrong size or shape for its contents. That's what the green "optimize" button is for -- to resize the window automatically to the same size as its contents, and properly implemented, this does just what you want. With Safari, it makes my web browser just wide enough to view the current page without scrolling, and tall enough to show all or as much of the page as possible. With Pages, it resizes the document window to fit the exact size of the document at its current zoom level. I practically never need to resize these windows.
The problem comes mainly with apps that haven't implemented the optimize button properly. The list of offenders includes Camino and all those expensive turds Adobe sells (which break almost all the rules of OS X consistency).
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
a. Apple is secretive by nature
Apple tends to be secretive about a lot of its stuff, but in the ramp-up to a new release of OS X they always get into bragging a LOT. Developer feature previews and what not are plastered all over Apple's website. I have NEVER seen an example of Apple waiting until launch date to unveil a "key technology" in their OS.
b. Leopard is still very early in development
Huh? Apple has already shipped more than one 10.5 developer preview so far. I believe they have a lot of folks in Cupertino already shifted over to it (as a beta test), and it's slated to come out sometime this spring. They first announced it to people over a year ago, so they've probably been working on it for at least two years. That is not early development.
Point 12: They seem to be complaining about how hard it is to find individual windows for an application. Haven't they seen Expose? No? How about splat-` to cycle through the windows of the current application?
Point 10: It's awkward to find applications too rare to put on the dock? I dragged my Applications folder to the dock as a folder. If I mouse over to it, I get a drop down menu of every app in the whole folder. Or I can double click on it to open the folder. Or I can go to Spotlight and type the first couple of letters of the application name and have it find the app very quickly.
User Point 3: The Apple mouse doesn't have three buttons. I spent a whole $9 for a Logitech optical wheel mouse, and all the buttons (including the scroll wheel) work just fine with no configuration.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
And your average user is going to use locate... when? When they launch that command prompt that most OSX users don't even know exists? Sorry, doesn't fly. In the GUI you have Spotlight... that's essentially doing the same job for average Joe User.
Oh, so YOU want locate? Well, since you obviously know it exists and what it does you must be a power user... therefore you should either know how to enable the database maintenance or put a little effort into a two minute Google search to find the answer.
Your objections don't stand up. Remember, OSX is made for the average user... if you want your power tools that'll get you UNIX functionality you need to put in a little more work. However, that amount of work is still significantly less than your average UNIX requires to be user-friendly.
Oh, and in response to the GGP, you've obviously never used an flavor of UNIX other than Linux. Linux is NOT UNIX despite what some might want to tell you. It's inspired by UNIX but doesn't follow many of the forms that became common in true UNIX platforms. OSX is closer to BSD than Linux is, and as such I'm quite comfy in that environment having cut my teeth on NetBSD, FreeBSD and AT&T UNIX (yes, the real deal). Just because nothing is where you expect it coming from a hobbyist UNIX platform, doesn't mean it's automatically wrong. In fact, OSX has more in common with most commercial UNIX's (Unices?) than Linux will ever have. As a result, I think it's a better UNIX.
Just as an aside, is it wrong for Apple to make X11 an optional install that runs after the main GUI? No, because that's what OSX does. The average user doesn't need or want X11... and if you want or need X11 you're a power user almost by default. As such, you should be comfortable with installing it. If you really want to make OSX more Linux-like, download Fink and start installing some more GPL tools... I am a power user, and I'm glad I put in the extra work to learn OSX properly. I've used OS/2, Windows (since 2.0 and up to and including Vista), Mac (from the original MacOS to OSX), GEM, Linux, UNIX (various), AmigaOS, OS/400, S/36, and quite a number of embedded and RTOS's. I have to say that for me, OSX fits the bill. It does everything I want it to, very little that I don't. It's not perfect, but no OS has ever been perfect. I use it because it just works... because I can get my work done. I can tinker with the internals if I want to, but I rarely have to.
And by the way, app bundles are the bomb. Sure, they use a little more disk space... but disk space is cheap. Think of your applications as a folder (which they literally are in the UNIX filesystem) that contain all of the stuff you need to run the app including configs in some apps. Right click on an app and Show Package Contents sometime... it's quite educational. And download the dev packages and learn something about the OS. Even if you have no intention of developing software, the development kit is incredibly deep and will teach you more about the OS than you ever thought possible.
Apple had that behavior before Windows went mainstream, and before Gnome, KDE and whatever copied Windows.
The behavior you want doesn't make as much sense in OS X. I mean, why make the window bigger if it is to show more whitespace and keep you from dragging content to/from an other Window?
Menzoberranzan Networks
Depends on the application and the framework it was programmed in.
Works in Cocoa apps such as CyberDuck and TeXshop.
Doesn't work in TextWrangler
Does weird things in Finder, esp. on a multiple monitor machine
Sort of works for Safari
All of which is a good argument for why Apple shouldn't've knuckled in to Microsoft and Adobe and should've stuck w/ their Rhapsody plan and never have wasted time on the foetid mess which is Carbon.
William
(who wants TIFFany instead of PhotoShop, Altsys Virtuoso instead of FreeHand or Illustrator and thinks that PasteUp could've been as good as InDesign and that FrameMaker would still be available on Macs if we'd had Rhapsody)
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
The parent is referring to the "maximize" button.
On Windows, pressing the maximize button, maximizes the window so that it takes up the entire screen (well, except for the task bar as you mention).
On Macintosh, there is a button called zoom. It resizes the window to show all the contents of the window. In some cases, this is (considerably) smaller than the entire screen.
The problem is that Windows Users (and apparently Linux Users) expect the zoom button (on the Mac) to take up the entire screen, so that it hides all other open windows. it doesn't do that.
Conversely, when Mac users use Windows, the maximize button really isn't what they want. They want to make the window bigger, but the don't want to obscure other windows, because they still want to see and use content from the other windows.
Both implementations have their uses. The confusion lies when you try and work in multiple environments and expect the same functionality.
The zoom button is actually controlled by the application and not the Window Manager. This is why you have different behavior depending on the application your running.
This was particularly true for true-Carbon applications. MetroWerks' PowerPlant Carbon framework, used by many applications (still today) kinda standardize the actual behavior and Cocoa under OS X also makes this somewhat more predictable.
But applications can still control the size they can zoom to.
This is why you wont find a system-wide switch to control this behavior.
Something you might find useful: Holding down command while clicking on a background window often lets you manipulate it without activating the window. E.g. in Safari, if I'm reading one window and want to check a detail in another while keeping my current one in front, I can drag the background scrollbar (or click on the arrows) while holding command and it will scroll without moving to the front. If I'm reading in Safari and want to check my mail without switching to Mail, I can just command click on the 'Get Mail' button and it will check in the background, leaving my Safari window on top. You can even drag windows about in the background using this method. One note though: if you command click on a link in a background window, it'll open in a new tab in the foreground window, though this can be advantageous at times, particularly if you use different windows for different categories of tabs.