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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."
11. Managing Window Size.
. . .
Here's a thought that's simple and solves about 80% of the problem. What if Apple made both lower corners of Mac windows draggable? What if all four corners were? Either of those minor improvements would be quite welcome.
How about regular click an edge to move the entire window, and control-click-drag anywhere on an edge to resize? (or vice versa)
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
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.
All your points will apply to any modern operating system, not just Apples. Computers have a certain unavoidable complexity, and if you don't bother to learn how they work, they won't.
If you don't like OS X, why not install Linux on that machine? Then at least your configuration files will be where you expect them.
One of the things thats always bothered me when I use OS X is the way that the maximize button behaves. I can see how its behaviour under OS X makes sense in a certain way (Only enlarging to be 'big enough'), but I maximize a window to hide the clutter behind it as well as to see some more content in the foreground window.
I've dug around in the system preferences a bit, and looked on google as well, and can't seem to find any way of changing this behaviour. Would an option to change behaviour be so hard? As silly as it may sound, its been one of the few annoying things thats really been keeping me from using OS X in any serious manner.
...if we should trust someone to give design interface advice who spreads their article over four pages.
"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? "
;-)
Maybe because you don't want to click 'reply' when you want to buy a song?
Many times I read about UI inconsistency in Apple applications, such as those mentioned in the post: Mail, Safari, iTunes. I note it as well, that they look different. However, I realize that I do not feel the inconsistency whle working with them, I do not notice it. Strange, how come? How it is possible, that I was feeling the inconsistency on my Linux machine even there was unified look of all applications and I am still feeling inconsistency on any Windows machine where is unified look as well? I found out, that it is not about the look, but more about the feel, more about the behavior of applications, more about expectations how the applications will react to your commands, how the applications understand your intentions.
I agree, UI look in Apple applications is not consistent, but the behavior is in majority cases consistent. And that is what counts. While working, you do not notice whether the app is brushed metal, Aqua or grayish plastic.
It is just my observation...
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Applications live in the Applications or Utilities folders. Support files? Depends on how much of a sadist the programmers were, but they're generally bundled within the .app bundles, or show up in ~/Library/Application Support/ Preference files are almost always in ~/Library/Preferences/ like you'd expect. It's far better than Windows' insistence on *hiding* user files in %AppData%.
System Configuration options? You mean the ones that are accessed from the always-available System Preferences? You seriously didn't look very hard, did you? Hell, for deeper hacking go READ osxhints.com.
Why do you care what's going on "behind the scenes" so much? Go get a $free developer account at Apple, download all the Developer Tools, and start READING.
Which files? Again, do some READING.
Honestly, almost all of your objections stem from the fact that you haven't put a single bit of effort to educate yourself about Mac OS X. You claim you're "quite comfy" with Linux and Windows, but you sure as hell didn't get that knowledge from osmosis. I only use Windows at work, and I know q bit more about some of the guts of the way it works because I did some READING.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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.
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.
Wow... I didn't think that doing simple desktop tasks on a Mac could be as complicated as getting NVidia drivers working in Linux!
(I'm kidding... kind of.)
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
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 fact that, when you minimize a window and pull it up using Apple+Tab, it STILL doesn't reappear until you pull it up from the dock. Seriously. This causes 95% of my frustration when moving from Windows to Mac.