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15 Things Apple Should Change in Mac OS X
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Dec 15, 2006 09:21 AM
from the twitching-the-tiger dept.
from the twitching-the-tiger dept.
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."
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Window Management (Score:5, Interesting)
. . .
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)
Re:Window Management. Maximize? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Window Management. Maximize? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Window Management. Maximize? (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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Re:Window Management. Maximize? (Score:5, Informative)
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?
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Re:Window Management. Maximize? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Window Management. Maximize? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Window Management (Score:5, Funny)
TW
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Re:Window Management (Score:5, Interesting)
When I got my first Mac (I liked it so much I now have four) it drove me nuts as did having to use the menu bar at the top of the screen. Also things like the mouse cursor disapearing when I scrolled a window or clicking into a window only bringing it forward rather than activating the button I clicked on. These were all things which nearly caused me to dump the platform but over time I learned that there is something wonderful about it. Muscle memory is the key. I have found that I can now do things much more quickly than originally because a flick of the mouse takes me to the top left of the screen where I hit the menu with great accuracy (trackpad too). When I want to resize a window, woosh, straight down to the bottom right corner and zip the window is resized. No danger of hitting close because I decided to widen the window up near the close button. Losing the mouse cursor when you scroll? I wouldn't have it any other way. On Windows it annoys the heck out of me that the mouse doesn't disappear when I scroll.
As more people come to the Mac from Windows, this discussion will keep coming back. The way the Mac does things isn't wrong or broken. Its just different and in time it becomes second nature.
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Re:Window Management (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Window Management (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the thing. Linux UIs freely borrow great ideas from many sources. Microsoft is famous for grabbing other peoples' good ideas. Isn't it time for Apple to learn that even their best ideas can be improved over time, even if the improvement was first implimented by another company?
TW
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Re:Window Management (Score:5, Informative)
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).
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Re:Window Management (Score:5, Insightful)
As with most things in life, I use things because I want them to do what I want, not because I want to do what they want me to. Like my OS. Even if it's all fucked up, I want it to work how I expect. There shouldn't be a learning curve with your desktop, just like there is no learning curve on a real-life desktop. You don't reach for that pen and suddenly it shoots off 50cm to the right, starts hovering in mid-air with a weird blue glow around it, quickly followed by all the contents of my desk miraculously re-arranging themselves 20cm above the top of the desk, Dana Barrat style.
The problem isn't that the users don't "get" OSX. OSX is just an operating system. You're talking about it like it's the hardest quantum theory any mere mortal could never hope to understand. I'm pretty sure I have the cognitive ability to understand what the buttons do. I just don't think "optimise" is such a great idea for resizing windows. I want to resize the window, but the UI has to step in to do it for me, as I can't be trusted? Is that it? If I want to make a window as big as my screen, shit, I paid for the OS and the software in question - I should be able to do that if I so wish.
I'm not having a go at you, I just think that you're arguing from your own perspective. I've been using computers for decades, and there ARE reasons you want to maximise/minimise your UI however you please. You blame it on the apps, but doesn't change the fact the GUI is not allowing you to fix it manually. If I wanted an authoritarian figure telling me I, or some software I've bought, is doing something stupid, I'd get some input from my wife. I don't need my GUI to tell me what to do, snatching my balls in the process :)
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Re:Window Management (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite true. The problem isn't not learning OS X, the problem is not unlearning Windows. "Take up the whole fucking screen with this window" makes sense in a GUI that's based on tiling (and, despite overlapping windows having been introduced in W95, Windows is still more of a tiling GUI--no differentiation between windows and applications, menu bars in every window, etc.). The Mac GUI isn't about tiling, so the "take up the whole fucking screen with this window" functionality doesn't mesh as well with the rest of the GUI. When I work in Windows, I always want to "take up the whole fucking screen with this window" because that keeps the menu bar in a predictable location. Windows, in effect, isn't really a single multitasking workspace so much as an implementation of multiple workspaces, with one application/window/form per workspace. The motivation behind wanting Mac OS X to "take up the whole fucking screen with this window" stems partly from being stuck in the Windows singletasking frame of mind, and partly from boneheaded software vendors who design the same UI for all OS's so that Photoshop or Office has to take up the whole fucking screen by design. (Mac-only software often has a minimalist UI that can peacefully coexist with other windows and applications, unless it actually requires that much space. Tasks that are usually done with space-sucking toolbars get put into Inspector windows and such.)
Nonetheless, there's nothing stopping you from making a single Mac OS X window take up the whole fucking screen. Just hide the dock, move your window into the top left corner, and resize it until it takes up the entire screen. It's just a pointless and silly task in the Mac GUI so there's no easy shortcut for it.
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That's good and all... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's good and all... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Not sure all of these are correct...exactly (Score:5, Informative)
And that solves the whole "no date on the desktop" one - and probably some of the others too.
Re:Not sure all of these are correct...exactly (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Not sure all of these are correct...exactly (Score:5, Informative)
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
After that, press F12 and start dragging widget.. then (while still dragging) press F12 again and drop widget on the desktop.
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Ah, the simple Mac... (Score:5, Funny)
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.)
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Noooooooooo (Score:4, Funny)
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo.
WTF ? No F2 ? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, pressing the 'Enter' key does precisely that.
Re:WTF ? No F2 ? (Score:5, Insightful)
You hit F2 in Windows to rename files? And that's supposed to be intuitive?
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NUmber 10 is flat out silly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:NUmber 10 is flat out silly (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:NUmber 10 is flat out silly (Score:4, Informative)
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I really don't know... (Score:5, Insightful)
looking different (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe because you don't want to click 'reply' when you want to buy a song?
UI (in)consistency? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
The actual quote... (Score:5, Insightful)
IIRC, the actual quote they were going for is "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" and the point he was making is that small-minded people tend to get bogged down worrying about consistency where it doesn't really matter. In other words, if your list of biggest gripes includes items like this, get a life.
--MarkusQ
navigating OS X by keyboard :: #1 problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Some of these are just ignorant... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Two applications open simultanteously (Score:5, Interesting)
What do I mean? Well, I have two big monitors and often work with several applications at once, for instance, Photoshop and Flash or Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. I would like to be able to run them side by side, simultaneously, not have just the one in the "foreground" open.
The problems at the moment are that it is very fiddly to position palettes etc between two applications so they do not overlap, lots of the palette windows disappear when when an application is not in the foreground, and there are lots of other petty annoyances.
How familiar with Mac OS X are these people? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
One of the reader peeves... (Score:5, Insightful)
If one doesn't want to be pestered by that dialog, just choose the Shut Down command while holding down the Option key. Easy squeezy.
Come to think of it, that's a good bit of advice to follow whenever you find yourself wishing something behaved differently: Try the Option key. It won't always make a difference, but often, it does.
Worst thing about OSX is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What I think they should change... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:What I think they should change... (Score:5, Insightful)
* I can ssh into my Linux and FreeBSD boxen and use Apple's X11 to seamlessly work with those (in OSX 10.3 use ssh -CX, in 10.4 better use ssh -CY).
* Via VirtualPC (or Parallels for those with Intel Macs), I can use the very few Windows apps I need and test my stuff in IE.
* Considering the former two points, I can use Linux apps, Windows apps and Macintosh apps all at the same time on the same screen, with good performance, and without ever having to reboot to change environments.
* You have a complete set of your *nix toolset, so that you can scp, grep, tail, sed, rsync, whois... all you want.
As for your complaint that the config files aren't 'where they belong', I think this is intentional so that you don't go and edit lots of stuff and expect the machine to do the same as your Linux box would. It IS a different animal after all, and as long as cron works as well as it does (for my backup), I'll gladly leave the server stuff to my real BSD boxen (read: I haven't found anything I want to do with the Powerbook I'd need to edit config files for).
OSX is far from perfect, but gives me a good mix of having the most things I need available while letting me conveniently access everything else. So when you're like me and use your fair share of Mac apps, you get the best of all three worlds.
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Re:What I think they should change... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What I think they should change... (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously, I'm not trying to troll, but Linux is not really like the flavor of unix Apple has built their OS up from. Maybe you could try delving into the way Darwin and FreeBSD organize their file system.
Here are some links that might be a jumping off point:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Co nceptual/KernelProgramming/BSD/chapter_11_section_ 3.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000905-CH214-TPXREF 103 [apple.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_sys tem) [wikipedia.org]
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Re:What I think they should change... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm going through the same thing. I've been using my Macs to do video editing and as a user I'm fine, but getting down to the system can be a little confusing. Just roll up your sleeves and let go of your preconceived notions of how things should be. Eventually you'll get it. I've actually had more luck with the Java examples than some of the other system stuff, but mostly because I'm not that familiar with Apache.
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Re:What I think they should change... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:What I think they should change... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is because you're unfamiliar with OSX.
I hate the fact that I have no idea what the fuck is going on behind the scenes with the Mac.
Also because you're unfamiliar with OSX.
I really don't like the fact that I *could* do stuff on the CLI but I can never find out how.
Also because you're unfamiliar with OSX.
Here, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: OSX isn't Linux or Windows. It works differently. As a result, you might actually have to *learn something about it*. Clearly what you want is for OSX to be exactly like Linux or Windows. But the very fact that it *isn't* is what makes it attractive to so many people. So get your learn on and quit bitching, ffs.
PS. I'm not an OSX user. But people who bitch about a product because it isn't what *they* want it to be really tick me off, especially if it's clear they haven't bothered to try and adapt. I'd have the same problem with a Windows user who switched to Linux and then whined about how they couldn't use regedit.
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Re:What I think they should change... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:What I think they should change... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What I think they should change... (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny thing, I've had to do neither, and I know I'm not alone in that.
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Re:What I think they should change... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:12. Documents and App Instances on the Dock (Score:4, Insightful)
As for the comment about printer support... plug printer into Airport, press print in any application on any computer on the network and then select printer from the bonjour printer list. Easy. Want a direct connection, skip the part about the Airport.
They had a point with the look and feel, but to be honest it doesn't bother me as perhaps it should. And cut and paste is just not the mac way of doing things... we drag and drop EVERYTHING and Expose makes that easy.
I'm sure given time I could come up with 15 things that annoy me about OS X, but their gripes seem trivial at best. How about disconnection from network drives slowing down the WHOLE system? Or the way the firewall settings are in 'Sharing'. Trivial things that annoy me are that fink hasn't been absorbed into the default install and X11 is still concidered an optional extra - being able to install quality free software like Scribus/The Gimp from a Synaptic like interface could really open peoples eyes to OSS.
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One more (Score:4, Insightful)
I get the impression that the folks in Cupertino have never tried to use an X11 app with a one-button mouse. God damn that's a painful experience.
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Re:Please Use Windows' Focus Model and Key Nav (Score:5, Insightful)
That, to me, was the epiphany that there is a Windows way, and there is a Mac way. The windows way requires you to know how Windows stores things internally, and what its design philosophy is. Everything needs to be done manually, especially when it comes moving data between apps. I used to think that the coolest thing in town was to be able to copy text from one remote terminal to another. Now I know better - there is the Mac way, in which I just do what I want to do. If it's something that ought to be common (enable ftp server? tab through apps? move pictures around?), there is a simple way to do it. As in, brain dead simple 1-2 click operation.
The reason you and I - and presumably a lot of other people - were confused is because we tried to use OS X like WinXP. Don't do that. Start to think that there ought to be a simple way to do it, and then just try it. I've found that that solves 90% of my UI issues.
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