well, first off you can go to finder preferences, then uncheck the show hard disk option, then under that you will see open new finder windows in home (default). change that to xxxx xxxxxxx's Computer. then just make an alias of finder and put it on your desktop.

second, you can make a folder on your desktop and drag aliases of whatever programs you want into it and then drag the folder on to the dock. it kinda works the same way.

as for the cracking, i have no idea

This is both an annoyance and a great feature. in finder, click go: connect to server: then type in an FTP server. It will mount it as a drive.

This is excellent. What isn't so excellent is that no matter what your permissions are, you can't write to that mounted drive. This is the ONLY feature from windows that I miss (well, also Half-Life, but that's another story).

although I have got pretty used to it now, after using os x on and off for 3 years, every now and again it catches me out when navigating finder by keyboard... enter doesnt open, it renames!! what is with that? lol.

Finder just plain sucks , amiga workbench 1.3 was better




well it's retarded even if it conforms to Apple's monkey Interface FOR RETARDS Guidelines. If i close the main app window i expect the app to freaking quit period

You may call it a monkey interface but there are many Windows programs that do the same thing; MSN Messenger, WinAmp, and X-Chat just to name a few. In Linux you've got Gaim, Rhythmbox, the entire Notification Applet for the panel was designed to allow for this behavor. Hell, even every single Windows Mobile device doesn't close down apps when you "click the x". Why is that, I wonder?

There are plenty of reasons for an app not to close. For the most part, I like it because I don't need to have every single running program on my screen at the same time. I don't think of "the x" as closing a program, I think of it as just getting it off my screen. Minimizing is nice if I want to keep a specific windows contents for later, but something like a web browser I don't need on my screen or in my dock minimized and it is something I open and close all day long. It's nice to not have to load it every time; with it still running it opens instantly. Mail is open all day long, sending and receiving, and not on my screen. If I need to see it, it'll beep at me, otherwise get it off my screen.

I love this functionality. Guess that makes me a retard.

Well you can't compare it with windows where it could make sense because the apps you say minimize to sys tray where you can see that they are minimized.

You can see that in the dock as well - running apps without windows still have the triangle.

I'm curious, why do you need to shut the monitor off? Why not just permanently leave it on automatic 5 min (or whatever) monitor power save. I assume that iMac has this option, separately from sleep timeout. I have power switch on my monitor, but I can't recall last time I used it.

Exactly and you don't get a cluttered systray. Also if there really was a problem with keeping apps open like a serious lack of ram or something: Program Name -> Quit or cmd+q. If the mouse is going towards the upper left hand side for the x, it can't be that much harder to continue in that direction to the menu bar.

I thought you only had to delete the Application from Applications and it's gone?
I also remember seeing a program that will remove applications for you.

Appzapper.

Roberto -

It looks like they're putting the "Preview" navigation in place with Leopard.

I have two big annoyances. Working and not slow WMV support, and I'd really like a double-click to full-screen function for some media player.

Well, you won't get double click functionality because of the Human Interface Guidelines. They mandate a minimize upon double click and it is system wide. Score one against uniformity, I guess.

One thing that is annoying me is whenever i find a wallpaper and I right click it and click "Set as desktop backgroud," it just turns my background blank. Never puts the image as my background!

From what I have read, most of these problems are from installing OS X on a PC so I don't think those should matter. Really, one of the only things that bugs me is the home-end keys. I was a PC user most my life and am used to hitting Home-End keys while programming(I really have to have them, I use an app to change them) to get to the begining/end of the line from where the cursor started.

As for what I've seen about clicking the X to quit an application....I totally disagree. It's really easy-want to quit the app? Press apple+q. Want to close the window? Click the x or hit apple + w.

As for you people who run OS X on a PC, how can you even complain about a problem when you aren't even running it on a mac? Yes, I have put OS x on my dell laptop, but only for fun not for real use. I would never post about how it doesn't 100% work on my dell because it was never ment to run on a dell.

also, you can only make windows bigger from the down-right corner...

What about scrolling with the mouse wheel? Is there any way to change that to a system wide setting? Some programs scroll one line at a time, some scroll several lines at a time. I hate that in Safari it scrolls one line at a time and I have to spin the wheel either a whole lot, or once really fast to get the page to move. It scrolls a lot better in Camino, but that goes back to programs scrolling at different rates. Would be nice to set everything to scroll at about 6 lines per click. That defualt seems to work well in Windows.

I dislike this one also. I have two mice (One Logitech and one MS). Both of them get wonky depending on the application. It makes me wonder if this is an application issue or a system wide issue (I'm open to either choice).

Well this is fine. But not all programs follow these guidelines. I use Azureus and that quits with the X. Surely that is something you keep running. Mmmm, maybe I should be complaining to Azureus about this?

Someone mentioned about un-installing programs. From your applications folder you can just drag programs to the Trash and that un-installs them. However, it still leaves some program preferences in your Library folders. You can manually go through and delete this, if you can find them all. Better is an excellent little program called 'Appzapper'. It only costs about $12 (i think) for updates for life and this will find all the stray files that go with a program. It is excellent and I highy recommend it.

Cracked programs? I find demonoid.com pretty good.

if i have to use the keyboard your gui royally sucks period

Hover over the icon on the dock, right click, click quit. Two clicks to close a program. Or, for those of us that use the mouse as little as possible because, frankly, the keyboard is faster on *any* OS, cmd+q. I'm still confused over why this is a problem.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I think it has more to do with people expecting everything to conform to Windows way of doing things, rather than learning to think differently. People have similar complaints about Linux as well when they attempt to use Windows logic. If you like how Windows does things, then really, you should use Windows. If you want to use something different, no matter which OS it is, you should be able to allow yourself to think differently about how it should work.

Otherwise, you're just going to get frustrated. :/

It's only a problem because people make it out to be a problem. For instance, it's a lot easier to hit cmd-c to copy and then cmd-v to paste rather than trying to navigate mouse menus. You can even do it one handed while the other hand is faithfully attached to your mouse. Some users would balk at the thought of using such an arrangement, preferring their all-mouse way to do the same thing.

That one is just complaint for complaint's sake.

I've been using OSX a bit more seriously the past few weeks, and I'm getting to know it better overall since with the .6 release and JaS's .7 updater it's actually pretty damned useful now. Stuff actually happens instead of me sitting around waiting like I did with older versions - and yes, we all know it's software never designed to run on generic or such varied hardware. The fact that is does is just a miracle in itself.

Having said that, a few things do piss me off about OSX and not the fact that I'm using software designed for a real Mac not on a real Mac:

- the "click X" thing that's already been talked about.

I'll go into detail about why I think that {censored} is so ridiculous and stupid. It's about mouse mileage, or the need to move the mouse entirely too much to do the same particular function.

There's this idiotic thing called Fitt's Law that, well, to put it bluntly says (and I'm paraphrasing it in my own unique damned way):

The time it takes you to move the mouse to move the cursor to point it to something onscreen is directly related to how freakin' far you have to get the mouse moved so the cursor points to something onscreen.

The actual Fitt's Law quoted verbatim says: "The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target."

I'm sure someone out there can understand what it means in it's original form, but I really get sick of people telling me that OSX and Apple's seemingly absurd "Human Interface Guidelines" is the defacto way things should be.

Try this example on for size:

Say you have one of those monster LCDs so popular today, 1920x1200 resolution, perhaps even 2560x1400 (the 30" Cinema Display does that res natively iirc). Now say you're running a Windows app, like maybe Word or whatever really, it doesn't matter. The point is, if for some reason you need to access the menu/toolbar on that application, it's right there, attached to the window itself. If you have a huge screen and you need to get access to the File, Edit, etc menu/toolbar, it's right there on the window, mere centimeters of mouse movement away, onscreen it might be an inch or two.

Contrast that with something on OSX. If you have an application open like that you'll encounter a situation just like in Windows: every single application (for the most part) uses the same exact guidelines - except with OSX it means the menu/toolbar (and I know some apps break this guideline) is at the top of the screen, way up there, inches of mouse movement (typically based on the default mouse settings most people never change - hardcore people yes, regular Joe Schmoe consumers, no) and a helluva lot of screenspace covered.

As Johnny Cochrane was so fond of saying: "Does that make sense?"

I could care less what some researcher decided was a "law" in the past and spouted off that this way or that way is how to do things, but if I've got my mouse pointer floating on an application window that's open, realistically if all I'm doing is using just that application, the mouse cursor should never have to stray outside the physical dimensions of the window, unless I just want it out of the way - we all know that one: point to a text box or whatever, start typing something, realize we can't see some of the letters because the cursor is in the way, and we reach out and move the mouse again to get clear skies.

I like OSX (and I'm diehard: I say Oh Ess Ex each and every time - if they didn't want it called Ex they shouldn't have chosen the "X"), but that one thing has been my biggest damned gripe about Macintosh computers since that day in January 1984 when I first discovered the things.

I'm using a 1024x768 LCD (XGA resolution), so the amount of movement I have with this mouse of mine while running OSX is considerably higher than it is running Windows.

Why?

Well, here's the other thing that pisses me off about the OSX GUI: the toolbar/menubar/whatever you wanna call it is at the top of the screen, and all the pertinent icons or shortcuts to the software I want (by default, because I do go in and make it vastly more efficient with keyboard shortcuts, etc - something I don't have to do in Windows and I'll explain why in a second) is at the bottom of the screen.

Sure, you can move the Dock to the left side, or the right. You can make it large and have the icons really jump out in superlarge size with magnification, but in the end, you're still going to end up doing a ton of vertical mouse movement that just seems so counterproductive I wanna take that Human Interface Guidelines manual and beat Steve Jobs to death with it.

I do use WrapAround, which is pretty damned slick for what it is, and in my opinion (like that holds any weight, shyeeah right) this little app is one of those absolute must-have piece of software - especially if you have a huge LCD and gigantor resolution(s) you work with.

It helps dramatically under OSX with the up-down-up-down Toolbar/Menubar to Dock movements since you can just move the pointer a slight bit at the top of the screen and voila, it's now resting on the Dock. Pretty slickz0re application and I can't recommend it enough.

So the question appears: why doesn't the OS have something like this built-in? Why doesn't OSX offer that feature by itself - is it because a great many people that purchase new computers also go out and get new mice (meaning they don't stick with the default factory mice/mouse that was supplied with the computer maker/supplier) and then get it home and install all the mouse software automagically?

Because that's what your average Joe Schmoe does. In fact, the average Joe Schmoe computer owner is:

- a Windows user
- uses IE as his default browser
- uses Norton AntiVirus because it was installed when he bought the PC and hasn't updated the definitions in a year or two since the trial period ran out
- has some idea of what spyware is but doesn't really notice it much considering he's too occupied closing the popups that keep spamming him
- when he's not closing the popups that are spamming him he's trying to figure out which toolbar to install next because one popup looked interesting so he clicked "OK" instead of "Cancel"
- never pays much attention to the fact that his computer takes 8 minutes to boot to a usable state
- never understands how many resources are wasted by the 27 icons he has in his System Tray for wallpaper changers, weather applets, etc etc ad nauseum - in fact the only useful things there are the clock and the volume icon, the rest is pure dreck

I could go on but you get the point: His machine is a total mess, and he makes it worse everytime he gets a new component - like a new mouse, for example - because he automagically puts in the CD from the box the mouse came in and installs whatever pops up onscreen. He's pretty damned good at clicking "OK," you know.

Anyway, I'm going off-topic in my own post.

Mash created this sub-forum for "The Great Debates," and most people that know me and my history with OSx86 and test3 and Release1 know I'm never short on words in situations like this. So let's have debates, long well-crafted discussions and posts about what annoys the living hell out of us about "the most advanced computer operating system ever."



Sorry, couldn't help but laugh at that again. It's always good for a chuckle.

To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke (and I've never read a single book he's written, or Asimov either, go figure):

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic... unless you're talking about the sleight of mouth the mad geniuses in Cupertino keep shoving down our damned throats... advanced my ass..."

Again, with my situation and using an XGA resolution screen, even with OSX I simply don't have far to move the mouse so it's an issue for me but nowhere near the issue it would be if I had a hi-res LCD monitor at 1600x1200 or higher resolution. I was at the Apple store today and when I stopped at the MacPro (slow as it is) with the 30" ACD connected to it, my god... I had to lift the mouse three times and set it back down to go from the lower right-hand corner of the screen to the top left-hand corner.

Apple should include WrapAround with OSX as a default thing. It's that important, especially for the big LCDs more and more people are using.

Either that or find a way to move the mouse pointer to wherever your eyes are looking. Can you imagine what computing would be like if that was possible? Mouse movement by eye-targeting? Good god... it would be like using a computer 50x faster... oh the possibilities

I can just see it now (no pun intended):

Apple would end up creating a "Human Ocular-Controlled User Interface Guidelines"

One blink is a single click, a long blick is a double click, three quick blinks is click-drag, etc. Hey, it could happen, and I'll bet someone is already looking that far ahead. But I mentioned it first!!! I want a cut!!!

bb

Hey, have fun with it...

ps
Oh, something I learned today that I simply did not know about the Dock usage: put the cursor on an icon, left click and hold the button, you get the menu. Hey, it was new to me when I discovered it in a book, I'm a Windows guy, we've had two very useful buttons for a long damned time now. Mighty Mouse... yeah right.

There are forward and back buttons, but you have to put them there in the "customize menu" critter. I do think those buttons should have been on there to begin with though instead of added later.



There's already equipment that utilizes small head movements for those who cannot use their hands. Eye movements might only be a blink away (pun).

Then would most likely come intuitive speech systems, which the Mac is kind of already handling via speakable items and the voices. But what I'm wanting is something where I can actually work with my computer and have it learn me instead of me learning it (The Star Trek computer, basically)

Here is one that drives me f****** nuts! In Winblows you can open a ZIP file and NOT extract the content to look at it. In OSX, it extracts it without asking. ARRGGHHH!!! Irritates me.

Calling Fitt's Law idiotic shows your lack of understanding of it, and the research behind it. As for your examples, you are again showing your lack of understanding of Fitt's Law. The menu bar on a Windows app is a very small target. The menu bar in OS X is what is known as an infinitely large target. Why? Because you can shove your mouse at it and you CANNOT miss it, as it is at the edge of the screen. I think you should read some of the reasoning behind Fitt's Law before you dismiss it as "idiotic".

Here is a good explanation of why you are wrong: http://www.xvsxp.com/interface/fittslaw.php



You don't even have to do that. Select a group of pictures that you want to browse through, then double click. This will open Preview with all of those pictures in the tray (just like multiple pages of a PDF file). You can then use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to scroll through them.



Myzar, while I respect your contributions to the community in the form of your releases, your comments here (and in your installer for OS X) rate you as a first class troll in my book. You seem to have a real hatred of Apple.

There are several that have that hatred, be it directed at Apple or at the PowerPC Processors

Yanno, I purposely didn't link to X vs XP's use of the Fitt's Law argument because it's stupid. You just proved my point, so thanks!

As for me being wrong, the thread is about my annoyances with OS X, so I posted what my annoyance with it was, the biggest one of all, for all Macintoshes since the pre-Macintosh Lisa days. It is a waste of time and effort moving my mouse any more than necessary. Using Fitt's Law to say that OSX is a better GUI is like saying it's easier to shoot fat people because they're bigger targets than skinny people.

It's just that ludicrous.

Actually, it's easier to shoot fat people because they can't run as fast (i know this from experience... ).

As for the home and end keys, that used to annoy me, but i soon learned that apple+right is the same as end and apple+left is the same as home in windows.

My only real annoyance with OSX is the lack of a unified theme. Open mail and we have one thing, and then open itunes and we have a completely differenct one.

I hate the theme issue too. There's an Application Enhancer module called Unifier that will take care of this little issue until Apple makes up its mind.

Everything works but, I would like a mic in, so I can use record sound.....

Too bad it's not a universal binary. Guess it's either be happy with the look or the performance of my system. I'll give it a try though and see how well it works. Thanks for the tip!

I wish Preview was like Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

I wish OS X had a start button and a taskbar. I wish it had Registry so it was easy to edit settings. I wish that application menus were attached to windows. I wish that it had system tray. I wish keyboard shortcuts were the same as in Windows. I wish it had Fax and Picture Viewer instead of Preview. I wish I was running Windows XP.

We can close this thread now. This should cover all of the past and future complaints that are likely to appear in this thread.

Thank you. I was about to say that in a less kind manner.

I've been a user since OS 8.5. Windows makes me want to punch babies. But when I use it, I take it for what it is, and I don't try and make it into OS X.

I'm a recent convert to OS X, but I come from a Linux background not a Windows one. In a way I suppose I can understand the Windows people and their complaints. I have to say that the transition to OS X was made much easier for me knowing I could pop open a Terminal at any time and be presented with bash, just like I was used to on Linux. ssh and what not work just how I'm used to and that is nice. So for people with a frame of reference that is completely different it would be harder to get used to.

That being said, earlier I suggested that if you're going to switch OSs you should be willing to relearn how you interact with your computer. Every OS has its own system of doing things and if you're not open to learning how each OS handles things, then you really should be using what you're comfortable with. Otherwise, you're just going to end up frustrated.


[steps up on soapbox]

I've encountered many similar complaints in the Linux world from ex-Windows users. The problem is that people aren't looking for a new OS for the most part, they're looking to escape from Windows. That is a subtle but important difference. OS X, Linux, BSD, etc aren't Windows replacements, they're complete Operating Systems that function in their own ways, and have their own specific strengths and weaknesses. They don't strive to be like Windows as if Windows was some benchmark to be compared to, they strive to be the best at what they do.

So if you want to change OSs think about why you're doing it. Do you really want a new OS, or are you just looking to escape from spyware/adware/EULAs? If it's the former, then you need to leave Windows logic at the door and start to learn the strengths of the OS you've chosen. If it's the latter, you're going to end up back in Windows anyway, so you might as well just reformat and invest in a good Anti-virus/Spyware cleaner.

[steps down off of soapbox]

The way some windows user complain about things in other OSs, things they call problems but are just different ways to approaching things; is like going to England and say they drive "the wrong way"

You forgot "I want to use MS Paint." How could you forget such a problem? *flogs*

What really bugs me is the lack of the ability to turn the screen of a mac off at will. It's extremely annoying on an iMac when you want to walk away for a few minutes but don't want to go into the energy saver preferences and tweak those settings. Something that uses a key combination or a menu bar icon would be just wonderful.

This is the second time someone has expressed the same annoyance, so I am really curious about rationale, because I am not able to imagine how it would be useful.

Although I have external monitor with a power button, I never use it. I have monitor sleep set to 5 minutes, and that takes care of it. I never just sit at the computer looking at it and not moving mouse for more then 5 minutes, except for watching videos, but that disables power saving anyway. And if I go to make a coffee for a few minutes and come back to find my monitor off, I just move the mouse, and it is on 3-4 seconds later.

The main drawback of not having sleep on, and having to press something to turn off the monitor, is having to remember to do it, and having to know ahead of time if you'll be away for a while or not.

If you have siblings/roommates and don't want them to see what is on your screen, a screensaver activated on demand should do the trick.

Installing network printers that don't have their driver built in to OSX. You download the driver from your manufacturer - install it. Go the add the network printer and guess what? The new driver isn't an option. Plug the printer right in to the Mac and poof it works.

This drives me nuts.

[sarcasm mode on]

I hate morrons who 'accidentally' installed MacOSX86 on their peecee and expecting it'd be like windows.

[/sarcams mode off]


Most of what I've read on this thread has nothing at all todo about that little app that would make life easier but all about the differences between OSX and Windows. In fact for some things mentioned here other users reply by giving the proper Mac OS solution (it's usually involving proper use of the keyboard). So most here is about us not knowing how Mac OS X works (at least not on the same level as our windows knowledge).

I suggest we stop this thread now or at least only let ppl who have thorough knowledge about OSX complain. Until we do know more of how a MacIntosh computer work. Perhaps we'd better read a good book about Mac OS X before "complaining" about the little things.

I for one will not participate in this thread any further until a) I learn to program and until I have sufficient knowledge about OS X.

Cya around ppl... after I finish reading that OSX manual :-)

EPDM

Stuffit Deluxe. Make archives open with it by default and you're set.

About the home/ end keys I have come up with a solution here in this thread.

Just for the record, this isn't a thread for wishing OS X was like Windows - a lot of these annoyances are legitimate things within OS X.

Make an all black JPG and save it in a specially created folder. Then make that folder your screensaver. You can also then declare a hot corner for it to activate to "turn your monitor off" at will.

I may be wrong about this, so if I am I apologize, but I'm quite certain what jpgodlew is talking about is related specifically to laptops. He's talking about actually shutting off the LCD itself to save battery life, hence his mention of the power savings. Since the LCD is arguably the most power hungry part of a laptop next to the CPU - which can typically change power needs due to speed switching based on usage - any power savings because of the ability to simply turn off the LCD would translate into far longer runtimes on a single charge of the battery.

While I'm not aware of any version of Windows (even Vista) that offers a "turn off the LCD when I press F12" sort of 'switch', at least with Windows you can set it to turn off the LCD when you close the lid without forcefully entering Sleep mode. I'm not sure OSX allows that, guess I need to look into it myself.

Again, I could be wrong but jpgodlew's specific mention of power savings makes me think that's what he's referring to: laptop usage and power savings by disabling the LCD at will.

bb

I was asking about that earlier in the thread. I really dislike that when I close my lid, the laptop goes to sleep. Someone here said there was a way to change that, but I can't find any mention of it, and they never replied about how to do it. Even Google searches turned up nothing on the subject, except for other people that disliked this action as well.

Why do I need to close my lid? Well, like I said, I have cats. If you don't understand what that means, you don't have cats.

Well, I guess this is straight from the horse's mouth.

If that's true and there's no way around it, I have to say that's pretty sucktastic considering I'm planning to get an MB/MBP at some point. I don't use external monitors - unless of course someone happens to give me a 20-30" ACD. So that feature, especially for conserving battery life by closing or somehow just turning off the LCD manually (would be nice, wouldn't it?) is conspicuously absent.

Not a good thing, in my opinion.

bb

It's called Sleepless I believe...