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OS X Annoyances


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Straight from that guy's mouth :P

 

See, that's what the definition of "annoyance" is to me: something the computer/operating system should do natively and by default requires an additional download or installation to make happen. This tool should have been a part of the operating system from the factory and not a download off Apple.com.

 

Just my $.02, but I'm happy to know it exists. Thanks for the shoutout, jgrimes80.

 

bb

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It's called Sleepless I believe...

 

:o

 

You are my hero. Why I didn't think to look for a little app to do it I don't know. Probably because it's such a basic thing that I've done on both Windows and Linux I thought I had to be missing something by not knowing. Thank you so much. :D

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

 

I've been a :D 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.

 

Well... euh... Ahem... Have you actually tried it (making win XP into OSX that is)? It works wonderfully well.

 

Checkout this program called FlyAKITE

 

http://osx.portraitofakite.com/

 

I have this running and it makes the Windows Desktop that bit more pleasant to use (for Apple OS X users that is).

 

In fact this Dual boot Hackintosh has this in its windows part. So it looks as if I have 2 OSX's. One for games (WinXP) and one for serious stuf (OSX86).

 

You also gotta see the website they build behind it. It's absolutley brilliant. That webdesigner is REALLY good. It might be an idea for OSX86.org-team to do something like that for OSX86 :-) (the wiki pages orso?)

 

Regards,

 

EPDM

 

BTW. OS8.5 and "Happy" in the same sentence??? You gotta be kidding, right? I hated OS8.x IMO classic became really good and especially stable with OS9.1 upwards. ;-)

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I've used FlyAKiteOSX in the past, and while it's not OSX, obviously, it's about as damned close as you can possibly get while still running XP as the OS - it's really that good.

 

Of course, it is XP underneath, so although the basic GUI is changed over to FAKOSX - Get it? Fake OS X ? Wonder how many people knew about that hidden acronym, not many I bet :whistle: - it's Windows at the core.

 

Still, it's an amazing piece of work and worth taking a look sometime just for fun.

 

Imagine having a MacBook/MBP and dual booting OSX and Windows XP/FAKOSX - people will wonder what the hell is up when you tell them "Hey, I'm running Windows on my Mac" and all they see is OSX no matter which OS you choose.

 

:blink:

 

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You also gotta see the website they build behind it. It's absolutley brilliant. That webdesigner is REALLY good.

 

The guy that built the website is a good friend of mine, although I don't know the bloke behind flyakite. His other website designs are very good aswell, flyakite website took like 6 months to create from what he told me, great design.

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dorksport-

check out CPUThrottler forum in the xlabs. It has some of the features of RM-clok taht you find useful. I am working on improving it,albeit rather slowly, but i will have more time to work on it soon.

 

 

cant wait till friday to see what the first challange is. Even if i can't finish it on time, im gonna try and have a blast doing it.

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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!

 

A uni-bin theme unifier? ... Not a problem, check this one (UNO) out

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there are a couple of annoyances in OSX

when it tells me i can't eject a disk or empty the trash because a file is in use. It tells me to try and quitting some applications. to just randomly guess what is using the file. It should tell me. Especially when its file sharing or some BS that is using the file. then i have to go into the activity monitor and kill file sharing and then go into system preferences and turn it back on.

 

second... i hate the default finder with the sidebar and the buttons at the top. I just wish there was a way to turn that off by default because every new folder i make opens with that crappy interface and then i have to click the pill button at the top right hand corner to get rid of it.

 

third... there is no standard way of moving the cursor to the beginning or end of the line. In windows all programs use home and end. In mac because of the wonderful half keyboards that came with the colorful imacs the home and end keys would not work because the keyboards didn't have home or end keys. So Microsoft office still uses Home and End. but then some programs use cmd + left arrow or right arrow and then others use ctrl + left arror or right arrow. I just want a standard. Cmd + arrow is fine... as long as its the same in every program.

 

fourth.... i hate how the screen on my powerbook dims to half brightness halfway before i have it set to turn off. I have the box unchecked in energy saver and that works for like 10 minutes and then it starts doing it again. I don't even understand why that feature is there. turning the screen to half brightness just wastes more battery because you can't read it at half brightness and its still uses almost as much power as full on. Basically if i set the screen to turn off after 10 minutes i want it to turn off after 10 minutes, not go half bright after 5. on a sidenote i think it is dumb that when you turn the screen brightness all the way with the brightness keys the screen itself doesn't turn off.

 

fifth... spotlight should have an option to search every file on the computer. Once i was having problems with Omniweb and i put omniweb into spotlight and deleted all its helper files fired up omniweb to no avail. Only after i sent an email to the omniweb guys did i learn there is a cache file in the cache folder that spotlight does not search. And that is in the home folder. Imagine how many system folders its not searching.

 

a couple more issues with the finder being retarted... i just hate how when i use my firewire drive the whole finder completely jams while it waits for the firwire drive to spin up. I also hate how completely and utterly useless the ftp support is. they should just take it out because i have never gotten it to do anything more than mount. When i try to copy a file or something it says permission denied and then more likely than not it will crash. they should just remove the usb support and tell people to buy transmit. also, i find it annoying that if you unplug the network cable or somehow a shared network drive that is mounted is no longer accessible, the finder jams for like 5 minutes until it pops up a message saying "this drive could not be reached" would you like to terminate the connection.... YES i would and i didn't want to wait 5 minutes to do so. Also, in general switching between wired and wireless networks for faster file transfers in osx is very good... its not perfect. if a shared drive is already mounted on the wireless and you plug in the wired it will stay on the wireless... unless you use a static ip and assign both wireless and wired the same ip address but who has a computer with a static ip these days, it really should be smart enough to switch everything to the wired connection.

 

 

 

phew... i think that is enough ranting for this foggy san francisco morning

-Jeff

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second... i hate the default finder with the sidebar and the buttons at the top. I just wish there was a way to turn that off by default because every new folder i make opens with that crappy interface and then i have to click the pill button at the top right hand corner to get rid of it.

 

That one's easy. You make a new default likey so:

 

1. Click on the Finder icon in the Dock and then hit the button in the right hand corner. Close window. Now whenever you hit the Finder icon, it comes up without the sidebar.

 

2. Hit command-N and do the same thing.

 

In terms of individual folders, I can't help there, so it's at best a partial solution.

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I'll tell you what I hate not being able to do in OSX (especially after being used to it in Windows) is cutting files in Finder! Gosh, why can't Apple see the sense in moving a file, not copying and pasting then deleting....

 

You CAN move files, you just don't do it the same way as you do in Windows. Hold down the Command key while dragging and dropping a file.

 

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/copydelete.html

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Just taste these iAnoyance challenges ideas to see if your nose agrees with their perfumes :D

 

1°) Dashboard (yes i know it' been discussed above). I really love widgets, but really hate Dashboard too.

 

So..., let me introduce... (rrrrrolling...) The Widget Reader! [® ™ ©Opensource - all rights NOT reserved :D ]

 

Imagine... you double click on a .wdgt thingie and your favorite widget appears in a cute little window, that you can stick so that it stay on background or foreground, minimize, hide in the dock, just with a click of your mouse. And you could have as many windows as you like, of course.

 

2°) In Finder, the infos located in the bottom bar are pretty useless (i don't care about the remaining space when i'm inside a folder, i prefer having it when i click on a drive icon) so... let me, etc....

 

The CaféBar! [Patent pending :P ]

 

Imagine that you could completely customize the infos that appears not only in the bottom bar, but also in the title bar of the Finder windows? mmm...?

 

3°) In the continuation of 2°) : why not imagine having the infos bubbles, just like in.... wwzwz....Linux?

 

In Konqueror, you can have great info bubbles that appears when you 'mouse over' a file, with, if you want, a miniature of the file (this could be great for html pages!).

 

For the name, this time, i don't have much idea (BobleBubblesBible? :blink::whistle: ), but i'm sure you will find.

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My Annoyances:

  • Lack of Anchored Keyboard Selection in Cocoa/Carbon apps.
  • Triple-click should select a line of text without the newline itself in Cocoa/Carbon apps.
  • Apps inconsistently use CMD+Right vs. CTRL+Right to move the text caret to the end of a line (same for Left, Up, Down).
  • Resize grabbers need to use a different mouse cursor -- that would make resizing at least twice as easy; window resizes need to not lag -- no other window manipulation does.

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One minor annoyance I have is that of screen captures (Apple-shift-3). They always go to your desktop, but are always named sequentially, so if you take a lot, move them to a seperate folder, and then take a load more, you're going to have a lot of files to rename.

 

If there was something that just saved them with a timestamp instead, or something, that'd be very handy indeed.

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Couple of things:

 

1) I hate the click to activate a window, then click again to do what you want to with that window. I've heard discussions that it's a usability thing (i.e., so you don't accidentally do something with a partially hidden window), but it just slows me down.

 

2) View a folder as thumbnails. There are currently some workarounds (like using a slideshow or increasing the thumbnails in icons view), but my preference is something like how windows explorer does it (I know, boo! hiss!!).

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I completely agree with h3h, I really wish the keyboard selection in list would behave in a anchored manner.... Often I want to select files in the finder (or tracks in itune), so I use the combination of shift plus the down key.... Since often I want to select more files than currently shown in the window, I don't know when to stop until I select the file I don't want to select (for example from another artist).

In this case, if the list was anchored I could just press shift + up key and unselect the last file or track but since on Mac os X the list is unanchored I need to use the mouse and command click on the file/track I want to unselect....

This is just really annoying !!!!

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You CAN move files, you just don't do it the same way as you do in Windows. Hold down the Command key while dragging and dropping a file.

 

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/copydelete.html

 

Yanno, on countless OSX installs since I dropped .1 on the world has shown me that damned 'tip' is useless. I just tried it again on my current install I made just this morning, and Command+Drag simply does not move the file, nor does it 'copy and delete' the file either.

 

I was trying to move a dmg file from one directory to another, a simply move process, and I tried it nine ways from Sunday and it never "moved" the file, nor did it "copy and delete" the original to the new location.

 

In some respects, that is a MAJOR HASSLE to me considering (dare I say it) Windows moves files by default as long as they're on the same drive/partition. If you drag across drives/partitions, then it becomes a copy operation.

 

Having to hold a key on the keyboard to do something so completely basic to a disk and file based operating system is beyond annoying, it's just plain stupid to me (and many others I'm sure).

 

</rant off>

 

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Hi all ya,

 

I am new in here and I might stir up a hornet's nest with my opinions, but...

 

Some things people said in here tells me that they either have absolutely no clue on Computer-human interaction or should better stick with windows or both.

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

Sorry, but this is so untrue. First you don't have to use the keyboard in most cases. Second, it is widely accepted that using the keyboard is faster in many cases than hovering with the mouse. Especially the close/hide-thing that almost everyone seems to be anoyed of. Just use command+w to close a window, command-h to hide the app and command+q to close the app. And prove to me that using the mouse is faster.

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):

Well, as I said, better go and learn something about computer-human-interaction, before whining about law's you don't understand.

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?"

Yep, it does definitely, and it is a far better solution than in Windows. Let me tell you why. On windows, you have to point the mouse directly to the menu-bar which my be anywhere on the screen, depeding on the size of the window. That means you have to point the mouse to a certain (not very tall position).

On OSX in contrary, you can just let the mouse fly up (which is insanely fast) and you know you will always end at the menu line. The point here is not the distance. Another proven fact is that this action does not take as long as it would using a menu on windows.

 

Besides, the law you where talking about does not only take the distance into account but also the size of objects. If there would be anything you could complain about than it would be that the close/hide-buttons in osx-windows might be a bit small.

You use something like the above mentioned program and whine about bad designed GUI-behaviour? Funny...

 

Besides, where's the difference to Windows? That the dock isn't the best thing regarding consistency and GUI-behaviour is quite clear, but is Windows better? I think not.

Well, I couldn't care less and I hope Apple don't.

Say, do you know anything about human subconscious behaviour (not sure if this is the right word as I am from Germany)? If so, you should know that blinking of an eye is (most of the time) something that is not controlled by the human. What I mean is, it would be extremely difficult to control such an interface because you simply can't control your eye-blinking for a a long time.

As others already said (others might have said it in a more gentle way, though): RTFM!

In other words: Don't blame Apple if you expect everything to work the way it did on another system and if you don't care at all for why or how Apple did OSX the way it is. I say it again: Sometimes there are good reasons for it.

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Hi,

2°) In Finder, the infos located in the bottom bar are pretty useless (i don't care about the remaining space when i'm inside a folder, i prefer having it when i click on a drive icon) so... let me, etc....

Why don't you just enable "show item info" in the in the "view/show view options"-menu?

 

Greetings,

 

Greenhorn

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Why don't you just enable "show item info" in the in the "view/show view options"-menu?

 

I agreed with some of your points in the post before (even thought there was no reason to say it so harshly...) but I don't really agree with that....

 

Of course it's possible to do cmd option i to see the infos of the currently selected file(s)

But it takes too much space.... I think it would be much more useful just to have some real interesting infos in the bottom bar, like the size of the currently selected item(s) at least....

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My chief annoyance is that without using a plug-in, Safari will not "Search In Google" in a new tab or new window, hence allowing you to get reference information about some text without losing your place on a page being studied.

 

I tend to hind all my open applications, when switching applications, I first hide the one open and then use the Application Switcher (Cmd - Tab). The annoyance is OS X will not let you hide the last application, one must alway be visible. This means that if I happen to have hid Finder, then I have to unhide to switch applications. I have not checked yet (because like to reinstall OS X frequently for extra security, so I keep the number of extra applications I use down to a minimum), but SwitchLight might actually solve this problem:

 

http://www.proteron.com/liteswitchx/

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