Ten Things I Hate About Mac OS X

Informit ^ | 6 jan 2006 | Owen Linzmayer

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Familiarity breeds contempt, right? So it stands to reason that anyone who uses a product extensively can find fault with it. I’m no exception—my work requires me to use Mac OS X every day, all day long, and although I am generally thrilled with its capabilities and reliability, some things about it really drive me up the wall. Take a gander at my list of pet peeves; then share your own by posting to the Macintosh Weblog.

[Petronski]

Here they are:

# Dock Items Bounce Indefinitely
# Programs Force Themselves to the Forefront
# Trashed Items Cant Be Opened
# Software Update Off-Limits to Third-Parties
# Dashboard Widgets are Modal
# Painful Pinwheel Pauses
# Permission Roadblocks
# Exposing Package Contents is Confusing
# Dumb Deleting
# Sidebar Items Cant Be Rename

[Petronski]

Windows does those first two as well.

Of course, windows items don't bounce, but they do flash annoyingly. It's very distracting. Sometimes the system tray looks like the nuclear power plant warning panel in "The China Syndrome." Trouble is, none of that flashing stuff is EVER important.

AS to the second one, sometimes called "focus theft," well, what can I say? I'm a touch typist. It can be pretty f***ing frustrating to look up at the screen and see half of the sentence went into a pointless dialog box.

[YouPosting2Me]

"Ten Things I Hate About Mac OS X"

Biggest Problem: It runs on a MAC!

[goldstategop]

The easiest thing about Mac OSX is installing and removing programs. You just drop and drag the mounted installer icon into the Applications Folder and watch it auto-install. And then you can keep the program in the Dock if you like it. You can get rid of it the same way by just dragging the icon from the Applications Folder to the Trash. I'm writing this on my Mac Mini. I don't have to worry about viruses, worms or spyware or about downtime. Like Mac fans say, one you've set it up, it just plain works!

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[johnny7]

The first two are pi$$ers.

[peacebaby]

something good about this MAC I have to use at the office: It's great for graphics, and won't get viruses.

something bad about this MAC: everything else!

[coconutt2000]

# Dock Items Bounce Indefinitely
-Turn bouncing off. Find your dock preferences and turn it off. Nothing more annoying than bouncing dock items.
-Make a list of the software that does this, make sure you have the latest versions.
-Update and optimize your operating system.

# Programs Force Themselves to the Forefront
-Which programs? And why? And how do these programs act any differently in any other operating system?

# Trashed Items Cant Be Opened
-Security. Something in your trash should not be executable or readable.

# Software Update Off-Limits to Third-Parties
-Again, security. The same password that allows software updates allows the installation of all software that modifies the system.

# Dashboard Widgets are Modal
-What's your actual complaint about this setup?

# Painful Pinwheel Pauses
-This I can agree with. Most of the time I can track the problem down to a program that is eating up processor cycles or disk access time.

# Permission Roadblocks
-In this day and age, permissions are important in keeping your data secure from network system crackers.

# Exposing Package Contents is Confusing
-Control-Click on the package and "Show Package Contents". Simple as that.

# Dumb Deleting
-???

# Sidebar Items Cant Be Rename
-Are you thinking you want quick access to your "Ladies" folder but you don't want it to be obviously labeled as such in the Sidebar?

[goldstategop]

They still haven't made up to date native versions of Open Office and Gimp to run in Mac OSX. So you have to run them in an X11 environment which feels kind of weird.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[Casloy]

# Trashed Items Cant Be Opened # Software Update Off-Limits to Third-Parties

On the first one, all you have to do is drag the item out of the trashcan and onto the desktop and it works. I actually prefer it. And on two, not sure what you expect. By third party I assume you mean someone you have shared your software with, which means you are doing something illegal and now you expect Apple to update it as well?

[Petronski]

You're not asking ME, are you?

[Casloy]

No, sorry, I think I hit the wrong post button.

[martin_fierro]

Cool little (free) menu app that Jeeves turned me onto -- puts an animated OS X app bar on your Windows desktop.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Agreed. It would be alot better if I could buy my own machine instead of loaning one from apple.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

^^^^^^^^^^Which programs? And why? And how do these programs act any differently in any other operating system?^^^^^^^^^^

I hadn't realized that the macos did this. This is one of my biggest reliefs since moving from windows. Now when I'm typing something and another window/program "needs attention" it is not forced to the forefront anymore.(this often times happens when dealing with instant messenging, they need attention all the time depending on who you're talking to)

^^^^^^^^^^What's your actual complaint about this setup?^^^^^^^^^^

I view the dashboard as completely useless considering i've got up to 16 full usable desktops. Why have a half assed second desktop that you can only put select things on?

Most of the gripes are personal. Those are the two that get me.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

neooffice and macgimp

[coconutt2000]

Programs under Mac OS X do not typically jump to the front and into focus. If the author has a gripe with this happening, it is probably with a poorly written program or a program in which this is a feature. One of the nice things Apple did with Mac OS X was attach the dialog events to their respective windows. Now if anything comes up and the system wants to redirect your attention to another application it bounces that application's icon in the dock until you take care of it.

The dashboard is useful, if you use any of the widgets. If not, it can be easily ignored. There are nifty dashboard widgets for translating languages, converting units of measurement, and reviewing the local weather forecast. That's really what dashboard is about anyhow, quick access to tiny little, often used utilities that are a pain to keep in the dock individually. It also helps that using dashboard doesn't require having to launch every widget individually. It is loaded and ready to go when you need it.

[goldstategop]

Nah. Download Flyakite, my friend - it will transform your entire PC into a Mac clone. A new version is supposed to be out this year.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[goldstategop]

Neooffice runs natively but I don't think Macgimp runs as a Cocoa application. There's Seashore but its too limited for OSX. I downloaded the German Photoline32 which is a graphics editor that does run in OSX and also in Windows. The bad news is its pricey. I opted to buy a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. Its a less expensive version of Photoshop and Richard Lynch has a good website (http://www.hiddenelements.com) with free tools that will let you do almost anything in PSE that you want to do in Photoshop. I don't intend to do professional photography and more isn't necessarily the best. Most us don't drive a Ferrari and we ought to do the same in finding software that does what we want it to do.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

^^^^^^^^^^^Now if anything comes up and the system wants to redirect your attention to another application it bounces that application's icon in the dock until you take care of it.^^^^^^^^^^^^

Yeah, that would be as annoying IMHO as is when windows' taskbar(on the right hand side) spams your desktop with info from whatever's running in the background. "two new updates are available" "your firewall is not running" "click here to take a tour of windows" and so on. Those also take away focus from whatever you're working on.

What my system does(suse) is change the color of the corresponding program's label on the taskbar, and leave it in the background. Doesn't flash, doesn't jump around, and doesn't *take the focus away*.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^The dashboard is useful, if you use any of the widgets.^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If I didn't have multiple desktops which could be used for *anything I want*, a second "desktop" via widgets I could see how that could be fairly convenient. But having multiple desktops it seems like a useless toy at best and it's a limited second desktop at worst.