Now I've never cared for the Windows OS - every PC I've owned has always had the shell replaced with one of my choosing, usually Litestep, including the Vista laptop I'm currently posting from, so I approached using Macs with a fairly open mind.
But the many little irritating things about the Mac OS have come together into one conclusion - I will never purchase one.
Have the object bar (which btw, I run on my Vista via Stardock's ObjectDock) set to auto-hide? Then you can't drag-and-drop to it.
Have the program window open, like Photoshop, and want to drag your image from your Finder window? Nope - you've got to drag it down to the icon on the Dock.
Want to replace the shell with a different one? Nope.
Want to change the look and feel of the GUI? Nope. Maybe add a background image to your Finder windows, but that's about it.
Use a custom cursor? Nope.
Instead of using Mac's I-Movie for video editing on the school's Mac towers I'm using Power Director on my laptop.
And for God's sake - someone please tell me how to go to 'home' and 'end' of a sentence in a browser window! Really - I have to use their Macs I want to know.
My Dock is auto-hide... and I drag and drop to and from it all the time. Perhaps you don't really know how to use a Mac?
Have the program window open, like Photoshop, and want to drag your image from your Finder window? Nope - you've got to drag it down to the icon on the Dock.
Photoshop, yes, but that was a choice that Adobe made—to ignore Apple's user interface standards—in any Apple application dragging from the Finder to the application window, or between application windows, or from an application window to a Finder window works fine. Universal dragging and dropping is something that the Mac does very well.
You can also drag and drop from any application into Photoshop with no problem.
Want to replace the shell with a different one? Nope.
There are a number of Finder replacements including Quicksilver.
Want to change the look and feel of the GUI? Nope. Maybe add a background image to your Finder windows, but that's about it.
Yes, you can. I can understand that the University might not allow you to do that to their computers, though.
Use a custom cursor? Nope.
But why would you want to do those things? Every Windows machine I've seen with Themes and fancy cursors is almost impossible to use accurately... finding the active point on a custom pointer that's a swinging gorilla can be very difficult. In my opinion, they all get in the way of productivity. And for God's sake - someone please tell me how to go to 'home' and 'end' of a sentence in a browser window! Really - I have to use their Macs I want to know.
You can use Command Left and Right arrow to move to the beginning and ending of a line.