“In many ways, it’s easy to slam Windows XP and Vista: Just start counting security flaws or user experience nightmares. When you’re the Goliath of the operating system world, everyone wants to hurl stones. But what about the proverbial David, or in this case Apple Computer Inc.’s Mac OS X? Looking for flaws in Apple’s OS seems like picking on the little guy — until you remember that Apple is doing very well these days and has made much of its vaunted UI and seemingly secure OS underpinnings,” Scot Finnie and Ken Mingis write for Computerworld.
Finnie and Mingis write, “Even though it’s been out for more than 18 months now, Mac OS X 10.4, or Tiger, is a noticeably better operating system than XP or Vista. But it’s not perfect. OS X has its own quirks and flaws, little irritants made all the more irritating by the fact that they come out of Cupertino, which should know better. There are some things about the way it works that aren’t as flexible, usable or convenient as Windows.”
Finnie and Mingis write, “we’re focusing on 15 of the little things already in OS X that need refinement or rethinking based on our everyday use of Macs:”
15. No Date Display
14. Widgets Can’t Be Placed on the Desktop
13. Inconsistent Use of Context Menus
12. Documents and App Instances on the Dock
11. Managing Window Size
10. Accessing Applications
9. Backspace and Delete Keys
8. Printer Setup
7. Inconsistent User Interface
6. Laptop Screen Dimming
5. Managing Finder’s Columns View, Problem No. 1
4. Managing Finder’s Columns View, Problem No. 2
3. Managing Finder’s Columns View, Problem No. 3
2. Finder’s Hobbled Cut Command
1. Dynamic Finder Refresh
Finnie and Mingis write, “Some readers have already sounded off about their Macintosh pet peeves, and here are some of things they picked at:”
1. Over-protective Shutdown Error Trapping
2. Renaming Isn’t Easy
3. Secondary Mouse Button
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, there are third-party products and hacks that allow you to attack some of the issues mentioned above. What are your favorite solutions and/or other pet peeves about Mac OS X?
My number one irritation with Mac OS X are the people that use Mac OS X. They are obnoxious.
Welcome To The Social
15. No Date Display
Click on the time in the menu bar.
11. Managing Window Size
Much easier than Windoze, since we have the green “fit to content” in the upper-left of all windows.
10. Accessing Applications
Spotlight works well as a built-in application launcher.
8. Printer Setup
Compared to the Windoze printer set-up process? Pssh.
7. Inconsistent User Interface
WHAT?? Mac OS X uses system APIs throughout the finder and release them for developer use to maintain consistency.
6. Laptop Screen Dimming
My PowerBook’s screen dims and brightens with changes ambient light. Plus all Apple notebooks dim the screen brightness by default when running onbattery power.
…and so on, and so on.
Mac OS X isn’t perfect, but it’s the closest thing to computing nirvana that I’ve ever experienced. This list holds little credibility.
Apparently, the Computer World writers don’t know about the System Preferences where the day/date can be set to display in a window on the desktop like a calendar page.
sigh.
The only thing that drives me nuts about OS X is that my applications keep crashing for no good reason.
I’ll be browsing the intenet, playing a video or something and the application will just shut down!! There doesn’t seem to be a fix for this problem either…
I would really like to see this one fixed!
ZT you never disappoint..keep it up
Zune,
Brevity is the essence of wit. And you’ve been sarcastic for a long time now. Time for a change?
As for OSX irritations:
15. You CAN show the date and time in the menu bad, idiots
10. Shift CMD A, people. Or just drag the app to the dock.
9. What’s irritating about the backspace and delete keys? They do exactly what they’re supposed to do.
#1 is the only one that really bugs me.
How to display the date in the menu bar:
http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/06/11/how-to-display-date-in-os-x-menu-bar/
I agree with Computerworld that this should be a System Preferences option.
15. No Date Display
– gee, sure is hard to click on the menubar clock.
12. Document and App instances on the Dock.
– this can be done.. what are they trying to say?
10. Accessing Applications
– huh? this is way more flexible than Windows.
9. Backspace and [forward] Delete keys
– this is a stupid PC thing anyway.
6. Laptop Screen Dimming
– how is that a feature of OS X? Do they want more software control over it? I fail to see how that would improve the OS.
2. Finder’s Hobbled Cut Command
– yes, this could be handy
1. Dynamic Finder Refresh
– do they mean windows should always show the latest? I think this is being fixed with the “new” Finder coming in Leopard. It’s going to blow everything away that we’ve seen.
Those last 3 “knit-picks” are just stupid. More PC mentality being inflicted on OS X. Wouldn’t necessarily make it better.
“8. Printer Setup”
This is aleady incredibly simple and straightforward.
If that’s the best they can do (with most of the items being personal preferences and taste issues, not actual problems), I’d say that’s proof Mac OS X is an excellent OS. Just like the lame attempts a “proving” Mac OS X has security issues just proves how secure it really is (if that’s the best the hackers can do, Mac OS X must be pretty secure).
[With Windows, you can fill up a list of 150 items with just the current malware exploits.]
Tank, it is in the System Preferences you dolt!
Widgets can be loaded onto the desktop…
Open up Dashboard, and pop open the widget bar. Find a widget you want, hold down the mouse button, drag onto the dashboard screen (while holding the mouse button) and hit F12 (or whatever button you use to activate the Dashboard).
Boom!
a) Screen dimming is strictly optional – the defaults are just quite sensible, but you can configure it as you wish.
b) Window resizing under OS X sucks, that much is true. Fit to content is nice, actually remembering the last window size is priceless, but the resize-at-every-border feature in Windows and other systems is simply superior in this regard.
Jeremy: I’ll be browsing the intenet, playing a video or something and the application will just shut down!! There doesn’t seem to be a fix for this problem either… I would really like to see this one fixed!
Probably a misconfiguration or simply a buggy application. I don’t know this kind of problem apart from one application I know is rather fragile.
I am quite pleased that the Finder doesn’t retardedly treat entire files as “cut/paste” or “copy/paste” targets.
That kind of retarded shit was what a well-designed GUI was supposed to avoid!
Clueless Windblows sufferers wishing their archaic nonsense on the rest of the rest of us…
The Dark Side of the Moon,
Cool, I didn’t know that. Only problem is, the second you invoke the dashboard again, it’s gone.
It won’t show the date in the menu, only the day of the week through the date and time menu, but tank’s tip is great
15. No date: I use MenuCalendarClock (iCal edition)- it puts a little caladar with the date in your menu bar and a pull down calendar appears when you click on it with all your iCal events in it. It’s phenonmenal (Apple should buy this and have it on every Mac as the default).
14. No Widgets on the desktop? Use Konfabulator.
13. They don’t really give any examples of what they’re talking about, so it’s hard to comment on this.
12. I TOTALLY disagree with their analysis. The LAST thing I want is to have a all my open documents cluttering up my Dock. I like cmd-click to see the list of windows open in any given app- it’s good enough for me.
10. They TOTALLY blew it here. Create a folder with aliases to all the apps you want to group, then put that folder on the right side of the dock- now click and hold the mouse button on that folder in the dock and you’ll get a pop-up menu of every item in that folder (whether app or document). Great short cut utility.
9. Valid point
8. Also valid. It’s MUCH harder than it needs to be (you see they’re close- but not quite there).
7. Petty, irrelevant complaint.
6. EXTREMELY small complaint, but I’ve seen this on my MBP and it is annoying.
3, 4 & 5. Like 6. But if it really bothers you, buy PathFinder- a massively better Finder than the Finder.
2. Is this really the best they can do? Do they have ANY idea how miserably this compares to the list of 4,000 improvements I could make to Windows? Come on guys, give me a break!
1. I have NO idea what they’re talking about here! I’ve never seen a problem with this (whereas on Windoze, it’s ALWAYS a problem).
10) Quicksilver is a wonderfully elegant app-launcher (among other things), and it’s faster than Spotlight too.
9) Touch-typists can get used to the Fn-delete for a forward delete. Same goes for Ctrl+Click—it makes more sense than right-click
1) The finder works quite well. Worst-case scenario, it can be relaunched. Fortunately, it’s nowhere near as buggy as Windows’ Explorer. Integrating the internet browser into the system its self is only a bad idea.
Hey Ping…
Thanks for the input… The problem is that the only applications that crash are Safari, Mail, Quicktime, iCal and iTunes. All my other apps run just great!
I’ve tried checking the disc for errors, everything.. Am I the only one here having this prob?
I love my Mac but I have not used the one button mouse in the five years I have used a Mac.
I think this is one place where Apple has not let function override form as it should. A Two-button Logitech scrollwheel mouse is the best $50 a new-to-Mac user can spend. Even the Mighty Mouse “looks” cool but falls down on real world functionality.
Maybe my hands are odd, but I prefer the contoured Logitech over the “Dove Bar” any day!
Jeremy: Thanks for the input… The problem is that the only applications that crash are Safari, Mail, Quicktime, iCal and iTunes. All my other apps run just great!
That’s bizarre… I don’t use Mail, but I’d guess that it’s more due to some other influence. You might want to check the system and console log after such an event, additionally the crash log of the offending application. You might indeed find out why this happens on your system but not on other people’s computers…
Double-Command is a MUST HAVE for anyone with an Apple laptop. It turns your backslash key (below the delete key) into a forward delete.
http://doublecommand.sourceforge.net/
The missing forward delete on MacBooks is a big problem that should be issued. It annoyed the heck out of me in the beginning, and even now that I’ve got used to fn+backspace, I’d still prefer a single button fwd delete. BTW, two-finger tap on touchpad or two fingers on touchpad + mouse click is much better and way more intuitive than a key combination.
For brevity sake: I second Zune Tang’s statements.
The Dark Side of the Moon
Cool, but you know what? The computerstorewindowssalespeoplemakingmoneyfromcrapsoftware can just piss off and leave me to just work. Hasta baby, I’ll be black.
PS 100mil iPods at year end, wanna bet?