“By default, there are several menu bar applications preloaded on the Mac, most of them giving you quick access to the most commonly tweaked settings, such as volume, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth,” Taylor Martin reports for CNET.
“Clicking on any of these will provide a list of quick access settings,” Martin reports. “However, if you hold the option key while clicking some of the icons, it unveils an entirely different menu.”
“Specifically, with volume settings, holding the option key will reveal a menu that will allow you to quickly change the input source and output device,” Martin reports. “For Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the option key reveals more in-depth information on your device or devices you’re connected to. ”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Another little volume-related trick: Hold down Option-Shift while using the volume up and down keys on your keyboard and you’ll get finer output volume control; by holding Option-Shift, each step is one quarter that of the normal volume up and down keys.
I was so happy when I learned about Shift Option Volume UP/DOWN, for finer control. Some years back.
Something not mentioned – adjusting the volume no longer makes the familiar tick sound, but holding down just shift at the same time, does.
There’s now more memorization required to use OS X (and iOS) than there was to use the MS DOS command line.
Hmm. You had to have memorized everything with MS DOS to accomplish anything. The MacOS memorization is only required to take access of advanced, but not necessary features. Quite a difference, in my opinion.
. . . or for shortcuts, stuff you use over and over. For the stuff you don’t use all the time, there’s not need for memorizing anything.
To learn something in DOS, you had to grab a manual.
The OS X (and, worse, iOS) UI is now only nominally a GUI. A GUI uses visible graphical controls. The OS X UI now often expects you to click on hidden screen areas or use keyboard chords (or gestures in iOS) to do many things that are not advanced. It would be another thing if gestures and hide-and-seek controls were alternative ways of doing things that are available via visible controls, but that’s often not the case now.
I’d bet 90%+ of first-time smartphone users (few though they may be) would fail to figure out how to delete an email in iOS without someone showing them how. (I know I’ve had to explain it.) Which is pretty much the same as needing a manual.
I can’t see how you came to your final point. It seems to me that you’re trashing good design. (Pun intended) For a first stab there is this intuitive option:
1) Open email
2) Touch 🗑 button at bottom
Left swiping on the email is just a shortcut, and furthermore it has elements that enable self teaching:
1) While scrolling one might discover that individual emails slide left or right
2) Buttons are revealed when you do that
3) One of them happens to be a 🗑 in red fill
4) If you keep sliding left, the red-filled🗑 rubber band snaps to fill the row, and un-snaps if you slide back to the right
5) remove your finger and the email disappears.
6) swipe left fast and the action is fast
7) If you perform the action by accident you might guess that you just deleted an email. Shaking the phone (a UX consistent action) presents the option to retrieve it.
If someone started with a desire to delete an email, they would almost inevitably learn it on their own, even the people you had to explain it to.
Sure people will discover how to delete an email: they google “how delete email iPhone”, replacing looking it up in a manual. I actually had forgotten about shaking the phone as a gesture. It’s straight from a Saturday Night Live skit.
Remembering to use “option” with various menu items is not all that hard to remember, since that works with lots of menu items. I first learned to use it with the wifi menu item to see more about my connection.
Maybe you should call yourself “degrees of meh”
Anyone interested enough to tackle a longish read about Apple UI design’s slide into mediocrity, see this by UI experts Norman and Tognazzini:
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-name
Fair enough! I think of it as a loss in coherence as well as loss of interest in usability. As for the ‘making things pretty’ concept, I don’t think that’s been entirely effective either. Ives throws away the lovely 3-D window button images in favor of dull kindergarten solid colors. That’s bad taste as well as loss of usability. Etc.
Well that explains it! Sir Jonathan IVE isn’t responsible for the kindergartenisation of iOS after all! It was Burl IVES.
Sorry dahling. I’m out of sorts with my parents in decay mode and a good friend having fractured his hip for the second time while attempting to deliver my collected mail to me after my extended period of assisting my parents. So argh.
I will no go and write “Sir Jonathan Paul Ive” on the wall 100 times. 😉 I hope you and your`s are well. (Note the correct use of the apostrophe key).
Derek, I’m sorry for your friend. If it was the same hip both times, how dreadful! Why have a friend collect your mail when you can have the local P.O. hold it for you? Yes they are a govt agency but I think they can be trusted. Unless the friend was also the postman, which would be logical. The phrase You and Yours needs no apostrophe, and indeed you didn’t supply one, but used a grave accent mark instead.
Ah, but I’m now acting the jinnit, pay no mind and hoist a pint, sláinte!
[Off topic] I was supposed to only be away a week. But dear old Mom was a wreck after returning from her ‘vacation’, so I helped out for a couple weeks while she recovered. – – Friend broke the other hip this time. He is swiftly becoming cyborg. – – ‘Jinnit’ and ‘sláinte’: New words for my collection! – – So is ‘ a single quote AND an apostrophe? As for accents, I use them as part of the character they accent, so I don’t understand. I’m not typing music.
Anyway, when you’re in town we’ll go to Tipperary Hill for some quality Irish ale.
It’s a date – I don’t really know about the diacritical marks. I looked them up to seem smart. Mark my words. When I quote Joyce I seem smart, or crazy, depending on my drinking buddy’s grasp of slurred dialect.
Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark
And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.
Holding down the option key while clicking on the battery icon list the applications that are using significant energy.
I don’t have a battery icon on my desktop mac!
Then you don’t need to worry about applications using “significant energy.”
Being very “PC” minded, I always worry about “significant” energy!
And for we menu bar maniacs, how could we live without:
Bartender
I currently have a dozen different menu bar apps in mine.
It would be nice for Apple to listen to users and offer more– and clearer — preference pane controls. The User should be allowed to turn off, or permanently turn on, advanced functions including FULL CUSTOMIZABLE MENUS. There is no excuse for a desktop GUI to keep hiding things behind pull-downs and swipes and multi-key inputs. Like Windows, Apple is falling apart ADDING user workload rather than keeping the GUI flexible for the USER.
Moreover, the computer admin should have the built-in control to permanently remove features and services that are not desired. OS X lags FAR behind Windows in large scale enterprise management tools. Not even close.
Hey Apple, some of us are using 27″ and greater size screens. What on earth prompted you to start hiding things, treating OS X users like smartphone users with tiny screens????????