GracefulFlavor

39 responses so far ↓

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  Peter Wilson // December 19, 2006 at 11:21 am

  I’d love an option to turn off the effects on the dock, so that when it’s hidden and you slip your mouse to the bottom of screen, it pops up INstantly. Those momentary Pause/Glide delays — 50 times a day — drive me NUTS!

  Also an option to choose where on the screen bottom (or sides) the mouse will trigger the dock, rather than having the whole width be the trigger. Damn thing is always popping up on me when I’m resizing a window.

  I’m sure I’ll think of more as soon as I click Submit…

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  michaelsanford // December 19, 2006 at 12:07 pm

  #14: you can use dashboard widets on the desktop, though I find this nearly utterly useless.

  And to signal something in which Apple lags behind enormously: accessibility. MacOS X with all it’s accessibility frills (VoiceOver mostly) can’t hold a candle to Windows XP with JAWS. In fact, my girlfriend, who is totally blind, can’t use my iBook at all; VoiceOver in Universal Access is complete garbage.

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  DB // December 19, 2006 at 12:47 pm

  15) No Date Display, you say? Wrong. Look at the menu bar. It’s a standard option and you can have it displayed in almost any way you please, including the time, all the time! Where did you get your information?
  11) Managing Window Size: I disagree. Doing it at one corner makes more sense, especially when that one corner is on the same side where the other major window-handling control (the scroll bar) is located. The scroll bars converge on one one cornder. This seems more consistent. The Windows way is all over the place. Forget it!
  9) Backspace and Delete Keys: Please explain again exactly why anyone would NEED a right delete key when you already have a key that deletes to the left. Just keeping up with the Jones’ perhaps? More is better?
  7) Inconsistent User Interface: Unfortunately, the discussion seems to be going more in the direction of consitency of style rather than consistency of functional interface.
  2) Expanded Cut Command in Finder. Why would you need more functionality than is provided? Give me one example. Because it happens in Windows doesn’t automatically make it reasonable or necessary. Why would I want to “cut a file”? Does that even make sense? If I need to move one, I simply move it. Also, consider the fact that simply moving a file is safer than cutting and pasting it. So I’m not sure why we need to be able to cut files…. Question, can you simply move a file by dragging it around in Windows? If so, why have two ways of accomplishing the same thing? Why not add just another three methods for good measure?

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  Jeff Ventura // December 19, 2006 at 1:18 pm

  DB — look again in the date panel. You can’t get date in the menu bar the way I explain it.

  You and I disagree. I get the feeling that just because Apple does something, you think it’s magic.

  It’s not. Some MS metaphors make a lot of sense. I don’t think people will agree that having a single corner to resize a window is the best way. Being able to use any of the window’s four borders is not being “all over the place.”

  Also: yes, cutting a file makes perfect sense if you want to remove a file from destination A and put it into destination B with one operation. Moving is fine and well, but on small-screen Macs, you often don’t have the room to drag everything everywhere. A simple cut-and-paste would be great. Just because YOU wouldn’t use it doesn’t diminish its utility to those who WOULD.

  If you can’t understand the value of a dedicated Delete key then I can’t help you. Sorry. Apple’s notebook keyboards are lacking in this regard, and everyone I know agrees. Except you, but that’s OK.

  Lastly: I’m a Mac guy too, but guess what? OSX isn’t perfect, and not every decision Apple makes is the Pathway to Light. Get over it.

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  David // December 19, 2006 at 1:21 pm

  How about making the zoom button useful again. You know that little green button in the title bar that supposedly zooms the window to accommodate the content (not maximize like Windows). Back in OS 7,8,9 it did a good job of figuring out how much content was in a window and resizing to show it all. Now in OS X I click it and the window changes shape, but still doesn’t show all the content. In fact it often makes matters worse. Currently it’s a useless interface item that needs to be fixed or simply removed.

  Printing setup completely sucks. It’s too complex and iPhoto can’t remember that it should default to the photo printer whereas Pages should default to my laser. The concept of a system-wide default printer should have disappeared last century. At the same time bring back last century’s location manager so the computer knows that when I’m at work there is no photo printer, the laser is a different model and therefore the defaults should change.

  The biggest beef I have with column view is the fact that you’re stuck with alphabetical order. Most of my folders are best viewed in chronological order so I’m stuck with list view when I’d prefer to use columns.

  I have to agree that the original list is definitely from someone who is completely used to the way Windows does things and doesn’t like the fact that Mac is different. Some of the “problems” are simply differences.

  DB - Windows’ cut and paste files is actually more consistent than the Mac which moves files if your destination is on the same volume as the source and copies them if the destination is on a different volume. Mac OS has never had a move command that works across volumes. If you want to move a file you first copy it to the new location and then delete the original. It’s inefficient. Likewise if you want to make a copy on the same volume you have to remember to hold down [option] when you drag or the file will simply move.

  Putting document instances into the Dock is so Windows. Why bother when we have Exposé to quickly show anything we want?

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  Jeff Wurtz // December 19, 2006 at 1:42 pm

  Unless you publish other articles using Muhammad’s or Buddha’s names in vain, I’d be forced to conclude that you’re intentionally singling out Christianity from all of the world’s religions as the faith most worthy of denigrating. I’d sure appreciate not reading your offensive language when I’m reading about Macs.

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  Jeff Ventura // December 19, 2006 at 1:47 pm

  Jeff Wurtz — a little further reading on my site will show you that I’m not a religious person; quite the opposite, in fact.

  I’m not singling any religion out, because I don’t consider that phrase to be offensive. In fact, it’s mainly uttered in a rather ubiquitous social idiom.

  If you don’t like the way I write, then perhaps this site isn’t for you. I’m OK with that, and you should be too. Different strokes and all of that.

  Regardless, I appreciate your comments.

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  Mike // December 19, 2006 at 2:02 pm

  Re: 14. Widgets Can’t Be Placed on the Desktop.

  I disagree very strongly. I like the dashboard for that reason exactly: I want it to stay completely out of my way when I’m not using it (which is most of the time). The last thing I want is more crap cluttering up my desktop.

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  Jeff Ventura // December 19, 2006 at 2:06 pm

  Mike — but what would an option for this hurt? If you don’t want it, don’t use it?

  But I agree with you, at least for the time being: keep the Dashboard GUI layer to itself.

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  HappyUserFromSeattle // December 19, 2006 at 2:37 pm

  In regard to #11. Managing Window Size.

  Check out WindowDragon. It’s awesome. You can move, resize with customizable keys. It’s FREE.
  http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16952

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  Jeff Ventura // December 19, 2006 at 2:45 pm

  Happy — cool, thanks for that.

  I know there are 3rd party apps/utilities that could take care of a lot of these. Still, these are things I’d like to see addressed in OSX natively.

  Thanks.

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  DB // December 19, 2006 at 2:56 pm

  Jeff, yes, you and I do disagree. You’re welcome to your opinion, and of course I can’t be responsible for your feelings. But let’s be objective as much as possible:

  1) I have the date and time set in my menu bar as Dec 19, 2006 along with the time and day. I don’t have to click on the clock to get this information, and I don’t recall having to jump through any hoops to get it the way I wanted it. Are we talking about the same thing here?

  2) Regarding window resizing, think about this for a moment: When a person wants to change their view of what they’re seeing in a window, the scroll bar is the most commonly used tool. Therefore if people tend to move their hands in the direction of the scroll bar to adjust the window view, it makes makes perfect sense to place the window-sizing button in a similar location. It’s a matter of simplicity. You don’t NEED more. Maybe you’re correct in saying that most people would not agree that one corner-resizing is the best way. But I suspect the reason for that would not be because those individuals have actually assessed their needs, but rather because they are more likely accustomed to the majority implementation, which is Windows. Adjustment from more than one corner is simply unnecessary. It’s another example of the philosophy that more is better. Sometimes it’s just bloat.

  3) Small screen Mac or not, “balloon” opening of file folders when you position a dragged file over the destination does away with any problem related to limited screen real estate in moving files. There is no NEED to cut and paste. Yes, a lot of people have gotten used to doing it because of the majority influence of Windows. But cutting a file is a more potentially destructive/catastrophic process than moving. You could delete a file by cutting. It’s almost impossible to delete a file by moving it. But if you’ve cut it, just make the mistake of cutting something else before pasting, and there’s the chance of your losing the file. We already have a delete command. Why provide a procedure for moving files that opens the possibility of accidental delete? Good design would say, limit the options for performing destructive actions. So I would say, if I already have a way of moving files that works, why add another (and not just another, but one that also carries the risk of being destructive)?

  Someone else commented as follows: “Mac OS has never had a move command that works across volumes. If you want to move a file you first copy it to the new location and then delete the original. It’s inefficient.” Actually, the way MacOS does make a lot of sense to me. If you’re moving a file on one volume, chances are you don’t want to have copies in several locations on that same volume and waste storage space. (If you did, perhaps you’d simply copy the file. Also, why have duplicate files on the same volume? Sometimes it’s necessary, but it would not be expected as the most common objective. But if that’s what’s desired, then drag with option key for this less likely scenario and you get a copy on the same volume. I’m not sure what happens between different accounts on the same volume.) Hence dragging a file around on one volume would just move the file. If I want to move it to another volume, I want to be sure the file is safely located on that new volume before I delete the original. So it may be inefficient, but in this case someone decided safety might be more important in this situation.

  4) Delete Key. Everyone you know may agree that you need two different keys to accomplish a delete, one for those times you’re feeling in the mood to move to the right, and the other for when you feeling the need to move to the left. I still say, absolutely unnecessary. Of course, I’m remain open to hearing at least one example from you that illustrates why it’s important to have two different keys for deleting. Please, have pity on me. Do tell.

  The thing that disappoints me most about these UI discussions is that most people are simply saying, well, this is what I’m used to seeing in Windows, so why doesn’t OS X do it that way? That’s just not good enough.

• 

  Mark Vincent // December 19, 2006 at 4:56 pm

  #10 right there in the menu-bar of all the apps I just (quickly) checked, is a menu called ‘window’ which surprise, surprise lists all the open windows. If third party apps don’t support *that*, boo hoo. Write to the dev - if s/he wants your money, they’ll implement it. this goes for windows third party apps too, surely?
  Better still, use this free app - tres cool! http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/17185

  #5 who needs to waste their time opening up the WHOLE column? Hold the alt key down and hover the curser over that looooong file name, and there it is, in all its glory.

  #4 if you can’t find the alt key on your keyboard, to get round this next gripe, just press shift and double click the bottom right hand grab-bit™, and your column will auto-open to the size needed to read the longest filename in that column.

  #3 okay, this guy is clearly broadcasting his intelligence quotient now…

  #2 is cmd-c, followed by cmd delete, then navigate to the desired folder and then cmd-v that tricky? this is all done with one hand on the keyboard, never leaving it, and in like a second or two. Maybe I’m just leet? Nah, I didn’t think so either.

  #1 I’ve come across this a couple of time, notably when accessing files from windows servers on the mac. The easy way around it is if you are in column view (for example) cmd-2 to go to list view, then back again to to column with cmd-3, and vice versa. If that doesn’t work, close the window, and then go open it again.

  But number one gripe??!?! Come on! How about having a networked drive disconnect immediately á la OS 7, and 8, and I’m pretty sure 9 too. OSX looks around for the just-disconnect volume like a guy who’s just lost both his contact lenses at a rave, ruining everyone elses fun in the process. Pathetic. Come on apple.
  A couple of the other points I do agree with - notably user interface continuity. I don’t see much point beating devs over the the head to try to keep the look and feel of the OS the same, if the mothership can’t be bothered.
  All the other points have been addresses so far, I think.

  I have a two week old son - perhaps I should get him to do a review of windows or even OS X, as he has about the same amount of familiarity with the OS as the computer world reviewer. At the very least, were he able to construct sentences, he might actually ask a real, you-know, mac user how to overcome some of the problems he was about to write about.
  Cheers from sweden!

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  Soft_Guy // December 19, 2006 at 5:05 pm

  I wish there was a way to turn the Dock off completely. I find the dock to be useful for launching applications, but since Tiger shipped it is easier for me to use Spotlight to launch an app (Command+Space, type the name of the app, arrow down to it, hit enter).

  A third party “neuvo Superclock” would be easy to write. At least you can turn the regular clock off.

  In the Finder, if I resize a column in column view, then close the window and re-open it, it should retain my preferred size!

  I love Spotlight, but does it have to be in the corner??? I don’t click the Spotlight menu, I activate it with Command+Space. If my hand were on the mouse, I wouldn’t be using Spotlight! On the other hand, I DO have ASM installed because I am a traditional Mac user (i.e. came to Mac OS X from MacOS, not from Windows, not from NeXT). So, not having an Applications menu in the upper right corner drove me totally crazy. ASM solved this problem rather nicely until Spotlight came along and stole the damn corner! In general, I want to be able to specify the order in which menu bar items appear!

  Also, I would like the Keyboard Viewer and Character Pallette which are currently accessible from the International menu, to be broken out into a full blown application that I can launch as I choose. I do not like having the international menu item visible in the menu bar (because it takes up space), but I often need to access these tools.

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  jason // December 19, 2006 at 5:06 pm

  You can get OS X to perform a move, like a cut, by holding down the Command key while dragging the files to the new destination. This will copy the file then delete it from the original destination. The problem is there is no indication on the cursor anything different is happening like when you hold down option and drag a file.

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  Jeff Ventura // December 19, 2006 at 5:10 pm

  jason — good tip. I didn’t know about that, which sort of goes back to Apple documenting things.

  Still, everyone knows that the Finder is held together by band-aids and baling wire. John Siracusa of Arstechnica waxed eloquent more than once about the state of the Finder and where it needs to go, and I suspect that’s the larger issue at hand.

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  Sergio // December 19, 2006 at 5:40 pm

  15. No Date Display.

  Visit http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/06/11/how-to-display-date-in-os-x-menu-bar/

  I did this months ago and it works.

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  Jeff Ventura // December 19, 2006 at 6:09 pm

  Sergio — NICE!

  Now if Apple would only wrap this into OSX as a default option!

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  michaelsanford // December 19, 2006 at 7:52 pm

  Jeff (W) are you referring to “god kills any kittens”? “God” is not unique to Christianity, firstly.

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  TheAdmin // December 19, 2006 at 8:16 pm

  Sheesh… Some of those were kind of weird…
  But some of them would be pretty nice! (Especially 10 & 14)

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  RyanC // December 19, 2006 at 9:04 pm

  Things I’d like to see:

  * MAJOR, MAJOR issue is that if you lose network connectivity (be that wireless or wired) whilst you have mounted a SMB share to a Windows machine, Finder will freeze up when it notices, and no amount of Force Quitting or trying to disconnect the drive, or reconnecting the network, can thaw it out - I then have to hold the power button down and turn it off because Shutdown, Restart, Log off etc do nothing when you select them, the system just sits there. And this isn’t just an occasional problem, it is consistent and repeatable 100% of the time lol

  *Two button trackpad (the two finger scrolling is absolutely brilliant, I’ve yet to see another laptop match that, but with Windows via BootCamp, I need two buttons!!!)

  *Icon spacing control in Finder so I don’t have so much wasted space.

  *Option to set the default Finder window size, the default is waaaay too large and there is no way to set a default like in Windows (Apply To All Folders option).

  And my comments regarding some other things people mentioned:

  *Cut in the Finder. Command dragging/spring loaded is all well and good, but what if you want to move files up a folder level and not down? At the moment what I have to do is open the target folder seperately, and drag between the original and the new location. Perhaps to address the potential destructive issue, have Copy and no Cut at the start, but then have a Paste and a Move option at the end.

  I should probably point out though that in Windows, if I Cut a file, then Cut a different file, the original file was not altered, all it does is grey it out slightly to signify it is ready to Cut, but until you choose Paste, nothing happens to the file. If you are working with text then it disappears and if you then choose cut again, you lose the original, but not with files. I have never ever lost data due to cutting and pasting files either in Windows or Mac OS X, so maybe I have a bias here lol

  * I disagree about the whole resizing a window only by the bottom right - sometimes my windows are off the screen a little, or have things in the way (like when a window somehow manages to be a bit too tall and goes under the dock…).
  PLUS If I have a window on the right of the screen and I want to shorten it’s width to get a bit more space, I have to resize it from the bottom right, THEN move it back over to the right of the screen to complete that task. If I could just resizing it from the left and have done, I save a whole extra task! I do work with files quite a bit, so thats a lot of saved time.

  * Dashboard widgets would be annoying for me to be on the desktop - if they were always on top, they would be in the way, if they were always underneath on the desktop, I would have to Expose to get to them when I wanted them, and then you’re right back where you started. For people who really want this though, enabling Dashboard Debug mode allows you to drag a widget from the dashboard into the normal desktop layer.

  *Laptop screen dimming can get on your nerves a bit if you are watching a video on youtube for example, and the screen dims because you haven’t moved the mouse. Despite the fact that I disabled anything in Power to do with the screen brightness altering, it still does it

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  Jeff Ventura // December 19, 2006 at 11:20 pm

  RyanC — the icon spacing thing is coming in Leopard, if I understand things correctly.

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  DB // December 19, 2006 at 11:29 pm

  RyanC,

  Good to know that there is at least that safeguard you mention for cutting and pasting files! I use a Windows system at work, and this is something I’ve wondered about.

  Regarding resizing windows from one corner only, I see what you mean. Now I’m wondering why I don’t usually have those issues! Maybe it’s because I tend to use Expose a lot rather than moving windows around. Once the Windows are sized and positioned appropriately at the start of a session, I guess I don’t move them around so much that portions are off the screen.

  By the way, when it comes to moving files by dragging them through the hierarchy utilizing spring-loaded folders, there is a simple way to move a file up a folder level or several (assuming, of course, that the higher level folder is not visible in the finder’s column view at that point). Just drag the file to the “Macintosh HD” icon (or equivalent) in the upper section of the sidebar and then drill down through the hierarchy. Doing that in column view works beautifully. Similarly if you need to get to a volume on your network. Make sure the Network icon is located in the upper part of the sidebar, and drag to it.

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  Anonymous // December 20, 2006 at 9:04 am

  1. The Finder
  2. The Finder
  3. The Finder
  4. The Finder
  5. The Finder
  6. The Finder
  7. The Finder
  8. The Finder
  9. The Finder
  10. The Finder

  I am always suprised to not hear more people pointing out the obvious iSore of such a beautiful os. The finder is absolutely horrible.

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  David Ray // December 20, 2006 at 10:01 am

  Regarding the window resize/zoom: In my opinion, windoze has always done this the right way: maximizing the window actually maximizes the window!

  Many users, myself included, want the application they’re working in to take up the entire screen, and XP makes this easy - press the maximize button. OS X makes this hard - press maximize then drag the corner to cover the entire screen.

  Good point on finder cut, but a bigger problem is finder paste. If you’re looking at a finder window in list or column view, right clicking to paste is damned near impossible.

  Last, printer setup is weak. On XP, you can set defaults for each printer (double sided, banner page, etc.) OS X makes you use system wide presets, which is overly complicated vs. the windoze model that’s been around since at least Win98.

  Note to Apple: M$ has no problem copying your best ideas, don’t be afraid to borrow some of their’s!

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  Peter J. Pedersen // December 20, 2006 at 11:16 am

  The discussion about copying files is actually about two things, as shown by RyanC: moving files, and navigating.

  The inconsistency of cutting vs copying files by keyboard, as compared to doing the same for text, has always annoyed me. I hadn’t thought about doing the Cmd-Del right after the Cmd-C, however, and that is a major productivity enhancer (although it still leaves the inconsistency hanging in the air).

  As I see it, the navigation is the main problem: it simply involves too many steps ( = time) opening two windows, one for the departure and the other for the destination place. The “drilling” technique suffers from the same problem: you spend too much time hovering in order to get to the destination. The problem of “upwards drilling” is mitigated by the possibility of starting the hover over one of the drive or folder icons in the left column, but it still takes time.

  Another possibility is parking the file on the desktop, and that is actually faster - but it is ruined for moving across drives, since OS X lost the feature found in the old Mac OS: putting a file on the desktop means having it copied to the boot drive; formerly, files stayed on “their” drives even though they were shown on the desktop.

  My wish is to have a mode similar to the old Norton Commander, in which one window showed two different places, each as an improved column view in its own subpane. Combined with the Shift-click ability to choose several files, this would make copying and moving incredibly much easier. Since I do a LOT of organizing files, I really wish something like that would show up in Leopard.

  The functionality I just described is actually implemented in the shareware program Xfolders; however, it is (still!!) unreliable as far as moving and updating the display is concerned (!!!!! the latter being the infamous Finder bug?), and it is therefore not an option. Still, by downloading it, you are able to see what I am attempting to describe: this functionality is - at least in theory - perfectly implemented there…

  Regards,

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  DB // December 20, 2006 at 1:14 pm

  Peter,

  Yes, navigating through a large number of spring-loaded folders to move a file by drag and drop might be tedious. In that case, selecting the file, hitting Command-C to copy, hitting Command-Delete immediately afterwards, and then pasting in the new location seems like a very simple and practical alternative if you’re confident enough.

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  Anonymous // December 20, 2006 at 5:01 pm

  12. Documents and App Instances on the Dock.
  Apple computers have always (in the past) been marketed toward heavy users. These will be the people with a dozen apps running simulateously. In this case, the Dock beats out the taskbar because it ORGANIZES the apps/docs, instead of simply shrinking the button until you have to guess. The work around for this was the brilliant, however less spoken about, Espose.

  11. Managing Window Size.
  Personally I think this was a bit of a mistake on Microsoft’s part. Being able to resize a window from all sides is more of an annoyance to me, but this is coming from someone who supports Windows for computer-illiterate people for a living.
  On the subject of maximize/minimize, I do like the idea of being able to “maximize” the window to automatically fit all contents, however sometimes the content may dynamically adjust to the screen, and it would be easier to just fill the whole screen.

  9. Backspace and Delete Keys.
  I think Mac laptop users ought to know going into the purchase that they will need some keyboard modifiers to get full functionality. That said, I also think that the Enter key is relatively useless and should be converted to a second Function key, which in my mind (I’ve never had a problem with this, myself having hands as big as the keyboard itself) would help to weaken the arguement behind this.

  8. Printer Setup.
  This continues to baffle me. How Apple can be so incredibly innovative in areas that could be overlooked, yet when it comes to something as crucial as printing… even I often end up staring at it like a monkey doing a math problem. I realise that Apple is trying to work around CUPS, but maybe its time to admit that it just isn’t working, especially when operating an a Windows-dominated environment utilizing print servers for spooling purposes.

  7. Inconsistent User Interface.
  To be honest, the first time I heard about this I had to open my iBook before I realised they were right. Must be a big problem, eh?

  6. Laptop Screen Dimming.
  I would tend to agree with this one. I tend to spend time reading without scrolling for a few minutes at a time, and this is sorely interrupted by the screen dimming until you can barely see.

  4. Managing Finder’s Columns View, Problem No. 2.
  Not so much about the actual problem, but Apple’s user documentation is terrible. They definately prefer developers when it comes to documentation.

  4-1. Finder stuff
  I think a lot of agressive Mac users will agree that the Finder has become OS X’s weakest link. Though there are third-party ways to get around many of the issues at hand, I do think it would be nice for Apple to come up with something on their own, and if they really put their minds to it (afterall, the Finder is sort of core essential to the OS) they could probably come up with something better than we ever dreamed of.

  RyanC,
  I work with mounted network drives on a daily basis, and I have never had to hard boot the machine. Finder tends to lock up for about 5-10 seconds, then gives me a message saying that drive is missing.
  As for icon spacing (I hear that its coming with Leopard) I move the names to the right, rather than beneath the icon, and the screen becomes much more efficient.

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  michaelsanford // December 20, 2006 at 7:35 pm

  I wanted to chime back in and add that I have for a long time had a strong suspicion that Apple leaves out some functionality, especially in the infancy of OS X, to bolster the number of “apps for Apple”, especially back when one of the chief reasons for people to stick with Windows was the disparity between availability and variety of programs for Windows or for MacOS 9/X.

  Inability to have a “Start Menu”-like application list? There are now 50 widgets, menuitems, docklets to do that.

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  Jeff Ventura // December 21, 2006 at 12:04 am

  michael — I’ve thought the same thing. If this theory is true, and combined with the notion that OSX is entering a relatively mature state for a mainstreamm OS, there should be more *native* adoption within OSX for specific functionality.

  The app base is stable. It’s time to “wow” out of the box and prove that OSX’s technology core is the most advanced in the world, bar none. Vista will prove to be a challenger in the aspects about which the mainstream cares.

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  Mark Vincent // December 21, 2006 at 9:42 am

  Ryan C
  “*Option to set the default Finder window size”
  if you hit cmd-n to open a new finder window, then *do not navigate through it or do anything* except move it to where you would like it to go, and then resize to your hearts desire. Now, close the window. Next time, and all subsequent times you hit cmd-n, a window will appear in this place, at this size.

  Your point is still valid that these features should be documented, but then Mr. Pogue would have to actually work for a living if that were the case

  “*Laptop screen dimming” gets on my tits too. The only app which I know and use which stops this is VLC. You don’t even need to be using it, just have it open, and it will keep the screen bright. Dunno how, but there you are. MUCH better than quicktime and DVD player for watching movies too.

  I’m with the other fella on mounted shares locking (although it seems like eternity, it seldom is, and it WILL recover). But, it’s still shabby, very shappy. I can understand apple’s reasoning, in that it is trying to help us out by not losing a mounted share if the network goes south for a couple of minutes, but it would be nice to have a say in whether we want it to happen or not.

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  Things to Fix in OSX: Graceful Flavor Readers Sound Off « Graceful Flavor // December 22, 2006 at 10:09 am

  [...] A scant few days ago I wrote a bit about Computerworld’s article on how Apple needs to fix 15 things in OSX to make the Mac even better than it is today. It got a ton of pageviews, which is great, but the comments were even better. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion. [...]

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  Leon Breedt // December 24, 2006 at 6:06 pm

  Might I suggest Radar for reporting bugs? Not sure that Apple monitors this blog post actively

  http://bugreport.apple.com/

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  RyanC // January 1, 2007 at 3:09 pm

  Thanks Mark that’s pretty useful tip to get them to remember. The only problem I have is if I open a window from another location, for example by mounting a disk image, or by double clicking on Macintosh HD on the desktop, I still get them opening in some sort of higher-level default size.

  Like in Windows, you can open up My Computer which is the top level, then set it up how you want to view it, then there is an ‘Apply to All’ option in Properties which sets these same preferences for all folders.

  Anonymous - I’m glad you don’t have problems with your network shares, the only thing I can say is that in my case I’m usually over a wireless network to the default shares on my friends Windows PC, such as ‘Shared Docs’ and so on.

  Perhaps in your case you have a Client/Server setup which works more reliably. My friends PC isn’t best known for stability at times I must admit.

  In any case, I shouldn’t get any freeze at all if a network drive disappears, Windows certainly doesn’t do that if I unplug a network cable for example.

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  Jonathan Dann // January 4, 2007 at 11:57 am

  I’ve been using OSX sincer the infancy of Panther (10.3) and have always hated going back to Windows, but I must agree, the window rezising is atrocious! Just tried the ‘zoom’ (green) button in Safari and the window half disappeared off the screen and couldn’t decide on the right size.

  The finder also has a few problems that need to be addressed, copying of large files doesn’t always work properly, and I agree with ‘David’

  [...]The biggest beef I have with column view is the fact that you’re stuck with alphabetical order.[...]

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  Jeff Ventura // January 4, 2007 at 9:03 pm

  Jonathan — Safari is the worst with respect to the green (zoom) button. The *worst*. I couldn’t agree more.

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  Jonathan Dann // January 5, 2007 at 10:58 am

  Jeff - yeah, the finder must come in a close second though. I have alot of 3rd party apps that use it merely as a maximise button, this is better than a disappearing window, its pretty simple to code. Address book has it nailed, could this just be apathtic (or overworked) apple employees?

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  Tom Waits // January 7, 2007 at 9:23 am

  I’d rather windows took up as much room as was needed to fit the content they are trying to display - working on a 30″ display, I don’t want a window hogging all of that space when I could be viewing other windows and other apps.

  I still feel the Windows’ way of getting an application to take up the whole screen was designed to make users only use one app at a time because of a lack of multi-tasking ability in the OS.

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  Jeff Ventura // January 7, 2007 at 9:49 am

  Tom — I totally agree with you, but I don’t have a 30″ display, which means you should lock your doors because there’s a good chance I will come to steal your display, but not soon, because I just told you I would, and naturally I’d be the first suspect if your display disappeared immediately, and I don’t want that.

  Anyway.

  I have a 23″ display, and I don’t want gigundo windows either.

  But I think, overall, that it’s really a design philosophy difference between OSX and Windows more than anything relating to the gracefulness of multi-tasking. Windows is document-centric, and OSX is application centric.

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