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Cut, as in Ctrl+X, to move files.

Drag and drop is fine for beginners, because as you said it's easier to understand, but it can only go so far. If you need to have a workflow and do things fast you need to work with keyboard shortcuts, or at least to do things more precisely and consistent.

Ctrl+C, scroll, Ctrl+V is certainly much faster than click, hold mouse button while you go over the scrollbar button, or while you clumsily move the mouse wheel with another finger, do some precision pointing to find the right place to drop the text, and then release the button without moving the pointer.

Or Ctrl+C, Alt+Tab (or click on taskbar to swich window), Ctrl+V, instead of click, hold mouse button, activate Expose, find the window (but be careful not to release the button), activate window, release button.

It's a mess.

Sure, Drag and Drop has its place, but not for copy and paste if you want to do something remotely serious with your computer. "

Ha! well no.. I have seen Mac users doint this operation with astonishingly precision. In fact, I must say beautifully fast.

You think copy/paste is faster because you are used to it and you have learned and trained to work around the limits, paradigms and metaphors of the platform. So, you are used to it. But, believe, the same things happen to a Mac users when they use Windows machine. And there are many Mac users who have only used Macs their whole life. Not everyone in Mac Land is a switcher.

There is no reason to cut and paste a file in Mac OS X. What If you cut a file and forget to paste it later? You need to remember, and people are terrible remembering things. And besides, if you want to move a file to a very strange place, why not place it first on the desktop. Find the place you want and then, drag it from the desktop. That is the whole idea of the desktop, because it is a place to store temporary files. Desktop is not a giant wall with shortcuts to launch apps... That is not the way it was design 20 years ago.

And by the way... You seem to be thinking in mouse and hold clicks... Using a trackpad/trackball or a properly configured mouse which retain holds when you click is not so difficult, for example.

Besides Mac has shortcuts also, lice Command+N to open a second Finder window to do drag and drop.



I, for one, didn't want to buy a 19" monitor because the default resolution was too high - 1280x1024. Unfortunately it's the only option and I had to settle for it.

I'd buy a higher resolution monitor only when the GUI of the OS I use will be made using vector graphics and would look fine scaled regardless of resolution and scale factor. "
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That is understandable because you are using Windows and Windows was designed with low resolution in mind. Microsoft cannot control the hardware and they settle to make a system that looked OK in low budget monitors, which are very common in Business. Everything is very pixel related and with high resolution everything looks very small.

However, Mac OS X was not design the same way. Apple controls hardware, so they know the whole user experience. They do not use ultra low budget monitors. They only use high resolution displays.

In fact 1280x800 is a 13 inch resolution in Mac hardware. And it looks fine, because Apple made its design thinking about high resolution.

You are assuming a bunch of stuff because you think Windows is right and makes sense to you... But that is not always true. Windows have nice ideas, but Windows is not right about everything, in fact, Windows is highly inconsistent in many things.

The fact that Windows is the dominant platform, because it has lots of market share does not prove Windows as a superior technology product. However, it says a lot about Microsoft and the very good decisions they made in its business model.

Any user interface specialist can tell you hundred of things that were better implemented in systems that these days are now dead or almost dead... Like Amiga, Atari ST, OS/2 and many experimental and academic systems. Please do not assume that Windows success is related to its interface design or technology merits, it is just related to Microsoft business strategy.

There was a time, when DOS was also the most popular platforms, and GUI systems were also selling like Atari ST, Amiga and Macintosh. Mac has always been expensive, but Atari and Amiga were really cheap, even by today standards, and they had mouse and everything else. They failed to grab market share, though, but that's another story.

You put things into words much better than I did, but what you posted here is what I was getting at. Windows users for some reason think that Windows has to be well designed because the OS was ingrained into them.

I have a user at work who has never used a Windows machine before and she has asked me several times about copy/paste among other things. She is used to using drag and drop for everything. Its weird because most other users think she's an idiot because she doesn't know how to use windows or do basic things in windows, but they would probably get the same response from her if they sat down in front of a Mac. She genuinely doesn't understand windows, and who would expect her to (except her boss ofcourse). If you've never used windows before then its hard to get. I know when I first used Windows 3.1 I couldn't make heads nor tail of it. When Win95 came out I was even more confused. Start Menu what the hell was that? Where the hell is the program manager (I had gotten used to 3.1 by then), but I learned, I didn't expect Win95 to work like what I was used to (though it actually did have a compat mode for 3.1 one where it would work very similarly).

My first computer experience as a child was an Apple][ in grade school, then a Mac in the later years.

Well, the solution is simple... and one that every platform except Mac has figured out. When you cut a file, it is not moved, altered, or changed in any way... until you paste it. Pretty simple, isn't it? Why would I want to drag the file to the desktop, then drag it into the folder I want instead of opening the folders and quick cut/paste? Finder has a copy/paste which actually works, why not allow cut to work as well? Oh, and what about those of us who for one reason or another can't really use the mouse or trackpad?