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I read the thread and I found your suggestions interesting and would love to see those, but none other OS X user I've met decided that OS X was so bad they needed to use either Windows 98 or Ubuntu to "get things done". You only have a 6-month OS X experience, that means you have yet to explore the whole OS experience. I took me more than two years to fully unleash it.

I don't know what "work you can't get done" under OSX, I have never seen an OS less intrusive. I have a small company, I code under Windows XP/Vista/7 using Visual Studio. I maintain three linux servers and use a Mac Pro for daily work (VMWare/Parallels for windows work). I haven't felt the reason to move back to Windows 98 (?) nor Linux.

Again, I think you have too much previous OS experience and don't want to relearn what your new OS offers you. OS X is not for everyone, but I come from a Windows world and I found a way to discover OS X (I started in Jaguar go figure). I lived thorough horrible Samba support, PPC, slow finder hangs, etc., however, the whole OS X experience has been superior to anything Windows ever offered me.

Go back to windows 98, and make sure you use 98SE, else you won't be able to use your USB devices.
Skip Windows Millenium, it had lots of bugs.

Well, yes, I have tons of Windows experience and it's true that I expect certain things done a certain way, but what I don't understand is why can't Apple provide more options in their software, so that converts like myself can tweak the OS and the apps to their liking without resorting to ugly hacks or 3rd party apps that kind of work.

Probably, if I've had 15 yrs experience in Macs as I do in non Apple PCs, I would have found the Windows and Linux way weird. But since 90% of the people grew up with Windows I don't think it's unreasonable to accommodate users that can't fully embrace the Mac way.

But ... if most shortcomings I've found in Mac OS X can be debated, Finder sucks big time and there's no amount of speeding up that can change that.

What I find most disappointing is that until now I thought that Apple were just too lazy to update Finder, but since they bothered to rewrite it I came to realize the sad fact that they thought it was OK.

Your comments arrogantly suggest that Apple should change the way they have always done things - in other words the way that Mac users (some of us have been using Macs since the original) are used to operating - in order to implement something that you would like to use.

You've chosen to use Windows because you like the way it does those things, and that's great for you, but please don't try to tell those of us who have been using the desktop / finder system since the original Mac that we should change because you don't like it. The Finder isn't by any means perfect, but for every annoyance it has there is at least one corresponding annoyance in Windows (or indeed whatever dedicated file manager you care to name). It all comes back to the user's preferences, and I can't wait to get my legit copy of Snowy today.

Edited 2009-08-27 22:17 UTC

This illustrates how deeply conservative the culture of no choice has made Apple. If this were Linux/Unix, the reply would have been, you don't like your DTE or file manager, use try one of the other 10+ ones available, mix and match till you find something you want, and here are a few suggestions to start from.

However, the idea that there is one way, the right way, our way, is so deeply ingrained in Apple culture that the idea that one size might not fit all is quite threatening. It is seen in fact as a demand that we all start working differently just to please you.

When all the guy needs is to be let out of the straitjacket to work how he wants. In a sane environment, he would work how he wants, we would work how we want, everyone would be happy. There would be choice. Yes, very strange idea that.

But it would not be Cupertino heaven. And that is the problem.

Actually apple was first (well xerox was) so everyone else did it different than apple ;-)
But seriously the keyboard shortcuts for instance have been mostly there since day zero. Microsoft tried to copy them but in a matter that they do not look like copies.
The same goes for various other aspects in the OS. The dock for instance stems straight from NextStep and it was there at a time no one else hat something similar.
The list could go on. I have been using a mac for 2 years day in day out, and those so called little annoyances usually are exactly those things everyone else copied from apple. The things Apple has copied from everyone else usually do the same.
But why should apple adjust? There are millions of users who instantly would make an outcry if just one keyboard shortcut changes.