Informit.com’s very own Mac Reference Guide, Owen Linzmayer, again risks the slings and arrows of Apple’s most ardent admirers with another look at how Tiger rubs him wrong. Take a look at “Ten More Things I Hate About Mac OS X” to see if you recognize any of your own pet peeves. Elsewhere on the same site, this chapter covers the initial installation and setup of Mac OS X Tiger, either as a fresh installation, or as an upgrade from a previous version. Detailed instructions are given to help you set your Mac up just how you want it.
Ten More Things I Hate About Mac OS X
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
A article over nothing
Bah, some of those are legitimate user interface concerns. This one was much better than the first article.
– chrish
The first thing he states in the article is that he is the saviour of the Mac OS and Apple should change everything to suit his needs.
…how can I add my Mac OS X peeves to this list?
1: option sizing of windows so they stay that way when clicking the resize button
2: outgoing firewall (Little Snitch just caught something today trying going out with a UT2004 mod)
3: full firewall logging instead of just blocked
4: a mile of “we are using special permissions..” in disk Utility that’s scaring the beejeezzes out of my newbies.
5: Still haven’t figure out why the Dock is calling Apple, and AddressBook (no .Mac account) and everything else I run from Apple.
6: Why Mac OS X contacts Apple everytime you boot your machine. (If I wanted to update a older version of Mac OS X I need for a special software I would, no need to get nagged.)
7: Why Mac OS X is not easy for the general population like it’s supposed to be. (I agree with the Woz now)
8: Why doesn’t Software Update perfrom a diagnostic test after a security update to make sure the Mac wasn’t compromised before the patch was applied?
Well I could go on but I’ll stop. the Meta Data file exploit is still raging and I got another Mac to fix now.
cheers
Never understood why you call yourself justanothermacuser when ever post you do is just a Apple bash, why not just call yourself OSXtroll and be truthful – your points might be useful if every other OS was better but they are not, they all have there good and bad points
And you are attacking him based on what points?
Constantly criticizing Apple does not make a person a troll. Luckily (or sadly for you) there is no law banning the criticism of Apple. If you’re precious company does not deserve criticisms, and then use debate to counter the opinions of those who you perceive as trolls. Apple is not perfect and some people might even say that Apple is simply a marketing company which is only perceived as adding value to its products.
Don’t you love the Mac thought police….
It takes a mac user to know what to criticize about his own damn system. I always use linux distros. I have a long long long list of grievances against all of them and I’m not afraid of mentioning them on forums across the internet. I still keep using them to the exclusion of all other operating systems.
#7 is just not true. My wife picked it up very quickly and she is not computer savy at all.
#8 The same reason no other OS that I know of does?
“Meta Data file exploit is still raging”…riiight. Sounds like you are just a sucky SA.
Some of the pings to Apple you see may just be the NTP client updating the system clock. Have you unchecked the time update option in System Prefs? Perhaps that would cut down on some of the calling home, though it is at the expense of some convenience. You could probably do some config file editing and change the NTP server to nist.gov or something less intrusive.
thanks I’ll check into that
FYI.. MacOS uses the super excellent ipfw firewall just like other BSD’s, and Solaris and HPUX Unixen. All of your firewall related questions are easy to take care of. If you want advanced functionality its in there, MacOS is a nix after all.
Its pretty easy to configure the rules by hand, much easier to understand the rules than Linux’es I think.
There is a ton of info on the net about configuring ipfw, but here is a good one that might get you started:
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/03/15/firewall.html
thanks good read
#3 – Try the “Enable Firewall Logging” option in Advanced, maybe?
#4 – Why are your newbies playing around in Disk Utility? Why are your newbies Administrators? Hmm …
#5 – Proof?
#6 – NTP
#7 – Depends on who in the “general population” you’re talking about.
#8 – Because there is no overall test for “security”. You can test for specific exploits, bad file permissions, etc., but not a generalized “security test”.
5: Still haven’t figure out why the Dock is calling Apple, and AddressBook (no .Mac account) and everything else I run from Apple.
Are you sure it is the Dock? Are you sure it isn’t any of the Internet-enabled widgets in Dashboard? Dashboard widgets are “owned” by the Dock, so connections from Dashboard may be reported as belonging to the Dock.
6: Why Mac OS X contacts Apple everytime you boot your machine. (If I wanted to update a older version of Mac OS X I need for a special software I would, no need to get nagged.)
You can disable checking for updates that you don’t want/need. Select the update you don’t want to be reminded of anymore from the list of available updates and go to Update>Ignore Update.
Also, check if you have the “Set Date & Time automatically” enabled in the Date & Time system preference panel. Either enter another time server (if you don’t want to use Apple’s) or disable it altogether.
Are you sure it is the Dock? Are you sure it isn’t any of the Internet-enabled widgets in Dashboard? Dashboard widgets are “owned” by the Dock, so connections from Dashboard may be reported as belonging to the Dock.
started happening in 10.4.4, the Dock contacts Apple, also at that time all the Dashboard widgets got permissions changes.
You can disable checking for updates that you don’t want/need. Select the update you don’t want to be reminded of anymore from the list of available updates and go to Update>Ignore Update.
No I got a old version of Panther on a external boot drive to use special software, whenever I boot from it it launches Software Update despite the “autochecking” being disabled.
9) Cut doesn’t appear in context menus for files/directories. Copy, paste and duplicate are possible, but I often (several times a day) need to move files as I organise downloads. It is annoying to have to copy, paste, go back and delete the old copy.
10) No tree view in Finder. A tree view makes navigating file systems much more efficient. Especially when you have a couple of 250GB disks and ~1 million files. No Mac user should have to pay for a 3rd party program to do this. Explorer does it well. Xfe does it well. So does Konq. Why cant Finder?
I’ll second your number 10. I’ve had no problems with Windows, Linux and BeOS file navigation but I still have problems using the OS X way. This is about the only non-intuitive thing in the OS that I’ve encountered – everything else makes logical sense but the finder is just wierd.
Interesting the way different people like to use their machines. I’ve always found the “tree” view in Windows to be irritating and confusing.
I much prefer the “column” view that the Finder provides (although I agree with the author that one should be able to have the columns auto-resize).
Still, like I say, everyone is different, so perhaps Apple should allow this “tree” view for navigation.
Regards the Cutting of files, I personally feel that Apple got this one right. With any document etc. (Windows or OS X) if you cut some text, but then overwrite the clipboard with something else, that text is lost.
Obviously, you don’t really want to be able to “lose” a file this easily. Windows handles this by not really “cutting” the file until you “paste” it. So in reality, it is just a delayed “Move” command. Now, to my mind this is bad simply because it is inconsistent.
Apple’s approach is simply to disallow “Cut” for files therefore avoiding both loss of file and inconsistent behaviour. For me, I find the whole spring-loaded-folders concept to be a perfectly adequate (perhaps even superior) alternative.
Although, like I said, everyone’s different. Perhaps, there should be a box in the Finder prefs to enable cutting of files, with a warning about the risk.
Simply drag the file while holding down the command key (the one with the Apple logo on).
As an indicator the overlaid (+) will dissappear, showing that the item you’re dragging to a different volumen will not be copied, but moved. Which in effect is copying and automatically deleting the original when done.
While all other keyboard shortcuts can be found in the Help for the Finder, this one wasn’t to be found there. strange.
Dragging and dropping files within the same volume moves things by default. No need to hold down the command key.
DUH!
What was the title of the post?
“Moving files across volumes easily”
ACROSS VOLUMES.
Got it, Mr. Superclue?
Woah dude. Take a chill pill or something.
9) Cut doesn’t appear in context menus for files/directories.
Cut & Paste is the “Windows way”, Mac favors the drag & drop approach. But I agree with you on this one, in many situations drag & drop doesn’t work so well, the option should be there.
10) No tree view in Finder. A tree view makes navigating file systems much more efficient. Especially when you have a couple of 250GB disks and ~1 million files. No Mac user should have to pay for a 3rd party program to do this. Explorer does it well. Xfe does it well. So does Konq. Why cant Finder?
Because, IMHO Finder does it right
You have three view modes: regular icon view, list view and column view.
– Column view is a lot more efficient for quickly navigating your folder hierarchy, a lot faster than manually expanding each folder on a “regular” folder tree view.
– List view as implemented in the Finder is actually a combination of what other systems call list view and a tree view. You can expand folders and subfolders just like in a regular tree view, but instead of just seeing the folders in one panel and the files in the other, you can see them together. If I want to quickly compare the contents of two folders with a few files, I can simply expand them both. With a regular tree view, I’m forced to see the files in a different panel, so I can only see the files in one folder at a time.
Also, don’t forget you have the “drag and hold” method, that lets you drop a file as deep as you want in the folder hierarchy (the folders open automatically in sequence, after a short period of time, which you can customize).
Oops, I’d forgotten one could use list view as if it were tree view. Although it does show everything, not just folders like Explorer does.
Also, with the “drag and hold” method (spring-loaded-folders really), you can also hit space whilst hovering over a folder, to open it up instantly.
Cut & Paste is the “Windows way”, Mac favors the drag & drop approach. But I agree with you on this one, in many situations drag & drop doesn’t work so well, the option should be there.
It’s not just the Windows way – it is a pretty common approach. Says me who installed FC5 with Nautilus 😉
10) No tree view in Finder.
Because, IMHO Finder does it right
You have three view modes: regular icon view, list view and column view.
I’m not a Windows fanboy, but Windows has 4 modes – and it is more efficient than Finder – particularly in list mode. Some Linux file managers present a similar view to Finder ($home, etc) but also have a tree view to compensate.
– Column view is a lot more efficient for quickly navigating your folder hierarchy, a lot faster than manually expanding each folder on a “regular” folder tree view.
I have to disagree. It is ok in some senarios, but not many that I use.
– List view as implemented in the Finder is actually a combination of what other systems call list view and a tree view. You can expand folders and subfolders just like in a regular tree view, but instead of just seeing the folders in one panel and the files in the other, you can see them together. If I want to quickly compare the contents of two folders with a few files, I can simply expand them both. With a regular tree view, I’m forced to see the files in a different panel, so I can only see the files in one folder at a time.
This might be useful to you, but it isn’t to me. 99% of my file operations are move or trash. Usually moving to a removal drive… with an organised hierarchy established with more than 10 years of data and structure.
Also, don’t forget you have the “drag and hold” method, that lets you drop a file as deep as you want in the folder hierarchy (the folders open automatically in sequence, after a short period of time, which you can customize).
I found this by accident – yes it is neat (and visually too with the spring effect). But it isn’t as convenient if you are going back and forth between directories, trying to find the most suitable location.
At the end of the day, the file operations I complete at work numerous times a day on Windows are far quicker and more efficient than the equivalent on a Mac. It is foolish to assume that all files owned by a person reside on the Desktop, or in $home, Applications, Documents, Movies, Music or Pictures. This is compounded when you connect a USB drive.
Finder also makes it more difficult to open a second instance – especially when clicking the Finder icon in the dock. Not impressed.
I guess what I am saying is that I can accomplish more with Explorer/Xfe/etc. quicker than can be done in Finder. This can be done without the keyboard too.
If 10.5 doesn’t have a tree view, I’m going to replace OS X with Fedora.
it is foolish to assume that all files owned by a person reside on the Desktop, or in $home, Applications, Documents, Movies, Music or Pictures.
Yes, the sidebar is not a tree view if that was your point.
It has a different purpose: it’s designed to have your most used folders readily available. You can add more simply by dragging them there and/or remove the existing ones if you don’t have a use for them (just drag them out). Note that adding or removing a folder there does not change the actual location of a folder, it is just an alias.
This is compounded when you connect a USB drive.
Why? USB drives, CD-RWs, mounted drives in general, appear on the sidebar of each window, they are always easily accessible. You can configure what exactly shows up in “Finder > Preferences…” in the Sidebar tab.
Finder also makes it more difficult to open a second instance – especially when clicking the Finder icon in the dock. Not impressed.
Err… did you try command-n? Also, if you want to open a folder in a different window, just command-double click on it. I have my mouse click wheel mapped to command-click for this purpose.
Another option is switching the window to “spatial view” by clicking on the top-right button in the title bar. Or, if you want to keep the standard window look (sidebar & toolbar), go to “Finder > Preferences” and in the General tab select “Always open folders in a new window”.
If 10.5 doesn’t have a tree view, I’m going to replace OS X with Fedora.
Well, Apple posted job openings looking for people to work on the new Finder for 10.5, so maybe it will
A very basic option I would like to see added to it is the choice to put folders first in the sort order of all views.
If 10.5 doesn’t have a tree view, I’m going to replace OS X with Fedora.
Why would you replace an entire OS for a single problem in an application? Just install a third-party file manager.
Would you switch Linux distros if Fedora decided to not ship Nautilus by default?
I disproved over half of the points this guy had in his last article, finally concluding with the fact that he didn’t seem to know too much about OS X. It looks like he has improved since then, but there are still a few things to bring up:
#2 – Umm … he asks for a way to customize login items, then bashes the most obvious way to do it? Oh, and um … maybe click the minus sign? If you don’t use it, remove it.
#3 – Fair enough, though it seems to be an annoyance only to those who actually have a highly-organized wallpaper scheme. Most people I know just dump all their wallpapers into one big folder.
#4 – Too nitpicky. I’ll play devil’s advocate here and say that maybe Apple calls the side bar a “toolbar” too? It is, after all, a bar of tools in a way. In any case, the menu option should be renamed to “Show/Hide simple window”.
#6 – An annoyance, but there’s a good reason for why it is so. FTP, as a protocol, is not designed to be used as a “filesystem”. It doesn’t support file locking, among a few other things, and that’s why the Finder doesn’t allow writes. It’s probably because Apple doesn’t want someone using FTP in an NFS-like fashion.
#8 – This is something that needs to be fixed in OS X all-around, not just login-item servers.
#9 – The reason that files are not re-sorted upon rename is probably Apple figured it’d be bad UI design if upon hitting your Enter key, the file disappeared from view because it was re-sorted to somewhere else in the list.
#10 – Think of the users. YOU know what a file extension is and whether you’re changing it, but most Joe Users probably don’t. And that is also why the default option is the safe option.
#2 – Umm … he asks for a way to customize login items, then bashes the most obvious way to do it? Oh, and um … maybe click the minus sign? If you don’t use it, remove it.
I don’t really sympathize, because I tend to avoid login items. One of my favorite things about my Mac is how quick and smooth it is to launch everything I want after startup completes. But his point is valid here. There’s no way to store an item in the list without it being active. You have to delete it outright, which, on some odd setups, would be an inconvenience. The problem with that dialog, in my experience, is that I would assume that a check box next to the item would be for de/activation, which I’m sure is what started the grievance in the first place, since I’ve never seen another OS wih an analogy for what he wants. On top of that, though, hiding doesn’t seem to work. It’s a feature miss, but it serves a (very) simple purpose well.
#3 – Fair enough, though it seems to be an annoyance only to those who actually have a highly-organized wallpaper scheme. Most people I know just dump all their wallpapers into one big folder.
What’s nice about the wallpaper thing is that it does support symlinks (aliases) (though they break if Finder has to “fix” them.) That’s what I do. I have all my favorite wallpapers sorted by aspect ratio (4:3, 5:4, and 16:10). I keep 4:3 and 5:4 separate even though they’re very close to the same thing because most OSes suck at scaling, but since OS X is so good at it, I have one big folder with symlinks to all the “square” wallpapers that I use for my rotation. A pit of symlinks should satisfy even the most obsessive organizer as long as their purpose is clear.
The author doesn’t seem to appreciate that regardless of what system you’re using, unless you rewrite an entire OS from source, you have to work within its parameters. When designers try to stick in a magic button or setting for anything a user might possibly want to do, it destroys the design and usability of the environment. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:MSWord.PNG ) A well-designed system is immediately useful but calls upon the user for some creativity about how to get the most out of it, so I completely disagree with him that nitpicking features might lead to “solving” any “problems” (unless, of course, they’re actual bugs, like repairing aliases breaking symlinks or hide not working.)
“1000 things I hate about Windows” …
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Very good… LOL
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Indeed. If only all the world’s people could be satisfied right down to the smallest detail…
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Well , sure you can disagree in some topics, sure you can find a different way to do something, but I think the articles of this guy are usefull…
I have been cheking the chapter, in the same site, about the installation and setup of Mac OS X Tiger, (fresh installation, or upgrade)and it looks to me very useful, with detailed instructions, links, etc.
Saying this guy has no idea its not appropiate at all. In my opinion this could be a very good information for any Mac OS X user, new or not …
Angel–Fr@gzill@
!!!
I had a mac for a week, and I agreed with him on a few things, but most of those problems I never ran into.
I missed having a file “Cut” feature. I don’t always want to drag files, because I rarely have the window open yet. I suppose that’s just years of conditioning from something Windows allowed me to do, though.
I also agree about the nagging windows when you try to change a file extension! I tried several times and always had to answer that “Are you sure” question, and it gets tedious. It really should have a “Don’t ask me again” feature.
Also noticed the drive free space not updating on the desktop.
I have mixed feelings about the zoom button. It doesn’t seem to have a consistent result across all applications. Like, in Safari it resizes to fit the content of the page, in iTunes it changes to mini-mode, and in other it behaves like the maximize button.
One thing that he didn’t mention was the lack of an “address bar” in Finder. In Windows I’ll frequently type in the location of the folder I want to go to instead of navigating to it.
However, he probably wouldn’t have most of those complaints if he had used nothing but macs all his life. Still, some are valid.
Overall I liked my mac experience. In fact, after I went back to Windows I quickly searched for decent Dock/Exposé/Spotlight clones. Apple definitely has a lot of good ideas that everyone can benefit from.
One thing that he didn’t mention was the lack of an “address bar” in Finder. In Windows I’ll frequently type in the location of the folder I want to go to instead of navigating to it.
In the Finder, clicking on the “Go > Go to Folder…” menu or (easier) pressing shift-command-g will make a sheet with an address bar drop down from the title bar of your active window (or will show a dialog if there are no open windows).
It supports tab completion too. For instance, type “/u” followed by TAB to have it automatically fill in /Users/ – basically the same as tab completion on the terminal. “~/” will take you to your home folder directly (or just press shift-command-h)
shift-command-g also works in file open/save dialogs btw.
I can think of a LEAST 10 things I hate about Windows, Linux AND OSX. Nothing is perfect. Yet…
I’ve been forced to use Mac systems for the past nine months, and the biggest peeve I’ve got with the whole system is Finder.
The default view is either “big Icons” or “column” – and neither is very good for dragging and dropping items. The Big Icons commonly get messy and overlapped VERY quickly, and the column view has a habit of not letting you go ‘UP’ the tree past where the Finder window opened. The preferences setting only asks “Open new windows in column view”, so what happened to the list/tree option? And does this actually tell you if it’s using big icons or list/tree – NO! Yuck!
And I think Finder is just plain nasty, I miss the tree views of Win that make navigation so easy. And BeOS’s right-click-to-anywhere options to navigate, copy, move, and link are still FAR better than anything else I’ve seen (even Windows trees). Only Linux seems to have taken a notice to the right-click-anywhere BeOS feature, and that’s still dependant on the UI…
I’ve said it for years, Apple should’ve bought Be. Finder (being the main shell interface) is crippling the usability of MacOSX – and till they fix it, leaves me sad and grumpey…
“Gag unto me with a spoon” – Bender
When you drag a bunch of icons into another folder they do stack up in an ugly manor. I tend to do “clean up Finder Window” after a drag. As for Windows tree view– I guess you must be a long-time Windows users: I find it horrible; you probably find it “familiar”.
Umm…you can easily change the “Big Icons” to something else…any size you like.
View > Show View Options
Then slide the icon size whichever way you want.
If you don’t like Finder, then change it to something else. Pathfinder is one. A new one is ccoming out called “Filerun” (http://ww.filerun.info) There are other window managers for OS X that work more like how you were talking about. Hell…I’ve seen KDE running on OS X.
The Big Icons commonly get messy and overlapped VERY quickly,
Turn on sorting. Command-J, keep arranged by (your choice), or just snap to grid.
and the column view has a habit of not letting you go ‘UP’ the tree past where the Finder window opened.
Add the Path button. View, Customize Toolbar. It’s indispensible.
Really, don’t insist a program lacks function until you’ve at least moused over the menu bar.
Finder (being the main shell interface) is crippling the usability of MacOSX – and till they fix it, leaves me sad and grumpey…
We are not in the era of Mac OS Classic anymore. Finder under OS X is just another application. You can replace it with PathFinder if you want.