If there is a way to get around these, please tell me.
In order to access the menu of a particular window, I have to first make it the active window. This means an extra click. In Windows, I can have two windows open, and go click on the “File” menu of window X while window Y is open, and the file menu of window X will open. On a Mac I first have to switch to that window/application and THEN the one and only menu bar will show the appropriate menus and let me click on them. This wastes time. Not much time, but enough to annoy me–plus it isn’t the way I’m used to working so it throws me off all the time.
Resizing windows. In Windows I can grab any side of any window and drag it. On a Mac I can only grab the lower right corner to adjust window size. This comes up ALL the time and drives me batty.
For some reason I’m having a really hard time understanding what you’re trying to do in the first example. I have Windows running on Parallels and I do the same thing to activate different windows as I do on the Mac. Am I missing something?
Most Mac power users don’t use the mouse alone, they use the mouse and the keyboard. For instance, I’m using Firefox right now. If I want to access Word I can go to the Dock and click the icon, or I can click on the Word window, and it’s active.
You can also use a two button mouse on a Mac. Right-clicking brings up the contextual menu like a Windows mouse does.
You can access any open program on your Mac by holding down command, then tab. All of the icons of the programs will appear and then you can click on them.
By default the only way to resize a window is by going to the lower right corner. I’m sure there are hacks out there if you want to resize in other places. The green button in the upper left-hand corner of any window will also maximize/minimize.
If you have an Intel Mac, you can install Parallels or partition your hard drive, and run Windows if the Mac OS is too strange for you. I started on Windows back in the 3.1 days, switched to Mac around System 7, and I find the Mac interface much easier (I use Windows daily at school and also in my research). But essentially you can do pretty much everything on Windows on a Mac, and vice-versa.
Just my beef with the newest iMacs
Aren’t iMacs supposed to be all ergo and whatnot? Then why are the headphone jack, USB ports, and power button all on the back?
Couldn’t they at least have put them on the bottom, with like, small, light grey icons on the front pointing out where they were? That’d keep them off the front, while not making them totally useless.
Sigh… Every time I think I could buy a Mac, they do something stupid to blow it. At least they have a two button mouse now, with a scroll wheel to boot. (But the thumb button on that thing is impossible to actually click.)
Oh trust me, I run XP on my mac laptop using Bootcamp–it’s very rare that I actually delve into the craptacular shittiness that is the Mac OS. But when I’m at school I’m stuck using Mac OS. Let me try to explain what my first thing is:
I’ve got Photoshop open and Firefox open. I want to click File > Save As in Photoshop, but my currently active window is Firefox. In Windows, I could still click the File menu in the Photoshop window and it would open, but in Mac I have to first make Photoshop the active application before the single menu would change to Photoshop menus instead of Firefox menus.
I think that most of my issues with Mac OS boil down to this: it tries to anticipate what I want too much, and it’s usually wrong. I prefer the Windows method of letting me choose ALL of my options, rather than making assumptions. It seems like all too often in Mac OS I have to go into hidden deeper levels just to get to what I consider to be a basic level of minimally acceptable controls. Macs just try to guess what I want WAY too much. And it’s usually wrong.
That’s funny, because I feel exactly the same way about Windows… doesn’t do the things I want it to! F’rinstance, I like that when I have a Finder window open, I can navigate to any place on my hard drive with ease. Windows, you gotta click on My Computer, then so on through the hierarchy. (I’m sure Windows power users know a quicker way.)
Your second example is clearer; think I got it. That is kind of convenient. As I said, it takes me two steps to do what you’re describing: control+tab, select the program icon, and then click on the menu.
To the first: windows key+R gets you to run, where you can type in the full length of a file name, or just a directory and BAM, it runs/you’re taken there.
As for two…well, I can do it in ONE step. I just click on the menu. Plus, that seems like three steps to me.
The rare times I use Macs, I hate, Hate, HATE those little window animations. Don’t make it look like the window is getting sucked into some vortex, just make the damn thing small! (I’m sure there is a way to turn that off, but it seems ‘on’ by default.)
And I know Macs can use multi-button mice, but the standard still seems to be one button. My roommate has a Mac and I sometimes help her get files she makes there work right on Windows PCs (mostly PowerPoint presentations, Mac PowerPoint loves to make all the images the Mac-formatted TIFF file…why? Just leave it as the damn jpeg!) But I digress, the laptop has just one GIANT button below the touch pad. Not even a ‘middle’ button to press to activate a scroll function. How do you scroll on a Mac touchpad?
And I agree that Apple chooses form over function WAY too often. No user-replaceable battery on the iPod? Why? Or, right, cause it looks soooooo much nicer without any of those ugly screw holes or battery covers. :rolleyes: (well, I’m sure the real reason is so they can charge an arm and a leg for people to send it back to get replaced, but either way, it’s a dick move.)
All Macs now ship with the mighty mouse. It looks like one button, but it touch-sensitive. If you click over on the right side, it does a right-click action and vice-versa. IIRC the last model with the single button mouse was the G4.
I think you can scroll on a Macbook (or older Powerbook) by using 2 fingers instead of one. If that’s not on by default, you can turn it on in preferences.
Can’t help you with the overhead menu problem, it never occurred to me to want to invoke the menu of Application B while Application A is the frontmost app. I see what you’re saying about 2 clicks versus 1 though.
That’s kinda funny, I used to mutter and fume at the PC all the time for doing the same thing to me! My coworkers fell off their chairs the day I finally stood and yelled, “NO! I’m the God! I’m the GOD! And** I **will do the thinking around here!”
Later, after the hilarity had stop ensuing, they showed me where all the preferences were to adjust that sort of behavior… :smack:
It’s the kind of situation where I can’t actually come up with an example to explain why it comes up, but yet when I’m on a mac, it actually comes up all the time and drives me crazy. But then, my style of computer usage is to multitask out the wazoo… usually running a handful of major applications along with a dozen browser windows and a chat program and whatever else. And I never ever ever ever maximize anything, so I usually have a number of windows visible at any given time–often fully visible, so which one is actually “active” may be arbitrary.*
I have a MacBook Pro and run it with XP; I have both Parallels and Bootcamp on it but I almost never boot it into the Mac OS, so I rarely use Parallels. I have the touchpad completely disabled (and yes, it’s just one giant button) and use my Optical Trackman with its 7 programmable buttons for ultimate geekdom. Oh, 8 if you count the scroll wheel button.
I’ll have to check out that windowdragon program. Looks nifty.
*especially when I’m at work and have two monitors. I’ll be reading something in a window on the left monitor, then I go to do something with the menu only to realize that the program on the right monitor is hogging the menu.
I know, but my problem is that except for the tiny semicircles on either side of the mouse (the part you’re supposed to squeeze) the rest of it is a button. So when i put my thumb on the left semicircle I can’t put one of my other fingers on just the other semicircle without doing a thumb-and-forefinger “pinch” on the mouse. If I just try to press the thumb semicircle (without changing my hand position) like it was a normal button it doesn’t do anything. And if I try and squeeze (without changing my hand position) I usually end up right clicking or doing nothing. I’m guessing this was an attempt to make the same mouse right and left handed but… thumb buttons really need to be specifically handed.
I do like the scroll ball, though. Definitely an improvement.
At work/school (I have a student assistant position at the school, in the art department where I’m studying, so it’s all the same, work and school) I hate the Mac mouses. I’m so used to my trackball, and resting the weight of my hand on it, that I’m always clicking on stuff I didn’t mean to because the weight of my hand clicks the mouse. I also constantly clonk the mouse into the side of the keyboard because I’m out of mousing surface on the desk… I’m just not used to taking that into account what with the whole trackball thing. (They do have a trackball that I can use, but it’s one of those ones that you control with your thumb and I just can’t get into it. Mine is finger-operated.)
Sweet! We should come up with some ultra-complex secret handshake or something. It should involve use of at least four of the buttons, I think, and probably the scroll wheel…
I have a hard time with hot corners when using a mouse (whether old-skool, optical, wired, wireless).
EVERY damn time I’m trying to lock my computer and run to the bathroom or to a meeting, I have to sit and fight with it for 2 minutes because it takes so long to engage, and every little tiny motion with my hand, or even just removing my hand from the mouse, seems to kick me out of the lock and dump me back onto my desktop.
Agree on that.
I purchased the three year Apple plan when I bought my I Mac and I’m glad I did. I am on my fourth mouse in fourteen months. I complain, Mac sends a new mouse, and I send the old one back. With over twenty two months left on the contract, I fully expect to go through eight more.
You can’t take it apart and clean it like mice (mouses?) of old. :dubious:
