Sorry about the derailing, but:
Ok, the way I have it setup, examples in my life. I’m, say, working on writing an article, which is a word doc that lives 5 folders down in the hierarchical dungeons of my computer. I remember the name of it, and hit apple-space; a little window pops up and I type “STA. . .” and a list of programs and docs that begin like that pop up-- my article, “StationsAlt.doc” is at the top of the list since I’ve used it recently (more letters will disambiguate things). I hit enter and it opens it in Word (same goes for webpage URLs in my bookmarks and history which I also have it catalog).
So at this point Word is open. WhoTF, I think, is Jean Gerson? I type [control-apple-G] and a search window pops up instantly–I type my search term and hit enter and in the background it opens Firefox and runs a search while I try to finish the current sentence (I have a similar trigger for google image search and a number of translation sites and such). I have it do fast unit conversions and calculations and dictionary definitions (faster than widgets and without the irritation). I have no idea what my dad’s street address is, so I open it and type “EHR. . .” and his address book entry pops up. I can quickly add iCal entries without bothering to open iCal first (hit apple-space, "ica. … ", tab and “. next tuesday noon – doctor” and it makes that entry in iCal. I can also write and send short e-mails without opening Mail by typing in the start of a pal’s email address and entering a short note in the input line, and off it goes. I can fast forward to the next song in Itunes without moving over to iTunes, or search and play a particular song. If I’m working in powerpoint I can hit my apple-space and type in “raph… .” and a list of Raphael jpegs I have 6 folders down pop up and I can drag and drop the image in (and I can navigate through the folders quickly).
YMMV. Other people use it for different things.
Hilarity N. Suze,
Sorry to hear about forced Macification. You sound like someone who was perfectly happy with how they were doing things and that re-learning things is a pain-in-the-keister.
Though I’m an avowed Mac guy and find their usability to be really slick, I will say that when people talk about Macs being intuitive, that does not mean “PC users will automatically know how to use them.”
My Mom totally needs to be upgraded, and the [what I percieve as] simplicity would be ideal for her. Unfortunately, she hates learning new things and wants things to work exactly as she’s used to them. Given those factors, there’s no way in hell I would ever try to foist a Mac on her.
You say there was no learning curve on the PC, but you clearly learned to work a computer on a PC. That’s somewhat like saying that learning English (if you’re a native English speaker) was a piece of cake, but French… they’ve got a different word for almost everything!
Again, I’m sorry to hear you got something foisted on you that you didn’t want. Here’s the reality: if you can go back to your PC, do that.
If you can’t, you can resist the way it’s designed to work and abhor the machine for as long as you have it. Or you can accept that you’re going to have to learn new ways to do things. If you don’t fight it, I have no doubt that you won’t still be grumbling about it after a few months.
Preach it, sister!
I was forced into the Mac world by my IT guy, who got sick of supporting our small network, claiming the spyware and junk mail problems were beyond his ability to control or repair. Not being willing to go to Vista, Macs were our only other choice. My boss’s friends had all raved to him about how easy, user-friendly and intuitive Macs are, which is anything but true.
Before anyone gets all defensive, I am NOT saying it is hard to learn. I approached it like I did when I had to go from DOS to Windows; I had to learn the features and how to find and use them, no problem. If I could do that, I can learn a Mac.
And sure, I’m learning it, but it is NOT, NOT, NOT friendly or intuitive. Not in the least. Some things are so convoluted I just want to scream.
Here’s just one example: I have a document open that I want to “Save As” in a particular folder. I click “Save As” and a box opens up. At the top there is a field called “Save As” where the current document name appears, or where you can type the name you wish to give it. There’s a button beside it, with a little arrow that points down.
Immediately below that is a field called “Where”, which allows you to choose the destination for this file. Well, sort of. I can choose the Macintosh HD, the iDisk, the desktop, home, Applications, the Documents folder, or my choice of 5 “Recent Places”.
So I select “Documents”. Ok, now how do I tell it which subfolder in the Documents folder I want it saved to? It won’t let me pick one, I can only choose “Documents.” GAH!!! I’m annoyed. I don’t WANT to have to go into the finder, navigate to the Documents folder, find what I just saved, and drag it to where it should be. :mad:
Well just by accident, I happened to click the little arrow button that sits beside the window for the field “Save As” where the name of the document appears. I expect this to have something to do with the name of the document, but no, there is where I can navigate to the subfolder I want to save it to!
Now, I’m not saying it isn’t there, or isn’t doable, or isn’t easy to learn or remember once you learn it. But it is NOT INTUITIVE. Having to click on THAT particular button beside THAT particular field, and not the “Where” field is DUMB.
And I find this kind of thing throughout my entire experience with a Mac.
Well, maybe almost all of them are, but a significant number of them aren’t. Particularly the ability to use a quick keyboard shortcut to send an email, which in the PC world is “Ctrl + Enter”, but in the Mac world is “Shift + Open Apple + D”, which makes no goddamn sense and is much harder to make your fingers do. (Which, by the way, I had to switch the functionality of the Control and Open Apple keys, so that Control really is Control. Trying to quickly find the ill-placed Open Apple key on the keyboard is ridiculous, when using the pinkie finger is far, far easier.)
What is this, 1982? Nobody says “open apple” any more.
That’s the terminology my IT guy used to explain the button to me. If it’s out of date, so be it. Do you know what I’m talking about? Then that’s all that matters. Sounds like all you’re doing is criticizing me for no apparent reason.
The icon sits next to the top field (and not next to the Where menu) so that when you toggle it, it can stay in the same place. If it was next to the Where menu, where would it go after you clicked on it and the Where menu disappeared?
I have no idea what you’re talking about, or why it even matters. Is it “intuitive” that one would have to click a button next to a field where you’re asked to input the NAME of a file, in order to tell it WHERE to save it, when there exists a field called WHERE?
If not, then that’s what I’m commenting on. It is my opinion that Macs are not as “intuitive” as they are made out to be. And this is jut ONE example as to why.
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
Wow. IMHO, that is stunningly bad design.
I’ve not used a Mac in years. So I can’t comment on the overall useability of Macs. I will say that I’ve had to learn how to use iTunes on a PC. I have to learn it every time I use it because to me, nothing is obvious.
(disclaimer - I only use iTunes about once a month).
I don’t think about this much because once it is set (either the large box or the more condensed state), it stays that way and mine are always expanded. I think that if the button was next to the “Where” menu, once you clicked it, it would be odd if that button had to move somewhere else because the where menu was going away. A bit of a lose-lose situation and I think Apple took the best trade off. Better to have the button in a single place regardless of window state than have a slightly better position in one state.
I am a Mac developer so am a bit biased, but while I think the Mac is a much better design overall, there are some things that have to be learned.
I think the Mac’s visuals are more aesthetic overall (less harsh) and having a single menu bar is probably the best thing Apple did. (See Fitts’ Law)
People’s minds work differently. Thus, different people find different interfaces more or less intuitive. It’s impossible to say that one OS is inherently more intuitive than another: they both have their strengths and weaknesses, and if someone finds something easier to understand than the alternative, then…great for them.
There’s no need to get all angry about it.
Sadly, this is true, if only because we just plunked down nearly $20,000 to convert everything; no way are we going back now. <sigh>
Why does there even have to BE a button that has to be clicked to expand the Where field, when there are arrows next to the Where field already, that expand it to show you the main menu of locations? That set of arrows should simply allow you to navigate where you want to go, much like when you’re navigating through bookmarks – simple!
Like I said, I don’t mind learning things. I don’t expect everything to be the same in a Mac as in a PC. But when it comes to the contention that a Mac is “more intuitive”, I’m here to tell you that that simply isn’t true. I am constantly running into things where one would expect to find something, and it’s not there, but in a completely bizarre place that doesn’t make any sense.
And I’m not even going to talk about the fact that Mac doesn’t have a set of keystrokes that will render 1/2 in ASCII! I am forever relegated to typing 1 slash 2. pffffththththththth! 
I agree the where field thing is very unintuitive, but how does Ctrl+Enter make any more sense than Shift+Apple+D?
I agree that in the collapsed state the Where menu should be hierarchical and show sub menus.
I think you’ll find it works there other way too and is highly dependent on what you “grew up” on.
It does not have a 1/2 keyboard option, but it does have easy access to the £ and € symbols.
Do you know about the Character Palette? Open System Prefs and under International, you can turn it on under the Input Menu… to show every available character on the system (even Chinese).
There’s a way to do it but it takes a little bit of work.
So go System Preferences > International.
Choose the Input Menu tab and scroll down until you find Unicode Hex Input
Check it and then also check “Show input menu in the menu bar”
Now at the top right of your screen by the time you should see a picture of the flag of our country. Click and and select Unicode Hex Input. When you’re in unicode hex input mode your keyboard should work normally although if you have ever used the option key to make accents then you’ll have to switch back to your country. Anyway, chances are you can stay in unicode hex input mode without ever having to change back.
Now if you’re in that mode you can press [ALT/OPTION + 00BD] to make ½ !!
If you’re curious what the unicode for other characters is you can find it in the special characters palette. Go to finder and in the menu select Edit > Special Characters. If you mouse over the characters it should show you the unicode.
Hope that helps!
For the most part, the keyboard shortcuts are some combination of Ctrl + some key; Ctrl + C = Copy, Ctrl + I = Italics, Ctrl + B = Bold, etc. So Ctrl + Enter a) follows the same pattern, and b) hitting “Enter” to “enter” the email makes at least a little bit of sense.
Whereas, in a Mac, Apple + C = Copy, Apple + I = Italics, Apple + B = Bold, but Shift + Apple + D to enter/send an email? Why 3 keys? What does the D even stand for? Why not at least S for Send?
Well I’m glad we agree on something! Progress – YAY! 
I don’t think I’ve ever had a need for either of those symbols, but okay, you can have that one.
So now that I’ve done that, uhm, how do I actually, you know, use it?
On Preview: Wooeeeee, Ice Cream Man, that’s an awful lot to absorb at the end of the day. I promise to come back later and look at it and try to make heads or tails out of it.
Thanks!
You can change the keyboard shortcuts in System Preferences > Keyboard and Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts if you like. Hit the + button. I think they didn’t use Apple + S because that’s reserved for save for every application. I just tried apple + enter and it worked.
No prob.
FWIW, I use the € and £ symbols almost every day - at least several times a week… but then I don’t live in the US (though I still use the $ symbol more than the other two)… and almost never use the ¥ symbol.
The character palette can be used by just clicking and dragging the character you want out of the box into your document. It is great for finding unusual characters like (Czech) Č, Ř etc. (I hope the board will show these ok). It is also nice for completely non-Roman scripts like Georgian. e.g. I used to live in Tbilisi თბილისი and now spend lots of time in Dubai دبيّ
I use a lot of diacritical marks and weird characters, so I just have the character palette mapped to F11 so I can drag and drop (fucked if I’ll remember how to do, say, the little ‘u’ with a circle above it that you see in Middle German, or that damned ‘i’ with no dot in Turkish, you know?)
I love my Mac!
But…
I wrote a long list of gripes about Os X a couple of years ago and between the 5 minute search and disappearing older threads I cannot find it.
Anyway, the problem mentioned in the OP was one of the first ones on the list.
The funky “maximize” button
The mysterious green button in the upper left corner of windows looks like it should maximize a window, but it doesn’t. It’s purpose is to maximize the content of the window in an appropriate way for the document, whatever that means. And each software product chooses to implement their green button in a different way. It’s actually kind of humorous to click the button and see just what your current app thinks it should do.
The right-click that might or might not exist
How about the way that Apple insists on making people think that Mac mice have only one button? The MightyMouse, a sweet mouse, appears as if it only has one button, and it behaves as if it only has one, out of the box. But, it really has two. You have to go to the preference pane and enable right clicking. So many Mac folks say “just control-click on the icon and…” as if hitting a key and left-clicking is so much better than a right click.
That sooooo consistent interface
Mac users have always insisted that the interface is soooooo much more consistent than Windows. However, there are different supported frameworks to use (What’s Carbon? How about Cocoa? How about Classic?). If your app is a Cocoa app, then you get extra bells and whistles. And up until Leopard, each app has had its own opinion of how the interface should be.
No “cut” in the file right-click menu
This means you cannot select fifty files, right-click-cut, navigate to some far distant land, and then paste. You are expected to drag them, while holding the appropriate mysterious modifier key to force a move (just like XP) and go through the “springloaded folders” before you drop.
Network drives are soooooo flakey
In a Windows box they are fairly robust: if I reference them in an app, the connections are implicitly made behind the scenes. But, in Os X, if I open iTunes to sync my iPhone without having already clicked the folder for my NAS share, iTunes screams bloody murder and my iPhone playlist is all effed up.
Why, oh why do they provide such crappy help?
In any good Windows app, I can hit F1 and get context-sensitive help. In any good Macintosh app, if I go to Help, it will tell me such useful things as “Safari is used to browse the World Wide Web”.
How about those secret handshakes?
There are hundreds of little secrets that only seasoned Mac users know. For example, if you hold the Option key while clicking on the wireless network menu icon, additional information shows up, including mac address, channel, and signal strength. Only if you know to hold down the option key.
How do I script something?
AppleScript has always been the official way, but it has withered on the vine and the primitive tool they provide for it has not changed in a decade. Automator sounds promising, but it has strange quirks too. How about Unix scripting? You can even mix the three. No worse than Windows, but no better. I currently have a shortcut on my desktop that runs an AppleScript that runs a Unix script that calls an open source utility that toggles my bluetooth state. Kludgy.
File Aliases
The file system is Unix under the hood. Why can’t I make a true symbolic link in the Finder? I can make an “alias” but I can’t make a symbolic link. But if I go to the terminal, I can do “ln -s” with ease. And the icon appears exactly the same in Finder as it does if it were an alias!
Video
Isn’t Mac supposed to be the uber multimedia machine? Why, then, doesn’t it support so many video formats? The third-party VLC viewer has come to the rescue.
Wimpy preference settings
Why are Mac apps preference settings so lame? I go to the preference pane for a relatively complex app, such as Pages, and I am sometimes presented with one checkbox for one simple option, on the Advanced tab no less. Not the dozens of checkboxes and fields and whatnot that I am used to in Windows. It clearly is the Apple philosophy, but sometimes it is annoying. Of course, there may be some secret thing you can put in a plist file using a special secret command line.
Why does iTunes do what it does?
Sure, this is an application, but it behaves similarly to iPhoto and others in that it does many mysterious undocumented things based on tags in your files and such. It is so difficult to truly understand how iTunes will group your music files; some times a subtle change will cause files to be orphaned, with part of an album showing up as separate from the rest. They don’t give a clear explanation of exactly what algorithm iTunes uses for much of its magic.
Well, I’ll stop griping for now.
There are so many awesome things about Mac. I love Time Machine. I like the consistency of having system-wide spellcheck and grammar check. I love having Spotlight instantly find my documents wherever they are. I love the integration between apps. I really like the Apple apps that are so smoothly designed and simplistic, with much unnecessary cruft removed.