For all the praise that Mac gets about how user-friendly and friendly its software is, the fact remains that several of its core applications are underdeveloped, even childish in their function.
Recently in this thread I asked and complained about the folder function in Mac. The opinion of one experienced user was that you need to use extra software in order to use the folders effectively and conveniently.
The trouble with Mac software is not the general crappiness and overprogramming one tends to see with MS apps. Rather, there are one or two no-brainer things that either you want the software to do or not to do, but which it doesn’t do or does.
In Mac mail, woe betide you if you have more than one account set up. Because you will use the wrong sending address, which can lead to embarassment and other problems.
You cannot make the damn program prompt you for which account you wish to use when you compose a message. Rather, you can select which accout you prefer to use. BUT the program won’t stick to that account. For example, if I am “in” my inbox, the program always chooses the one address that is linked (somehow) with the inbox.
If I respond to a message that is itself a response to a message I sent using a particular account, the machine chooses that account automatically.
Because of the above and similar instances in which the comp gets “smart” on you, you must be forever on guard not to use the wrong account. My friend, who considers himself a power Mac user, said that you pretty much have to use separate mail programs in order to prevent the problem. How convenient.
There are other stupid things about the program. It would be easy to make the paperclip icon show up in the list of e-mails in the inbox to show you have an attachment, but no: you have to click on the e-mail to see if there is anything attached. The program also spits out icons for attachments that can gunk up e-mails for those users whose systems can’t handle them (almost all Windows users?).
I could go on about Mac–not just this program but many others. The Office software for Mac is, in general, inferior to Windows versions. I prefer WordPerfect, but Corel no longer makes it for Mac.
OSX is nice and has many convenient features. But Mac always seems to give with one hand and take with another. I goddamn fucking HATE the autofill function that pops up in Address Book (a really shitty, underdeveloped program if ever there was one) and just about everywhere else.
I’m quite sure that my next machine will be a Windows machine. Mac just kinda lays one.