alt? ALT?! What kind of a Mac user, are you? We don’t need no steenkin’ alt, it’s option!
For application switching, I really prefer Exposé over Alt+Tab. I set it to MOUSE 3, but I think the default is MOUSE 4. It is really useful when you have 15 to 20 windows open in 4 or 5 applications. On my MacBook, which effectively only has 2 buttons on the trackpad, I set Exposé to the upper left corner of the screen (move cursor to the corner to activate Exposé).
OpalCat, why all the hatred?
I switched to mac (MacBook) earlier this year and love it. While the software is cool, my favorite thing is the hardware. It’s sturdy as a brick, light as a feather, turns on/off instantly, has the magnetic power connection, has amazing wireless reception, really intuitive touch pad implementation, and just generally works really well. My only problems are (surprise!) with Microsoft applications: [ul][li]Office programs do not play well with Spaces[]Office-for-Mac does not come with OneNote, the greatest program ever…[]…so if I want to use it, I have to buy a copy of windows and a copy of parallels for a total of like $500 to use a program I already own[/ul][/li]Fun tip-
Hold shift while minimizing/maximizing a window and watch what happens!
Our IT guy finally talked us into converting our Windows network over to the Mac world, so add +3 to the new users list. I’m typing this from my new MacBook Pro. But it’s my birthday, so I don’t feel like delving deeply into any of the links provided above at this exact moment, but I will definitely go back later and check them out, so thanks for providing them.
So far, it’s ok, but I can’t say it’s as “user friendly” and “intuitive” as I was led to believe. That doesn’t mean it won’t be easy to learn, but it’s definitely not as straightforward as advertised. It is pretty though! A girl always likes her bling. 
Didn’t someone at Apple just have a kid? So we’re probably up net 1.
Plus my friend installed OSX86 on a Toshiba, so that’s another .5. 
Well, just on the MacBookPro physically I was constantly irritated by the lack of a true delete key (leading delete, not backspace), the lack of a CTRL key on the right side, the lack of a print screen button, the lack of a right-click option without a separate device, and several other little things like that. On the OS side, I find Macs irritating. I don’t like their defaults generally speaking and they make it hard for you to change things. They assume too much that they know what you want and usually with me they’re wrong. I can’t think of any examples off hand but I know that I repeatedly ran into situations where I became extremely frustrated that something I could do easily in Windows I either couldn’t do at all in Mac OS or could only do by ridiculously roundabout means.
I found my entire experience using Macs, both my MacBookPro and the Macs I used at school and when I was working in the resource center, was a long and maddening torture filled with much hair-tearing and head-on-desk banging. I found myself exclaiming “MY GOD I HATE MACS!!!” on a daily basis because of one thing or another. I’ve rather put most of it out of my mind at this point because it was so annoying.
I should add that prior to going back to school as an art student and working on Macs there, and working in the resource center there (in a computer job) my only main objection to Macs was that I’d have to buy all new software, because everything I had was for Windows. I had always assumed that if it had the software I needed on it, I’d like Macs, since I’m a graphics person. Boy was I wrong.
I suspect that most of your issues could be taken care of with a little training. For example the MacBook doesn’t have a right-click, but it has something WAY better - the two-finger click (two fingers on the trackpad + click = right-click). However, once you get to the point where you are frustrated, sometimes no amount of training helps.
Well, but see I hate trackpads anyway and the first thing I ever do when I get a new laptop is disable them and use a trackball (I once had a laptop that it couldn’t be disabled on so I taped cardboard over it). So that isn’t really a solution for me (it wass just an irritation factor whenever I had to use someone else’s) Also I’m not sure that your solution would be recognized under Windows, which I ran on my Mac. The lack of right click was the very very least of my complaints.
Well, I’m not going to try to change your mind, which seems to be made up, but:
a) The two-finger click works under Windows (at least running in a virtual environment, like Parallels).
b) The lack of a forward-delete key can be taken care of by something like this: http://www.lockergnome.com/osx/2006/12/11/getting-that-forward-delete-on-your-mac-notebook/
c) etc., etc.
Well I mostly ran Windows, so a Mac OS based forward delete wouldn’t be that helpful. The printscreen button was the one I missed most. I had to use the on-screen keyboard or use software for taking screen captures. VERY annoying. But like I said, the hardware issues were just a few of the things I didn’t like. Mostly I found MacOS highly irritating to work with. Perhaps I could do 1000 workarounds and fixes and patches and cheats to get things to work how I want, but why bother when Windows provides the same stuff without having to do all of that? As I said I can’t remember specifics since it’s probably been 6 months since I used the Mac OS, but I think maybe every 10 minutes or so I’d have a “ARG! STUPID MAC!!” moment.
And no, it’s not that I’m an idiot. I’ve had classes in Macs and such, and when I’d bring up a particular issue with, for example, my graphic design teacher who uses Macs exclusively she’d not know how to do what I wanted to do (typically she wouldn’t know why I’d even want to do what I wanted to do–which is part of my whole problem with Macs. They assume that everyone uses things the same way and wants things done the same way and it never occurs to them that maybe some people have different needs.) And I’d say probably 99% of the default settings on the Mac were not what I wanted. For example, I would never ever ever want to save files directly to the desktop. WHY would I want that? I don’t understand how anybody could want that, but apparently Apple assumes EVERYBODY wants that.
Anyway there is no point in changing my mind. I have a Dell laptop that works a zillion times better than my MacBookPro ever did, and I don’t have thousands of dollars to replace all of my Windows software with Mac OS software anyway. (Among the programs I use most are the Adobe CS3 products–that’s about a $1000 alone right there.) So why you would even care or want to change my mind is sort of a mystery to me.
I think the refuting what you’re saying has more to do with the fact that refuting what you say will help other people, OpalCat, not to try to convince you one way or the other.
And macs do have a printscreen button, it’s command-shift-3/4, depending on whether you want the whole screen, a selection, or just the active window. 
I made it a point, early on, to learn how a particular OS wanted me to operate, then stuck to it. Did that with WFW, NT, 95, OS/2, BeOS, on up til now. I originally figured that out when realizing the only way to get my Palm III pda to be dependable was to stop adding all the 3rd party software to it.
OpalCat is more than welcome to her opinion, and it’s a good thing there’s choice in the world as there’d be a portion of people pissed off if the only thing available was Microsoft, or Linux, or OS X.
I am MASSIVELY happy with OS X on my laptop. As happy as I am with Ubuntu serving up my files, and with Active Directory managing the infrastructure at the office.
(I will humbly submit that a large portion of your ‘DAMN MAC!’ moments weren’t entirely caused by the Mac and more the way you were shoehorning it to fit your work style.)
To be more accurate, they were about Macs’ inability to be flexible to accommodate my work style. I don’t deny that they’re great computers for the people who like to work that way, but they don’t work for me.
Ahhh, I see what you did there, and it’s yet another reason why people like OpalCat and I hate not only Apple/Macs, but a lot of the people that use them. (Or at least just hate them while their talking about their Macs)
You take a legitimate and honest complaint about the Mac OS, and turn it around so that somehow the complaint isn’t valid, and the workaround is now superior to the (in not just my but lots of people’s opinion) original desired function, like it’s somehow Opal’s fault that the Mac can’t do something as simple a a right-click, something that’s been around for DECADES on PCs. And even though Macs now support it, and have for a while, it’s still the default to only have the ONE button on may of their products, forcing you to use the workarounds or buy another peripheral. It’s that kind of attitude, both from the people and seemingly from the Macs themselves, that turn a lot of us off.
Oh, you don’t NEED a right click, because clearly putting two fingers on the touchpad and then tapping the button is better than just tapping a second button. Ok, maybe that’s better for you, but lots of us HATE touchpads in the first place, and now I have to move my hand and shift another finger onto the touchpad, when I was already in a position to just have on finger on it? And I’m sure it always works flawlessly and never senses your two fingers close together as just one finger. And you don’t need to click that one button to take a simple screen shot, hit this three button combo instead, cause it’s better! Oh, but if you are new to Macs and forget that you need to hit the 3 instead of the 4 for the whole screen, not just the active window, well you won’t find that out until you go into your image program and paste it there!
The people who design Apple products, from hardware to the software/OS, all seem to think they know better than you for everything you want to do. Are they right some of the time? Yes. Are they right all of the time? Hell no.
Well, I use both Macs and PCs, and I have laptops of both varieties, and personally, I find the two-finger click to be not only faster, but more comfortable and more useful, especially when you start to use two-finger scrolling. But, if you really must have a second button on the trackpad (which you don’t like anyway), then I guess you are just not going to like Apple’s laptops.
Just to clarify some things about right clicking and screen captures…
To right click, you can either place two fingers on the pad and click the button, OR you can simply tap the pad with two fingers. Personally, I think Apple should implement a two-button trackpad, or a context-sensitive single button (like the mighty mouse), but they don’t. And in my experience, my trackpad has never interpreted a two-finger tap with a single finger.
For screen capturing, I agree that a print screen button would be helpful, but there are a variety of capture shortcuts to give you flexibility. The cmd+shift+3 shortcut mentioned above takes a screenshot, and automatically saves it to a file, eliminating the need to open another program, paste from the clipboard, and save the file. Add ctrl to the shortcut, and the capture goes to the clipboard. There are even command line options you can incorporate into a script if you use screen-caps frequently, giving you lots of flexibility. Check out this link for more info.
OpalCat, I’m not trying to change your mind. In my opinion, the cost of the OSX software would be enough of a reason for you to not switch. I just want to show others that the flexibility is there in these and other situations, if you look for it.
OSX is not for everyone, just as Windows is not for everyone. Neither is perfect for everyone, but one might be perfect for someone.
Frankly, the whole “print screen” issue baffles me. Print screen was somewhat useful back in 80-column days, but now with 2x 1600x1200 monitors, I don’t see what good it is.
Re: the “Print Screen” button: how is it not confusing to a new Windows user that you take a screenshot by pressing a button labeled “Print Screen” (or however it’s abbreviated)? Seeing as how Microsoft has repurposed an existing button, why don’t the hardware manufacturers replace the obsolete “Print Screen” label on the key with “Take Screenshot”? Because I suspect old-school PC users would raise holy hell. Also, on a purely linguistic level, taking a screenshot is not “printing”. It’s confusing to use one word to mean multiple, unrelated things (and yes, I realize we’re talking about English here, but you know what I mean). On a Mac, “print” means one, and only one thing: output to an external printing device. On Windows, “print” apparently means two different things.
On DOS machines (and other early text-only OS’s) the “Print Screen” key did just that - it dumped the text on the screen to the text-only printer. Perfectly intuitive, and probably necessary on a daily basis for 99% of the people using those OS’s (and in fact, the “Print Screen” key likely goes back to even pre-PC days when a teletype-style printer, not a video monitor, was the primary output device on most computers) - so why not make keyboards with a dedicated key to perform this common task? But it’s totally counterintuitive in a GUI environment (which the Mac has always had since Day One), where you probably don’t want to dump an image of your screen to the printer. Which is why Macs, which have never had a text-based UI by default, don’t include a “Print Screen” key (though early Macs did include a “Print Screen” or “Print Window” option in a menu).
As for screenshots, the vast majority of users don’t take screenshots often enough to make adding a new key to the keyboard worthwhile or cost-effective. For that small percentage of users who do, there is a key combination.
As for the “customizability” of the way things work under Windows (and not speaking of screenshots here), I understand that having 14 different ways to perform the same task is one of the contributing factors in why Windows code is so bloated. Apple decided to determine the 2 or 3 ways most commonly used by the overwhelming majority of users, and to support only those most-commonly-used methods in order to keep their code cleaner. For people who prefer a different method, there is undoubtedly a 3rd-party add-on available.
One thing I realized when I was switching to mac is that while mac is intuitive, I think it’s only intuitive to new computer users. I find that being a windows user for years created a set of expectations about how an operating system should operate. So when I switched to mac there were plenty of things I found difficult to wrap my head around or that I had to look up. However, for the vast majority of them, I found the mac way of doing things to be much simpler.
So for example, the whole print screen issue. When it came time that I wanted to take a screen capture I had to look it up. But when I did, I loved the fact that I can take a screen capture of the whole screen, or a click and drag area and that it can be saved as a file on the desktop automatically or go to the clip board depending on the variations on the key command that I use.