Some MAC annoyances

Apple has done a great job of making their products flashy and easy to use. There are a couple of exceptions in their latest operating system. In fact, these annoyances go back a few operating system versions. Some of these only annoy me because of my Windows background.

For the most part, Leopard is everything that Vista was supposed to be and then some. I was really disappointed to discover that despite all of this Apple goodness, they failed to fix a couple of the most basic failures in the OS X operating system.

Finder

The finder is the OS X version of Windows Explorer. This is one area where Windows beats the MAC hands down. The Finder is a horrible file management tool. They were so concerned with cloning the look and feel of iTunes that they completely forgot that it's main purpose is to manage files and not music.

Drag and Drop - In Windows explorer, the directory tree on the left navigates as you click through folders on the right. No such feature on the MAC. Navigating through folders in the Finder can be confusing and difficult. You need to open two finder windows in order to do a quick drag and drop operation that is very simple in Windows Explorer by just dragging from the file list to the tree view on the left.

Network Browsing - This really sucks in Leopard. It was bad in Tiger and I expected them to do something about it. If you don't have your network settings set up just right, Leopard fails to find any computers on your network. Out of the box Windows can enumerate all of the workgroups on your network. Leopard often fails to enumerate even a single workgroup. It shoves what it does find into a partial list in the finder that you need to expand upon. Even after you get a good list of compters, logging onto their shares often fails. The "connect as" button works about half of the time. I've had a much easier time connecting to Windows shares using Samba in Ubuntu than I do on the MAC.

CMD+TAB

This is the equivilant to ALT+TAB in Windows. There is one major shortcoming on the Mac, though. If you minimize a window and then CMD TAB to it, the window will not restore. Noting at all happens. This is very annoying. To restore the window, you need to find it in the open windows list and click on it. This is very remenicant of Windows 3.1's "Window" menu. C'mmon, Apple! This is basic!

Single Mouse Button? Still??

Finally, the last annoyance that I'll mention here is the stupid single mouse button on all of the Apple mice. The typical answer is to purchase a third party USB mouse and replace the one that comes with your MAC but on the MacBook Pro, you get what you get under the touch pad. This was a bad idea ten years ago. Why have they not listened to reason and put a second mouse button on their mice and laptops?