Annoying Things in OS X

June 27, 2012

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I have a friend who is getting into OS X for the first time after being a lifetime poweruser in Windows. He has a number of valid complaints, and I wonder what the official OS X fanboy answers are.

[ Note: I’m an OS X fanboy. ]

Basically, the problem is that for an operating system that is supposed to be elegant and intuitive, OS X has a number of things it does significantly worse than other operating systems–notably Windows. A few examples:

  1. Maximizing and minimizing doesn’t behave like it “should”. In Windows if you maximize something it takes up the whole screen. And if you change the size of a window and then maximize and unmaximize it will return to that size. OS X neither maximizes properly nor remembers custom sizes you’ve set for windows.

  2. Copying/Pasting/Moving with the mouse is extraordinarily unintuitive. Last I checked there was some sort of keyboard option for moving vs. copying in Finder. Something like control-option-command-escape-takeyourfingeroffmouse. Unacceptable. You should drag over and be presented with options.

  3. Create “alias” is a silly way to say “make a shortcut”–especially for a company that prides itself on simplicity.

  4. There is no default shortcut for locking the computer. In 2012.

  5. There is a lack of shortcuts in general for a number of common tasks, including things like F2 for renaming something.

  6. Alt-tabbing between applications in OS X doesn’t quite do what it does in Windows. In Windows you move through all open tabs, like in Chrome, but in OS X you just move through the apps themselves.

  7. If you map a share in OS X you can’t search it using Spotlight.

  8. Three finger swiping to the left takes you to the desktop on your right.

I’m sure there are more. If you can think of any that annoy you, or answers for those above, opine through the comments.

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