MacBook 6- Odds and Ends
Here are a few things that bother me or are really excellent, but never made it in to some of my other posts.
Finder
Address bar?
Finder does not have a editable location bar without pushing Shift+CMD+G; that is only if I want to jump to a new folder, my current location is not in there. I am constantly copying my current location in Windows and using that in other applications, OS X does not provide an easy way to do this. What do I do if I want to copy my current location? No I do not want another plugin to extend the functionality of OS X to make it usable, but I might have to go that route.
Go To Folder (cmd+shift+G)
On the other hand, the option (alt) key does wonders for OS X window management, which solves a lot of the complaints I have. Option+Close (either cmd+w or clicking the close button) will close all open (Finder in this case) windows. Nice. Second, option+move the mouse around will grab the bottom right window corner and allow you to resize windows without having to move your mouse down there to find it. In addition to that, you can control+move mouse around and it'll move the window with it.
Edit: Turns out some of these functions are features added by the BTT (Better Touch Tool), and not a native function. -1 point for OS X.
Overlapping active windows
One concern that I have (and this might not be Finder, but might just be the window management system) is which window is really active? Sometimes when I click on a window and all it does it bounce the Dock icon at me and doesn't actually switch to the program I wanted. This happens most frequently when I try to close an unsaved document in the background like the screenshow below.
Window on top of Windows
You can see the TextEdit Dock icon is bouncing, trying to get my attention. This was right after I moved the mouse cursor from SLES 9 in VMWare to click the close button in TextEdit. Why doesn't the TextEdit window bring itself to the foreground, especially when I click on it and it is trying to get my attention? It's behind the VMWare window, which will require me another click to get focus on TextEdit, then another one to save or not save the file. Very odd behavior and not all programs do this.
Device Manager, System Profiler
The closest thing to the Device Manager (which I spend a fair amount of time in) is the System Profiler; I feel System Profiler is more informational but less powerful. The Device Manger lets you see every single device currently attached to the computer, and also as an extension lets you see what devices are being installed (if they are new) via the task bar tray.
The first picture is the thing you see right after plugging a new device in, and if you click on the bubble, it'll bring up the second pictures window, which enumerates every device driver that is being installed, in this case a new mouse.
Installing Device Driver
Driver Software Installer Window
System Profiler shows every device attached, but with no way to disable the device, update its driver and also no way to see easily what devices are new and either being installed or have just been installed. There isn't a system-level way to tell if something that I just plugged in is actually working. For an example, a USB headset, I would need to open Skype or a similar program and use its testing functionality to see if something worked, since in System Profiler it shows that the device is there, but doesn't say anything about it working or not.
The nice thing about System Profiler vs Device Manager is that the OS X version shows you tons more information, such as how much memory is installed, what brand it is and its speed. In addition to this hardware info, they also show you software-related information such as all system fonts, what type of universal access (accessibility) options are turned on and what preference panes are active. To find this information in Windows, you have to dig much deeper through the control panel, use third-party programs like CPU-Z or TweakUI (which I have not found a good replacement for Vista/7, btw).
System Profiler- Memory
Dock
This almost isn't worth its own section, but I view this as a very serious omission.
I have a minimized dock icon, that looks like this:
Minimized Window Dock Icon
Why, when I bring up the context menu for that icon (right-click or ctrl-click) does it show me one measly, worthless option? It is almost not worth even having!
Minimized Window Dock Icon Context Menu
In Windows when I right-click a minimized window it at least gives me the option to close it, which I do very often. They would rather me restore the window, then close it.. an extra un-necessary step. Would it be so hard to add that? Even after 6 major version of OS X, they still have not gotten basic window management correctly implemented.
Minimized Window Task Bar Context Menu
Automator & AppleScript editor
These two programs are too broad to go in to any amount of depth, but I will say that the inclusion of these two applications in the OS are neat, to say the least.
Automator
Automator does exactly what it sounds like it does:
Automator is an application developed by Apple for Mac OS X that implements point-and-click (or drag-and-drop) creation of workflows for automating repetitive tasks into batches for quicker alteration, thus saving time and effort over human intervention to manually change each file separately. Automator enables the repetition of tasks across a wide variety of programs, including the Finder, the Safari web browser, iCal, Address Book and others. It can also work with third-party applications such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop or Pixelmator.
Automator Template Selection
AppleScript Editor
The AppleScript editor is a close equivalent to batch file programming in Windows, except you can take AppleScripts and make Applications out of them, just like in Automator, or you can create compiled scripts. This is a very powerful tool, and just like Automator, can make many repetitive tasks become only as hard as running an application.
AppleScript- Test script
The test script I got from this blog.
That is about all I can say of those two applications, they are very extensive and I don't even think I have even scratched the surface on either of their full functionality.. and I haven't even used Xcode yet.
Final Judgement
OS X is just like an RPN calculator, if you have ever used one you'll know they are crazy hard to get used to. After a while it isn't so bad, then you don't even realize you are doing things differently than you were before and you'll be able to jump back and forth from an RPN calculator to a normal one without even thinking about it.
OS X and Windows are different but, the same. They both get things done and that's what is important. It also makes me realize that I need to pay more attention to the pieces of software that I choose, I need to make certain that they are really cross-platform before investing in them (I'm looking at you Quicken). I need to ensure that not only are there clients for both platforms, but that the data can be opened and edited by both clients without any trickery. This is important, especially since OS X market share is on the rise.
On a side note, it will never be the year of the Linux desktop, so stop dreaming, it isn't going to happen.