Fair enough. I just do not think that arguing about the meaning of the enter key or bitching about how switchers will destroy the perfect Mac UI qualifies.

Hilarious clip! I had not seen it before.

I thought computers were just tools that performed tasks.

I am used to it, unfortunately. In fact, I don't often bother saying anything about it, but every once in a while I feel that somebody has to. There are too many Windows "features" that have crept into the OS already. Applications closing when you close a window for example. That might have made sense decades ago, but with today's systems, why close an app if the user hasn't specifically requested it?

No it doesn't qualify as helping them. I'm not interested in helping some one Windowsify the Mac OS. I'm interested in countering their lobbying to do just that! I like the Mac OS, except for parts of it that remind me of Windows.

Yep. Your tasks. Preferably your way.

Sounds like you had a traumatic experience with Windows. :)

Wouldn't you like to be able to tweak OS X to not remind you of Windows at all?

Without interrupting anybody's prayer meetings too much, I'd just like to point out that there are some principles that have been developed in user interface design, and it's usually a good plan to understand the basics before making any major changes to them.

Some examples:

http://www.sylvantech.com/~talin/pro...ui_design.html
http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristi...stic_list.html
http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html

A Google search will locate many others, although Jakob Nielsen and Bruce Tognazzini will turn up quite frequently.

Consistency isn't always a foolish hobgoblin. :D

My apologies for steering this thread off course.

See, I don't see anything in post #1 that says Windows. I am guessing from the responses that it is possible in Windows, but I didn't know that it was so didn't automatically think Windows and this person wants to change their Mac to run like it.

Now that I spend more time working with Windows machines there are a lot of things I would like to mix and match. I know many of them I can't. I also know sometimes there is a way to do it and I just don't know it - so I ask.

Enough dead horse beating from me though. Again, my apologies for steering this thread off course.

Note:

If he didn't come from Macs, he had to come from somewhere. Windows and Linux are the most likely candidates. All of the non-Windows-bashing comments here apply in both cases.

I think you have missed the meaning of what you're responding to. It was a comment on computers just being tools, not a "celebration of individuality", so to speak.

You could say that. I've seen people fired for not purchasing Windows, even though what they had purchased cost the company less and increased productivity.

As for tweaking the OS to not remind me of Windows, I'd be happy if I could go to a Mac site and not be reminded of Windows!

When I want a Windows feature on the Mac, it isn't because I think Windows is better, it's because I think a feature is not being done optimally on the Mac. Frankly, I don't care if Windows or Mac is better, I am simply interested in using the system that does the right thing more of the time. It just so happens that the Mac does more better than Windows.

And since it is unlikely or impossible that either system will ever do 100% of tasks 100% better than all other operating systems, it is logical that at times there may be a feature that works better on Windows than the Mac, making it perfectly reasonable to request that the Mac add that to its arsenal to nudge it further along that asymptotic curve approaching but never actually reaching 100%.

Yes it is logical, but as has often been the case when people ask for the Mac to work more like Windows, the requested method is not better than the Mac's method. It's worse, since it requires an extra step in order to edit the file name, and has already been shown by others, it isn't 'intuitive.'

There is no interface that would be intuitive for everyone. As a long time programmer, I know that you can ask 100 users of any system what would be the best way for them to do a specific thing and get 99 different suggestions. The 100th guy didn't get the question.

Apple has long used the Return/Enter keys as a way to easily edit file names.
I for one, find this perfectly intuitive. I figured this out back in '84 without being told or reading about it.
Please, please, let's not make Mac OS a copy of windows. Remember windows is just a cheap copy of Mac OS.

Extra step?

I long ago used QuicKeys (or maybe KeyQuencer?) to set Return in the Finder to do a Cmd+O, while leaving the Enter key for rename mode. (Remember, on the Mac, unlike PCs, Return and Enter generate different key codes.)

Hehe, when my sister used my machine and discovered what I did, she thought I was the only person to do that. Somehow I don't think I was. :D

I do get fed up with the insistance that if someone wants a given feature to work like Windows, they're a stupid switcher who should take time to get used to the Mac, or go back to Windows. Anyone with any degree of pragmatism would see that neither OS can possibly be perfect for everyone, and so for a given individual, the perfect OS would inevitably take the best of both.

I don't like the steps at the back of my house, but asking a home improvement forum how to re-build them shouldn't result in a series of "idiot - get used to it becuase steps are better than ramps", or "move back to your tiny old house and stop bothering us" comments, should it?

I switched just under a year ago. At the start there were many things I couldn't work out in OS X, but with help I found the OS X way to achieve most of them. Some of those methods are easier than Windows, some are neutral, some are harder, but overall I now find OS X the more productive OS.

However, that's not to say I don't want it improved. Setting aside the sad lack of decent OS X apps in certain categories, the following still annoy me:

- Finder listing folders alphabetically amongst files, rather than folders first, then files NOT because Windows does it that way, but because it's illogical and slows me down. At the very least there should be an option.

- Finder's lack of ability to deal with FTP except read only. Yep, of course I can do it with third party apps, but in a modern OS I should be able to manage ALL my files from one place. NOT a "make it like Windows" request. I know Window's FTP integration with Explorer is weak, but that doesn't mean Apple shouldn't tackle the issue. Making me add third party apps to manage files also sits badly with Apples "it just works out of the box" advertising claim. And no, terminal is not a solution - in this day and age I should be able to expect GUI ways to do everything.

- Inability to manage (mainly close, but also hide, minimise etc) open apps and windows using Expose. I find it almost impossible to believe that Apple didn't see the next logical step after bringing up Expose - click a window to bring it to the fore, OR get a context menu (dare I say right click?) offering close, hide and minimise. Or have little close X's at the corner of each window, a bit like Widgets do when in the "manage Widgets" mode.

- [Flame retardent jacket on] A better way to handle the old "close the app or close the window?" question. Cwtnospam's "Applications closing when you close a window for example. That might have made sense decades ago, but with today's systems, why close an app if the user hasn't specifically requested it?" is perfectly valid, but so is "why not close an app when I've finished with it, and get it's menu bar out of the way?". But my point here is that it doesn't have to be one or the other, and this is one area where I think Windows gets it right while OS X doesn't:

In Windows, I have a choice whether using keyboard, menu's or mouse (meaning clicking an icon). I can choose to close the window, or can choose to close the app. In OS X, I get that choice ONLY with keyboard or menu, not mouse. Except with obvious "only ever one window" apps like system preferences, I'm with others and don't want the red cross to close the app, but I do want a way to choose whether I close the app or close the window, without being forced to use a keyboard shortcut or the menu's. Windows solves it quite elegantly by giving me two crosses, one for the app and one for the window, and while I'm not fixed on OS X doing it the same way, I do want Apple to tackle this issue. [/Flame retardent jacket on]

- NOT a request for a start menu, but I do like that in the start menu I could organise my apps the way I wanted to, into logical folders ("Music and video", "Office", "Games" etc), and wish that OS X could allow me to do something simillar. I can re-order them in the dock, but I have way too many apps to put them all in the dock.

BTW, I agree enter isn't too logical for open, and think Cmd O is - it intuitively means "my Command is Open this file". On the other hand, enter isn't any more logical for rename. It's fine once you know, but there's no logic to tell you to expect that, and it remains inconsistent as it doesn't do that everywhere (open and save dialogues for example).

Mark

You can sort by kind in list view. That groups the folders together. Use it when you need it--it is an option.

No argument here.

Good idea. Maybe Leopard will do this.

Good point, but how can we expect the computer to know when we're done with an app. The user knows best, I think.

I don't get it...File>Close and File>Quit are both mouse selectable.

This isn't elegant. It's due to Windows' asinine parent/child windowing--even Microsoft is moving away from this window model.

You can. Just leave you apps alone, but put aliases into Nusic, Video, Office, and Games folders. Then keep those folders in the dock.

Just my ideas...Chris

My point is that the Mac method is the preferred method of Mac users, and there is only a call for the Windows method by recent PC switchers. If Mac users wanted the PC method, they'd buy PCs, but that's not happening.

What's happening is that PC users are seeing that the Mac way is better, but then they want to change the Mac to work more like their PCs. It's like the woman who loves her husband but wants to fix him. He doesn't think he's broken, and we don't think the Mac's method of dealing with the last open file of an application needs fixing either.

This is especially true since OS X came out. Lots of people keep many applications running all the time without realizing it, since there's no apparent drain on system performance when they do. Many don't ever notice all the little black triangles on their docks. There's just no need to close the application because it has no open windows, and there's no real benefit to doing so. There is a benefit to leaving it open though: speed. If the app is open, the only thing you need to load is the file, and since lots of Mac's have average uptimes measured in months, that additional speed will save a lot of time.

I just think it's silly to jump all over people who want something to work like Windows, given all the features that Mac OS X has stolen from Windows over the years. Even Apple knows Mac OS X isn't gospel, and that makes it silly to be a Mac OS radical fundamentalist.

Nobody's saying the Mac is Gospel. I'm saying that Windows isn't Gospel either. If it were a feature that had any real value, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

I think it's silly to want something to work like Windows when it doesn't make things better.

Chabig,

Thanks for that.

Sorting by kind doesn't work in columns view though, which is what I use a lot (and isn't in Windows BTW), and even in the other views it doesn't put folders at the top.

File>Close and File>Quit are menu selections, available in both OS's. I tried to make it clear that by mouse I meant by clicking on a UI element; i.e. an icon. That's available in Windows but not OS X.

Are they? As far as I can tell apps in Vista still have close crosses for both the app and the individual windows (not that I've tried Vista), and anyway, how is it different to OS X? Both OS's can have several or no windows (documents) open in a given app. I agree with your earlier statement that it should be the users choice, so it's as wrong for OS X to decide I can only close the window as it is for it to decide I must close the whole app.

I've tried folders of aliases in the dock, but it's just too much work to maintain it. I'm using Overflow now, which gives me a kind of multi section dock, and that's pretty good, but I'd like to see the dock enhanced to allow me to organise my apps better.

Mark

Who says it's the prefered method of Mac users, and who's this royal we? I'm a Mac user, and it's not my prefered method. It's your prefered method, which is all you can claim. I'd love to understand what the dissadvantage is to having an extra cross, probably on the menu bar, that closes the app while the current cross continues to behave as now? Other than "it's bad because Windows does it that way" that is. And anyway, I'm not asking for that. I'm asking for Apple to give me the choice of whether to close the app or the window, using a single click, by whatever method they choose.

And saying that if Mac users wanted the Windows method, they'd buy PC's is just silly, because A) I don't want the PC method - I want Apple to solve the problem their own way, and B) even if I did want this item to work the Windows way, it's just one of many features, most of which I prefer on the Mac. You seam to suggest that it's herracy to like anything from Windows better than OS X?

Finally, of course there's benefit to closing an app when it's not in use. Resources are NOT unlimited (try running AutoCAD under Parallels with a load of running apps under OS X, even with 2Gb RAM as I have, and you'll soon regret having anything else running), the menu bar hangs arround for no good purpose (yes you get used to it, but why should you have to?), and the dock fills up to the point where it's no longer any good as an application launcher.

Mark