Tiger > Leopard – disappointed at lack of PC flexibility still

[Jeff Carpenter]

OK! There

[John Davidson]

Scott you’re the man. I didn’t know about it – but I love it!

[Mark Palmos]

Hi John and Jeff,
thanks for your replies… just to consolidate and make it easier to read, ive quoted your answer and then reply to each… ive nly replied to the ones which to me are not just “different on osx, so get used to it”…

First, i wanted to say, as an example, imovie is different from fcp, and for you and i, fcp is definitely “better”. We could probably also agree that expensive french food is tastier than army food… one could argue though, that it is a matter of taste. This arguement is only usefull up to a point, otherwise there would never be any cause to improve anything since no matter what shlock we put out, it would always be as good as the next thing as all boils down to “just different, not better or worse”.

to start off with, lemme tell you an osx feature i love, something i had wanted on pc for years… highlight a bunch of text in, say, your web browser, and drag it to the desktop. Whammo! Instant text file on the desktop. Well of COURSE it should work that way. Thanks osx!

ok, now the business
WRT not seeing file size in file open/save dialogue you said:
1. Use column view to see file sizes of types of files that can be opened with the program you’re using.

i say
hmm kinda, but that limits you to doing that one by one, you cannot sort by size, see sizes at a glance etc.

WRT open/save dialogue not being flexible, you said
2. Sounds like you’re falling for the ‘it looks and acts like finder’ so it must be finder!’. The unified look of the interface makes everything look like finder, which actually looks like itunes from tiger. I think these options wouldn’t be that much to ask for, but it’s always good to use one tool for it’s purpose. ‘Save as’ typically has a limited look until you click the black down arrow and then it becomes more finder-ish, but it might help you to not think of it as finder.

i say:
yep, true, its not a finder, but a feature request would be to have it not limited to one task. Once you are there, why not do what you can rather than have to open a different app… extra steps.

wrt spotlight
hmm spotlight seems worse than i had thought. Its a dismal search tool… wow! if i want to search all jpeg files for a specific part of a word, between cerain dates, in a specific hard drive, how could one do that with spotlight. Or if I want to just search all files with a certain name and file extention, even that is missing… Finder search is a lot better but does not default to search in the folder/drive you are displaying but rather searches globally which then has to be refined…. I suppose 6 of one .5doz of the other really.

wrt no cut-paste command, you said
6. With 1 finder window, click the file you want, drag it, and by holding/hovering over your hard drives or folders in the sidebar they will open after a second delay. One you’ve hovered/navigated to the folder you want, hold down the command key right before you drop it.

i say:
ok, i will try that, but dont fancy all that mousing about while holding down the mouse button, cmd-x would be faster and therefore should be a feature request! i guess another way would be to cmd-n to make a new finder, navigate to destination and cmd drag it? – but cmd-x / cmd-v would be best.

WRT shrink button:
7. Stop clicking the shrink button. Click CMD-H (hide). Tabbing back will make it appear again. Spaces also alleviates this. Since you’re already alt-tabbing on the keyboard, a cmd-h quick key should make it faster for you than clicking the difficult to hit “-” icon in a program window.

yep, i figured that, but the shrink button would have no real function then! It seems logical it should behave in the same way as cmd-H and seems more like a bug than a feature.

WRT seeing what windows are open
8. Press F10 on a macbook and F5 (I think, I don’t feel like getting up to look) on a desktop. This splits all open windows evenly for you to pick from. Fast – and it looks pimp to use in front of the ladies.

i say:
yeah, that is very cool, gotta love that!

WRT ctrl-arrow to move to next word, you said
10. You can hack the ‘next word’ feature in the System Preferences, Keyboard and Mouse, and then select Keyboard Shortcuts. There you can add and edit all the shortcuts in any application all you want.

i say
hmm i tried but i guess i dont know how to do it. I added a command called “next word” and assigned it to cmd-right arrow, but how would texted it know what that is?

WRT menus being on programmes rather than one bar for all you said:
11. In virtually every program on a mac, you can memorize quick keys of almost every command in any of the menus. If you can’t, automator will learn it for you, as will keyboard prefs. Print out a list of your most used quick keys and memorize them. Typically, they’re pretty common sensical.

i say:
yeah, im a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, but a programme like fcp is very deep an you cannot remember all things, so using the menu is necessary sometimes,… 1 menu per app is more user friendly as it is ON the exact window you are using.

WRT protecting users from themselves in some ways but not others:
12. uhhh….I guess you learned not to mess with disk permissions. I guess not everything they build is designed for the dummies :-). A warning of interference with startup disks would have been nice, but perhaps you had to click a few padlocks to get through and make those changes? Think of those as warnings….

i say:
yep, leant the hard way- but my it guy showed me how to fix it, boot to cd, disk utility. Padlocks dont say anything, you have to unlock the fcp keyboard to change one of the shortcuts and that is by no means mission critical. OSX should say, “removing disk permissions on your system drive will render your computer unuseable!!! are you Sure!?” then “are you double sure?” Now that would be more useful than a padlock 🙂

WRT speed and real time, you said:
13. Your speed is going to be directly related to your drives as much as your processor. 4 drives striped together as a RAID will provide far more realtime than one 7200 rpm drive. Without knowing your setup, I’m going to assume you don’t have a RAID or at least a FW800 drive. We also don’t know codecs that you’re trying to playback, data rates, etc. Far more to it than just CPU.

i say:
i usually use dv codec captured with aja, have 2 250gb striped raid 0 but will get 3 1000gb drives sometime soon. I wouldnt have thought DV files, which are only 5mbps, would have no bandwidth problem on a two drive raid. I hear leopard will more efficiently address memory, so hopefully when fcp gets released with leopard compatibility, it will be snappier. Another comparison will be to compare my CS3 premier on osx and xp.

WRT automator and making new text files
14. I just tested this. Go to automator. make a new automation called ‘new text’ and as many new whatever types of files you’d like (each with it’s own automation, not all in one). Save the automation as a plugin. Then, you right click on desktop, select ‘more’, and then select automator, and your processes will be there as however you named them in a list. Better yet, you can select as many automations as you’d like with allot more intricacies than you’d expect. Automator is the BOMB!
Be sure you enable assistive devices under system preferences/universal access.

i said
its excellent, ive just made the make text plugin… very nice!
it doesnt seem to have most commands from most apps though, like i would like to make one which resizes and compresses all photos in a given folder for emailing to family… i will look deeper…

WRT choosing which app to default open which document you said:
15. Select a file and hit COMMAND-i to open an info window. There is an

[Craig Alan]

I’m still on 10.4.10.

If you have a save (save-as) dialog box open and want to make changes to the finder–renaming things, moving stuff around, etc, apple key-tab to finder. apple key-N will open a new finder window. You can, then, make what ever changes you want before saving. apple key tab back and forth between save as and finder.

also in save window you can create a new folder to put the item in or click on a greyed out item to copy the name of any listed file into the save as box and add to it anyway you want. that is a real time saver.

spotlight is useful once you click show all. Its primary purpose is to find any search term quickly and it does this very well. want more traditional search features use apple key-F. even in spotlight once you click show all: i did a search for flower then show all then clicked by type. there under images were all my flower jpegs. maybe not quite as powerful as you’d like but easy enough to find my flower jpegs.

[Craig Alan]

1. column view: click on any file and this info is there.

6. good point. you can, instead, open side by side finder windows and in the target window use icon view which makes dragging any file into it easy.

7-8. apple key tab.

9. good point

[Craig Alan]

14. get a multi button mouse like an ms mouse and install software and customize it the way you like.

15. select file of a type. apple key-I. open with: choose your app. and then click apply to all of this type.

[Craig Alan]

yeah apple key tab does not treat spotlight as an app. see help menu for shortcuts for spotlight. i wish it just treated it as an app. can’t remember all these.

[Craig Alan]

17/18) good points!!!

19) try finder preferences under finder menu.

[Mark Palmos]

thanks eyecamiam
i will check into your tips…
mark.

[Jason Milligan]

I switched from Windows to Mac 3 years ago.
At first, I had similar reservations because things were so different from what I had become accustomed to. Yet, within a few weeks I found myself much more comfortable using OSX than I had ever felt using Windows. Now, I can’t stand working in Windows. I’m sure if I switched back, I’d acclimate again.

There are strengths and weaknesses in any OS.
A number of your points are valid, but many of them are personal preference and not bad design. Once you get comfortable within Apple’s structure, you may feel differently. Then, again, you may the type of person who prefers the Windows structure.

Thank goodness for options.