OS X woes

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Not to be taken too seriously or during pregnancy….

  • The setup asks you too many questions.
  • Keyboard user experience sucks.
    • Too much reliance on the mouse; can’t even tab to move among fields.
    • It’s inconsistent – some dialogs allow tab movement, and others don’t.
      • E.g.: Firefox’s remember-passwords dialog
      • E.g.: OS X setup wizard (during the barrage of questions)
    • Universal access is cumbersome. Especially when you need ctrl to work like normal with the Terminal.
  • AirPort sucks
    • It always loses my connection whereas my Dell and IBM laptops don’t ever have this problem. It hides too much information – I can’t tell what’s going on (e.g., is it trying to fix my connection?).
    • When automation is unreliable, manual intervention should be easy. However, there is no manual “repair” button – I have to shut down AirPort, wait a couple of seconds, and then turn it on again.
    • There was a period during which AirPort actually lost its connection whenever I tried ssh-ing into previously ssh-ed hosts.
  • Terminal sucks
    • ANSI colors need to be configurable!
    • No font resizing
    • Occasionally, ctrl-c stops working, and I have to use cmd-.
  • Powerbook display is too white. Seriously! E.g., when I use MS Remote Desktop to connect to my main XP machine, everything is tinted too white, even at the minimum brightness. At first, it looks kinda cool, but it really strains your eyes after a short while.
  • Apple Mail is b0rked
    • Apple Mail requires failure before you can enable SSL in an IMAP account. I think there was a failed attempt somewhere to auto-discover the maximum security authentication protocol.
    • Actually unable to download all messages from my IMAP account (only a couple thousand messages). It downloads in bursts of a couple dozen; you need to continually click somewhere aside from the Inbox, and then click on the Inbox again for the damn thing to resume downloading. I’ve sat there forever, thinking it would ultimately resume, but no such luck. I eventually gave up before making it to 40% of all my messages.
  • SUICIDE MODE! Once, after closing the lid, instead of suspending, the computer keeps running and becomes flaming hot. Opening the lid doesn’t do anything – the screen remains blank, yet the computer is somewhat responding (the Caps Lock key would still cause the Caps Lock LED to light up). I had to power cycle it.
  • Safari sucks. But this would be another article by itself, so I won’t go into it. Just install Opera and Firefox.
  • The update system requires me to click through O(n) license agreements. Also, the “Pause” button lies. It actually aborts the entire download and restarts.
  • Hardware seems to be pretty good, aside from the suicide.
    • Suspend/resume is super-fast.
    • Although mine doesn’t have one, I’ve seen the glow-in-the-dark keyboards.
    • The magnetic hook is nice. Attention to subtle details is always appreciated.
    • You do pay a premium for Macs and OS X, though
  • Eye candy is great.
  • Things I’ve yet to figure out
    • The file system organization – this should be interesting (e.g., what exactly are all the apps? Single files?)
    • A lot of the native apps and also the apps Sam gave me (Omni*, iWork)
    • Fink, DarwinPorts, etc.

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  • you can control click (or right click) on an app and do a “show contents” to see all the files in an app.

    Sorry you are not enjoying your Mac. I wouldn’t leave home without mine.

    I do own a PC, but rarely use it because it seems counter-intuative to how the mac works. But that could be because I’d always owned mac, and rarely had to the need (school, some work) to use Window’s boxes.

    You can set different profiles for the monitor under system preferences, so if you want to switch the “brightness” for certain situations, you can simply go into the pref pane, and choose the desired profile.

    I think some of TOS in the downloads are apps that deal with other copyrighted material, IE, itunes and quicktime. I don’t think all apps require a EULA.

    Regarding the tabbing, are you referring to Safari? There’s a preference under “advanced”, that you can check that allows for pressing tab to highlight each item on a web page.
    Hope some of that helps.

  • you can control click (or right click) on an app and do a “show contents” to see all the files in an app.

    Sorry you are not enjoying your Mac. I wouldn’t leave home without mine.

    I do own a PC, but rarely use it because it seems counter-intuative to how the mac works. But that could be because I’d always owned mac, and rarely had to the need (school, some work) to use Window’s boxes.

    You can set different profiles for the monitor under system preferences, so if you want to switch the “brightness” for certain situations, you can simply go into the pref pane, and choose the desired profile.

    I think some of TOS in the downloads are apps that deal with other copyrighted material, IE, itunes and quicktime. I don’t think all apps require a EULA.

    Regarding the tabbing, are you referring to Safari? There’s a preference under “advanced”, that you can check that allows for pressing tab to highlight each item on a web page.
    Hope some of that helps.

  • Thanks for the reply + open-apps tip.

    The brightness isn’t the issue; even at min brightness, the contrast is too “light.”

    As far as tabbing, the context is any window/dialog box, not just Safari.

  • Thanks for the reply + open-apps tip.

    The brightness isn’t the issue; even at min brightness, the contrast is too “light.”

    As far as tabbing, the context is any window/dialog box, not just Safari.