Trouble in paradise

[jimmer]

Hello All,

Until only a short while ago I had never owned a Mac and had only used a LCIII running System 8 at university. But, three months ago I received a Macbook Pro 17" with 3Gb ram, 160Gb disk, ATI x1600, etc etc. running OS X tiger 10.4.11.

Since then I've been trying to be a happy switcher but the machine and the desktop environment are driving me 'round the bend

First off the hardware... the machine gets impossibly hot when charging, it gets improbably hot when using any 3D stuff, but it needs to be connected to the mains or the battery will run out in an hour and a half of 3D use. Together... it's like typing on top of a blast furnace

Yes, the macbook pro has beautiful curves - it's sooo coooool... luuurve the battery lights... But ugly blotches have appeared _in_ the LCD screen. uncool. The Firewire connector wont grab the cable properly. uncool. The casing screws need regular tightening. uncool. The screen only holds one angle properly - fully opened. uncool. The LCD/lid latch is so thin that it makes opening the machine embarrassing. uncool. Excellent call by Apple on SysReq. but why no proper 'delete' button that deletes rather than backspaces? uncool.

Applecare will take care of the blotches (I hope) but the rest of the hardware issues are just bad design.

Then the software... where to begin... I've not yet come across a system that gets in my way so much as the OS X environment. I'm running 10.4.11 - several iterations into the OS... and it's a dog. NeXTSTEP style 'spinning disks' turn up all the time. Pulling files over the office net from MS Windows or IRIX boxen is _slow_, starting applications is _slow_, the airport menu is purgatorially _slow_, many other down-menu's or pop-up dialogs are not snappy - the whole machine feels sluggish in general. How can that be? it's a Dual Core 2.33Ghz machine with 3Gb RAM for chrissakes! 3D support is spotty - Blender seems OK, but gamey stuff like SecondLife is full of hiccups and display artifacts. Sigh... I could go on but there's little point...

Moving on... Apple supposedly are the king of the UI hill.... but look at some of their apps... the file dialogs dont make sense, and I HATE the inaccurate status reporting - 'About one minute' yeah right... Less of the cuddling and more accurate information, please. I tried to use Aperture for a month or two - but left - label text is too small, buttons cant be seen... I haven't used Shake in a while, since it left IRIX, but I'm sure Apple has 'improved' it no end. Safari is decent enough... but Mail... it's soooo slowwww... as to be unusable.

But the Finder takes the cake... it's of course hooked up to the preview app that wont select files sanely for extra agony... selection/drag and drop by carefully selected icons only... I can't count the number of times I've dragged or dropped stuff into the wrong folders because of the way the finder deals with drops in the file view. Worse still... no files/folder traversal with the keyboard!

I realise that much of my frustration stems from being a 'power user' - I like to configure my system as per the 15 years of computer use has conditioned me, and this is an alien system. But Apple clearly does not know best - these day seemingly even more so than Mickey$oft - yet is hell bent on not allowing me make my machine 'personal'. I really dont understand how Apple gets away with selling this stuff to the Adoring masses...

So, post rant, here are my practical questions:

1. Is there anything besides Path Finder or Disk Order that will replace the evil Finder?

2. How do I make the window-manager work with click-to-focus-on-first-click?

3. How do I stop OS X dropping 'hidden files' like bit-poo all over my non HFS+ filesystems?

4. How to turn off the stupid post-burn verification when burning a CD?

5. Is there some hidden check box that will give me back a classic UNIX view of the filesystem?

Thanks for letting me vent and any pointers for turning my Macbook Pro into a power-users delight will be most gratefully received!

J.

[Satcomer]

So, post rant, here are my practical questions:

1. Is there anything besides Path Finder or Disk Order that will replace the evil Finder?

2. How do I make the window-manager work with click-to-focus-on-first-click?

3. How do I stop OS X dropping 'hidden files' like bit-poo all over my non HFS+ filesystems?

4. How to turn off the stupid post-burn verification when burning a CD?

5. Is there some hidden check box that will give me back a classic UNIX view of the filesystem?

Thanks for letting me vent and any pointers for turning my Macbook Pro into a power-users delight will be most gratefully received!

J.

1) Leopard gave us such a better Finder it isn't even funny. Have you ever tried LaunchBar or QuickSilver ?

2) I'm sorry but what do mean by "click-to focus". I guess I don't understand because I am a network analyst. not a darn unknowing/ignorant system administrator I constantly have to bail out of a jam.

3. Download the free application TinkerTool and there is a check box to stop that.

4. I'm sorry but I use the Mac burning program called Toast and haven't used the built in burning in a long time (except iTunes CD burning).

5. I use the view call Column view. In an open Finder window top click on the box with three squares together to get Column view. Is this good enough?

Plus have ever used the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) before? You can find tons of unix OS X hints at MacOSXHints.com. they have tons of hints starting from the birth of OS X you might find interesting. They have a search function to find all those hints too.


Lastly never believe the hype that a Mac never needs maintenance. Down either Yasu or Onyx and run the cleaning routines about every 4 weeks. Just remember to reboot you Mac twice after the cleaning routines are done to rebuild the startup/shutdown cache. This should keep you Mac humming along.

[nixgeek]

As far as I know, the only way to really view files in the classic UNIX sense is to use the Terminal (seriously). From there, you can get access to the /pvt directory that houses all of the UNIX system files and apps. The reason you cannot view them by default from the Finder is because it would cause confusion for new users that really don't need to see all of that stuff (possibility of deletion or movement from the default location due to lack of knowledge about UNIX). Still, if you need to view them from the Finder, click on Go-->Go to Folder on the menubar and type "/pvt". That will open up that folder to you (which is normally hidden in the Finder).

As for the window manager focus thing, usually all window managers are "click to focus". I imagine you're talking about the ability to have a window focus just from having the mouse move over it (which I've seen in X Window systems for some time now). There might be a third party app that will allow you to do this, but none that I've heard of.

Regarding the post-burn verification, you can uncheck that BEFORE you begin the burning process if it's through Disk Utility. Once you've unchecked that, it stays unchecked until you check it again.