# Frustrations with OS X



## phinsman (Nov 22, 2005)

Well, first off, let me say that I love my new iMac, my first Mac ever.  It's beautiful.  I love OS X, for the most part.  It's run flawlessly -- I think I've only had to kill an app once in the month or so I've had it.  iTunes, iPhoto -- best of their kind.  Safari is a really nice browser and I'm trying to choose it over Firefox (but Firefox is tough to beat).

I've used the old TRS-80 CoCo, UNIX, MS-DOS, Windows (of course) for years, and the last couple of years almost exclusively GNU/Linux.

I think my number one frustration right now is that it seems like every piece of software I've been interested in downloading is shareware.  Freeware seems to be non-existent, scarce at best.  Coming from using GNU/Linux (where everything is Open Source and free), this is a major shock to me.

OS X does run most all of the X apps I'm used to, but they're not really integrated into the operating system; i.e. to start them up, I'll go through the "X" dock icon, and of course they just don't look like Mac apps.  They also don't look nearly as good as they did on my Red Hat systems.

An example of what I'm talking about is this:  yesterday morning before work, I spent an hour or so trying to find a Mac-equivalent to "TuxCards", which is a Linux notebook-style notes application.  I found quite a few, but every single one of them was anywhere from $15 to $30.  Really -- this is a notebook app we're talking about here.  No way would I pay that much for one.  I looked at Xnippets (which I liked best), something from Hog Bay (I think that was the name), and a couple more.  I finally am just settling on using TuxCards, which I installed from source after installing QT via Fink, and dealing with the fact that it looks like crap on here.

I'm a programmer for a living, and I've started looking into Cocoa development.  So at some point (when I have time!) I can hopefully create some of the apps I'm looking for.  But for right now I'm completely annoyed at all of this, to the point where I'm not sure I'd spend the $1500 on this machine if I had it to do over...no matter how nice it is.

My next frustration is the "treatment" of minimized windows.  It's like you shouldn't do it or something.  Yes, they show up in the lower-right corner of the dock, but Expose completely ignores them, as does CMD-TAB.  I think this stinks...at least give me the option to include them in Expose.  I've seen add-ons out there that seem to accommodate what I'm wanting, but they do it a little differently; I'd like to see this in Expose.

Let me quickly say that Expose is one of the cooler features I've ever seen on an operating system...I love the way a video can be playing, and you will still see it running amidst all the windows.

I miss using HOME and END to go to the beginning and end of lines...everwhere!  I'm trying to get used to using CTRL-A and CTRL-E.  That's a minor gripe.

The iCal dock icon -- it stinks that you have to restart it every day to keep the date correct (well, maybe I'm doing something wrong here).  I actually removed it from my dock so it wouldn't confuse me.

The Mail app looks good, but it doesn't have the power of Thunderbird or Evolution.  No Entourage for me, either.

I guess that's it...I apologize if this offends anyone.  Hopefully someone will spot ignorance in my statements somewhere, and tell me how to change/fix whatever I'm whining about.

Dale


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## dbonneville (Nov 22, 2005)

I noticed you mentioned Home and End missing on OS X. I'm coming from Win XP and almost can't function without it. What keystrokes are you using in place of just Home and End? Command-A is select all for me. Command-E doesn't appear to do anything.

Thanks!


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## rubaiyat (Nov 22, 2005)

You are going to find plenty more to annoy you.

Personally as a Mac user since the Fat Mac, I think the user interface is still very rough and inconsistant even after 5 revisions.

On the other hand you are also going to find many gems, only they will be different and hidden in places you would not expect. A different mix, I guess. Coming from Unix you of course will miss the freeware, but believe me shareware is still cheaper and more freeware is available than on Windows where avarice is God.

I know that that this is not exactly what you are looking for as a notebook, but explore the possibilities of TextEdit. I find it enormously powerful and versatile and heck Apple, gave it to you for free. 

The more powerful features TextEdit may lack canbe often had by utilising Services (3rd item down under the TextEdit menu). Hunt on VersionTracker and other DL sites for more services to suit your needs. Just don't be fooled by TextEdit's apparent simplicity, it does an enormous part of what most word processors do without most of the hastles.

One drawback is Apple, for some weird reason, does not allow changes to the print margin, but there is a simple hack that fixes that and that can be your first venture into Xcode programming.


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## fryke (Nov 22, 2005)

I'm using Fn ArrowLeft and Fn ArrowRight. Those keys even have "home" and "end" written on them on my PowerBook. Must admit I'm not sure what the desktop keyboards currently have for that.

About offending anyone: I'm pretty sure you didn't, since you didn't say "Hey, Macs s*ck!", but rather you made your point quite nicely.

I can understand your gripe about the freeware/shareware situation. linux _is_ different here, a different movement altogether. However, I've seen more and more freeware alternatives pop up for any given utility task over the past few years.

I personally use SideNote for notes. It's the greatest, I believe. Handy, useful - and still under active development AFAIK. And hey: It's freeware. Looky!  http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/productivity_tools/sidenote.html


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## fryke (Nov 22, 2005)

Oh, Apple hasn't updated that page about SideNote. So here's the link to the developer's homepage, where you'll find version 1.7: http://www.chatelp.org/?s=Sidenote


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## kainjow (Nov 22, 2005)

phinsman said:
			
		

> Safari is a really nice browser and I'm trying to choose it over Firefox (but Firefox is tough to beat).


After using Mac OS X for a while, you'll come to appreciate Cocoa programs much more then any other type (i.e. Carbon, X11, etc). Safari is so much nicer because it gets all the free system enhancements for free - like spelling.



			
				phinsman said:
			
		

> I think my number one frustration right now is that it seems like every piece of software I've been interested in downloading is shareware.  Freeware seems to be non-existent, scarce at best.  Coming from using GNU/Linux (where everything is Open Source and free), this is a major shock to me.


Mac developers have a lot more requirements put on them then any other OS in the world. Why? Because Mac users expect good looking applications with slick UI's. Not all developers can do that and have skills in that. Plus, it requires icons, which 99% of programmers can't make, so they have to hire someone. But if they're going to be making a freeware app, they don't want to spend any more money then necessary on it. Mac users are picky. They don't take just any program that does the job. They want it to look good! I think it's sort of hard to grasp when users come from others OSs, especially Linux, in which the entire OS is open source! Mac OS X is not 100% open source, so why should each individual program be? Open source doesn't make full sense unless the OS is open source. Get my drift? 



			
				phinsman said:
			
		

> OS X does run most all of the X apps I'm used to, but they're not really integrated into the operating system; i.e. to start them up, I'll go through the "X" dock icon, and of course they just don't look like Mac apps.  They also don't look nearly as good as they did on my Red Hat systems.


Again, it's the same thing with GUIs. Most Mac OS X users don't care about X11, because there are (usually) far better native alternatives.



			
				phinsman said:
			
		

> I'm a programmer for a living, and I've started looking into Cocoa development.  So at some point (when I have time!) I can hopefully create some of the apps I'm looking for.  But for right now I'm completely annoyed at all of this, to the point where I'm not sure I'd spend the $1500 on this machine if I had it to do over...no matter how nice it is.


Next time I'd suggest you research the topic first, before spending $1500! Don't just assume the Mac is for you, because lots of other people are switching, especially if you're a techy 



			
				phinsman said:
			
		

> The iCal dock icon -- it stinks that you have to restart it every day to keep the date correct (well, maybe I'm doing something wrong here).  I actually removed it from my dock so it wouldn't confuse me.


Maybe iCal is meant to stay open? That's how Mac OS X works best. Give it good enough RAM, and leave all your programs open. That's what I do - I have anywhere from 15-25 open at once.



			
				phinsman said:
			
		

> The Mail app looks good, but it doesn't have the power of Thunderbird or Evolution.  No Entourage for me, either.


What kind of "power" are you referring to? You know, Thunderbird is available for Mac OS X..


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## phinsman (Nov 22, 2005)

dbonneville said:
			
		

> I noticed you mentioned Home and End missing on OS X. I'm coming from Win XP and almost can't function without it. What keystrokes are you using in place of just Home and End? Command-A is select all for me. Command-E doesn't appear to do anything.
> 
> Thanks!




It's actually CONTROL instead of COMMAND for those two...I do believe those are emacs keys, but I'm a vim guy so I wouldn't know.    

Dale


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## phinsman (Nov 22, 2005)

rubaiyat said:
			
		

> You are going to find plenty more to annoy you.
> 
> Personally as a Mac user since the Fat Mac, I think the user interface is still very rough and inconsistant even after 5 revisions.
> 
> ...




OK, thanks for the tip.  I will give it a try.  I haven't messed with TextEdit enough to know what it's about.

Dale


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## phinsman (Nov 22, 2005)

fryke said:
			
		

> I'm using Fn ArrowLeft and Fn ArrowRight. Those keys even have "home" and "end" written on them on my PowerBook. Must admit I'm not sure what the desktop keyboards currently have for that.
> 
> About offending anyone: I'm pretty sure you didn't, since you didn't say "Hey, Macs s*ck!", but rather you made your point quite nicely.
> 
> ...




SideNote...I will check that out when I get home today!  Thanks!

Dale


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## phinsman (Nov 22, 2005)

kainjow said:
			
		

> Mac developers have a lot more requirements put on them then any other OS in the world. Why? Because Mac users expect good looking applications with slick UI's. Not all developers can do that and have skills in that. Plus, it requires icons, which 99% of programmers can't make, so they have to hire someone. But if they're going to be making a freeware app, they don't want to spend any more money then necessary on it. Mac users are picky. They don't take just any program that does the job. They want it to look good! I think it's sort of hard to grasp when users come from others OSs, especially Linux, in which the entire OS is open source! Mac OS X is not 100% open source, so why should each individual program be? Open source doesn't make full sense unless the OS is open source. Get my drift?



I don't agree with most of this.  If you're going to make something freeware, most likely you can dig around the Internet and find yourself an icon to "borrow" -- asking permission if necessary.  Or use some icon built into the system, as I did with most of the GTK stuff I wrote on my Red Hat machine.  Or, better still, take any kind of picture, art, etc., break out The Gimp, and make an icon from that.

I'm not saying everything should be Open Source...I'm just whining about the lack of freeware.



			
				kainjow said:
			
		

> Again, it's the same thing with GUIs. Most Mac OS X users don't care about X11, because there are (usually) far better native alternatives.



So far I haven't found that to be the case, unless I break out my credit card.



			
				kainjow said:
			
		

> Next time I'd suggest you research the topic first, before spending $1500! Don't just assume the Mac is for you, because lots of other people are switching, especially if you're a techy



Now you are dead on here!  Haha...I can promise you that I won't be admitting that to my wife.



			
				kainjow said:
			
		

> Maybe iCal is meant to stay open? That's how Mac OS X works best. Give it good enough RAM, and leave all your programs open. That's what I do - I have anywhere from 15-25 open at once.



I just feel like if they can put a date on an icon, they should have it be correct whether iCal is open or not.  Also, it seemed like it wasn't updating even when I left it open, unless I actively used it.  I may be wrong there.

I'm trying to get used to keeping lots of windows open, but that seems very unorganized to me.  I go back to my complaints about the lack of support for minimized windows.



			
				kainjow said:
			
		

> What kind of "power" are you referring to? You know, Thunderbird is available for Mac OS X..



Poor choice of words by me...not really power, just a feature here and there.  Labeling messages with a color, or marking as important a la Evolution.  Just minor things; I'm sticking with Mail so far.  I did try out Thunderbird on the Mac, but, like most of the other multi-platform apps, it didn't quite seem integrated enough.

Thanks for all the discussion; you made your points well.

Dale


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## Lt Major Burns (Nov 22, 2005)

home and end is apple+left or +right.  start and end of words is alt+left/ +right.  much easier than home and end keys when you get used to it.  pc's seem silly having a whole extra key for these function now, and it's so out of the way....


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## mosx86 (Nov 22, 2005)

My current favorite text editor is TextWrangler by BareBones.  It's free as beer and has a lot of the great features of BBedit, only it's free as beer.  It also installs a command line tool (edit) that allows you to open files from the command line within it.  It also works well with Services.

http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/index.shtml


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## phinsman (Nov 22, 2005)

fryke said:
			
		

> Oh, Apple hasn't updated that page about SideNote. So here's the link to the developer's homepage, where you'll find version 1.7: http://www.chatelp.org/?s=Sidenote



Sidenote is great!!!  Thanks for the heads-up.  I'm still not sure whether I want to use it instead of a notebook app, but for note taking, it's as good as I've ever seen.

Thanks again,
Dale


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## texanpenguin (Nov 22, 2005)

The iCal icon is supposed to update. A lot of people (including me) share the bug that it just... doesn't anymore.


I've NEVER noticed a lack of freeware on OS X. If anything, I've noticed an incredible amount of freeware. I think the problem is the actual applications you want to have. If you post a list of the *functions* you want programs to do, we can point you at the best way to do it.


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## kainjow (Nov 23, 2005)

phinsman said:
			
		

> I'm trying to get used to keeping lots of windows open, but that seems very unorganized to me.  I go back to my complaints about the lack of support for minimized windows.


You can learn to use the Hide <App> in each application's menu to hide all of that program's windows. It works well if you can get used to it.

Also, when command-tabbing around, you can use 'h' to hide an application also. Although AFAIK there is no way to show the application again via command-tab.



			
				phinsman said:
			
		

> Poor choice of words by me...not really power, just a feature here and there.  Labeling messages with a color, or marking as important a la Evolution.  Just minor things; I'm sticking with Mail so far.  I did try out Thunderbird on the Mac, but, like most of the other multi-platform apps, it didn't quite seem integrated enough.


You can color messages when you create a rule in Preferences, but it appears you can't just normally. That definitely should be a normal feature. You can also flag messages, and then use that with smart playlists/sorting, etc.


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## fryke (Nov 23, 2005)

"Although AFAIK there is no way to show the application again via command-tab." - Well, if you bring it to the front, of course, but that's it.


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## kainjow (Nov 23, 2005)

fryke said:
			
		

> "Although AFAIK there is no way to show the application again via command-tab." - Well, if you bring it to the front, of course, but that's it.


But there's no way to do it for select applications at a time. Only one by one.


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## HateEternal (Nov 23, 2005)

Have you gotten into any Cocoa developement yet?

If you are anything like me that may get you excited. I have only had time to mess with it a little but I had a blast playing around with it, it's just a really cool framework and interface builder is A+ in my book. It's way better than the visual studio environment if you ask me.


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## dmetzcher (Nov 25, 2005)

fryke said:
			
		

> I'm using Fn ArrowLeft and Fn ArrowRight. Those keys even have "home" and "end" written on them on my PowerBook. Must admit I'm not sure what the desktop keyboards currently have for that.


The keyboards for desktop models look mostly like standard keyboards and have the Home and End keys in the row above the arrow keys (like my PC keyboard).



			
				fryke said:
			
		

> I personally use SideNote for notes. It's the greatest, I believe. Handy, useful - and still under active development AFAIK. And hey: It's freeware. Looky!  http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/productivity_tools/sidenote.html


I have this installed, but I haven't really gotten into it yet. I'm sure it's great for someone who creates snippets of code daily, though. I'll have to start working more with it, now that you're reminded me that it keeps popping up whenever my mouse hits the right edge of the screen.


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## dmetzcher (Nov 26, 2005)

kainjow said:
			
		

> Also, when command-tabbing around, you can use 'h' to hide an application also. Although AFAIK there is no way to show the application again via command-tab.


To show an app after you have hidden it, just Command+Tab until you have the app you want to show highlighted and release the Command and Tab keys. The hidden app will show again and be at the front of the stack.


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## Lt Major Burns (Nov 26, 2005)

dmetzcher said:
			
		

> The keyboards for desktop models look mostly like standard keyboards and have the Home and End keys in the row above the arrow keys (like my PC keyboard).




they aren't actually home or end keys.  to navigate around a paragraph, use the arrow keys in conjunction with alt (option) and apple (command) keys


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## fryke (Nov 28, 2005)

dmetzcher said:
			
		

> I have this installed, but I haven't really gotten into it yet. I'm sure it's great for someone who creates snippets of code daily, though. I'll have to start working more with it, now that you're reminded me that it keeps popping up whenever my mouse hits the right edge of the screen.


 ... I've set it to a keyboard combo (Cmd-Shift-F12 for me) and set it so it does _not_ pop up when I hit screen edges, because that'd get on my nerves. But with the keyboard-combo, it's always there when I need it.
(Just noticed that this is my 8'000th post. Maybe I should go a bit slower now.)


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## dmetzcher (Nov 29, 2005)

Lt Major Burns said:
			
		

> they aren't actually home or end keys.  to navigate around a paragraph, use the arrow keys in conjunction with alt (option) and apple (command) keys


What are the home and end keys on the keyboard for then? I never use the keyboard, so I can't say that I've tested this much (so one would ask the question: "Why did you ever buy it in the first place?" to which I don't really have an answer except that I thought I'd use it more).


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## Lt Major Burns (Nov 29, 2005)

are you talking abvout the mac keyboard or a pc one?

the mac one doesn't pretend to have home or end keys, it just has extra arrow keys that pretend to do something.  you can however bind them to do what ever you want with them


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## texanpenguin (Nov 30, 2005)

Home and End work fine, though they refer usually to the beginning of the document/page and end of the document/page, rather than the Windows technique of beginning of line, end of line.

On a Mac, do the following:

When you would have pressed "Home"/"End" on a PC:
&#8226; In single-line text boxes like Google Search for instance, press the up arrow or down arrow. These can be used in conjunction with the Shift key for text selection.
&#8226; In multi-line text areas, like the post entry field here at MacOSX.com or in TextEdit, hold Command (that's the Apple key), and the left or right arrow. Once again, these can be used with the Shift key for text selection.

When you would have pressed Ctrl+Left or Ctrl+Right on a PC:
&#8226; Hold Option and press left or right. Again, hold shift for selection.

When you would have pressed Page Up or Page Down on a PC:
&#8226; Press Page Up or Page Down on a Mac . You can also get the same functionality with Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down

To skip to the beginning or end of a document on a Mac, you can use Home and End, or Cmd+Up and Cmd+Down respectively.


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## M_a_c_X (Dec 3, 2005)

i been a mac user for many years, so im not sure ur comming from, however i do run a pc (sadely as well) i run debian on both. i love open source, their is afew open source programs on mac. use version tracker and sourceforge!

-MacX


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