Linkstew

I've been meaning to write this since just a couple of days after I installed Panther, but it took me quite awhile to actually find a third irritation. But find one I did, so here we are:

1. In Preview, the default tool that is selected when you open an image isn't very consistent. Sometimes it's the scroll tool, but more often than not it seems like it ends up being the selection tool, which is very irritating. This is solved somewhat by noticing that you can activate the scroll tool with command-1. Also irritating is that they changed zoom-in and zoom-out from command-up arrow and command-down arrow to command-+ and and command--. Probably more consistent in general, but irritating until I get used to it.
   • An annoying holdover bug from Jaguar's Preview: If you zoom in and then hit the "maximize" window widget, it never fully maximizes horizontally, even when there's clearly plenty of room. It always makes the window just a little bit too small. More irritating, in Panther, it seems like this behavior now happens when you initially open an image, too.
2. In Jaguar, I made backups in Disk Copy by using the "New Image From Device" feature. Unfortunately, when I try to make an image of my hard drive in Panther, it tells me that there was a "Device Busy" error. Instead, I have to resort to making a "New Image From Folder," which is a little more work to do each time.
3. The final irritation I've found has to do with the new application switching interface. In 10.2, if you hid an application and then hit command-tab once, you would return to the application you just hid. However, in 10.3, that newly hidden application gets moved near the end of the application list. In theory this is a good change, but in practice it seriously disrupts my workflow, because I would hide applications I was still actively using but that I just want off my screen for a second.
   • Also irritating is that hidden apps don't get shown when you use Expose. It'd be nice if there was some sort of modifier key to make it show hidden apps in addition to visible apps. Minimized windows, too, for that matter.

So, those are my first three irritations. As usual, feedback to Apple goes here. I'm sending the above comments to them pretty much as written.

So at work, I've been doing a lot of work with Mac OS X's NetInfo database. In particular, I'm generating password and group files to import into the database via the niload command. Since I wanted "old" accounts to be deleted from my OS X clients, I looked at man niload, and found the following option:

-d: Delete entries which are in the directory, but not in the input.

Exactly what I wanted, right?

Heh, after I spent an hour tonight beating my head against `niload -d` not deleting entries that weren't in the input, I absent mindedly typed `niload --help,` and here's what I saw (emphasis mine):

-d: delete (override) existing entries from NetInfo when the input contains a duplicate name

-m: merge new values into NetInfo when the input contains a duplicate name

Note: only one of -d or -m may be used. If neither is given, existing entries in NetInfo will be unchanged if there are duplicate names in the input

Gah! Inconsistent documentation is the bestest! So this means that I've got to iterate through each entry currently in the NetInfo database, and if that entry isn't in the in the input (and isn't some form of "local" account), then use `niutil destroy ...,` which makes me sad.

YAFHW = Yet Another Hour Wasted.

So I've got a lot of issues with Mac OS X, but you wanna know what my #1 biggest pet peeve about OS X is?

It can't remember my fucking web browser preferences!

I want OmniWeb to be my default browser. I do not want IE to be my default browser. Even using this tip, my default browser regularly switches back to IE. This is especially irksome for me, because I navigate my bookmarks with LaunchBar, which just uses my default browser to open the bookmark in question, no matter which app it got the bookmark from.

Jesus Christ, how hard could it possibly be to retain a preference? You'd think this was a fucking Microsoft OS or something...

One of my coping strategies is to remind myself that "Wet socks are worse" whenever something is getting me down. Because, well, they are.

Unprepared for your final today? Don't worry, because no matter how bad it is, wet socks are worse.

Sleep deprived? Wet socks are worse.

Didn't have a chance to eat breakfast? Wet socks are worse.

Of course, this whole strategy fails when your socks get wet while walking to a final you're absurdly unprepared for, because it turns out that taking a final with wet socks is a lot worse than wet socks.

So I've been using Photoshop 7 for a few weeks, and while it's fantastic to finally have Photoshop running natively in OS X, there are some little things that I'm really hating about the way it works.

1. Command-~ doesn't cycle through Photoshop's open windows. This shortcut has become such second nature for me that applications that lack it drive me nuts (Finder and Word being the big offenders besides Photoshop).
2. If you're in another application and click on a Photoshop window in the background, every Photoshop window is brought into the foreground. OS X's psychotic windowing model is already bad enough without apps going out of their way to behave differently. This means that if Apple ever fixes OS X's windowing issues, Photoshop is going to continue to be annoyingly inconsistent.
3. Command-dragging a background Photoshop window when another application has focus brings Photoshop into focus. Worse, when Photoshop is brought into focus because of a command-drag on a background window (the point of which is to move a window without bringing it into focus, and hence, without having it get in the way of the frontmost application), every Photoshop window is brought into the foreground (see point 2), getting in the way of whatever I was just doing. Getting everything back where I wanted it is often an annoying chore of window shuffling.
4. It doesn't use sheets for Save/Don't Save dialogues, and so I'm stuck with the modal days of yore when closing a document needs user input. Worse, if Photoshop isn't the active application and I click on the close widget of a Photoshop window, Photoshop becomes the active application, with all of the issues that that entails (see 2, 3). Damnit!
5. The text-editing supports Control-A for beginning of line, but doesn't support the rest of the emacs-like shortcuts that most other OS X text edit boxes support. While I can understand (and get incredibly frustrated with) the complete lack of these key bindings in Word, I don't understand why Photoshop supports just Control-a, but not Control-{e, k, d, f, b, n, p}. Basically, I don't use the arrow keys, nor do I want to. Emacs-like keybindings are good enough for the System text input widgets, so why not for Photoshop?

Basically, what I feel like what Photoshop is trying to tell me with 2, 3, and 4, is that if I'm using Photoshop, I shouldn't be doing anything else. Photoshop thinks that if I'm doing something else and in any way interact with a background Photoshop window, it must mean I'm ready to return to the Photoshoperating System. It's a lucky thing for Adobe that most people use Photoshop that way anyway.

But honstly, all of these annoyances are outweighed by the minor detail of Photoshop running natively on OS X, because I haven't had to boot Classic since I installed Photoshop 7.

A year ago today I installed Mac OS X 10.0.0 on my PowerBook. In that year, I've come to appreciate it more and more, and it's definitely the most powerful and extensible OS I've ever used. And yet, I'm not blindly in love with it, and I recognize that it still has a long way to go.

The OS X Finder has always been my least favorite part of OS X, and so I'm going to focus exclusively on that for my "OS X Anniversary" post. So without further ado, here are ten problems I still have with the OS X Finder (as of 10.1.3) (though there are many more):

1. Text/Picture/Etc Clipping Icons no longer distinctive - In the classic Mac OS, text clippings and picture clippings and so on (a feature Windows users have probably never seen) had very nice, distinctive icons. In OS X, clippings of any time get a generic icon, making them not only indistinguishable from each other, but also indistinguishable from a directory full of other "generic" files. I use clippings a lot, so this problem is staring at me from my desktop every day.
2. Alias names aren't italicized - Back in the day, you could tell the difference between an alias and a real file because the alias name was in italics. When Microsoft introduced Windows 95, they introduced shortcuts, which were distinguished from a real file by an ugly little error. When Apple came out with Mac OS 9, they added a little arrow in addition to the italic file name to signify an alias. While the arrow was ugly, presenting the information in more ways than one isn't such a bad thing. But then, in OS X, they got rid of the italics, and now the arrow is the only indicator that a file is an alias. This sucks when you're looking at files in list view, because that arrow it tiny.
3. Command-~ is inconsistent with other applications. - Since 10.1 came out, command-~ has been one of my most used key shortcuts. It cycles through the open windows on an application level, so it's useful for quickly flipping through my open Terminals, or open OmniWeb windows, or what have you. However, the Finder doesn't support Command-~, which irritates me daily. I'm so used to hitting Command-~ at this point that I do it without thinking, and then have to deal with the Finder thinking as it pops up the "Go To Folder" Sheet/Dialogue, and then have to hit cancel, and then have to find my mouse... Ugh.
4. Off-by-one error on the Desktop - This one doesn't actually irritate me so much as it endlessly amuses me. Hide everything and stare at your Desktop. Nice, isn't it? Go ahead and click and drag your mouse around and look at that nice shaded drag box. Now, move your mouse to the absolute left edge of your screen and start a drag box. Now, move your mouse to the absolute right edge of the screen and try to start a drag box. Also, try the bottom while you're at it. Ah, the difference between < and <= makes all the difference!
5. Command-click now toggles the selection - I already wrote about this one at length, so I won't repeat myself here. Suffice it to say that I hate this, and it drives me crazy when I'm organizing files.
6. It takes two clicks to rename a file. - In the classic Mac OS, you had a few options for renaming a file. You could click on a file and hit return, or you could click on a filename and wait a second, or you could click on a filename and quickly pull the cursor away to open the edit box quicker. It's important to note that in all three of those scenarios, it didn't matter whether or not you already had the file selected. Luckilly (sarcasm), in OS X, the file has to already be selected before clicking on the filename has any effect. Even better, the "pull away" trick doesn't work any more. Your best bet now is probably just to hit return before you start typing. Subtle, but irritating.
7. Disappearing cursor while editing file names - Heh, click on a file. Hit return to switch to edit filename mode. Hit right and watch as your cursor disappears, so you have no idea where it'll be when you stop moving it. It'll show back up after you stop hitting arrows and wait a few seconds, but basically, this makes editing file names even harder, because if you want to insert some text in a file name, you're better off using your mouse, but then you have to deal with the "two clicks to rename" problem. This one is probably qualifies as the "most obviously a big problem and how come it wasn't fixed in 10.1.1, 10.1.2, or 10.1.3?" bug in the Finder.
8. Finder windows don't update. - This one is only debatably the Finder's fault, but: If you're manipulating files in the Terminal and you have a Finder window open to that same directory, the Finder window doesn't get updated to reflect moved/copied/deleted files until you click in that Finder window and wait a few seconds. I suppose this is my fault for using the Terminal so much, but it'd be cool to use an open Finder window as a sort of "graphical ls" to see what's in a directory and what isn't while manipulating files from the Terminal.
9. Replace, Replace, Replace... - Basically, the copy dialogues need a "Replace All" option. Try this: Make a copy of a folder, open the original, select-all, and then option drag (to make copies, so you don't mess up your original) the files onto the copy of your original folder. Hit "Replace." Hit "Replace." Hit "Replace." Scream when you realize that you're trying to copy 1000 files, hit "Stop," (at which point you're left with an incomplete copy), clean out the target folder, and and do the move again. This is actually a big problem if you were doing a move instead of a copy, because if your target folder has an incomplete move, you're going to have to sit there and figure out which files need to be kept (because they were part of the incomplete move), and which ones need to be gotten rid of so you can finish your move without hitting "Replace" 986 more times. Solution: Add a "Replace All" button or something, fer chris'sake.
10. Age old keyboard shortcuts that got changed - "Make Alias" is now Command-L instead of Command-M (because Command-M is now "minimize window"), and "New Folder" is now Command-Shift-N instead of Command-N (because Command-N is now New Window). Both of these still give me fits every day, even after a year with OS X.

And lordy, I didn't even touch file extensions or the Dock... This was just the Finder.

So, what irritates you about the OS X Finder? (Or the Classic Finder, or the Windows Explorer, or KDE's Konquerer, or your file browser of choice?)