[Tristano]

My biggest complaint about Leopard is Spotlight, which for me has been ruined. The Finder window that pops up is almost unusable. It is always small, and doesn't remember preferences. (I found the results window in Tiger's Spotlight infinitely superior.) Then there's the Spotlight command line... jiggle the mouse by mistake and it closes... sometimes... stays open... sometimes... and where is "reveal in finder" which was so useful in order to see the item within the context of the surrounding files. Now there "open enclosing folder" which doesn't even take you to the file in question.

Next, the Sidebar. Tiny icons. Can't customize it. Terrible.

iCal. The edit balloons are a nuisance. The drawer was so much better... I see NO advantage to this!

Tris

[tallscot]

Tristano said:

My biggest complaint about Leopard is Spotlight, which for me has been ruined. The Finder window that pops up is almost unusable. It is always small, and doesn't remember preferences. (I found the results window in Tiger's Spotlight infinitely superior.) Then there's the Spotlight command line... jiggle the mouse by mistake and it closes... sometimes... stays open... sometimes... and where is "reveal in finder" which was so useful in order to see the item within the context of the surrounding files. Now there "open enclosing folder" which doesn't even take you to the file in question.

Next, the Sidebar. Tiny icons. Can't customize it. Terrible.

iCal. The edit balloons are a nuisance. The drawer was so much better... I see NO advantage to this!

Tris

Agreed on all of the above.

The iCal/Mail/Address Book combination is getting more clunky and I wish Apple would just combine them into one application, like Entourage.

I now use a clone utility for backup versus Time Machine because the clone affects system files and Time Machine doesn't. Apple really dropped the ball on this one, IMHO, by not implementing the System Restore feature of Windows into Time Machine. A great example of the need to have this on the Mac is the latest OS X update crippling the GeForce 8800 in CoreImage (Final Cut Studio) and making it half as fast.

I don't use Spaces. I just don't see the point.

The "new" Finder isn't really that new, and it does have several areas where it is a step back. It's sad that iTunes has more features for browsing and sorting than the Finder. I still can't believe we don't have more columns in List view. The Cover Flow view is just as useless to me as Vista's Flip 3D. What would be a whole lot more useful is having the on-the-fly scaling of Icon View icons like the Spotlight results window has. The first Spotlight was very inconsistent with the Finder and I really thought Apple was going to fix it in Leopard. Nope. Features in the Finder aren't in the results window, and vice versa. Not very Mac-like. Tiger's Spotlight results had some great sorting options that are now gone versus being implemented in the Finder. WTF? The Spotlight results window sucks and actually has fewer features than Tiger did.

I do use Quick Look but I wish it supported .SWF and nobody has come out with a plug-in for that yet. Microsoft Office files don't render accurately in Quick Look, from my experience.

One feature of Leopard I use every day is the ability to scroll a window in the background! :)

[jwestveer]

sRAW
Several cameras now support a sRAW file format.
Too bad that Apple has decided to ignore this. It seems that they are refusing to acknowledge that such a thing exists. Perhaps if they ignore it long enough it will go away? Or perhaps their users will go away and quit bothering them.
j.

[John_I._Clark]

Would you mind posting how you use Path Finder in place of the Finder? I've tried it for years, but never been happy with the fact that it's so difficult to keep the Finder from jumping back into the action...

[John_I._Clark]

That's a great one!

Another tip is that you can use the Esc key to dismiss the edit pane, even after making changes. The changes will be saved. I use that a lot, but I've been using it with Cmd-I. Cmd-E is going to make me even happier...

That all said, still, Apple needs to give us back some version of the Info drawer/window, absolutely.

It's embarrassing really; kind of makes it seem like the iCal development team doesn't even use the software they develop!!

[HarryL]

Talk about bland: how about the boring gray in Apple Mail in 10.5! Yawn.
And you want irritating, just try to insert line numbers in Pages. Stupid and incompetent software writing. As I remember, I could do that in Claris Works v1 or 2. I blush to write, but I'll stick with MS Word 2004 and Firefox.

[icerabbit]

That zoom state button is my biggest outstanding gripe with OS X. I still find myself repositioning and drag-resizing application windows every single day and just can't understand why we are still forced to do that manually. In Safari I use a little script with a square icon assigned to it. Some apps will maximize. Most don't. I wish I could hack the button to always maximize.

Secondly. Dialog boxes do not respond to keyboard presses of the initial character or arrow presses to switch buttons. You have to switch to using the mouse and scroll to button you want to press.

I like the sidebar in the Finder but find it very sad for the rest. I still don't know why we can't have cut/copy/paste in the Finder. I find that much safer than dragging around and much faster than opening and resizing two windows to drag between. Additionally, the Finder column view still doesn't default to showing the width needed to display names. There are blank columns present that shouldn't be there.

Can't think of additional major annoyances right now.

Has the isse with .DS_store files littering shares and removable media been absolutely fixed?

[pemulwuy]

icerabbit said:

That zoom state button is my biggest outstanding gripe with OS X. I still find myself repositioning and drag-resizing application windows every single day and just can't understand why we are still forced to do that manually. In Safari I use a little script with a square icon assigned to it. Some apps will maximize. Most don't. I wish I could hack the button to always maximize.

Secondly. Dialog boxes do not respond to keyboard presses of the initial character or arrow presses to switch buttons. You have to switch to using the mouse and scroll to button you want to press.

I like the sidebar in the Finder but find it very sad for the rest. I still don't know why we can't have cut/copy/paste in the Finder. I find that much safer than dragging around and much faster than opening and resizing two windows to drag between. Additionally, the Finder column view still doesn't default to showing the width needed to display names. There are blank columns present that shouldn't be there.

The zoom button isn't intended to be a maximise button. Expecting it to maximise will be confusing and frustrating.

Its unfortunate that keyboard commands to switch between buttons in dialog boxes are absent. I think earlier versions of Mac OS enabled this. I don't think the first letter thing applied, that was Windows.

I usually prefer spring loaded folders myself, and use drag lock with a trackpad, but you can copy/paste files and folders, for years now. Try it. No cut, but the delete command works on the original selected file/folder/s.

If column view defaulted to fit long names, you may have to scroll a long way to find additional columns. Its fairly trivial to double-click the column resize widget.

[tallscot]

>That zoom state button is my biggest outstanding gripe with OS X. I still find myself repositioning and drag-resizing application windows every single day and just can't understand why we are still forced to do that manually. In Safari I use a little script with a square icon assigned to it. Some apps will maximize. Most don't. I wish I could hack the button to always maximize.

You used to be able to OPTION-Click on the "maximize" button, in OS 9, and it would make the window full screen. They haven't implemented this in OS X for some weird reason.

Quote

Secondly. Dialog boxes do not respond to keyboard presses of the initial character or arrow presses to switch buttons. You have to switch to using the mouse and scroll to button you want to press.

There are a plethora of keyboard shortcuts in OS X. You can control the entire OS via keyboard by turning on Full Keyboard Access (CONTROL F1). You can use the keyboard to highlight menus in the menu bar, icons in the Dock, flip through all windows (back/forward), etc.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343

In a dialog, ESCAPE is Cancel, CMND S is Save, CMND D is Don't Save.

Quote

I still don't know why we can't have cut/copy/paste in the Finder.

Copy and Paste is there, just not Cut. I agree that Cut (Move) should be there.

[XMattingly]

tallscot said:

There are a plethora of keyboard shortcuts in OS X. You can control the entire OS via keyboard by turning on Full Keyboard Access (CONTROL F1). You can use the keyboard to highlight menus in the menu bar, icons in the Dock, flip through all windows (back/forward), etc.

Yep, System preferences> Keyboard & mouse > Keyboard shortcuts gives you a cornucopia of customizations you can do with the OS. My only minor aggravation with that is there is no easy way to implement custom mouse+key commands, such as using a modifier key with the scroll wheel.

Quote

In a dialog, ESCAPE is Cancel, CMND S is Save, CMND D is Don't Save.

Command"." is an alternative to ESCAPE (and it might be more prevalent). There is also a commandr for "replace", as in saving over an existing file.

Quote

Copy and Paste is there, just not Cut. I agree that Cut (Move) should be there.

I think that is a justifiable reason, in itself why Apple has never offered a cut command for files. It's been said that Apple left it out to keep you from accidentally hurting yourself: if you cut something and forget to place it elsewhere, you'd lose it. A "move" command would make a lot more sense to me.

[sequethin]

you know what else annoys the heck outta me? why is there no "Restore to original location" for the trash? Sure you can "undo" if you catch your mistake right away, but why should our only hope be to catch accidental deletions before something else moves into the undo stack? Is it that crazy to keep track of where something was deleted from?

[icerabbit]

pemulwuy said:

The zoom button isn't intended to be a maximise button. Expecting it to maximise will be confusing and frustrating.

Its unfortunate that keyboard commands to switch between buttons in dialog boxes are absent. I think earlier versions of Mac OS enabled this. I don't think the first letter thing applied, that was Windows.

I usually prefer spring loaded folders myself, and use drag lock with a trackpad, but you can copy/paste files and folders, for years now. Try it. No cut, but the delete command works on the original selected file/folder/s.

If column view defaulted to fit long names, you may have to scroll a long way to find additional columns. Its fairly trivial to double-click the column resize widget.

I disagree that the (+) would be confusing if it maximized. It is all about logic, industry standard and standardizing it throughout the operating system & apps.

The () buttons' current implementation so far is very confusing and unpredictable. In Mail it Maximizes. In Safari it doesn't. In iCal it maximizes. In the Finder it doesn't. In Address Book it does nothing at all. In iTunes it jumps to the minimized state ... now what is up with that?? I hit () to get a bigger viewport, not less! In iPhoto it does. In TextEdit it does.


Yes, windows allows you to tab between the buttons in dialog boxes and hit the first character. I think OS X could benefit from that as well. It saves time and mouse miles.


I have lost GB of data with drag & drop copying between network volumes with Tiger and have had other occurrences where the drag & drop went wrong ... and it is not that I'm inexperienced with computers or clumsy. Springloaded folders help, but they're inefficient and open up batches of windows (might have check a preference I guess) Above Cut / Copy / Paste working I actually prefer the very simple Copy to... and Move to ... buttons that bring up a dialog window to select the destination. Since the Finder annoys me so much I have actually gone back to using a dual pane file manager to shuffle data around.


My Finder column view width comment was aimed at showing Folder names particularly, not file names which can be extraordinarily long, I agree. If I click on any of my drives, it shows some abbreviated folder names in the first column. Then the same happens in the consequent subfolders I go to. The little || at the bottom of the column isn't a bad thing to hit once in a while, but it gets long in the tooth when you have to do it all the time, because you have hundreds of folders with a name longer than 20 characters, all while I still have half to two-thirds of my Finder screen still available / blank on the right.

I do frequently navigate in deep folder structures and yes, horizontal scrolling could be an issue, but it would be minimal since the finder scrolls automatically with you. All I basically would like is an option in the Finder: "Enable folder name column width" or "Adjust column with to folder names" or whatever we would call it. Some columns would automatically be narrower; like the main hard drive > system > library ... which will aid in getting more columns on screen or compensate for the wider ones down the tree.

[icerabbit]

Thanks, Tallscott & XMattingly,

I will read up some on the keyboard options. I just think it would be logic to be able to hit the first character or an underlined character of the dialog buttons to perform that particular function, as those would be very clear. Yes / No. Proceed / Cancel. Save / Don't Save. For safety reasons they can (maybe should?) be combined with Command, so that users don't accidentally do something unintentional.

I think it is a logic extension that if you cut something that you have to paste it; and in case of the Finder it certainly can be programmed that until you paste it somewhere else, that particular file / folder / group of files / folders it isn't deleted/moved yet.

My absolute preference above having a fully functional Cut / Copy / Paste is actually to have Copy To ... and Move To ... commands and buttons, like in my DOS & Windows days.

[XMattingly]

sequethin said:

you know what else annoys the heck outta me? why is there no "Restore to original location" for the trash? Is it that crazy to keep track of where something was deleted from?

That's a very justifiable grievance. I've been in many situations myself where I couldn't remember what volume something in the trash came from, and had to fumble around to put it back. I would also add to that: why is there no ability to empty trash from selected volumes?? The current trash window is essentially its own custom thing, like a Spotlight search or burn folder. I can't imagine it would be difficult for Apple to add sub menu that had "This Mac" and "Volume 1", "Volume 2", or whatever.