

What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day? - ideamonk

I'm seriously giving thoughts to getting a MacBook Pro for myself, I spend most of the time doing python, php and web development related stuff. I was wondering what sort of annoyances bother a macbook user ? and has anyone faced problems with installing Ubuntu on it (not a VM) ?
======
tsuraan
Running linux on a Mac laptop is a bit of a pain, mostly because of the
keyboard/touchpad. The control and alt keys are in strange places (at least on
my powerbook), and having only one button on the mouse is pretty irritating
when you're not in OSX. I actually replaced my powerbook with a Linux laptop
primarily for those two reasons; I'm always working in a terminal, so not
having reasonably placed control and alt keys pretty seriously slowed down my
ability to navigate on the command line and in an editor.

I'm not sure if this applies to the MacBooks, but on my Core2 Duo Mac Mini,
the left audio channel frequently gets a lot of static when playing music; it
seems to be a random thing on boot; either you will have static on this boot
or you won't. It's a common problem of the Mini with Linux, but I have no idea
if it ever happens on any other Mac.

If you're a KDE user, then OSX's finder will drive you mad. They don't have
IOSlaves, but they do now have Fuse, which can allow you to browse remote file
systems over ssh. If the ssh connection goes down, every finder window
(including the desktop) freezes until the fuse connection times out, and it
never feels quite as nice as KDE's IOSlave system, but it does make browsing
of remote systems possible.

Spaces is a little flaky if you try to use it the way you use a normal
multiple desktop implementation. With spaces, you can have either all windows
of an application on the same virtual desktop, or you can allow them to be on
multiple desktops. If you do multiple desktops, then alt-tabbing to a running
application won't ever switch your current desktop. Since OSX generally only
has one instance of each application running, this can make switching between
windows of the same program on different desktops a bit of a pain. It's not
terrible, but it isn't as smooth as it could be.

To be honest, I'm not really sure why a developer would use a MacBook at this
point. When I bought mine, Linux's wifi support was a sick joke, which made it
pretty pointless for a laptop. OSX is very polished and clean, but their
developer tools for python, php, etc are going to be the same tools you'd be
using under any other OS, I would think. Is TextMate a killer app for OSX now?
What does OSX offer that's really good for web development?

~~~
megaduck
I do most of my web development using the terminal and emacs, so there's
nothing intrinsic to OS X that's an advantage there.

The real advantage of OS X is that the rest of the system gets the heck out of
your way so that you can get work done. There's a million tiny little touches
in the system that make life easier, so you spend more time doing actual
development instead of wrestling with the email attachment that Aunt Edna sent
you.

It's also the most popular *NIX out there, outnumbering everything else by an
order of magnitude (or two). That means that virtually all recent UNIX
software has been either been tested on the Mac, or written on one. That's
nice.

~~~
moe
_It's also the most popular NIX out there, outnumbering everything else by an
order of magnitude (or two). That means that virtually all recent UNIX
software has been either been tested on the Mac, or written on one. That's
nice._

Sorry to rain on your parade but both of these statements are wrong.

------
bcl
I can't think of any common annoyances. I come from the Linux desktop world,
so having a GUI that works right is great. It was hard to get used to the
close in the top left and drag in the bottom right only at first but I don't
even notice that anymore.

Under the hood it is Unix, includes Python and wxPython by default, Xcode is
free and an awesome development environment so I can do as much and more than
I can with a Linux box.

If you need to run Ubuntu, just do it in Parallels, otherwise your annoyance
is going to be having to reboot into OSX.

~~~
cpr
Ditto, but I can't recommend Fusion enough.

Tried Parallels, and had too many problems.

~~~
JeremyChase
VirtualBox is very polished virtualization software released under GPL. I have
run this on my MPB for a year with Debian, and XP as clients. It runs great.

<http://www.virtualbox.org/>

~~~
mediaman
I recommend VirtualBox as well. I haven't used Fusion but have used Parallels,
and VirtualBox has become my default VM. Being free and GPL doesn't hurt at
all.

------
arrrg
I had tons of hardware problems.

It’s just that I could be an outlier, these kinds of stories are always so
freaking anecdotal and not really a help when deciding what to buy.

My screen failed and was exchanged. Then my main board failed and was
exchanged. Now everything seems to be working fine. Oh, yeah. I nearly forgot,
my DVD drive was unable to burn anything so it was exchanged. The exchanged
drive was also unable to burn anything and was exchanged again. After those
two tries it finally worked. And I already destroyed two batteries. After mere
110 cycles both were unable to hold much charge (they lasted for 30 min or
less). Both were exchanged.

All this, and the MBP is not even two years old. Since I have Apple Care I
didn’t have to pay for labour or parts, but I had to pay for transport to and
from the few places in Germany where Apple hardware is repaired and I didn’t
have my laptop for several weeks in the span of those last few months.

I hope that’s all for now because I actually still like my MBP. I planned to
buy a new one at the earliest in three years, but after all those failures I
don’t have much hope that my MBP is going to make it.

But: it simply cannot be the case that every or even a big percentage of Macs
fail like this. With Apple having to pay for two batteries, one whole screen,
a main board and two DVD drives plus all the labour they certainly didn’t make
any profit from my purchase.

~~~
JeremyChase
Not an outlier.. I have had three hardware problems with my MBP:

1) Hard drive had IO errors and was replaced (2 months)

2) One of my keys stopped working. (9 months)

3) The right fan died. (10 months)

The last company I worked at had a small fleet of MPB's and hardware problems
were a regular occurrence. Far more frequent than when I was at an
IBM/thinkpad shop, but drastically less than when I worked with Dells.

Jeremy

~~~
GHFigs
Data is not the plural of anecdote.

~~~
fatdog789
Anecdotes are still data.

You have 2 verified MBP users with a total of 4 problematic MBPs. That's raw
data right there.

Do not confuse data with statistics.

------
kleinsch
The green button has inconsistent behavior by application - firefox maximizes
to whole screen, safari sizes to the window, iTunes goes back and forth from
mini-Player

No cut and paste between windows - But I use the command line for most things,
so it's not that big of a deal

~~~
cliffdickerson
Not to keep pushing this software, but SizeUp allows for a keyboard shortcut
to do full size windows (for any window) and then snap back to previous size,
plus a whole mess of other great features. Its literally the app that kept me
using OS X after switching from Linux. And its name your own price licensing.

<http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/>

~~~
weaksauce
That looks like a great piece of software! I have been bugged by the lack of
maximize for a while now. This looks like it will fit the bill nicely.

Out of curiosity, what is a typical "donation" to the developer in this style
of licensing?

~~~
cliffdickerson
He asks for $2.99 min so his paypal fees are payed, etc. I gave a bit more and
got a personal thank you. It does have a demo mode as well.

~~~
weaksauce
The posts from the people that are releasing the sales data are extremely
interesting to me. Thanks!

As an aside, does anyone know of an agregator of blog posts concerning sales
data for ISV's?

~~~
Irradiated
Some developer blogs might show graphs so you can see the trend of their
sales, usually with a line showing where they finally become a viable
business, but few release hard numbers. I'm happy to share more hard numbers
if anyone asks, since I feel this is very valuable data for anyone considering
ISV or the "name your price" model. Feel free to contact me via the site:
<http://www.irradiatedsoftare.com/contact>

------
carbon8
The custom "framework" system for Ruby and Python is a minor annoyance when
you want to customize or upgrade them. Apple puts python in one place, the
python community installers put it in another, and neither is where you'd
install it on your own. Although installing most things and building from
source are pretty much the same as with linux, if there is already an apple-
installed version you might find you need to so some minor surgery (make a
symlink or two) after an initial install. In most cases, using macports works
just like any other package manager and, as a bonus, keeps everything
segregated into its own directory tree, so many people use that when possible.

Still, these issues are minor and infrequent. Linux installs aren't always
painless and will require triage from time to time, too. But compared to doing
the same stuff on windows, well ...

~~~
progLiker
I think this is the worst about owning a Mac. The Open Source Anarchy is very
well established on the Mac platform. To many repositories and sometimes forks
from repositories which aren't totally compatible with the repository it once
came from and this sometimes results in configuration nightmares. Both with
latex and a forked version of Vim for my part. I think Apple really should
make some guidelines in this area. Or that the different repositories should
sit down together and agree over some standards. Installing is one thing but 6
months later when you need to overhaul your configuration ...

------
brk
Why would you get an MBP just to install any other OS on it?

I've owned a couple (15" MBP currently), and I think there is more durable
hardware out there that can be had cheaper.

I don't really have any annoyances with OSX or the MBP hardware. That is not
to say it is perfect, just that I knew what to expect going in, and that there
is no all around perfect OS or hardware. I do find the overall annoyances much
less than when I've had to work on plastic (Thinkpad) laptops with Windows.

~~~
megaduck
More durable hardware is hard to come by. The Apple stuff is usually pretty
sturdy. There's exceptions, but I generally trust Apple hardware over Dell,
HP, Toshiba, Acer, etc. The Thinkpads used to be as good or better, but
standards have declined somewhat since Lenovo took over the line.

For me, the real winner is AppleCare. Apple has the best support that I've
encountered for consumer hardware. It's also valid anywhere in the world,
which is a lifesaver if you do a lot of international traveling.

------
dmlorenzetti
One thing I miss from Windows-- the ability to easily access any menu item
from the keyboard (not just items that have a defined keyboard shortcut). Yes,
it can be done, but not "out of the box" using individual keystrokes to
navigate each level of the hierarchy.

~~~
GeneralMaximus
The best way to quickly access a menu item is to hit CMD+?. Then just type in
the name of the menu item. That, IMO, is a much faster way of accessing the
menu than the ALT+foo shortcuts from Windows-land.

~~~
weaksauce
Great tip! I wish firefox behaved like a good OS X app. just tried it in
firefox and it brings up a help tab.

------
lon
No cut and paste in Finder... you have to move your files from one window to
another...

~~~
mmc
A friend of mine just got his first mac recently, and he mentioned this same
complaint to me - I had no idea, because I almost never use the Finder for
file management. (I assumed you could do cut & paste)

I always just use 'mv', etc. from a terminal. So this is genuine curiosity -
is there something that other people do for which a Finder window and cut and
paste is better/faster/less prone to mistakes, or is it just that the shell is
not as familiar for them?

~~~
tsuraan
Sure, if you need to move a bunch of files whose names don't match any
particular pattern, then using a GUI tends to be more efficient. Suppose you
have a directory with a hundred documents in it, and you want to categorize
them into subdirectories. With a shell, you'll probably actually need to have
two terminals open, one to keep the full list of files available, and one to
type commands. You'll mv file1, file3, file4, file7, etc using tab-
autocomplete, but it's still going to take a bit of typing and a bit of time.
With a GUI, you look at the full directory contents in the file manager,
control-select each file you want to move, and then drag them into place. If
there are a lot of files, and they don't have filenames that match shell
patterns, then a GUI can be faster.

~~~
bretthoerner
I agree. But in the rare case that I need to move a bunch of weirdly named
files - I have no problem hitting Command+N to open another Finder window, get
it to where I want to be, and drag the files to there.

I just can't imagine a hacker workflow that involves doing that even once per
week, much less day.

I'm not saying I don't miss Cut/Paste on those occasions, but it comes up so
rarely and I feel like I gain so much more by using OS X that I just don't
care.

------
cpr
You really want to run OS X on the hardware, to take advantage of all the
details of the various hardware nooks and crannies (power management, wireless
hardware, etc.)

There's no real downside to running any Linux distro in a VM. (Again, I
recommend VMware Fusion.) You can put each VM in its own full-screen space and
switch around between them (and Mac OS X) with a keystroke.

Highly recommended.

(BTW, the way that Fusion works it that it essentially goes "under" OS X, when
Fusion is running; it becomes a hypervisor, running OS X and the other OS(es)
as virtual guests on an equal footing.

I heard a great talk at C4[1] from one of the VMware Mac engineers, who said
that the Apple engineers weren't very happy to learn the details of how
virtualization works (since it replaces their precious OS at the lowest
level), but they didn't really have any choice, either. ;-)

~~~
holygoat
Do you have a citation or two for your Fusion point? I'd be very interested to
read more.

~~~
cpr
[http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2008/02/fusion-geek-
spe.h...](http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2008/02/fusion-geek-spe.html)

This blog entry contains a video of the talk along with some other relevant
links.

The talk is quite entertaining, reasonably deep, and highly recommended if
you're interested in such things.

------
cpr
If you're an Emacs user with (3!) decades old-finger habits like me, Mac OS X
is a dream come true--you can customize the Cocoa text environment to be a
quite decent subset of Emacs, available in most system apps now (most
importantly, Safari).

Oops, this is an anti-annoyance. ;-)

~~~
GeneralMaximus
I would like to know how to do this. Do you have any links?

~~~
cpr
Sure, the best info is probably here:
<http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/cocoa-text.html> .

------
miles
I wrote this back in early 2007, and it still applies:

Four things OS X can learn from Windows 95
[http://www.tinyapps.org/weblog/mac/200703210700_four_things_...](http://www.tinyapps.org/weblog/mac/200703210700_four_things_osx_can_learn_from_win95.html)

You would think that after all these years, Apple would have copied these
simple yet essential abilities from Windows 95:

1\. In Spotlight's search result window, files should be able to be deleted,
copied, moved, renamed, etc.

2\. Spotlight should offer an "In Folder" or "Location" column rather than
forcing the user to press the tiny "i" symbol for each result.

3\. The Trash should have two more columns: "Date Deleted" and "Original
Location".

4\. The context menu in the Trash should offer a "Restore" option to return
files to their original location. This is especially useful in putting back
the 20 or 30 files from 10 different locations that Adobe asked you to remove
and then realized they shouldn't have.

~~~
GHFigs
1 & 2 are both in Leopard. Apple ditched the weird Spotlight results window in
equally weird but more functional views in Finder windows. 4 is in Snow
Leopard.

~~~
miles
_"1 & 2 are both in Leopard"_

Sorry about that - you're right about the deleting and copying in Leopard. As
with the Finder in general, files cannot be cut/moved, and renaming is not
available from the Context Menu or by pressing Enter (though it is available
by clicking the file names).

As for #2 ("In Folder" or "Location" column in Spotlight results), can you
please tell me how to display such a column?

------
teilo
I have two:

1) The new Macbook Pros moved all the function keys around. I can no longer
control the volume with one hand, because the Fn key is too far away from
F10-F12. (I want my F-keys to be F-keys, not Fn-F-keys, because I use Windows
via Fusion all the time, and use F-keys in Mellel all the time as well).

2) When opening a Finder window, Finder starts to create thumbnails of all the
documents it understands, and replacing the default file icons with the
thumbnails. Nice feature - except that every time it creates a new thumbnail
it refreshes the window. Consequently, if you are trying to rename a file, you
can't do it in the window. Every time you try, the window refreshes, and you
lose focus on the filename! You are forced to do a Command-I just to rename a
file. There is no reason this has to happen. Why can't Finder refresh a
thumbnail without stealing focus? Idiotic.

------
romulob
The mouse speed algorithm. I'm using an iMac for three days and want to throw
it out off window. I just keep missing the clicks! Or the mouse go too fast
and pass the controls, or too slow and don't reach them.

But the worst thing is that when I switched to my Dell Notebook (ArchLinux), I
was too used to the iMac's mouse =\

~~~
johanl
I agree. The mouse speed has to be altered. It's frankly horrible. I've been
using osx now for about 5 years and I'm still not friends with the mouse
pointer on my laptop. (On my iMac I don't have the same issues for some
reason) I hate using the trackpad, it actually weariers my wrists.

I think I use USB overdrive on my iMac which might explain why I don't have
the same problem with it. Or it might just be that I use a Razor-mouse.

------
vesan
Finder is pretty horrible. Keyboard shortcuts are all over the place and
overall I find Finder really unintuitive.

~~~
progLiker
Here is a list over all keyboard shortcuts in Mac Os X :
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343> It's hard to memorize all this, but I put
them into a learning by repetition program named Genius.App. Genius can be
found here: <http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13938>

I enter only those shortcuts that I tend to need from whatever App I use. I
spend the odd 10 minutes each day repeating keystrokes. The shortcuts seem to
stick in the grey matter after a while.

------
volodia
The glossy screen!

------
GHFigs
The Cut/Paste in Finder issue comes up a lot, because in people that use the
GUI for file management the basic action becomes a deeply ingrained habit with
a specific mental model.

Windows-style "pick up here, drop there": \- make selection with mouse \- cut
with keboard \- navigate to destination with mouse \- paste with keyboard

Mac-style "carry from here to there": \- make selection with mouse \- drag
with mouse \- navigate to destination with mouse \- drop with mouse

You can learn to use the other kind, but if you have to switch between them
often you'll likely grow frustrated with one or the other. With the Finder for
lacking Cut and for others lacking spring-loaded folders and Expose.

------
ptomato
Inability to resize windows from any corner except the bottom right.

~~~
cliffdickerson
This might help.

<http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/>

~~~
ptomato
It might, if I was really to pay $20 for a hack that does something that
should be in the OS by default. And it looks like it still won't let you just
resize windows with the mouse from any corner.

------
andrewf
You don't have a set of packages that is as broad, well integrated and easy to
use as Ubuntu's or Debian's packages. MacPorts is a lot better than nothing
though.

------
cjlesh
OK -- I might be alone on this, but I have a 30" Dell monitor, and the single
top menu bar concept simply does not scale to large monitor sizes.

~~~
cpr
Funny, I've got both 24" and 30" Apple monitors, and decided that the 30" was
just too large for my field of view (plus the newer 24" LED displays are just
too beautiful not to use).

But your point is well-taken.

Fitt's law helps here, though--you can ram your pointer up top and generally
hit the menu bar.

------
joshu
Terminal.app can't go full screen. I don't need a scrollbar. I don't need menu
bar. I don't need any window decorations.

I really like Terminator on linux; it's a python script that wrapps Gnome
Terminal and lets you split the screen horizontally and vertically. I'd love
to have that on OSX but don't want to run X/Gnome/etc.

------
kingsley_20
The lack of good keyboard shortcuts for window manipulation. Window management
in general is a pet peeve of mine.

~~~
cliffdickerson
Ha, I'm posting it again, but only because I love this software so much. Check
out SizeUp <http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/> It has replaced Mercury
Mover for me.

------
rmason
For me the email client and finder for file management. I am going to try
entourage but its not outlook, its outlook light. Apple should look at the
fact there are five separate mac products that emulate windows explorer, that
alone should tell them that Finder is lacking for file management.

------
weaksauce
I think the thing that bugs me the most is the fact that there is no way to
create a new window from the dock. The only thing that the dock does is start
the application if it is not running or activate the application if it is
running.

~~~
philwelch
If you right-click (or two-finger click) on a Dock icon it brings up a mini-
menu, but I don't know if any of these include "New Window". It varies by app.

~~~
weaksauce
I have yet to find one that gives the option to create a new window from the
context menu in the dock.

------
sunkencity
[FN] and [CTRL] need to change places!

Why does't toggle full screen work in stock X11?

Why is it so hard to get plan9/wmii to work properly :(

Binary package managent for common tools, like subversion etc.

------
spudlyo
I miss focus follows mouse.

------
stonemetal
Apple has Balkanized their OS's API. Most software out there only supports the
latest release. The rest only supports two releases back. In fact with 10.6's
release imminent it is hard to find software that supports older than 10.4
anymore.

~~~
cpr
What's the point of running older OSes?

~~~
ams1
i'm a fan of newer hardware with older software for speed reasons.

~~~
philwelch
Newer Mac OS X versions don't tend to be any slower than older versions,
though. But I definitely agree with you when it comes to Windows.

------
carterschonwald
one tiny thing is that the analogue of ctrl + left or ctrl + right, with cmd,
skips to the end of the line instead of to the next word, which is a smidge
annoying.

~~~
GeneralMaximus
Use Option+Left and Option+Right. Also, hit Fn+Left and Fn+Right to go to the
beginning and end of a file, respectively.

------
lamnk
Ability to switch Terminal tabs with Cmd+1, Cmd+2 ...

------
mcav
iTunes doesn't come-to-front when you click its Dock icon if it has a window
open already.

------
erlanger
Security warnings all over the place.

------
jtillery
Not having a MAC to begin with.

