Re: osx usability for a windows/linux user

On Sun, 7 Oct 2007 10:10:47 -0500, Jolly Roger <jollyroger@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

I will explain my findings in a different follow-up.

Sounds good. Looking forward to it! : )

More or less already did in the reply to " troll ".

I pin the Dock to the bottom-right corner of my display so the trash is
always in the same spot, and as I open applications, the Dock grows to
the left along the bottom of the display.

Okay that's pretty cool. In my KDE I have a control, don't remember
what it's called, but it's stuck to the right side of my screen. It
provides icons for all of the windows, and it grows downwards as new
windows are opened. If you open a new window, the icon will be
spinning until the app has finished its startup. It also shows a
reasonably sized preview of the window as you hover over an icon. It's
much like the Dock, in a way. But the graphics are s a bit buggy, and
I never use it (perhaps because it's not at the bottom), and the
window previews often get in the way when I don't want them but when I
accidentily mouse over.


The fact that moving a document off of the dock
makes it disappear (but I guess that is basic Mac behaviour).

That doesn't bother me - in fact, it makes perfect sense. Icons on the
Dock are virtual icons (aliases to originals). Moving something into
the Dock doesn't move it from where it is on the disk, nor would I want
it to! Same goes for taking something back off the Dock.

True, but the more intuitive behavior is that moving something
actually moves it, not destroys it. So moving something off the Dock
should put it on the desktop. Moving it to trash should be the
preferred way of deleting Dock icons, imho (I mean, it's already
there, that trash icon) (and be fair, it's not like this is a high
profile operation, that needs the shortest access paths possible. In
general, destructive operations should have longer access paths than
non-destructive operations. So this behavior is not only unnatural
(given the desktop paradigm), but also wrong from a usability
standpoint. In short, it's crap).

Maybe you should go to an Apple store and play with application hiding,
minimizing, and Expose. Personally, I find myself using application
hiding and Expose almost exclusively. I will rarely minimize a window
just quickly to get something out of the way for a second or two.

Aye, I should, but it's just that I have some mobility problems
(health issue). I haven't been out of my town since last june. There
is a possibility that I'll try to go to Amsterdam tomorrow, because a
friend of mine may need me for something, and I suppose I could visit
one of the Apple stores there... but in my experience, properly
evaluating something takes me quite some time in a relaxed
environment, so I don't know if it would do any good, especially since
I would want to heavily customize, but I guess it'd provide me with
some feel, especially since I already know the most important keyboard
shortcuts right now. I'm a really bad shopper. I always end up buying
the wrong stuff if I have to decide in the shop.

Aight, my friend also recommended QuickSilver, stating that he almost
never uses the Dock. I already checked out the website, seems kinda
neat, though I don't have a grasp of what you can really do with it.

While I do use it as my application launcher, it's actually much more
than just a launcher. It's a really cool way to access just about
anything on your Mac quickly through the keyboard. For instance, I can
very quickly open any JPG image file in Photoshop (even if some other
application is the default application) by selecting the file's icon,
then typing: Control-Space, o w, Tab, pho, Enter.

That IS cool. I would LOVE that. Opening a document with an app that
is not the default, is a very annoying process in Windows. I usually
end up opening the app manually and then dragging the file into it.
Even better would be if the system would remember file openings and
would list previously used apps in a submenu of the context menu for
the icon.
.

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