enter to rename files

I hate this. When i press enter on a folder in Finder, 99% of the time I want to open that folder not rename it. F2 does the trick in windows.

closing the last window doesn't quit

Also another weird one for me. Why would I want to close all windows and leave the program running? Doesn't it just hog memory/cycles while it's in this mode?

confirm delete

I'd rather it confirm than not but, then again, I'm constantly fatfingering keyboard shortcuts.

window management in the mac

I still can't get used to the fact that program windows don't fully maximize without a manual resize. I want my window to go full screen automagically, not only after I take a minute to resize the window to the perfect dimensions. Maybe my mouse skillz aren't l33t but I also hate the small minimize/maximize/close buttons.

If enter-to-rename is so great why does Apple violate it in iTunes?

In iTunes, when a song is selected and you press Enter, it doesn't ask you to rename it, but "opens" it, i.e. starts playing it.

F2

F2. It's the universal rename key in almost every renamable control in the OS. You can also do two slow clicks. But the timing is fidgety. You can also right click and rename in most context windows in most pieces of software that have a renamable control.

* closing last window doesn't quit application. the decluttering effect of this is amazing. *

How precisely is leaving stuff around you aren't going to use decluttering?

* windows NEEDs maximize designed the way it is because all those fancy borders and menus are so full of CLUTTER. macs are more true to the "windows" philosophy, windows should be called "screens" from how i've seen people abuse maximize. *

Ugh, the visual cacophony going on the background behind my applications in OSX are so f-ing distracting, I spend most of my time on a Mac moving the damn windows around and individually minimizing them so I don't have to look at them all the time. I really really really don't need to see the last 4 photos I opened up in Photoshop, a terminal window and browser and whatever other random stuff I happened to have opened over the last 6 hours sitting around in my visual field in the background while I do something else. Really, I don't. There are times when having more than one thing on the screen in different applications is useful. But 90% of the time it's a visual distraction that breaks focus.

I always find this counter argument amazing coming from a community that made worshiping full screen minimalist text editors an art form. http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom

Doesn't anybody in OSX user-land want to read a document or write music in full screen so they can focus on it? Or is that only for writing (it's clearly not for any other kind of production work)?

Gah!

* as a follow up, people maximize on windows in order for the menus to comply with Fitt's Law. as noted, not necessary on mac. *

No they don't. They maximize the windows so they can focus on the thing their actually working on instead of the visual field garbage cluttering up their peripheral vision.

Side rant: I wish beyond all that's holy that OSX users would stop excusing the obviously bad OSX menu bar design by bringing up Fitt's law when that's pretty much the only place in the entire OS that concept is followed. Pick an application, ANY application, and they jam all kinds of controls all over the screen. Web browsers don't just line up links along the edges of the screen, they embed them all over the screen, Photoshop's toolkit isn't jammed against the side of the screen, it's a floating window, iPhoto doesn't just give you a linear list of photos along the bottom of the screen, iTunes playback controls aren't lined up directly along the bottom, Safari has almost no major control surfaces on the edges of the screen...etc. etc. etc.

If you rely on Fitt's law to save a novice mouse user from OSX's incredibly bad (and non-configurable) mouse acceleration curve, you'll be very sad. For all of the gods sakes (past and present), stop bringing up the example of the one singular interface component in the entire OS that happens to adhere to Fitt's law if nothing else in the operating system follows it. (btw, all those windows floating around that you can't maximize in OSX? yeah. those don't follow Fitt's law of an infinite mouse target either by definition)

Gah!

Command-option-H. You'll like it.

I like the deemphasis on full-screen windows in Mac OS; one of the biggest losses in OSX UIs of the last decade is that they've moved from the exceedingly customizable palette-style UI (see ircle, for example—an IRC client with the entry box in a different window from the chat log!) to the iTunes-inspired, all-features-in-one-window style.

The ability to use the windowing system to split your focus between different documents and apps for the same task (instead of maximizing every damn thing, like most Windows users I know) was powerful; the current approach reeks of MDI. (As does Adobe CS5—git yer damn tabs outta my Photoshop, Adobe.)

PS - Personally, I can't stand the mouse acceleration curves on Windows. "In matters of taste, there can be no dispute."

CS5 - Tabs can be a powerful thing when done right, CS5 does not do them right. I strongly dislike Photoshop's tab implementation. Though I'd never in a million years hold up Photoshop (with its aging wretched evolutionary interface cruft) as an example for people to follow in UI design.

Maximize - I've known many people who use the exact phrase "maximize every damn thing" when referring to people's desire to maximize windows to focus on one thing at a time. I've actually sat down with them to discuss their UI behavior and observe how they use their smaller non-maximized windows. What I discovered was fascinating. Instead of focusing on one particular thing at a time, and moving their mouse around inside screen sized real-estate, with nothing else cluttering up their visual field, they focused on one particular thing at a time except they had a much smaller area to work in, things became cluttered and they often got distracted or confused by non-relevant stuff in the background. They spent inordinate amount of time moving windows around to get them positioned well to not be distracting or so they could see them all well (as if the other document they were writing was going to suddenly change state without their notice and they wanted to see that happen - yes this was how it was described exactly to me), and fiddling with toolbars so they were "just so". If I didn't know better, I'd classify most of the behaviors as OCD type worry twitches. The real problem is that if you want to maximize and focus on a Mac, you simply can't. Whereas on Windows or many Linuxes, I can choose either method of operation -- like if I writing some code and have a separate app up logging network activity or something, I can do that. But if I'm having a particularly bad time killing a bug, I simply can't maximize and get everything else out of the way.

There is a built in efficiency in killing off tasks serially that you sometimes can't get when operating in parallel.

Thanks for the command-option-h tip.

However, I still think the multiple-window model is powerful when single-tasking with multiple tools. In XCode, for example, I always run in the "Condensed" layout; the file list is in one window, the editor is another, as are docs, the console, the debugging HUD, etc. It lets me put things where I want them to be: console and debugger on the second monitor, documentation side-by-side with the editor, etc. And I can scootch them around to make room to see a terminal window, or IRC in a dev chat, or whatever.

It means I do spend a little more time on the resize handle than I would hitting a mythical Mac "maximize" button, but trying to use single-window IDEs feels like walking in mud in comparison. (I'm looking at you, XCode 4.)

I tend to use Spaces to focus on tasks. One neat trick: you can manage windows from the Spaces zoomed-out view. Drag your IDE or text editor to another space, or shift-drag to grab all an app's windows at once. You can even engage Expose in Spaces and drag windows from that view. I never find myself wanting a window filling the screen, especially with modern resolutions.

Point taken on ircle. I'm just nostalgic.

Oh most definitely. Having multiple tools available all at once (particularly monitoring tools) is really powerful and can shorten up certain work cycles immensely.

One area where I can definitely see the maximize window concept of Windows falling down is the huge screen real estate available on some monitors. I don't have a problem with it on a 22" monitor, but say...a 32" that may end up just being too big. I can't keep the entire screen in my visual field anyway.

Ircle: I know, old software, even with warts, can sometimes still feel best. Like an old pair of shoes.

enter to rename is just a lot faster for me than f2, bigger clearer button makes it much faster. from a usability standpoint, i'd rather rename easily than open easily.

when opening - you usually have the file(s) you want highlighted, and you KNOW you want to open it, so you can divert your attention to "okay, now i want to open this, press cmd+down"

for me, when I'm renaming, it's usually an annoyance I run into in the middle of doing something, I want to get it over with and move on, at which point hitting enter quickly without having to hunt for F2 (or even worse, right clicking and finding a menu option) is much faster. It also makes serial renaming of multiple files easier and much more keyboard friendly.

also maybe it's because I've gotten used to the cmd+up and cmd+dn to go up and down directories (and also open files). in the end, we're all arguing a matter of preference.

on closing windows:

it's equivalent to minimizing for windows. I want my mail app and calendar apps to be running and able to give notifications, but the window itself doesn't need to be rendered. Also, stuff like my browser that i open and close constantly doesn't need to be reloaded from the HD every time I open it, I don't want to see photoshop and office splash screens and wait the extra seconds to load an app every time i open a file simply because i closed the last window last time.

I also liberally use spaces to deal with the "background clutter" issue. When i need to move to a new task, i go to a new clean space and work there.

I agree that f2, as an interface key, is less convenient that enter. However, there's a principle that more common interface operations should have shorter paths to activation and less common ones can become more and more inconvenient by being buried in menus or hidden behind some non-discoverable 3 or 4 key combination. The key side benefit is discover-ability. Renaming is just simply not as common an operation as opening/running. Unless you spend your days renaming lots of things and only open on occasion I guess.

But this principle, shorter path to common operations, is violated all over the place in OSX keyboard land, but rigidly followed in OSX mouse land and iOS touch land. Whereas the inverse is probably true for Windows.

also maybe it's because I've gotten used to the cmd+up and cmd+dn to go up and down directories (and also open files). in the end, we're all arguing a matter of preference.

I agree in many cases. cmd+up/dn is just as good as the windows equivalent. Being different isn't being worse, being worse is being worse.

it's equivalent to minimizing for windows. I want my mail app and calendar apps to be running and able to give notifications, but the window itself doesn't need to be rendered. Also, stuff like my browser that i open and close constantly doesn't need to be reloaded from the HD every time I open it, I don't want to see photoshop and office splash screens and wait the extra seconds to load an app every time i open a file simply because i closed the last window last time.

There are three things you should be aware of. In windows land, you can have background services running that handle notifications. You don't need the app open if they've designed it that way. Often they'll even stick a little icon in the taskbar you can click to open the app. Second, often pieces of windows software will stay resident in some part so that opening them a second time is much faster than the first time. Firefox for example takes a good 20 seconds to open on my system (what with all the extensions and junk I have in it). But only 2 or 3 seconds after that. Chrome opens so fast the first time I may as well have it minimized. Office apps in particular do a good job of this. Third, because of the MDI style in Windows, closing a document in an MDI style program is clearly not the same as closing the application. Many applications will stay up after closing the last document, like Photoshop, but it's clear that it's open and not just indicated by a generic toolbar at the top of the screen that could pretty much be from any old open app -- which is a consistent problem in OSX, "I've closed all my documents, now is the software closed or not, dunno, there's a toolbar that looks like every other tool bar for every other app, perhaps it is closed and I've just switched to another application, nope! It's still open". Not saying this is better, it just falls into the "different" category. Once you get used to it you go to close the app by command-Qing everything. But it's hugely annoying going from Windows->OSX and never ever ends up "feeling" right.

just a final note on the last part. I am aware that windows caches your recently run programs to some degree, but it's still not quite the same sense of control of knowing your app is running. (also, have you tried starting a MS office app on the mac? yikes)

and windows 7 has definitely fixed a lot of the clutter that really annoyed me with the taskbar and makes it a lot less annoying to minimize a whole bunch of windows. and the whole "minimize to tray" was just a way to get around the taskbar clutter, but then you start getting system tray clutter... and that's another story.

the list of running apps on OSX is fairly easy to tell for me from the "dots" under the dock badges. also, my fav trick for quitting apps is holding cmd, tabbing to the app you want, then pressing q to quit.

anyway, it's mostly a matter of preference. it all felt foreign to me when i first made the switch too, but after getting used to it, i'll take OSX's quirks over windows any day

> and windows 7 has definitely fixed a lot of the clutter that really annoyed me with the taskbar and makes it a lot less annoying to minimize a whole bunch of windows.

I agree, it really is a completely different way of operating. I used to spend a lot of time trying to get the old taskbar out of the way, with Win 7, it feels really nice, operates even better, and in many ways makes a lot of sense.

> and the whole "minimize to tray" was just a way to get around the taskbar clutter

Truer words were never spoken. The process tray is really quite abused. Do I really need 37 icons in there. At least with 7 you can configure the behavior a bit.

I do like how OSX's dock operates, and how it indicates running programs and the like. I think Windows 7 copied very liberally from this in terms of function, but it looks quite a bit different, with some updated ideas.

I still think Apple can optimize the dock and toolbar and notification area of OSX a bit more.

> my fav trick for quitting apps is holding cmd, tabbing to the app you want, then pressing q to quit.

Yeah, that's almost as nice as Chrome's tab closing operation.

In OSX land, there is a nice tendency to put a verb on the buttons like "Yes, Do XYZ" or "Not right now" or something descriptive and unambiguous and creates a nice cognitive binding between buttons and actions. It's a simple thing but is noticeable and I wish it would start to bleed over in Windowsland more.