Comments by user "ebaur"
Registered since: September 13, 2008
Macbook: Lowest brightness level (black screen) is a bit misleading
Control-Shift-Eject is *not* a hidden shortcut in Snow Leopard (maybe it was previously). You can also easily get to this by pressing the power button and then selecting "sleep" from the dialog that comes up (or pressing "s"). Or you can just close the lid. To be clear, though... putting the computer to sleep and lowering the screen brightness are two very different things.
The first two options you pointed out aren't very good for the reasons you pointed out... they break assumptions people may have about that setting. To be honest, I don't like the third one (Windows does stuff like this, and it annoys me), but it's probably the best of the ones you list.
Apple! Stop stereotyping PCs!
It's. A. Joke.
Goodness graceous. Heck, even at my office (where I am currently the only "Mac user"), nearly all of my coworkers thought this was funny.
Finder should remember windows size
The main problem behind this is that it's not clear what the size should be. Mac OS X allows a folder to be open in two windows at the same time, which was not possible in Classic Mac OS. Because of that, what does the OS do if the windows are different sizes, which one is it supposed to remember?
I think the OS does a reasonable job at it, but I leave my windows in column view nearly 100% of the time... so the trick of opening a window, sizing it and the closing it works fine for me.
Dashboard and Expose at the same time
That's pretty cool. Does anything bad come out of it?
Delete a File by Pressing Delete Key
@mikeschinkel - What you are hearing is my frustration with the general Mac zealot for whom everything about the Mac is perfect and for whom no constructive criticism can be valid.
Fair enough. What you get from me is that I've used multiple operating systems and I genuinely prefer Mac OS X. Many things on this site people pretend there are objective reasons for, but usually there aren't. It comes down to preferences most of the time. This is no different. I regularly switch between Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and develop for all three... I've found that most of the time I can work very efficiently on any one of them in the confines of a standard install... so I do take with a grain of salt some of these types of complaints.
@mikeschinkel - I accept your definition as it applies to you if you'll accept my definition as it applies to me.
I'm okay with that, but then the word shouldn't be used... since it's now meaningless for discussion. (I'm not trying to be mean, but if a definition can't be agreed upon, then any sentence containing it is going to cause confusion.)
@ebaur - Do you really think that having to hit two keys to delete a file significantly increases your risk of carpal tunnel syndrome?
@mikeschinkel - Yes.
@ebaur - This is blatant and useless exaggeration
@mikeschinkel - Again, from your perspective. The fact you are not willing to consider another perspective is telling.
Sorry, this isn't about perspective. You are bad at math... or you delete an amazing amount of files one by one each day.
I have a programming project I've been working on in the last few months. It's up to about 25,000 lines of code and over 1 million characters. Granted, due to code completion and copy/paste, I didn't type each character, but I also had to retype and delete things, so I think that's a fair estimate. In that time, let's say that I've deleted 10 files per day... that's around 1000 files during the course of that project. So, 1,000 / 1,000,000 = 0.1% Of course, that's not including the number of e-mails and documentation I've written (around 100,000 more characters in docs for just this one project). I'm sorry, I don't believe that adding 1000 more keystrokes to 1 million increases your risk of carpal tunnel.
@mikeschinkel - Let me guess; you are under 30, right? I ask because if you are then carpal tunnel is less likely to be a concern.
Interesting Ad Hominem. No, I'm over 30... in fact, I've nearly been using computers for 30 years. Again, this has nothing to do with my concern for CTS... it's the fact that taking two keystrokes to delete a file isn't going to make much of a difference, so I find it a pointless thing to bring up. In fact, I tend to be a pretty heavy keyboard user in order to keep better posture overall (I often find it amusing that an old complaint of Classic Mac OS was that you couldn't do keyboard navigation very easily... now I watch my friends tied to a mouse completely in Windows.)
@mikeschinkel - I didn't say Windows is perfect; far from it.
My initial response to you was in large part due to the comment: "Why cede the power user space to Windows?" So, you're contradicting yourself a tiny bit.
The comparison is interesting, however, because it shows that two separate UI teams decided that file deletion was important enough to protect from occurring accidentally. This is especially true when the file is on a network share and will not be saved in the Trash/Recycle bin. (Note: Mac OS X does warn you with an additional dialog about this). But Windows has a *less* user friendly (my opinion) way of dealing with the original issue and uses the exact number of keystrokes in the end. By making the power user statement, in this thread, you implied that having to strike two keys in Mac OS X was somehow worse than having to strike a single key, wait for a second, then strike another key. I can delete a large number of files much faster
@mikeschinkel - Contrary to the negative press Vista is much better than Win XP
meh. I'm a Mac user at home and I use what they give me at work. Nearly everyone I've talked at my office (power users! [grin]) has told me that they prefer XP to Vista. The same people tell me Windows 7 rocks. I'll be installing that in VMWare on my MacBook soon. Windows Server 2008 annoys me, but that's probably just familiarity again. [grin]
Delete a File by Pressing Delete Key
@mikeschinkel - No, it makes you look silly to not be able to consider another person's perspective...
You missed my point, sorry if it wasn't clear. I do actually understand what you want and why. I've even had the thought myself that it would a smidgen easier to be able to delete a file with one keystroke*. What I'm teasing you about is that you make it sounds like it's a huge deal. To me a power user is someone who runs Linux, Mac OS X and Windows and switches between them. A power user is someone who has built small utilities to streamline common activities - using batch files, Automator, etc. A power user is someone who has customized the system beyond what the original developers intended. A power user is someone who has figured out how to do most of what they need to do via the keyboard and/or command line and not touch the mouse (hey, it's faster to not switch!).
A power user is not someone who is frustrated that they have to hit two keys at the same time in order to delete a file*.
By elevating this issue to a "power user" issue, I think it sounds silly. It's an annoyance, nothing else. Or, you and I have significantly different definitions of what a power user is.
@mikeschinkel - Yes, power users like to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome as much as the next guy; more so actually
See, this is what I'm talking about. Do you really think that having to hit two keys to delete a file significantly increases your risk of carpal tunnel syndrome? How many keys do you hit on a daily basis and what percentage of them are involved in deleting files? This is blatant and useless exaggeration.
@mikeschinkel - BTW, that keyboard remapping doesn't work on all apps; just had it not work yesterday on a Java-based app I'm using.
Oops.. my mistake. The feature is only available for Cocoa apps (ie: Mac OS X "native"). It doesn't work for Carbon apps, either. Sorry for misleading people there, I should have known better.
*Now for the footnote.
All this is about having to hit two keys to delete a file... have you counted recently how many keys you have to hit on Windows to delete a file? "You just have to hit the del key" I hear you object, "and Windows doesn't insult you by assuming you'll make a mistake, Mac OS X treats you like an idiot!" And then, after hitting the Del key, a dialog pops up: "Are you sure you want to send '...' to the Recycle Bin?" with a "Yes" and "No" button. Hm... maybe I'm not enough of a Windows power user to be able to do this trick w/out two keystrokes - or a trip to the mouse, which is less efficient, so let's not go there.
Maybe they've changed things... I'm using Windows XP. And I'll admit that I haven't dug around to see if there is a way to get rid of that dialog, but if there isn't a way, then the keystroke count is the same between the two OSes and this entire thread is completely pointless.
Delete a File by Pressing Delete Key
"power user space"?
We're talking about hitting Command-Backspace compared to hitting the Delete key, right? Is this really a block to you being a self-described "power user"?
BTW, Mac OS X *does* have the ability to remap any keyboard command from any application, which is a very powerful feature that Windows does not have. It also has the ability to swap out the various modified keys - which is useful for using a Windows keyboard on a Mac. Try doing the reverse, it's very difficult to setup and required third party software.
The one caveat that you're not going to like is that the command mappings are required to have at least one modifier key (other than shift). So, no you can't use it to have "Move to Trash" execute via the Delete key only. Deal with it. The paradigm is that the command key is pressed when a *command* is to be sent to the computer rather than just text input. It's done that way, in part, for consistency. Also, as has been pointed out, it keeps you from being in the middle of renaming a file, then accidentally deleting it (well, moving it to the trash) because you weren't in rename mode when you thought you were. Can it be recovered, of course... is it annoying? A bit. Is is more annoying than having to hit *two whole keys at the same time* to delete a file... I guess we disagree on that.
Look, I get it.. it annoys you having to press two keys. Fine. Don't try and pull this "power user" crap, though... it just make you look silly.
Trying to rename a folder in use results in unhelpful dialog
It kind of is an unexpected error, isn't it? In my experience, Mac OS does not prevent you from renaming folders, even when they contain items in use.
How did you get this to show up?
There is no native support for read/write NTFS in OS X
The problem with FAT32 is that it doesn't support the security model that NTFS does. Not sure if that makes a difference to Mac OS X, though.
Don't have Safari open dmg's automatically
"...no other mainstream OS allows that disk images..."
That's being a bit disingenuous. No other mainstream OS supports disk images out of the box they way that OS X does. No other mainstream OS uses disk images as the common format for delivering software.
There are pages that will download and launch things from IE on windows - no, it's not run from a disk image, but software runs anyway. As far as admin passwords are concerned... I will blame the user to a large degree. If you didn't expect to authenticate, you should be worried when the OS asks you to. I could write an app that look like a security dialog and pretends to ask for a password when really I didn't need it. I could write a web page that pops up a dialog that also appears to be an OS screen asking for a password. That is the nature of a trojan and no amount of OS vendor security is going to solve that problem.
Note, for the record, I'm not thrilled with Apple automatically opening the file in the disk image, although, I'm not sure it will run an app... I think it only opens automatically if it's a package file. Is that off base? Actually, what I'm more upset about is that it deletes it automatically after installing.
There is no native support for read/write NTFS in OS X
Yes, this is Microsoft's issue, for the most part. MS has never released an official spec for reading data from NTFS and 3rd party (ie: open source) solutions have often had read corruption issues. Although Apple may be able to adopt those, I have a feeling they don't feel like taking *any* chances with corruption, since they would be held responsible for it.
If I were in Apple's position, I would do the same thing. At least Mac OS X has an extensible filesystem drivers.
Don't have Safari open dmg's automatically
You seem to be talking about two different thing. I believe that DMG files are always safe, although they may not contain safe files. Granted, they may contain a Trojan, but if the user intended to download it (thinking it was an app they wanted). If it was downloaded without their knowlege, then the password prompt is a good hint that something weird happened. Even apple software updates require a user action before they start installing. Also, that password dialog is not customizable by the application.
Delete app related files/settings when dragging apps to the trash
If an application uses a package to instal, then there is already a BOM file (Bill Of Materials) included in the package. You can use Pacifist (if I remember the name correctly) to inspect a BOM and see what files were installed.
As for other files (preferences, application support directory, etc), those will *not* be in the BOM since they are dynamically created as the app runs.
Yes, I know a lot of people want these deleted automatically... but it shouldn't be by default in my opinion. On the other hand, there should be an option.
Snow Leopard - the new minimize option has no clear indication of minimized windows
No, "Hide" applies to the entire application (ie: all windows) where as this option effectively hides single windows.
Macbook: Lowest brightness level (black screen) is a bit misleading
Wrote on March 25, 2010, 1:59pm
I say it's not a hidden option because it's listed under the Apple menu like any other command key combination (in Snow Leopard). It is a sleep option, however... so if you don't want the computer to go to sleep then it won't work for you.
I haven't tested it specifically, but I think the behavior mojo2012 referred to is only when waking up from sleep. Not sure, however.