When I bought my first Mac a couple of weeks ago I bought it for a number of reasons. One of those was that I had been led to believe that the Mac operating system presented the ultimate in user friendliness and ease of use…
Now don’t get me wrong before I’ve even started. I am pretty enamoured with Os X’s smooth lines and nice antialiasing, it’s aqua, it’s quartz extreme, it’s genie trick when minimising windows and it’s magnifying dock. It truly does look very very nice. In fact, the more I look around the web, the more I see little bits of Os X creeping into the public view - some horizontal lines here, some small blurry text there.
However having used Mac Os for a while now, there are a few things that are really starting to bug me. Before I start though, a caveat. I am well aware that tinkering or the installation of haxies can fix some of the things I mention (TinkerTool, etc). The things I refer to are most evident when the operating system is in it’s default state, or if you prefer, how Apple would like us to use Os X.
Navigation and The Dock‚Ñ¢
Let’s get this one out of the way first. It sucks. Big time. I have yet to find one person who really, truly likes the dock. For those of the windows persuasion, imagine your start bar not reaching from one side of the screen to the other. Then quadruple its height. Add the name of each application above its icon, which has also grown in height. Position it in your mind, in contact with the left, right or bottom of the desktop, slap bang in the middle of the screen. Then try to maximise a window. Hmm.
Application switching is also pretty clunky ‚Äì you can switch between applications by using Command+Tab, but there is no uniform way to switch between windows in a specific application. While I’m on the subject of uniform navigation, my PowerBook has no dedicated Page Up/Down or Home/End buttons, only arrow key secondary functions. This is not so bad and is quite standard in a lot of laptops. However depending on which application you are using you either have to press fn+arrow key or Command+arrow key to access the same function. ???
Ctrl-Command-Alt-Fn-Thatsquigglyone
Whaaaaaat? We live in an age of five button mice and space age game controllers and I’m still having to use both hands to execute simple commands and input so called ‘obscure’ characters? Incredible. Let me illustrate… In order to take a screenshot and copy it to the clipboard, ready for pasting into another document on a Windows PC, you press the button on your keyboard marked ‘Print Screen’. In order to do it on a Mac, you have to press Command+Ctrl+Shift+4, which unless you are Andr√© The Giant or Richard Kiel, requires two hands.
It took me weeks to work out where the delete button was (fn+backspace) and I still can’t find the bloody hash button (Update: alt+3! How ridiculous - shift+3 is the ¬£ sign. Someone’s having a laugh…)
Also, there is the fact that the alt and command keys have several names. Alt is also known as ‘option’ and has a strange water-divining stick type illustration on the key. The command key (which in my mind is a name too easily confused with the control key) has a picture of an apple and a kind of Escher influenced noughts and crosses board. Is this really necessary? They should, imho, just be named the ctrl, alt and apple keys, like you have the ctrl, alt, dele.. uhh.. Windows key on a Windows keyboard. Much simpler, don’tchathink?.
The Finder
Ah, the Finder. Lovely that it is, I can’t help wondering why they chose to make the grid the icons sit on so large. Or why the path to the current directory isn’t displayed anywhere in the windows so you know where you are at all times. Or why you can’t have a shortcut to your home directory on the desktop. Or why there is no easy command (apart from divining-stick+Escher-grid+H, which you have to click off the current window and hopefully onto the desktop to use any way) to minimise all active windows, a la the ‘Show Desktop’ button in the Windows quicklaunch bar. Or why there is no visual equivalent of the ’sudo’ command.
*Sighs*
Getting into a Fitt
While browsing around the internet a while back, I came across a mathematical model which deals with the prediction of human movement and motion based on rapid aimed movement and has vast implication for usability and user interaction with computing systems. This little gem is was developed in 1954 and is known as Fitts Law. In terms of usability it basically states that target areas (buttons etc) can be rated in ’size’ depending on their proximity to the mouse pointer or and edge of the screen. If a target area is touching the side of the screen it is deemed to have infinite ’size’ as it is impossible to overshoot it with the mouse pointer.
Now, to apply this to Os X. Take the Apple menu button for example. The button appears to be in the top right hand corner and as such must be of infinite ’size’. However someone decided to stop the button from reaching all the way to the left hand edge making it all too easy to overshoot. This phenomenon also occurs in Windows where the start button is one pixel from the edge of the screen. Microsoft managed to fix this for XP though…
Also, think about the Dock’ and it’s magnification. The target is moving. This is bad. Although with closer inspection, the way Apple have executed the magnification is quite clever as the icon the mouse pointer is directly above stays in the same position and all the others move to accommodate it’s growth. I still can’t help but think I’m chasing the icon around the screen though. Not very easy with a track pad…
Another implication of Fitt’s law states is that if a target area is clearly labelled (think ‘Back’ and ‘Forward’ in a web browser) and does not move around, it’s ’size’ is increased.
Why oh why does Os X and the programs that run on it rely on so many floating pallettes? When Macromedia released their MX line of products they made a great fuss about the fact that everything now takes place in a single layered docked environment, and oh the difference it made. No more did I have to juggle little pop ups to view different parts of the document I was working on. It was Christmas come early. As Fitt points out, because the palettes don’t move it is easier to learn where they are and as such my productivity increased markedly. Any of this make it to the Mac? Nope. I’m back to window juggling,
I’m going to stop now. This is getting a little out of hand. I had planned to mention the ridiculous idea of needing a powerful 3d accelerator to power the 2d environment of the Finder, and to attempt to debunk the equally incredible idea that ‘You plug it in and it just works’ for peripherals (I effectively have no printer or digital camera now) but I may save this for part 2.
Hopefully some of this stuff will be sorted out in future revisions of the operating system…
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