– Menubars aren’t ideal for multiple monitor situations. – Keyboard-only navigation needs improvement in most places in Mac OS X. You’re used to Windows (which KDE on Linux copied other environments also copied some elements from Windows). I’m sorry, but this is mostly a “coming from Windows/Linux” thing.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.īoth comments and pings are currently closed.Ĥ2 Responses to “10 usability lows of Mac OS X” On Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Mac OS. There we go! That’s set the world to rights. You have to switch to one of the other views to do this. Shift-clicking to select a range of files in the Finder doesn’t work in Icons view.And talking of the Print dialog, why can’t you move focus to the “PDF” drop-down menu with the Tab key? How do I print multiple copies? Oh, I have to click a little arrow to the right of the currently-selected printer – which you’d have thought would change printers, but no, it brings up the hidden print options. Why can’t I do even basic things like rename a file or folder? Windows and Linux have simply done it better. And I don’t think this is a “coming from Windows/Linux” thing either, as I switched to the Mac 2 years ago and this behaviour still pisses me off. Yet the easy-to-press Home and End keys jump you to the start or end of the document without moving the caret, which is next to useless in my book. Having to use the fiddly Command-Left and Command-Right keyboard shortcuts to do the extremely common tasks of going to the beginning and the end of a line. Nasty keyboard navigation of text documents.(Though you can at least choose which monitor displays the menu bar.) Results in frequent RSI-inducing mouse marathons from one display to the other. Only one menu bar on multiple monitors.And no way to control the acceleration either. First thing I did with my new Mac was whack the tracking speed up to the max, and even then it’s not as nice as in Windows. Terrible keyboard control in general (try using iCal with just the keyboard).Not being able to type a shortcut key for all of the buttons in a dialog (a la Windows). Dialogs hard to use with the keyboard.A menu disappears if you accidentally click the separator bar between two menu options. So in the spirit of rational debate – and, frankly, because I’m a bit grumpy this morning – here’s my top 10 list of Mac usability disasters (in no particular order): While I agree that the Mac is generally pretty easy to use, it’s by no means perfect. This article worshipping at the temple of Mac OS usability has garnered a lot of attention recently.

Mac trackpad gestures with a mouse