Forewords
I'm no Mac guru, it could be that I've missed something really obvious somewhere, but these are nevertheless some issues that I find hugely annoying and keep me from using my Mac OS X more than absolutely necessary.
This article was written in 2012, hopefully some things have been remedied when you read this in
Updates Are Done On a Per Application Basis
Every piece of software installed have their own update notifications when a newer version of that piece is available. This is first of all hugely annyoing and ineffecient.
Added to that, I've missed out on important software updates because I hadn't used that application in a while (Skype). When I one day needed it, I assumed that I had the latest version and was taken by a bad surprise when I needed it (Video conferencing with multiple users). Since the meeting had to start precise, I had to do without the video feature.
Symlinks are not exposed as full worthy directories
It's a HUGELY pain in the butt that symlinked directories don't show up in the various application's open file dialogues. I cannot believe this can be! It's amazingly stupid, in order to access files on symlinked location, I must, well, not use the symlink at all.
The Window Maximize Event is Faulty
Using a 3rd party program, I've managed to get a shortcut for maximizing the current window. However, the un-maximize event doesn't work on all windows (e.g. the Terminal and GNU Emacs), which is rather annoying.
From what I can understand, Mac OS X does not have the concept of maximizing a window, only a document. This leads to funny behaviour like this. As a user, I cannot understand how difficult it can be to introduce this concept if Mac doesn't already have it, but what do I know :-)
No fast way to switch between keyboard layouts
I have not found a way to fast switch between different keyboard layouts. I use three layouts every day: American for programming and Norwegian & German for writing colleagues, partners and customers. Hence, I constantly find myself switching back and forth. On Linux, it is a doodle to get this working, but on Mac, I have so far settled with:
- Stop typing (of course)
- Move my right hand to the mouse.
- Click once to select the layout menu
- Click again to select the other layout.
Being able to have a self defined shortcut, that is easily hit without moving the hands off the main part of keyboard has a lot to say for my daily operation speed and I wish there is an easy way to do this on Mac, without writing my own program.
Impossible to Remove the Window Decoration
When I'm working in one application for a long time, I normally turn off the window decoration (including the window title) to get more space on the screen for the important thing, namely the window contents.
However, this doesn't seem to be easily done with Mac OS, but if you know of a solution, please give me a shout! What I want is one shortcut which allows me to toggle the window decoration of the current window.
Hard to re-map the keyboard into sanity
Re-mapping is probably possible, but it's not as straight forward as all other Unixes makes it.
Doesn't follow the file hierarchy standard
Another hugely annoying thing for someone used to other
Unixes and Unix like operation systems.
It's equally annoying since Mac OS X claims to be a modern
Unix, and is in some respects, a very old and silly
incarnation of it.
- `/Volumes` not `/mnt` or `/media`
- `/Users` not `/home`
It's close to impossible to change this as
well. `/home` is on Mac, unlike any other Unix on
the planet I've used, not the default home area for users, but
a special area for users that log in using SSH.
I found it close to impossible to change this behaviour so that my
user had its `$HOME` under `/home`.
## Spaces
When Mac got this "revolutionary" technology that Unix and
Linux has had since the break of dawn, it looks very nice at
first sight. However, one thing that came to annoy me, and is
still a big problem, is that I have to choose between three
pre-set keyboard shortcut combination to cycle between them.
All of these three combinations are useful for other
applications and I therefore have to alter the behaviour of
several of my favourite applications in order to use the
shortcuts to change workspace. This is just one more thing
making it impossible for me to work fast (as fast as I am used
to on Linux) in Mac OS X.
## Terminal
### Double/tripple clicking doesn't consider the terminal contents
After using urxvt
for years, I've gotten rather spoiled with its grandour. One
such detail, is the click intelligence. It always does what I
want: double clicking on a URI in the terminal should select
it. However. Terminal just highlight the entire line, even
thoug there is no text on the entire line.
Hence, Terminal doesn't consider the actual contents of the
window when applying click events to it.
## Ports is Bad
Before getting a Mac, I constantly heard people saying that
Mac had the belove feature we're used to from the Linux and
BSD world: a command line tool wich allows for easy install,
upgrade and removal of software and their dependencies.
However, after using `ports` for a bit I must say it's ... perhaps ok
if you're used to REHL, but if you're used to something like Debian's
`apt-get` and `.deb` architecture, it's just slow, stupid and utterly
limiting.
And now I didn't mentioned all the loop holes you need to go
through in order to install ports (because it's no way near
standard software on the Mac).
## Network Status Incosinstency
The nice GUI network utility can get quite confused, without
trying too hard (I just wanted to set up VPN, which only
worked for certain types of VPN), I ended up with this
inconsistency:
Notice the IP of the wireless network interface, ```eth1```, it's
different!
## Final Words
If you have solution to any of the above issues, please give a
shout, I'll love to get these things working.
