Common Mistakes Made by New Mac Users

looking for the Alt key on the key board for ctrl+alt+Del to quit applications when not responding

They'll also not realize that Safari's default location for your adding a bookmark is on the bar and not in the Bookmarks menu. They'll just simply fault Safari for not having a Bookmarks menu at all if they can't seem to open their eyes and suggest that one be added there instead.

They also love to call CPUs hard drives. Gotta love that.

I think this article just shows that OSX's usability really isn't all that much better than Windows'. If Apple is smart, they will listen to user complaints/feedback like this and tweak their UI to address these common problems, even if it flies in the face of what Steve Jobs dictates. I don't have a lot of faith that this will happen though -- Apple products are very much "Steve's way or the highway".

You guys make it sound like the transition to Mac is full of headaches for those poor PC-users. No? If the switching cost is obvious, why not provide a list with "how to ... on PC" and match it with "how to ... on Mac"?

I've repeatedly seen people not be able to find the programs menu, saying there isn't one because of the stupid 'one menu for all programs' thing.

#1 is great when they ask you why it's running so slow, you look at memory use and realize they have a hundred or so applications still running - just with no program windows. (Which I STILL say is the most counterintuitive thing in MacOS)

In theory the way zoom works in OS X is better for me than how maximize works in windows because when you have a large screen with a lot of real estate in my opinion it's not as usefull to always maximize to fill the whole screen. I practically never used to maximize any windows in windows. In general when you hit the zoom button in OS X it's supposed to zoom the window to fit the content. So if you have for example a finder widnow with four icons and you have it stretched out real big when you hit the zoom button it actually should shrink the window to fit the icons. Sometimes though that doesn't work so well in particular with finder windows but if you don't understand that then I can see how one would think it's just an unpredictable button. I find that I use the zoom button a lot more than I used the maximize button and I have used both macs and pcs for many years.

Something I would do frequently when I switched to mac: trying to figure out why none of my maximized windows were in the dock. Then I discovered Expos頨and the easy way to put in accented letters!).

When I first got hold of a classic Mac way back 1995, I was also creating lots of untitled folders like crazy. I don't know, but there's this sort of fascination when you first got hold of folders that you don't store in filing cabinets. :P

you forget the ones who switch from linux to mac os X (I was a die hard fan of gnome 2.2 WITH enlightenment 16 so here're mine

typing "best camera france" on the url bar of safari and using tab then enter to search it (as in mozilla)
looking for the arrow to get the list of the last url I typed
and the most horrible ones:
using alt +click mouse to move winwows
double clicking on the title menu to get it one lined (as in windows maker, e16 and even mac classic)

Speaking as a fairly recewnt Mac convert (from linux) my main issues were:
1) the disk image. wtf!?
2) trying to use the Finder effectively (still havn't figured that one out yet!)
3) how to find how to launch programs without a 'Start' menu (still haven't got a good solution to that one either.) Quicksilver isn't so useful when you can't remember what that rarely used app is called!