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Stop manually maximizing your windows


This rant about Mac OS X, multitasking and usability is brought to you by the letter Q and a disgruntled design student:

I heard something snap in my head today as I sat down at the back of an art history lecture hall (where outlets are, I follow) and got to peek over the shoulder of a girl using a 15" PowerBook in front of me.

This girl was using Safari to browse MySpace and - arguments about that site's damage to civilization as we know it aside - the browser window was 100% maximized across her 1280 x 960 display, obliterating what I would estimate is at least 1/3 of useful screen real estate. Then, she switched over to Word to keep working on a paper - again, Word had been manually maximized across the entirety of her widescreen display which was throwing easily half of her usable screen space into the garbage. Unfortunately, she is just one of many I have witnessed throwing away all sorts of useful screen space while using Mac OS X.

Men and women, boys and girls, please: Mac OS X more or less offers only one way to manually maximize windows across your entire display for a reason - because they don't have to be that large. "Multitasking" is defined as "the simultaneous execution of more than one program or task by a single computer processor." If we apply that definition to a person's ability to multitask, it means that you too are able to work on and look at more than one thing at once - which is why Mac OS X intentionally makes it difficult for one application to dominate the entirety of your display (Applications, such as Firefox, that don't obey the Mac OS X windowing rules I'm referring to are exempt from this post).

While the various tricks and design ideals that Mac OS X uses to accomplish this fantastic feat of productivity-inducing magic are outside the scope of my rant, I just want the word to get out that it is actually safe to trust your operating system's judgments in these kinds of matters. Tell your parents, inform you friends. I'm especially looking at you, switchers. I know the way Mac OS X handles windows and changing their size is strange, but trust me - once you get used to it and wrap your head around why it works this way on Apple's side of the fence, you'll be overjoyed with all the extra screen space you just reclaimed.

So go ahead, live on the edge: use that green "best fit" button and the Window > Zoom options, and be happy that you've taken a positive step towards getting just a little more done on your Mac.

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This rant about Mac OS X, multitasking and usability is brought to you by the letter Q and a disgruntled design student:I heard something...
 

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sight_unseen

oi ! Show some backbone there! Show 'em you're not taking the piss !

April 22 2006 at 1:27 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Thomas Fuchs

I completely and utterly agree.

The posters that say stuff like "Just because you say that it's the right way doesn't mean everyone has to hold that opinion." don't get what a blog is about: Saying opinions.

If you want facts, hop over to wikipedia.

April 07 2006 at 10:32 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
melissa

is this a joke? someone's actually THAT upset about the size of the windows on my computer? holy crap.

well, here's something he can lose sleep over: i am proud to announce that i generally looooove to have my windows maximized. wooohooo!! i'm a rebel! watch out.

March 15 2006 at 2:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Adam

While this may be true for people using Macs with larger displays, on my 12" PowerBook, I most certainly like to keep things maximized. Why? On a 1024x768 pixel display, if I *don't* maximize the windows (and hide the dock) I'm losing a lot of valuable screen real estate. Besides, as previously mentioned in these comments, the Apple-Tab keyboard combo does wonders for multi-tasking. Please remember, in any GUI there are generally going to be many ways to do the same thing. Your way is not always the right way.

March 11 2006 at 9:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
andy

Worst.TUAW.Article.Ever.

Slow news day?

March 11 2006 at 6:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
TimF

It can't be as big a waste as having the dock on the bottom vs. the side. That's actually useable area down there that the window can use.

March 11 2006 at 8:35 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Scott Dodson

"This rant about Mac OS X, multitasking and usability is brought to you by the letter Q and a disgruntled design student"

Ah yes, throw in the "design student" for validation of this entry. I'm a full screen user myself, for the sake of less clutter, and to provide more focus on what I'm currently doing (what many have stated in comments so far). Coming from a mac blog I would expect the usage of apple-tab, or the dock to be a main point..those to me make my productivity MUCH HIGHER than running (what he seems to be implying) an internet browser sided next to a word document.

Oh but some people will always figure their way is better than others...

And maybe your "design student" needs to pay more attention in class:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_space_(graphic_design)

March 11 2006 at 2:27 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
CupertinoSlim

STFU.

March 10 2006 at 4:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Alan Schmitt

Oops, I posted my comment a couple hours after looking at the feed on NNW, so I did not see #112. Thanks for the heads up.

March 10 2006 at 2:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Alan Schmitt

Is there a keyboard shortcut for this green button? That would be really useful.

March 10 2006 at 2:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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