Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor, Software
What are your app annoyances?
After my long-winded dissertation on Mac apps, I got to thinking how some people prefer clunky interfaces. I know people that actually like and use the horrid Sony-branded music player that shipped with Vaio's back in the early part of this century. SonicStink or something? Anyway, different strokes I guess. My wife, for instance, can't stand iPhoto's insistence on iWeb. She misses the utter simplicity of 1-click publishing to .Mac. Now she actually has to manage a website (simple though it may be in iWeb). I noticed a huge array of opinions about Disco, and of course, there are those who simply hate OS X for various and sundry reasons... So out of the apps you love, what annoys you? For me, #1 has to be Safari's lack of warning when you close out a window full of tabs. How is that supposed to make sense? At the least, let me turn that ON. Oh well, I guess it could be worse.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
jsw said 4:26PM on 10-31-2006
I think my biggest peeve is the inconsistency between apps with respect to (a) autocomplete and (b) cmd-arrow / option-arrow.
For example, I use NeoOffice and regular Microsoft Office, and in Microsoft Office, cmd-arrow means "jump one word". In NeoOffice, it means "shrink the spreadsheet or table cell you're in, and don't treat that as an undoable action". Option-arrow is jump-a-word in NeoOffice. Gah.
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Derrick said 4:29PM on 10-31-2006
I second the window-full-of-tabs opinion. I'm also amused that the picture gave me a reason to use ctrl-alt-command-8.
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eric said 4:30PM on 10-31-2006
Disco pisses me off in the fact that they override the default OS X style window widgets. I don't want to use they're bullshit black stuff. At least make it an option so I can turn it back to graphite...
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john said 4:31PM on 10-31-2006
if you sleep your Macbook/Powerbook with network volumes open then turn it on at a new location that doesn't have access to the old network the Finder beachballs forever and ever while it tries to locate the server(s). In some cases takeing out using the mac entirely until it gets it sorted eventually displaying a "disconnect?" dialog box.
There are enough clues that those volumes are not available and won't be any time soon: IP address changed, Wireless access point name changed, the fact that a ping failed after 10 seconds and that the Mac was slept, cover closed and motion sensor wiggled ought be enough clues. Instead the Mac is brought to its knees.
At least it doesn't crash the Mac like it did in OS9. If you fileshared to another Mac and it crashed you're Mac would crash too.
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RWD fan said 4:33PM on 10-31-2006
Firefox 2.0 constantly SBOD'ing on my MacBook.
No, I haven't added more ram, but that shouldn't be an excuse for the program to freeze. Other apps running at the same time keep right on going.
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Paul said 4:34PM on 10-31-2006
F2 in Excel not putting focus on the edit bar, unlike the Windows version (and NeoOffice). Drives me nuts!
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Peter said 4:35PM on 10-31-2006
Installers!
If you can't make it drag and drop there had better be a damn good reason for it. If I can't drag you program into the application folder then I will drag it to the trash.
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Simon Iannelli said 4:40PM on 10-31-2006
I love eyecandy in application - but only as long they serve a purpose or don't distract in any way. when eyecandy is beginning to distract from work there should be an option to turn it off. the latest example for this is the windowtransperency in disco... what for?
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Mike said 4:49PM on 10-31-2006
@3, I have replaced the images in Disco to give me regular Aqua buttons, and in my opinion it looks a lot nicer.
My biggest annoyance lately is Disco and it's 'look.' Don't get me wrong, it is a very nice application, but there is absolutely no reason why it needs its own buttons.
awaken: http://tinyurl.com/tk3vt . The look of Disco reminds me of Awaken, with it's transparent main area, but Awaken looks great with an iTunes 7 metal and buttons.
Safari quitting with more than one tab open bothers me. At least let me restore my tabs if I accidentally command+Q instead of command+W.
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Scott said 4:53PM on 10-31-2006
My Applications folder will not stay sorted the way i want it to, instead its just all jumbled up. Lucky for me quicksilver rocks!
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Devin Pike said 4:56PM on 10-31-2006
The Adobe CS's nasty habit of not using system-standard keystrokes for hiding the app (apple-h). I know there are workarounds for it like a script or whatnot, but every other app knows better than to mess with that reflex movement.
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DrWho said 5:01PM on 10-31-2006
Finder not remounting network volumes after a sleep. With my iTunes library on a network drive this drives me nuts.
CD burning from a burn folder, the dialog that tells you to insert a blank disk but only has a cancel button on it. Very confusing.
Frontrow slow to start and general slow responsiveness especially when going back from videos to the main screen (and i have a core 2 duo imac with 2 gig
ram)
No smilies in mail.app - at least I haven't found a plug in for it yet.
Other than that I heart my iMac and Tiger...
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jerome said 4:59PM on 10-31-2006
I wish iPhoto did the old style publishing too. My latest "what?!?!" is Photo Booth...i'm sure you used to be able to apply effects to already shot pics...now it seems you can only apply the effect when taking the pic. Am I going mad?
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Keith said 5:37PM on 10-31-2006
i have to agree with #4 and #7.
i'd also add to #7 that if a program is going to ask me for my password, it better explain what it plans on doing. textmate has a good exapmle of this.
i really hope leopard has a more unified look & feel. i use UNO on all my macs, but when i come use someone else's mac i'm instantly reminded of how "mish-mashed" the window styles are.
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Robert said 5:06PM on 10-31-2006
Firefox's lack of the standard command-period to halt any operation really ticks me off. Worse than that though, I use ultra high-end workflow software from Kodak (Prinergy), that actually had the bright idea of changing the Mac-standard command-delete combo for removing files to command-backspace. WTF? WHY?
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Michal said 5:06PM on 10-31-2006
Lack of full screen playback in Qt. C'mon apple!
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Paul said 5:10PM on 10-31-2006
"For me, #1 has to be Safari's lack of warning when you close out a window full of tabs. How is that supposed to make sense? At the least, let me turn that ON."
Victor -- Safari *does* warn about closing multiple tab windows. At least mine does. I'm running v2.0.4 on 10.4.8.
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terk said 5:51PM on 10-31-2006
yep, DrWho, I hate that too! I have 3 n-drives I need to use often and they just bore me with the autosleep ON
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myheaditches said 5:10PM on 10-31-2006
MY annoyance in installing an app:
All the cool new apps tell you to drag the application to the Applications folder, usually with an arrow pointing to an image of the applications folder. The best thing to do is to replace that image with an alias of the applications folder. It makes it much more graceful, I just drag the app to the alias and I'm done.
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Wizardgold said 5:10PM on 10-31-2006
it really bugs me whenI want to copy an phone number from Address Book and the thing stops working for a short while then up comes a window asking me what application I want to use. Silly thing to happen every time I want to get a phone number out of it to paste elsewhere.
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