Some of the unsung wonders of working in Mac OS X are the features influenced by Fitts' Law. I first saw this concept mentioned and articulated by John Gruber in his Fitts's Law and the Apple and Spotlight Menus portion of a Tiger Details page he was maintaining after the launch of 10.4. In fact, I might as well just quote John for a summary on the basics of Fitts' Law:

The gist of Fitts's Law is that the time it takes to point to a target - in our case here, with your mouse or trackpad - is a function of the distance and size of the target. Bigger and closer targets are easier to hit.

The beauty here is in how Apple has leveraged this concept with Mac OS X's UI, right down to the reason behind the menubar being pinned and always accessible at the top of your display. Basically speaking, there are five primary targets that are dead simple to hit, without even having to look at them: the four corners of your display and the menubar (and sure, the Dock could count as a sixth, but I'm leaving it out for now). You can easily just fling your mouse 'up' and hit the menu that governs the application you're working in (or any you can quickly switch to); it might seem like a minor detail, but it's one that makes it a lot easier to land on the menu you need and keep working.

The four corners of your display are even easier, according to Fitts' Law, since they are what John called 'infinitely large targets.' You can close your eyes and fling your mouse 'down and to the left' and know that you've hit the lower left corner of any display. Attach an action like invoking Dashboard or an Exposé view to those corners (accessible via the Dashboard and Exposé System Preferences pane) and you have just enabled a powerful way to access information and organize your windows. Tack on a 3rd party tool like MaxMenus, CornerClick (a download is available but their site is under renovation) or Spanner and you open up even more possibilities for using these incredibly easy targets to enhance the way you work.

TUAW reader Chris Roberts was right: it's been far too long since our last post in The Little Things series, so I figured I'd pick up the slack with a really handy feature of Mac OS X: drag and drop. Sure, most OSes these days can drag and drop at least some things, but Apple has gone to great lengths to build this workflow-enhancing feature into so many facets of Mac OS X's experience, I don't really have time to cover them all (and there's no doubt that I don't even know about them all). Take my screenshot for example: I'm dragging an image of our puppy out of iPhoto on the left into iChat's icon well on the right. A simple gesture, sure, but a tiny example of how powerful this functionality can become. Try a few of these other drag and drop operations on for size:

• Drag a file onto an app's icon in the Finder or Dock; its icon should darken, signifying that it can handle whatever you're throwing at it. Hold the Command key to force an app to open a file if it isn't initially cooperating.
  
• Drag images from a browser (except Firefox and Camino) into a Mail message or iChat window to easily share them; no clunky 'right-click, Save, Open' workflows here.
• Pause a QuickTime movie, click on the video and drag out to the desktop to create an instant snapshot of the frame you paused on (this might only work in QuickTime Pro - can anyone verify?).
• Drag a file onto a Terminal window to instantly create a path.
• Highlight text in most apps, then click and drag it to the desktop to create a text snippet, or into another window (Mail, iChat and Yojimbo are great examples) for a drag 'n drop take on copy/paste.

I'm sure there's a ton more where this came from, so try it on for size or stay tuned to the comments on this post where readers can share their own tricks and tips for dragging and dropping one's way to productive bliss.

It's been a while since we've had an entry in The Little Things, a series that examines the unsung features of the Mac and its community that we appreciate. A post from The Macalope brings to light a great one: Apple's KISS policy towards the versions of Mac OS X and how they're named.

[Update: Mike made a great point in the comments: the six versions of Vista only encompass consumer-focused editions of Windows, i.e. - Windows Server isn't even a part of this conversation, so I probably shouldn't have considered Mac OS X Server in my post. In this context, there is only one version of Mac OS X. I guess ultimately (no pun intended), I was just trying to be nice to the visiting team by giving them a fighting chance and doubling their odds with two versions of the Mac OS.]

The Antlered One points to (and laughs at) an eWeek article that asks Which Vista is the Right Vista?, examining the 6 - yes, count them, 6 - versions of Microsoft Windows Vista that will hit the streets soon: Vista Crappy Starter, Vista Home, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, Vista Enterprise and, of course, the $400 Vista Ultimate which might very well likely require a new PC purchase of its own, just so its overblown eye candy doesn't choke on the 'old 'n busted' PC you might have just bought earlier this year (disclaimer: yes, 'Starter' is mainly for emerging countries and markets, but it's still on the list, which means it's still going to add to many customers' newfound addiction to Advil). While I have traditionally tried to stay at least somewhat informed of what's going on in the Microsoft Universe since my switch about 5 years ago, I find myself floored by this latest achievement of mind-numbing OS stratification. Does Business include Office? Why does Home Premium have crippled networking - after all, it's Premium, right? Will Ultimate eat my baby? These, and many other similar questions, are sure to take the bounce out of many a customer's step on their way to purchase a shiny, new (emphasis on shiny) version of Windows.

So thanks Apple, for not splitting Mac OS X into Gutted, Home, Premium, Even More Premiumer and Ultimately Shiny versions. Mac OS X does everything for everyone it needs to (and for bonus points: Apple's media center comes on all of them Update: save for the Mac Pro, good call Mr. Hugenstein), and Mac OS X Server's name is obvious enough to let most customers know that it's probably not their cup of tea. Good show Apple, and thanks for letting me check that bottle of Advil at the door.

Continuing our new The Little Things series that highlights the often-overlooked polish and underrated features that make Mac OS X such a joy to use, I thought I'd highlight one of those 'guy behind the guy' features that makes Apple's OS so gorgeous: font anti-aliasing. Nerdy, I know, but check out the screenshot: Windows, even XP, doesn't support this feature system-wide like Mac OS X does, and it shows. Type looks like garbage in everything from desktop icons to most applications and their menus on Windows. Mac OS X, on the other hand, supports anti-aliased fonts from the ground up (to my knowledge), so everything from System Preferences to desktop icons, text editors to iLife and more are incredibly legible and lickable.

Some call it a minor detail, but given the undeniably pleasant usability this brings to the OS, I would argue it's one of those trademark additions that Apple's engineers don't receive enough credit for.

Update: As many people pointed out Windows does, in fact, have a similar feature called 'ClearType,' which some consider superior to OS X's (though it is a matter of taste). The key difference is that ClearType is disabled by default, which in effect means that most Windows users have no idea that it is even an option. Another case of Apple paying attention to the little details, though Vista will have this feature enabled by default.