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Re:That’s it, we’re quitting by cookiecaper on Saturday March 26, 2011 @02:23PM (#2372754)
I agree, generally. I find Mac the most irritating platform to use -- the shortcuts are all different because Apple has a silly insistence of using Super where they should use Ctrl, and common shortcuts are supplanted by the OS, leaving apps to have to find new ones. The Dock is a slow method of switching and Sup+~ shortcut to switch to a windows is more annoying than a straight Alt+Tab. Sup+H and your window goes away; this has confused a lot of people I know, and it annoys me a lot when I try to look at history.

I really see no serious UI benefit in Apple's products. It seems roughly equivalent to me, and it uses the same paradigms as other conventional systems, it just does it in a shinier way, and it seems cool just because Apple does it, just like everything MTV does seems cool to a teenager.

Re:That’s it, we’re quitting by cabacon on Saturday March 26, 2011 @02:43PM (#2372807)
Huh. I find that shortcut consistency is actually a strength of the platform. Are you talking about inconsistencies between OS X's choice and the other OSes you use? Because otherwise, I don't see it. Only on the Mac do I know that I can use the same key combo (apple-,) to get to the preferences of an application, regardless of where it came from. And I'm not sure how apple-` is "more annoying" than alt-tab; apple-tab still exists for switching between applications. apple-` just switches between the windows of an application. I actually like that ability, and again, it's consistent across applications.

OS X may not be your cup of tea, and that's just fine. You just happened to attack what I perceive as one of its strengths, so I'm surprised by your choice of targets.

Re:That’s it, we’re quitting by arrogant on Saturday March 26, 2011 @05:44PM (#2373289)
I agree with this. The fact that you can cycle through both applications and a specific applications' individual windows (in a consistent way) is definitely a perk of the way that OS X handles windows.
Re:That’s it, we’re quitting by cookiecaper on Saturday March 26, 2011 @06:55PM (#2373465)
I do mean that it's inconsistent between OS X and other OSes. I mean that Apple+Tab is more annoying, and I would prefer it all to just switch windows instead of applications. Most apps on other platforms have a consistent shortcut to the preferences and/or menu bar (Alt).
Re:That’s it, we’re quitting by _djo_ on Saturday March 26, 2011 @07:02PM (#2373477)
Actually, Apple's use of the Command key for GUI shortcuts both precedes the use of Ctrl for the same task and pioneered many of the conventions, such as Ctrl/Cmd x, v, c & s, that are universal today.

Although I was a bit skeptical at first, once I got used to the concept it made a lot of sense. On a Mac, Ctrl+key combos are for contextual menus in the GUI and navigation/commands in terminals and text areas. For instance, you can navigate to the beginning and end of nearly any text element in OS X by using Ctrl-a and Ctrl-e, the standard Emacs shortcuts. And the Cmd+key combos are for GUI and application-level shortcuts, such as copy, paste, print, close, etc. There are two different contexts being handled, so it makes sense to use a different key. The combo to copy a line from a terminal window should not interfere with the combo to cancel the running process within that window, as an example, and on OS X it doesn't.

Most importantly, those shortcuts are implemented consistently across applications. No matter what app I'm working on, Cmd+, will always bring up the Preferences window, Cmd+w will close the window, Cmd+q will quit the application, Cmd+h will hide it, Cmd+p will invoke the print dialog, Cmd+s will save, Cmd+S will save as, Cmd+z will undo, etc. I never have to stop and think about it, or get jarred out of my train of thought by an application that uses some non-standard shortcut to save, or quit or similar. I use Ubuntu at the office and while many apps are making good progress on presenting a consistent interface across the OS, I still get frustrated regularly by apps that do things differently.

Finally, Cmd+Tab provides the same functionality as Alt-Tab on Windows and Linux. Cmd+` lets you switch between the windows of a particular application, which I've found to be quite useful on a many occasions.

Point being, don't knock it till you understand why others like it. While I don't agree with all of Apple's UI decisions, there are plenty of excellent usability features in OS X and I now prefer it to both Windows and Linux because those features line up nicely with the way I work.

Aside from a few crappy lowest-common denominator Java desktop apps that haven't been optimised for OS X, but thankfully those are disappearing fast.

Re:That’s it, we’re quitting by _djo_ on Sunday March 27, 2011 @05:21AM (#2374605)
My apologies for the formatting being messed up, I forgot that the * character invoked italic formatting. That last sentence was supposed to be a footnote.