#1. OS X 10.3.9 is certainly much quicker on my upgraded Sawtooth PowerMac G4 with 1.2 GHz G4 and ATI Radeon 9000 Pro than my office computer is with Windows 2000 Pro on a P4 2.4 GHz. It starts in less than half the time and it shuts down immediately - compared to Windows where a shutdown command can take several minutes. The only app that I feel is slower on my Mac is Word 2004 where the scrolling speed sucks compared to the Windows Word 2000 version.

#2. Agreed that OS X is lacking in consistency compared to OS 9, but compared to Linux? Gimme a break - the most inconsistent system I have GUI-wise is my Linux laptop (Mandrake 10.1). I still like using Linux more than I like using Windows.

#3. I don’t use 10.4, but I use the Google search field all the time. I wouldn’t want to get rid of it.

#7. It may be confusing to some people, but not in any way to me. It is definitely more consistent than the confusing behavior of the task bar on my Windows computer at work or on my Windows XP laptop at home (1.3 GHz AMD and slow as molasses, definitely slower than my 600 MHz Celeron Linux laptop and less than half the speed of my 1.2 GHz PowerMac in most tasks).

#8. I only use F9 to get to Exposé, so I don’t know about any hot spot corners.

#9. I use Entourage 2004 as my PIM. There are as few reasons to use Mail.app in OS X as there are reasons to use Outlook Express in Windows.

# 10. I hardly ever have to reboot my Mac. The only times seems to be when security updates are released, and I don’t find that especially surprising. My Linux computer needs fewer restarts due to upgrades, but do not sleep gracefully, and thus needs to be shut down, a flaw that takes a lot of time. I only use deep sleep on my Mac, which make it sleep and wake in an instant. Even if I restart it, the total cycle is very short compared to either my Linux, Windows XP or Windows 2000 Pro experience.

# 11. A centralized *working* uninstallation function should be nice on any system, but seems to be less than optimal everywhere. In Windows you often get confusing questions about if you want to remove dll files you never heard about while uninstalling. If this works for you, fine, but it does not work for most users.

PCs are fast.
Macs are fast.
AMDs are fast, (IBM) PPCs are fast and Intel are fast CPUs.
Other computers are probably fast too.
This and that software are fairly good, OS X is very good and Windows is too tightly clogged with technology and methods to keep developers — and thus most owners — blind to any other possible choice.

I programmed PCs for ~10 years (NOT VB!), worked for the ‘evil’ company for 1 1/2 years and have now (mid ‘02) left and gone back to Apples, open-source and hardware that _just_works_!

I am interested in what a person, or I, do with computers and information, NOT playing games, chasing arbitrary commercial goodies or wasting my time by reading, blogging or being a (company) champion for IT promises or future rumours — to stifle free thinking or some innovation.

MY annoyances list contains all you commercial money grabbing media types and or CEOs, who try and continue to manipulate the average ‘joe’.

That must be the one thing that I absoultely *like* about OSX! I detest the fact that in other operating systems or DEs lowered windows are actually active too; because it forces you to find an empty, widget-less space to click. That is for instance why I’ve already accidentally banned two people on OSNews: I was using GNOME, but thought I was in OSX, so I clicked the Firefox window blindly, only to find I was clicking the “ban user” button :/.

“6. Microsoft would make millions for years if it had a feature as polished as that. You can easily turn it off and on - search Macupdate.”

I know, I use DisableTigerFeatures to disable Dashboard.

Btw, thanks for the responses, everyone!

1. The worse problem is that it is not only slow but it *feels* slow. Of course, that alone wouldn’t make me use Window$ as my main OS.
2. Couldn’t agree more. I hated metal when it came out to replace aqua and I hated aluminium PowerMacs (for some reason I liked Titanium/Aluminium PowerBooks). I am using Iridium skin because I can’t stand the new Mail and iTunes look.
3. I am not using Safari. There are better browsers around but none is perfect so I have to use more than one. Opera would be fine for me if it was a Cocoa app.
5. It depends. It’s certainly not worse than the competition. It’s interface and functionality is what needs work. Right now it feels like alpha version - too many inconsistencies and rough edges.
6. Micro$oft would make millions for years if it had a feature as polished as that. You can easily turn it off and on - search Macupdate.
7. The Dock needs an overhaul ASAP.
8. Never experienced that as I’ve always used a multi-button mouse and Expose is too frequently used not to have it assigned on one. I find it unintuitive to move the pointer to a corner open a program or trigger a function on a constant basis. And there is really only one hot corner easily used if you have a dual-monitor system: bottom left. All the others are too hard/easy to trigger.
9. I agree. I hate Mail’s new look too. It’s too Windowish and looks cheap.
11. I hate installers/uninstallers. It’s what makes Winblow$ so lame after all. It’s a common cause for problems. Window$ has to keep up with everything making it so slow (if you don’t think it is slow you either work for Micro$oft, you are too young/old or you ‘ve never really used more than 2 OSes). The uninstall process gets easily corrupted on Windoze and you have to deal with registry sooner or later. I just love applications that are as self-contained as possible with just entries on Preferences and Application Support directories (perhaps these two could be unified someday ?).
12. See above (#3). I believe there are many ways to change this misbehaviour. RCDefaultApp is one of these.

Finder has never been remarkable but that’s because I was using a superior OS when others only knew about MacOS, MSDOS and Unix. What really bothers me is annoyances that I am not able to fix with a 3rd party program, either because I haven’t found one or because there is none:

- GUI inconsistencies
Inability to align icons properly in the Desktop (grid spacing is too wide).
Inability to change default windows-focus behaviour (I hate clicking twice on an inactive window just to activate a widget/button. Maybe there is a tool around ?).
Drag’n'drop does not work ok universally (Why is it so unintuitive to select a folder or a group of images in Preview ? Why you can drag’n'drop text to another window’s textbox/textarea only if the latter has been previously activated ?)
Is there any reason that someone would want to open 100 “Get Info” windows when he really wanted to change the attributes of his 100 photos instead ?

- System performance
Crucial system features and performance of applications like MySQL is too slow and the CPU or the app programmer is not always the one to blame.
Help viewer is too slow (not the program but the local indexing and the retrieval from the online resources).
Quicktime 7.x is terribly slow.

“You haven’t a fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

Yeah, I made it to Managing Editor of one of the biggest computernews sites in the world because I “haven’t a fucking clue what [I’m] talking about”.

LOL.

“I don’t see this this bug on any of several systems. Are you sure this isn’t a problem with your video card?”

Actually, I mentioned this in the interview the KMac guys (deffo Mac-fans) had with me, and they acknowledged this problem, they had it too. Since these remnants starting popping up *after* the upgrade to Tiger, it must be a software problem, since Panther had no such remnants.

This rant is fucking nonsense. Go back to your Windows Explorer and find out what the keyboard shortcut is for “New Folder” (hint it’s not Ctrl+N, or even Shift+Ctrl+N). You haven’t a fucking clue what you’re talking about. Bloody schoolkids…

Hey, great, thanks! I’ll try that out when I get back from university today.

“It is ANNOYANCE, not annoyence.”

My native language isn’t English, so I might make mistakes.

“Mature what you have and spare us more flash at the expense of the fundamentals.”

AMEN.