Mac Annoyances
That Useless Red Dot I’ve been using a Mac for over a year now and I still can’t get the hang of how to quit an app. Clicking on the The Useless Red Dot (TURD) closes the window, and, sometimes, the app. It’s pretty inconsistent which leads to a littered Dock. Some work as expected (Calculator, Dictionary), but most don’t. It’s frustrating to close the last window of an app, only to have the icon sit in the dock, waiting for me to close it. Further, if I click that little red dot, the app disappears, but depending on the app, the focus remains on it.
Separate menu bar Some would argue it makes sense to always have the menu bar, have a consistent location for the menu bar or maximizing screen usage. But I can’t count number of times I have closed an app via the red, useless, dot in the corner then tried to access the menu only to have the focus to still be on the app I just closed!
Home and End keys Okay, this is the WIndows guy in me. I expect home and end to go to the beginning and end of the line, not the beginning and end of the document. I almost never have to go to the end or beginning of a document, but I often have to go to the end of line. Simplicity dictates that the more common command should have the minimal amount of key presses.
Can’t maximize I’m sorry. I want to decide how much screen an app uses when I press the green dot. I don’t want the app deciding that it only needs to take up half the screen. I pressed the yellow button to minimize, I press the red to quit (which it doesn’t!), and I want to press the green button to maximize and I mean maximize.
Cmd-Tab switches between Apps but not instances of apps Sometimes I need to transcribe between windows of Firefox. Normally I can copy and paste the text, but on occasion I forget to grab something. It would be nice to just hit Option-Tab and cycle through the two windows and not just between apps.
Left over apps in the Dock I keep my dock simple. I use a small number of apps consistently (Firefox, iCal, Mail.app, Address Book, iTunes, iPhoto, Photoshop, Remote Desktop, and Audio Hijaack Pro; this is my home machine, not work), so I keep these in the Dock for quick access via the mouse. But thanks to TURD, my Dock becomes littered with applications. Maybe I’ll write an app who’s job is to monitor running applications and the Dock. If an app doesn’t have any active windows, then it’s closed automatically after a fixed period of time. Of course I will have to add a white-list, but maybe that will keep my Dock clean.