10 Things I Hate about OS X

OS X is good but far from perfect. Better that Windows XP? Maybe. Definitely faster. It is not without its share of annoyances. To Windows XP's credit, most annoyances can be fixed with tweaks, power tools, and registry settings.

So, inspired by these lists of 10 Things (actually 20) to Hate about OS X, here's mine.

If you see something here that can be fixed, let me know.

10. Dragging dissimilar items to the trash doesn't work.

If I drag a disk and a file to the trash simultaneously, the file should be put in the trash and the disk ejected. This is even more important with Disk image files, where I have mounted an image file and want everything to just "go away".

9. It's too easy to accidentally launch the wrong item from the dock.

If you click a few pixels off the mark, you might have to wait a long time staring at the spinning beach ball.

8. The "you removed this device the wrong way" message.

Windows XP figured out how to deal with this, the Mac OS X should have figured this out first. This also goes back to #10.

7. Lack of write support for NTFS volumes.

6. When you press command-J to change the view of a Finder window, the default is "All Windows".

That's backwards. It should default to the current window. It's very easy to screw up all your finder windows with this default.

5. Dashboard is only as fast as the slowest open widget.

If you have a widget that has to look something up on the net or "initialize" when you invoke dashboard, none of the other widgets work until that straggling widget has got its work done. This problem alone has kept me from using the dashboard altogether.

4. Too hard to get rid of dashboard widgets.

I know there is a way to make them disappear from the active dashboard. The fact that I can neither remember nor easily figure out how to do it by guessing means it's too hard.

3. Default icon placement spacing is WAY too big.

At least on the desktop, new items are created with way too much space in between them and the last one.

2. Single sign on isn't really single sign on.

When I login as a user with Administrator rights, I don't expect to get prompted for a password for *certain* actions that require these rights. I have identified myself to the system once and the assumption should be that it's still me. If this were actually done to increase security, it would require me to enter complete credentials, and not just a password (the username text field is pre-populated).

1. Bouncing dock items.

These are worse than System Tray balloons in XP. They are little imps -- incarnations of evil determined to distract me from my work and annoy me needlessly.

Quote du Jour: Backwards priorities

And this is even from a Senator

"The reality is that it is easier to buy low-grade radioactive material for a dirty bomb than it is to buy cold medicine"

tip: To the People

(Must also reference summary of article on border security:

Old man on tricycle [with pot]? Busted.

Undercover agents with dirty-bomb material? Welcome to the U.S.A.)

Anti-walmart propagandist scared by Stephen Colbert

Robert Greenwald, author of "Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices" is pleading for help to prepare for his interview with Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report this week.

There are about 100 pages of suggestions on his blog, so I will offer mine here instead.

Make sure you have your facts straight.

(thanks consumerist)

Onesuite.com hates me, doesn't want my money.

I use onesuite.com for my long distance. It's a pre-paid card. Dirt cheap for the whole 10 mins of long distance I spend each year.

They clearly don't want me to recharge my card, because their multi-page online payment form has a Reset button on every page of the form located where the OK/Submit button should be.




It should come as no surprise that I have accidentally cleared this form while filling it out many, many times.

As Jakob Nielsen points out, Reset buttons do more harm that good. Especially when they are placed where they shouldn't be.

Real reason for no trials

The Bush administration doesn't want to to have trials for detainees because they are too incompetent to convict them.

Virginia Postrel is fucking awesome

Libertarian author, design pundit, all-around hottie and former Reason Editor-in-Chief donated a kidney to a friend this month.

My New T-shirt

Will say this on the back, ripped verbatim from To The People but empasis will be mine.

"The incompetence of the US government has been nothing less than shocking in the past few years. The bungling of the Iraq War, the inept preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina and the Keystone Kops implementation of the Medicare drug benefit have combined to make the US government, which sucks $1.5 trillion in taxes from its citizens' pockets each year, look like a very expensive Mickey Mouse operation."

Burn Witches to Heat the Pizza Ovens?

Tom Monaghan, founder of Dominos Pizza, is planning a catholic university and town that sounds like living hell.

the highlights of "Ave Maria":

• no porn
• cable controlled by, er, the church? Tom himself?
• no condoms or contraceptives at pharmacies
  
• all commercial real estate is controlled
  

On one hand I applaud Monaghan for doing this the right way -- privately building a (walkable!) community from scratch around your beliefs. On the other hand, I bet he doesn't do it privately. Tax abatements will abound, eminent domain invoked, yadda yadda yadda. The taxpayers of Florida will foot the bill for many things I am sure. Florida. Jeb Bush. Hmm.

It will be very interesting to see how they handle the contractual issues. They will most certainly require waiver of such things as the First Amendment, which has made it possible to do exactly what Monaghan is doing. For instance, can another pizza shop have a "666" competing pizza special after they've agreed to the retail contracts in the town?


props Consumerist, which points to an update from Slate.

My New T-shirt

Will say this on the back, ripped verbatim from To The People but empasis will be mine.

"The incompetence of the US government has been nothing less than shocking in the past few years. The bungling of the Iraq War, the inept preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina and the Keystone Kops implementation of the Medicare drug benefit have combined to make the US government, which sucks $1.5 trillion in taxes from its citizens' pockets each year, look like a very expensive Mickey Mouse operation."

Mail them the $%#!$#@! Tickets

Having solved all crime, police in Texas started pulling people over for doing nothing wrong.

They rewarded them for courteous and good driving behavior.

Unless of course they happened to spot something in the car, or the driver had an invalid license, etc..

We'll use cameras to mail people tickets for driving infractions, but we use real police to give them baseball tickets. That's a good use of resources.


props Agitator.

Learned nothing from Katrina?

Holy flying cows.

What is the Douglas County Emergency Management Department doing? Evidently they aren't preparing to manage emergencies. Are the expectations so low after Katrina that we find it acceptable they couldn't even keep their generator and sirens running?

This wasn't an equipment failure, as Director Phillips was quoted as saying in the paper, this was a failure of emergency management officials keep their emergency equipment tested and running when an actual emergency occured.

During the next storm I won't be in my basement, I will be headed downtown with a couple of cans full of gas doing the job DCEM is supposed to be doing.


Link.

Ridiculous Error Message du Jour

Aaahhh!!!! Am I in The Matrix now? I've already been downloaded. No wait, this is a question.

From the app Streamdown. I would have kept it anonymous if the software was free.

If you want money for your software, you're fair game.

Department of Churchland Security

If having the DHS do drug and porn raids wasn't enough, Bush signed an executive order creating the Department of Homeland Security with Respect to Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

I had to double-check that this wasn't a joke. I wish it was.

Homeland Security will come knocking

Because today I am sure to set off all the secret Drug War alarms by buying up all the stock I can find of the current formulation of Nyquil. You know, the formulation that actually works.

You see, Procter & Gamble is removing pseudoephedrine from it's 'Quil products because they can be used to make people feel better methamphetamine. Pretty soon the hardware stores will restrict toilet parts to stop pipe bombs as well.

If you're wondering why the KBI or ATF won't come knocking, it's because DHS is increasingly being used to fight the war on drugs.

Oh, and internet porn is now under the DHS as well.s

The Future of Illegible Text

Here's the menu for the home page of a particular company's web site.

Perhaps a little less focus on "techie futuristic look" and a little more focus on "don't make my eyes bleed to read this" would be appropriate.