I hate HATE how Aperture hogs all of my resources every time I close it. I have plenty of speed and ram on my macpro, so why does Aperture need all of it?

I also hate that CS2 doesn’t work properly on my macpro. But maybe that’s an Adobe whine.

William,

Thank you for your response and subsequent insights, it (and they) help with my frustration. Regarding the Dreamweaver / Flash issue with the keys, I’ll acknowledge after reading your post that it’s up to me (and other users, should they share the concern) to report to Adobe and tell them to get on board with complying to Apple’s HIGs.

Much appreciated.

I agree with the oft-voiced complaint about iCal - why can’t alarms be set to default-on? Really, there are so many small wtf? inabilities in iCal… like why, on god’s green earth, can’t you delete an event with a key command?

Being able to sync (easily) between two computers using an iPod or other small removable drive instead of .mac would be great. In fact, I feel like there must be a way to do this that I just haven’t figured out.

@Broen:

The problem here is that you have a different understanding of “appropriate End functionality” than Apple Inc. does. according to Apple, Home and End are not supposed to move the insertion point, but rather scroll the window all the way to the top and bottom respectively (Page Up and Down behave the same way, but scroll just a page at a time). All of the apps that follow Apple’s HIGs work this way (this includes Textmate, Safari, and Terminal — the reason they appeared to do nothing is because you must have been scrolled to bottom of the document already). If you want to move the insertion point, that is where the {,Cmd,Opt}-arrow keys come into play (although, it seems that no one does Cmd-{left,right} arrow right, which should move to the end of the line, then on the next press, move to the end of the next line, and so on). The apps that behave differently (Dreamweaver, Entourage) do so because they chose to not follow the guidelines.

Now then… there’s the issue of Cmd-{left,right} arrow not working in Terminal/iTerm. The reason for this is due to the nature of the applications themselves, which is to mimic the behavior of various terminals. These terminals that they are emulating likely don’t have keybindings for things like Cmd-{left,right} arrow, and the app designers decided to not add those bindings for one reason or another — probably because the various shells have different keybindings for this functionality (usually ctrl-a and ctrl-e) that people used to working in those shells would be accustomed to, and so they reserved it for some other use (e.g. iTerm uses them for switching between tabs).

Martin: You can almost get what you want by setting the view options for all windows in icon view to “Show Icon Preview” and then push the icon size slider up to 128 pixels. You can do this on a per-window basis too if you want; Finder should remember your window preferences if you close and reopen the window when it’s in the state you want. I agree this should be better. It should be smart enough to know image files from other files etc. Hopefully the new quickview in Leopard will fix this.

Guns: I completely agree about the Enter key …

Paully: I agree about the iCal sharing. The only workaraound I managed was to symlink the iCal folder in the Shared user folder so that multiple users can share and edit the same calendars (so it’s all calendars or no calendars. Still, it has worked OK for me as each user can just switch off the calendars they don’t want)

I wish Address Book would allow multiple users on the same computer to share an address book but retain their own “Me Card”. Surely it’s very common for multiple users of a single comuter to have shared friends or family (or business contacts) I can set this up with .Mac as a subscription, but the users who subscribe to my address book can’t use autofill in Mail so it is not a very useful database. The symlink won’t work with Address Book as it doesn’t like it when it is edited by more than one user.

Both iCal and Address Book (and Safari bookmarks) should allow users to access and edit a shared database and their own private data. Even my seven year old DECT home phone can have a shared phone book for the network and a per-handset private phonebook.

It seems that a lot of the whines here do have fixes but I’m sure most would agree they shouldn’t need fixes or the solutions should be more obvious (better documented). Many of the whines though, are real flaws with no apparent solution (mounted volumes in Finder being disconnected etc.)

I’m in regarding the snooze options in iCal. I’d need “tomorrow same time”, “tomorrow at XX:XX”, etc. To cut a long story short, I would like to see user-configurable snoozes (is that a word?).

my 2 cents Erik

Consistent functionality of the HOME and END keys. At least on the notebook models. I’m a coder, designer, writer, and general user. I have a MacBook. I find that in whatever program that I am using at the moment, my HOME and END keys function differently, and I have to use different key combinations to get what I want.

Present-tense narrative ensues: I’m in Dreamweaver, writing a line of code. I hit Function-Right Arrow (end). The cursor moves to the end of the line. “Appropriate END functionality!” I exclaim. Command-Right Arrow moves the cursor to the end of the current word.

I’m in Flash, using the ActionScript editor panel, writing a line of code. I hit Function-Right Arrow. Nothing happens. I hit Command-Right Arrow and I am moved to the end of the line.

I’m in Entourage, writing an email. “Eek!” some readers of this post exclaim. I hit Function-Right Arrow and I am moved to the end of the line. Command-Right Arrow moves the cursor to the end of the current word.

I am in TextEdit, writing some words to help make my point in this present-tense narrative. I hit Function-Right Arrow. Nothing happens. I hit Command-Right Arrow and I am moved to the end of the line.

I’m in Safari, entering a URL. I hit Function-Right Arrow and nothing happens. Alas, Command-Right Arrow gives me the proper END key functionality.

I’m in iTerm (Terminal replacement), writing some savvy command-line instructions. Function-Right Arrow moves me to the end of the line. Command-Right Arrow does nothing.

I’m in Terminal, neither Function-Right Arrow or Command-Right arrow do anything a ‘tall.

The schizophrenia of my HOME and END keys may have lasting effects.

Biggest gripe is the Mail.app.

Emails just don’t get downloaded.

Had to switch back to Entourage…uuuurg….resource hungry beast, but at least I know every email I’m sent will be received.

A couple of whines:

1. Grab a list of files in either icon of list view. If the files are numbered with a number in them like CES8001.psd, CES8002.psd etc double click on them to open them in photoshop and the files are opened in some random order. If you do this in column view it opens them in the right order.

2. Listining to a podcast on my Ipod — not finished with it yet but I’ve arrived at work so I take my Ipod to its dock in my office then I have to used Itunes to find the same Podcast to listen to Oh — it is a TWIT episode so I don’t finish listening to it at work either so I take my Ipod back to the car to finish on the trip home — I have to refind the Podcast again to continue listening to it. Can’t a true round-trip Ipod to Itunes to Ipod happen?

1) I find managing window sizes a real pain. Why doesn’t the maximize button just fill the screen? I spend way too time going to that lower-right-hand corner to drag out windows. (I think apps like Write Room and Scrivener are showing us how wonderful full-screen interfaces can be.)

2) The Mac OS has always been preoccupied with renaming files. Why should the “enter” key rename a file rather than open it? In a dialogue box, we hit “enter” to open a file, so the behavior is already partially established. I open twenty files for every one I rename, yet rename get the easy shortcut.

3) Why do we have universal volume control and volume controls within apps? Why not just one? Maybe there’s a reason for this, I dunno…

I’d love to hear an elaboration on what exactly is wrong with the Finder and what to do about it.