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Vox Pop: What's your "Mac Whine?"

We've started a new feature over on MacBreak Weekly that I really hope becomes a regular thing: "_Mac Whines_!"

Yeah, sure, I'm an unapologetic Apple fanboy (I, mean duh), but some stuff about my Mac experience makes me crazy. Have you got a beef with your Mac or OS X you want to shout from the shiny counter of the "Genius" Bar? Yeah, me too.

I'll open with:

  • inexplicable iCal "snooze" options (per MBW 30 -- which, incidentally, may also be my favorite MacBreak Weekly to date)
  • near-hangs whenever a mounted network volume is no longer available
  • no way to (temporarily) enable password-free user switching
  • The Finder. The goddamned Finder.

What's your Mac Whine?

MLong's picture

I have to agree with...

I have to agree with everyone who has whined about the Finder freezing when a network drive has been disconnected. This has been a problem for far too long.

Also, I agree with Damon's comment about re-enabling the scripts menu in Mail etc.

Jeremiah Staes: I am really curious what you mean by "Address book forces you to enter things in successive order". I'm probably just being stupid here and, like you, I am used to it ... I'm just not sure what you mean.

Pazu: in System Preferences>Keyboard & Mouse>Keyboard Shortcuts set "Full Keyboard Access" to All controls (or just use ctrl-F7)

Then .. in any application Ctrl-F2 to highlight the Apple Menu (top left corner) then cursor right to whichever menu you want and cursor down to select an item OR Ctrl-F2 then type the first letter of the menu heading (E for Edit V for View etc.) and then type the first letter of the menu item to highlight it.

[on a notebook, you will probably need to use function-ctrl-F2 to highlight the Apple menu]

This in not necessarily quick so it you plan to use any menu item often, you would be better to make your own custom keyboard shortcuts for those items.

Balfour: What do you require from Preview for viewing PDFs to make it decent? Are these things that come as standard on other operating systems or do they bundle Acrobat Reader?

Solo: I have never had your problem with hiding and showing the dock on any of the (30+ various age) Macs I deal with so it may be an issue with your set up. Also, you could set a custom keyboard shortcut to Secure Empty Trash:http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2005/04/tigertip4setakeyboardsho.html

Chris: Would tagging all your work photos with "Work" and making smart albums for "work" and "non-work" help? I find iPhoto keywords and smart folders very useful for similar problems.

As for one of Merlin Mann's original whines - "inexplicable iCal “snooze” options", I listened to the MacBreak Weekly mp3 to hear the complaint and I have never experienced the snooze options changing from the default 1, 5, 15 etc. minutes and one hour or two hours before. These options seem to be the same for any items I have reminders for. However, I wish I could customise these without command line trickery.

 
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