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43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

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?

marijane's picture

@Jason: thank you for letting...

@Jason: thank you for letting me know about the keyboard shortcuts setting! this is a big improvement.

i am not sure i clearly communicated my whine about drop down boxes. my issue is not selecting items from them, but getting focus to them from the keyboard so i can proceed with selection. my experience with web forms in os x is that tab will cycle focus across text boxes (and i think radio buttons as well) but it skips over drop-down lists. if i don't have focus to the drop-down, pressing the space bar or the character i need just appends those keypresses to whichever text box currently has focus. for over two years now, i've been dying to know how to change focus to a drop-down via the keyboard on OS X.

@GeekLady: i needed to follow Jason's instructions before your suggestion worked...

@Robert C: thank you for those pointers! unfortunately, i have to use windows at work, so i like to keep the different things i have to remember between it and os x to a minimum. if i get into the habit of using command-d, or command-., i know i may reflexively start trying to do it in windows too, and previous experience tells me that would be frustrating.

 
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