By Oga Ajima
Having been a Windows user since the days of
Windows 95, I have grown to be a fairly competent user. Though I wouldn’t quite
call myself a “power user”, I consider myself slightly above the average user. I
have also used various flavors of desktop Linux including Ubuntu, Fedora,
CentOS amongst others so when I decided to get a new laptop, and the MacBook
Pro was the only option that met the conditions of size, battery power and
hardware specification, I didn’t foresee any usability issues as I considered
myself a better than average user. I had never used a Macintosh before but had
heard how easy and intuitive Apple’s OS was and being an avid follower of
technology, my thoughts were how hard would it be to start using. With this
mindset, I had no intention of spending any time learning the user interface,
that was for “noobs” I thought, that made it harder to seek for help when I ran
into what were different design choices between the Mac OS and Windows. In
retrospect, some of these would have been fairly obvious if I had taken a
little time to learn how to use the OS but in other cases, they make no sense
and I still do not know why certain UI choices were implemented in a particular
way. The following is a list of trouble I ran into while transitioning from a
Windows laptop to a MacBook.
1.
Red Close/Minimize button
Closing
an application (really closing) requires you to go to the file menu and select quit
or use the “Command + Q” keyboard shortcut. This was my most frustrating
encounter with the Mac OS. The three buttons UI design is used across
practically all OS GUI in the folder control and they tend to represent a
Close, Minimize to taskbar and Maximize commands. The Mac OS X instead closes
the application window but not the application when the “X” button is clicked.
I would think from a layman’s perspective, “X” would represent “exit” and this
in combination with the red colour signifies in my own interpretation, a desire
to “stop” an application. Coupled with the fact that across all other OS, it
closes the application, it is a rather odd UI choice and not particularly
intuitive.
Figure 1: X means “minimize”, not “close”
Another
minor annoyance is the lack of a “proper” maximize button. There are times when
having multiple windows side by side is useful but after you are done with the
task, simply clicking the maximize button to resize the window to full size
seems more intuitive than going full screen. However, this task is achieved by
clicking the maximize button while holding down the “Option” key or by double
clicking the title bar of the current application window. Again, going full
screen would seem to be better relegated to the “Option” + click combination as
that seems to be the less frequently desired outcome. Again, this choice in UI
has no apparent advantage that I can see and seems to exist just to annoy.
2.
No cut and paste in right-click menu
Mac
OS X implements only an option to copy files/folder when using the mouse and in
order to cut an item, one needs to make use of a keyboard shortcut “Command +
Option + V” that does not seem terribly intuitive. This is in contrast to
Windows and other desktop Linux variants that include it in the right-click
menu or make use of the “Ctrl + V” shortcut. While the “Command + V” is used to
start the OS in verbose mode, it doesn’t seem to be assigned to any command
within the OS itself and assigning it a different command within the OS seems
like a better option than the three key shortcut the “cut & paste” command
presently uses.
Figure 2: No cut command
3.
Taskbar does not restore between applications
minimized using the Minimize button
Restoring
a minimized application takes up a lot more effort than seems useful especially
in comparison to Windows. While the “Command + Tab” shortcut allows one to
switch between multiple open applications, if you happen to have minimized an
application window, releasing the key combination seems to have no effect as
you are still left with the last window that was open. Closer inspection of the
menu bar reveals that focus has actually shifted to the selected application
but in order to get the application window into focus, extra steps are
required. A left click of the application icon in the taskbar is necessary or
the complicated keyboard shortcut of “Command + tab”, release “tab” while
holding “Command” then “Option”. Coming from a Windows world, this is very
frustrating as there seems to be no rationale for a situation that arises
fairly frequently I would think. A similar annoyance is the ability to switch
between multiple open windows of the same application. This requires holding
down the left mouse button for at least a second to bring up a menu or using
the right click button to bring up the same menu. The nature of implementation
in Windows appears to me to be more intuitive and less time consuming. Open
applications are cycled through using the “Alt + Tab” key combination and
considering multiple windows of the same application can be considered as a
single instance of an open application, why the Mac OS X implementation doesn’t
show them up in the open applications UI doesn’t make much sense. This saves
time since switching to an application using the Tab should allow you select
the specific window at the same time rather than having to use the mouse. Using
the “Command + Tab + Option” key combination opens up the last minimized window
which may not always be what is desired.
4.
Copy and paste of a folder overwrites any other
folder bearing the same name in the same location.
This
is another baffling decision coming from a Windows OS to the Mac OS. Moving
folders is a fairly common operation and having the ability to merge folders of
the same name would seem to be a useful command implemented by the OS. Rather,
the Mac OS overwrites folders bearing the same name with the new one being
copied. In order to merge the contents of folders, one needs to hold down the
“Option” key while copying a folder using the drag-and-drop functionality. A
better implementation would be to pop up a dialog asking to merge or overwrite.
5.
Selecting multiple files in a non-contiguous
manner
Windows
allows you to select multiple contiguous files by using a combination of
“Control + Shift”. In addition, releasing the “Shift” key while “Control” is
still being held preserves your selection while you have the added ability to
select other files not contiguous with your selection using the arrow keys and the spacebar. All these can be done without having once to reach for the mouse. While this is a multiple
key combination that could get cumbersome, it is very useful especially when
organizing or selecting multiple files in a folder. While the Mac OS allows a
similar functionality using “Command + Shift”, there doesn’t seem to be a comparable
one to selecting non-contiguous files without reaching for the mouse; one can only select a any desired number
of files and perform an action after
which the next set of files can then be selected and the same action performed
again. To gain a similar functionality requires the use of the keyboard and mouse and in my view, an incomplete implementation.
6.
Using the Return/enter key to launch
applications
The Return/enter does
not seem to have a consistent action in Mac OS. While it can be used to select
the default action in dialog boxes, using it in a folder however “highlights”
the file/folder/application’s name. This is useful if the intent is to rename
the file in question but if the intent is to launch the file, then there’s a
more cumbersome key combination “Command + O”. Again, not assign the launch
action seems to be counter-intuitive as launching files seems to be a more
frequent action than renaming files. Coming from a Windows background and
having experienced similar behavior in Linux, there doesn’t seem to be any gain
for this decision. Having a two-key combination no doubt ensures that launching
an application is a deliberate action and prevents accidental launches but any
positives gained from this is minor compared with the inconvenience associated
with multiple key shortcuts for an action that will be engaged in fairly
frequently.
7.
Separating the calendar from the clock
This is another odd decision that seems to
carry no benefit beyond giving a distinct approach to the Mac OS. Checking the
date and time are usually part of the same work flow as knowing the time tends
to go with a need to know the date and vice versa. While the Mac OS
incorporates a user’s schedule within the calendar, there seems to be no reason
while the time and calendar app are not integrated as one application. The
process of checking the date is not a particularly onerous task but it entails
some annoyance as it requires multiple steps to accomplish a task that could be
done in one step.
8.
Navigating using the “Tab” key not natively enabled.
Using the Windows OS does not require a mouse
and where this is very obvious is navigating options in popup dialog boxes. The
“Tab” key can be used to navigate among the various options available within a
dialog box. Within the Mac OS, this option seems to be unavailable and this is
rather frustrating. This hole in UI implementation is usually most obvious when
you desire to select the non-default option in a dialog box. This requires an
interruption since you have to reach for the mouse as there is no default
navigation option in the Mac OS. The default option seems to have been changed
as earlier versions of the Mac OS had this enabled. In order to enable this behavior,
users have the option of going to System preferences and navigating to Keyboards/Shortcuts/Full
Keyboard Access option and selecting the desired behaviour of switching the keyboard focus. This option can
also be accessed using the “Control+F7” shortcut.
9.
Having a shared menu bar for applications
There are both pros and cons to sharing a
common menu across applications. Using a common menu provides consistency
across applications as the user becomes accustomed to where to search for
commands irrespective of the application but on the other hand, coming from a
workflow where having multiple application windows open side by side is more
often the state, it becomes rather frustrating as you have to keep track of
which application window is in focus. This is a minor annoyance which is more
of a pet peeve since I believe that for a greater proportion of users, having a
common menu is more advantageous.
I am over a year now in my journey in the use
of the Mac OS and these different UI implementations still aggravate and not
just because of the learning curve but rather the inconsistencies that they
seem to embody for a UI that is makes an effort to be easy and intuitive. A lot
of the issues and grievances I have is that the OS does not seem to allow you
use a one in put device to achieve all UI tasks. You might be using the mouse
to perform certain tasks but in order to have full functionality, you have to
perform an extra step or use a combination of the mouse and keyboard;
similarly, while the Mac OS employs a lot of key combination and shortcuts, it
does not provide full interaction with the OS using just the keyboard but
rather forces the use of the mouse. These do not come across as very user
friendly. There are probably keyboard shortcuts to achieve all these tasks but
from the perspective of the average user, it would require a time commitment
and memorization of commands. The OS by itself is not particularly useful
except as a platform to get tasks done and making it have a more time and
effort investment in order to get access to all the features available means a
lot of those features won’t get used by the average user.
While the user paradigms used on both systems
are no doubt very different, the anecdotal stories of the origins of the GUI in
Xerox PARC system creates some preconceived notions with regards to GUI
implementation, unfortunately that was a misunderstanding on my part but in the
same vein, having now used the Mac OS for over a year now, there seems to be no
explanation of using multiple key combinations for tasks that are done fairly
frequently.
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