barefeet's Profile

As a recent Mac switcher who loves her Powerbook, I completely agree with you. Keyboard short-cuts -- I'm finally getting used to hitting the Command key, but it wasn't pretty at first. I can see how that would be true for others if either the Control key or the Command key was made the standard shortcut key... I think a whole lot of people on whichever side 'lost' would make a lot of fuss, but it honestly is not that difficult after a while. (As a further example, I grew up in the UK, where our keyboards are laid out to have the " symbol over the 2 and the @ symbol over the ' -- they're switched around. At first when I was typing on the standard US layout, I'd get email addresses with inverted commas in the middle all the time, but now I can use either lay-out comfortably. Your body learns it.) I don't know that I necessarily support standardising the two systems, but it would be a good-faith gesture on Apple's part if it maybe put out a plain-English manual for switchers and included it in the box with the computer and said: okay, this is what you used to do. Here's how you do it on a Mac. Even if they included it on the OS as a help file or tutorial, I think it would help out a lot of people. They could even give you an option when you boot your new machine up for the first time to use a standard Mac keyboard layout with the Command key as the shortcut key, etc. or to use a WIndows layout with the substition of the Apple key for the Windows key. Two-button mice -- again, I'm used to the one button on my Powerbook now. I was working on a Windows laptop yesterday and I kept trying to left-click with the right button. But I think the two-button mouse is better, because I loathe having to Ctrl-click to bring up the right-click menu. All of the arguments against it as a good keyboard shortcut key (it's too far outside the centre of the screen, for example) are, I think, even more valid for it being a modifier key. I have to break off whatever I am doing to make sure I time the mouse-click and the key-push together, whereas my fingers can reach as far as Ctrl-N (new document) so I can do it one-handed. But with the two buttons I can just right-click -- and it does it without me having to think about it. (I prefer keyboard shortcuts over the right-click menu, btw -- at least one Windows user who does.) Other features I'd like to see in OS X: 1. Image thumbnailing -- I fully agree. I realise I should use iPhoto for all my viewing needs, and while it's a very nicely-implemented piece of software, I am not going to fire it up every single time I want a preview of a folder of images I'm already at in the Finder. 2. System Restore. I've used it a couple of times on my Windows PC, and even when I haven't used it it was nice to know I could make a back-up point as a piece of software was downloading, just in case. Maybe I'm paranoid after obsessively clearing out for spyware for years on Windows, but it would be nice if the Mac had some sort of fail-safe for users hellbent on screwing up their computers. 3. Highlighting a file and pressing enter should open it. I want a rename option in the right-click menu. I want it to open when I press enter. This is one of the more frustrating things for me, since I use the keyboard a lot. I don't like switching between it and the mouse if I can avoid it. 4. When I'm typing into a form, e.g. logging on to this site, I type my user name, hit tab, type my password, hit tab, and then on Windows I hit tab again and press enter to check the box saying "remember me." I then hit tab and press enter once more to submit the form. Why am I forced to click on the Mac? Other than that, I'm very happy with OS X and my Powerbook. I think Apple has done an excellent job of making the Mac as pleasant as possible for switchers, and the things listed above are all fixable and implementable. They're little things -- I think that if I were answering the question, "what should Longhorn borrow from Tiger?" my list would be longer, much more difficult to incorporate, and more depressing. :-) So Apple's definitely on the right track, and they have made most of the experience very pleasant for me.