Steve Jobs and Apples “amazing” geniousity: Macbook usability issues
So we hear all the time about apples’ amazing UX/UI experience, right? Here is a list of Apple Mac iOS “unknown” bugs – clumsy ideas which turn into a bad user experience and somehow, we don’t hear about them:
1) Saving a file is not done into the folder you opened it
You double click a file in its folder, for example, you want to update a “pages” (the mac version of Word). Now you click save, and it is trying to wave it in the folder which you recently used for word, say you worked before in a different folder, this is where it will try to save it
2) Why the hell the folder is expanded?!
You open “Finder” (the Macbook version of “files”) and you click the list view on a folder – boom! all the subfolder are expanding. Well, nice try to “improve” usability, but where is the “collapse” button? It can’t be find, because the apple geniuses knows better than you!
3) Take a screenshot – but it doesn’t really do a real screenshot
You click the screenshot app, and try to take a screenshot of say – an app which is mouse sensitive or click sensitive (for instance – a website that has got a “mouse over” effect). You can’t really do it… because to take a screenshot, you need to move your mouse and click the screenshot app – the mouse sensitive app is now changed. (comment: you could do it with shift + command + 3 but this is a shortcut, there isn’t any dedicated button for it)
4) Flip the command and control buttons? great, but there are bugs
The Mac is letting you chose roles for the command and control buttons (obviously because initially the command button was a very bad choice…) however, the roles would not communicate with some apps, for example – if you SSH to a remote server, the “command” button will still function as “control” and vice versa.
5) The “dock” area has got its own personality
Sometimes I find lots of buttons in my docs area – of running apps / opened windows – but sometimes those apps are running but can’t be found in the dock area. When there are lots of buttons, they turn very small which is annoying. I’m still scratching my head to understand the logic behind this behavior.
6) Looking for a window? great, now its quest time
The Mac iOS tends to collect and keep apps open, and it seems that there is no real way to tell which apps are running and which ones are not. You click the “all windows” app and you may find apps which you closed – are still running. You click the “all windows” button and some apps which are found running in the processes, are not shown there.
7) How about setting a conjob?
The Mac iOS seems to have a crontab, but I never managed to run it. No matter how many hacks I tried, the jobs are entered, but are not running
8) Packaging is horrible
The Macbook packaging is horrible – if you are used to Debian apt-get, there is no real equivalent for it in Mac. Professionals users may use all sort of hacks for packaging, one of them is brew. It seems like praying would work better if you try to install some pieces of software: and those which have got installation packages – would have lots of bugs. The ones which are stable are sold for thousands of dollars.
9) The cut and paste bug
If you use a secondary language, the Mac has a cut and paste bug: if you are on the secondary language (say Hebrew keyboard) and pasting content you copied when you were on the first language (say English keyboard), the content will get posted twice.
10) Unwanted system updates
Do like like to control your computer instead of it controlling you? Right, this is why I hate Windows and like Linux systems. But a Mac won’t be better – it is forcing you to see those update windows, and in some of them, it is not really clear what the action going to be: you click “see updates” and they actually get installed. You click “later” and it will ask you “later when? – 1 hour / 2 hours etc” without any option to completely cancel the update. This is a very poor usability approach.
11) The DB Store Ghost
The Macbook operating system is saving a type of a system index file or meta data file in each directory that you use – its name is .DB_Store and it is very hard to get rid of this very strange way of doing things. It means that each project directory is contaminated with system files – this is really the wrong way to do things (and one of the reasons I think GIT is the wrong way to handle file repositories). The other bad news is that this .DB_Store mockery is fairly big in size – in this case – about 40% of this project folder!
In general, I find the Mac as a much faster and stable computer than Windows computers, but as for the usability advantage – well this is sort of a lie.
