Programmer Musings

I am not a Mac Person

Despite being convinced that we are rational people, many programmers or software types can be rabid about our favorite technologies. If you want to hear a passionate opinion, ask about favorite programming editor, programming language, or operating system. If you want to start a fight, suggest that the preference is not an objective decision. That instead it is just a preference.

After you get out of the hospital, you might wonder why people who pride themselves on rational thinking are so passionately irrational about these things. Over time, I've finally come to understand that different people's minds work differently. (Yeah, we should know that. After all, everyone else isn't rational like us.) Many people wiser than I have told me this over the years. About a decade ago, I finally began to realize they were right.

I am a vim user, it is comfortable and does what I need. Several of my co-workers use emacs. That's fine. I understand that it makes sense to them, even though it seems to fight me at every step the few times I've used it.

Over the last few years, I've been using a Mac for work. This is the first time in my career I've ever used one. I know people (some of whom I really respect) who rave about the brilliance of the Mac interface. Who absolutely adore the way the hardware is put together. Any time I've commented about something I don't like, I've been told it's that I "just don't understand the reasons why this is obviously the right way to do things."

The truth is, I have read about why some of the interface issues were chosen. I've heard the arguments on why I'm wrong. But, truth be told, they don't convince me. Amusingly enough, it's not the big things that give me grief, it's the little stuff.

Minor Nits

There are a few things that a really minor and might even be reconfigurable. They are minor annoyances, that I trip over just often enough to annoy, but not so often that I am willing to take time to find a fix.

• Cmd-C, Cmd-X, etc. instead of Ctrl-* (granted this would be less of a problem if I didn't keep returning to Linux at home.)
• Mouse seems to be required for many operations
• Only able to resize windows from bottom/right. (I'm used to resizing and moving windows into whichever direction I need.)
• No "select with mouse and right click to paste" feature that is available in both Windows and Linux.
• In Finder, select several items and push the delete key. Nothing happens. Instead, you need to navigate to the "move to trash" context menu item.

Actual Annoyances

The next set of issues actually cause me some real trouble. BTW, there's no need to tell me that I just don't understand the superiority of the Mac way of doing things. The arguments about superior design really don't trump the loss of my productivity every time I trip over one.

• Cmd-tab to an application with multiple open windows and all of its windows move to the top
• Closing windows doesn't close the application
• If I'm in a window in one application, open a window in another application, close the second window. (I expect to go back to the first window in the first application. Instead, I seem to be sent either to another window in the second application, or lose focus on any application.)
• Menu bar on the top of the screen, not top of window
• Attempt to create new window on a different desktop puts it on desktop where the others are.

Macbook Annoyances

In addition to the desktop machine, I also work with a Macbook. In addition to the other issues, there are a couple of things that only seem to happen on the Macbook.

• The function keys default to not being function keys, but special hardware functionality instead. (I was recently shown where to reconfigure this.)
• When waking up the Macbook with the screen locked, I begin typing my password and the cursor is often moved out of the login dialog. If the last program I was in was accepting input, that's where my password ends up.

No One, Right Way

Despite how it may sound, I'm not claiming that the Mac interface is horrible or badly designed. On the contrary, I see a lot of polish and good design in the interface. These problems are just mismatches between the world of the Mac and the way my brain works. That mismatch causes a definite loss of productivity. And, that explains why I'll probably never be a Mac person.