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You actually made laugh out loud. 
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson
Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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It is nice, until you start doing something serious with it. It gets job done when the job is simple. But when you start using it for serious work, it really gets in your way. And like all the other Apple products it will make you feel stupid / frustrated with simple tasks even if you are a pro.
Yes, the Finder is a bad design. I still remember googling for 'How to rename a file in Mac' (there is no option in Edit menu also  ), 'How to do a slideshow in Mac', 'How to open a file using Keyboard in Mac' and few other embarrassing searches, and it was really simple but not-intuitive (take that Apple) like press Enter (rename), press Space-bar (slideshow) and press Ctrl + Down Arrow (open).
It took me few days to get over the lack of Backspace key, specially when I was coding. And it still annoy me that Mac can read, but can't write to my external HDDs, because they are formatted with NTFS. When you backup/import your Music/Photos with iTunes/iPhoto, you can't find it on the HDD anywhere.
Also be gentle/careful with the power adapter, the cable 'will' break (near the power pin) and it will cost you an arm (take a look at its reviews on Apple Store). And be ready for GBs and GBs of updates every few days. Apps will get updated for the latest version of a Mac OS, even if you are using an older version. The Mac App-Store's prices will make you laugh, > $100.00 for Apps that does so much little.
So most of the negatives are due to the awful Mac OS and not because of Mac (They know hardware but don't know software, opposite of Microsoft), if you install Windows on it. It will be very useful. 
On the positive side: I really like the portability, track-pad, keyboard feel, display, long battery life, overall built-quality and other people's oh wow expressions (which, I will never understand why).
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Rutvik Dave wrote: It is nice, until you start doing something serious with it. It gets job done when the job is simple. But when you start using it for serious work, it really gets in your way. And like all the other Apple products it will make you feel stupid / frustrated with simple tasks even if you are a pro.
Can you give a few examples of the "serious" work that you do so easily on a Windows PC that is so difficult on a Mac? This is an honest question. I've seen a few others make the same general claim and I'll be damned if I can't think of any work I do in Windows that isn't similarly easy or hard on my Mac. Makes me wonder what others are doing that I'm not.
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
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Mike Mullikin wrote: Can you give a few examples of the "serious" work that you do so easily on a Windows PC that is so difficult on a Mac?
Off the top of my head, "Doom" and "Quake" come to mind. 
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde
Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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- Mac will not work properly on a network,
- It doesn't work when I enable user quota and permission on my NAS,
- It can't write to my friend's external HDD (because most of them are formatted with NTFS partitions, it can read but not write),
- It can't read from my smartphone that is connected using USB (no usb mass storage mode),
- sometimes it will not connect to my mobile hotspot (this happened many times on my client demo).
- Can't connect projector. not even my PICO projector with USB port.
- Many times it will not find the printer on a network.
- Desktop window management sucks, you need to do some stupid gestures to find that Copy Files Progress window.
- Crazy amount of terminal commands required to setup a development environment.
- And the amount of internet bandwidth it consumes is insane.
- Many apps will not have a proper installation process so when you drag it to your Application, it will ask you if you want to run this unknown app even when you have enabled to run unknown apps it in the settings.
- My usb headphones doesn't work on a Mac. It doesn't have a microphone jack so my other headphones also doesn't work.
I am not saying there is no fix for all of the above, and I am not even looking for answers. What I am trying to say is when I try to use Mac in my office it gets in my way (Mostly due to design choices Apple made on behalf of you). It makes my system admin feel stupid even they are very good at windows and linux.
It works great at my home for surfing and watching movies. 
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Wow! Sounds like you've had your hands full. That's a shame. I won't waste any of our time trying to address these individually. Suffice it to say that I've not experienced very many of these issues - despite doing the vast majority of them.
In fact, the only one that stands out is "not writing to NTFS partitions". I understand there are licensing issues between Microsoft and everyone else (Apple included) that prevent Apple from officially offering full support for NTFS. Luckily those same issues do not apply to ExFAT[^] partitions (also developed by Microsoft). I format all my external drives with ExFAT specifically so they can operate with both Windows and OS X. Too bad the drive manufacturers don't do the same.
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
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Keith Barrow wrote: who moved my cheese?
I went through that back in 1998 when I switched from OS 7.5.5 (on a Powermac 6100) to Win98. I haven't looked back since! I do remember 'Finder' from those days as it tended to crash often. Great times!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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I went through that pain about two years ago, though I used the mac only part time (for an intended port--the entire project got canceled before I had to do serious work.)
My view of Apple is that as long as you do things the way they want you to do them, everything is fine. Deviate from that and your life gets difficult.
One thing I never got over (of many) was how the UI seemed to be three UIs cobbled into one and one was still using thirty year old font. I never did adjust to how some options in xcode were in the xcode menu and some were on the global menu (whatever it's called.) and some weren't on any menu at all (the silly amount of keyboard shortcuts issue, which wouldn't have been so bad had the key combinations made logical sense.)
Then there's the joy of windows popping up in the background with no indication anywhere that a window popped up in the background.
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Few more tips:
- cmd-ctrl-shift-4 will place the selected screen area into clipboard, not a desktop file.
- I often go to Preview and press cmd-n to create new file from clipboard.
- cmd-shift-3 and cmd-ctrl-shift-3 will do the same as their -4 counterparts, but for fullscreen
Btw. you have apparently some strange keyboard, I never seen a mac with # key in any other place but shift-3 
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I've been using Mac for ages - I love OSX, but would agree that the "It just works" thing isn't always the case. There are some pretty strange/non-obvious things which you need to do on the Mac.
To change the filename in finder: select the file to change, and then press 'Enter'. Quick to use when you know it's there, but intuitive? Hell no.
And don't get me started on the hundreds of hidden characters - on my (Finnish) keyboard, the {} | $ and many more are all hidden behind the alt key, and not marked on the keyboard at all. You get used to it after maybe 5 years, and it's always fun to alt through all the keyboard characters to see what's there. •Ω鮆µıœπ
About a year ago, Apple started taunting us with the mysteriously moving taskbar on dual-monitor machines. No word of warning, it just suddenly started moving between screens - took a few weeks to figure out the mouse moves for it. Thanks, Apple.
I would really really love it if I could cmd+tab to a specific application window rather than just an application - something you can do in Windows and Linux but not Mac. Although you can keyboard through all the terminal windows, which is nice. (Cmd + arrow keys, only works on Terminal).
And I really hate the 'natural scrolling crap' which they forced on us - like 99% of Mac users, I switch it off first thing.
Love my , but not blind to the strange/questionable OSX design decisions.
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SpoonLord wrote:
I would really really love it if I could cmd+tab to a specific application window rather than just an application - something you can do in Windows and Linux but not Mac. Although you can keyboard through all the terminal windows, which is nice. (Cmd + arrow keys, only works on Terminal).
Cmd-~ cycles through windows within the current application - I'd been using OSX for years before I know this one. The thing that I really don't like is that Neither Cmd-<tab> nor Cmd-~ will visit a minimized window - you to do some dance with cmd-tabbing to the app and down arrow while still holding down Cmd to find a minimized window.
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> I would really really love it if I could cmd+tab to a specific application
> window rather than just an application - something you can do in Windows
> and Linux but not Mac.
I love this feature on the Mac. CMD+TAB cycles you through the Applications CMD+~ cycles you through the Windows of *that* application (unless you are already cycling through applications and then it cycles backwards.)
Did I mention that track-pad actually works? On Windows(or Linux) I have yet to have a track-pad that actually works. I always end up selecting/moving/deleting stuff while I am typing on Windows and Linux. I never have that problem on the Mac.
And if you really can't stand OS-X buy a Macbook anyway and run windows on it. It's a better Windows laptop than most (all?) Windows laptops. I mean it was declared the "Best Performing" Windows laptop in 2013.
There are some things I missed when moving over but I have forgotten what they are.
Wayne J.
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Cut is done at the paste destination by using CMD+ALT+V
Show path in finder footer Via view menu (or finder preferences, can't recall).
Tags can be very useful in finder if you use the file system a lot. Familiarise with finder preferences
difficult to perform basic tasks- can copy but not cut. Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there, from the people who criticised MS for putting shut down in the start menu. No real sense of where you are in the file system - I want to be able to navigate a path
---Guy H ---
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A few protips, I swapped over to OSx full time a few months ago, and I can say going back to Linux or Windows is not on my todo list for a every-day machine.
Renaming files can be done easily; click on the name for 1/2 a second, and leave your cursor over it, it will allow you to rename it.
Install LightShot, works on Windows and OSx, I assigned like CMD+^+9 for it and I can easily take a selection and save to where I want quickly, or just CMD+C and paste as normal.
USB port overpopulation is something you can't really complain about, I have a desktop running a 'Slightly modified version of OSx'; USB sound card, webcam, keyboard and USB dongle plugged in, I could ditch the sound card (Internal went funny, and I had this on the side so I figured it will keep me running) and the webcam if needed, but USB ports are handy!
With my macbook on the other hand, I hardly use them because its always being moved around. USB ports are handy on desktops, but on laptops they're more of a 'Ohh, I can plug a mouse in while I do this tedious bit of work' or for USB drives, however I transfer most files over the network using the file sharing or just good ol' rsync.
Moving files is more done using drag-and-drop methods, if you wish to move a file between devices you're screwed, better move and delete or just fire up a terminal.
All in all, OSx is designed for simplicity for new users, the biggest issue is coming from Windows or Linux and expecting stuff to work how it used to. Best tip I can give is to forget how you worked on another operating system and just accept what they've given you, or abuse the terminal to hell.
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Hi, Keith.
Sorry if someone else has pointed it out already (I don't feel like looking at the entire conversation thread just to find out...), but you don't really need to open Get Info window to rename a file (see below)...
Some little tips:
> Rename a file from Finder: All you have to do is press enter key. Type the new name and press enter again. That's it.
> This can lead to a question: So how do I open a file from Finder? Answer: cmd + o (I know... It takes a little time to get used to this, but it is consistent with every other App's shortcut to open a file)
> When you want to type a path to navigate to it, use the cmd + shift + g shortcut.
> To get a sense of where you are in the file system, use the following menu entry: View | Show Path Bar. The bar will appear at the bottom of the window (a little weird, but still better than nothing).
> Screenshots:
>> cmd + shift + 4: capture a portion of the screen to a file.
>> cmd + control + shift + 4: capture a portion of the screen to the clipboard.
>> After pressing cmd + shift + 4 or cmd + control + shift + 4, press spacebar and the mouse cursor will change to a camera. Then you click a window and it will be captured.
>> cmd + shift + 3: capture the entire screen to a file.
>> cmd + control + shift + 3: capture the entire screen to the clipboard.
>> To change the path where the files will be saved, use the following command on a terminal:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Path/Where/You/Want/Your/Screenshots
>> To set it back to default (the Desktop), use the following command:
defaults delete com.apple.screencapture location
>> To change the file format used to save screenshots, use the following command:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg && killall SystemUIServer
Replace jpg with the file type you want: jpg, png, bmp, gif.
I hope these tips are useful to you.
Cheers.
Cristiano V. Moreira
-------
There are 10 kinds of people in the world:
those who understand binaries and those who don't...
modified 18-Jun-15 9:47am.
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Not that I like Macs at all but the "rename file" thing is actually easier that what you've discovered. Just hit <return>. Yep. I had to ask 'cause I couldn't find that action anywhere. But, <return> to rename a file vs. opening/running it? Like I said: don't like Mac.
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Keith Barrow wrote: Rename is insane - need to go to the "Get Info" popup and do it there
Uhm...what?! To rename you just click on the name while the icon is highlighted. No need to go to 'Get Info'.
Keith Barrow wrote: A keyboard that doesn't have a # (alt-4 on a mac) but does have a key for ± / § is not a keyboard designed for actual use. The physical keyboard is good otherwise
Hmm...I have a '#' right there over the '3', but not the other key you mentioned. But I see you are in the UK. So, the keyboard must be different there. Interesting. Must be because it's a different language then in the US. (Don't worry, I know that the US version of English is the mangled version!)
Keith Barrow wrote: No PrintScreen key, so i've had to learn the shortcut (cmd-shift-4) bad
There are actually different keyboard shortcuts depending on the type of screenshot you want to take: http://www.imore.com/how-take-screenshot-mac-os-x[^]
I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone - Bjarne Stroustrup
The world is going to laugh at you anyway, might as well crack the 1st joke!
My code has no bugs, it runs exactly as it was written.
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Not pro- or con- Finder, but I rename files in Finder the same way I do in Windows Explorer: I click once on the filename until it's highlighted, wait a second, and then click again and it becomes editable.
I'm pretty sure that my keyboard has a # over the 3 key like normal US keyboards, but like others here I'm on a PC at work and my Mac is at home so I can't verify.
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Don't often post here, but seeing this, I just had to say something.
I used Windows devices until a few years ago, until I found Linux. That's all I've used since, except for maintaining enough knowledge to fix other peoples Windows computers. As for something on topic..
Quote: bad apple, naughty apple, haughty apple
I'm not a fan of their philosophy or OS design, and how oversimplified everything seems. The first impression I got, helping someone install a new version of OSX, was that it seemed fairly familiar to some of my Linux installs. It's all a matter of getting used to, I suppose. However, I don't see how anybody could use these things for production. To each his own.
When I talk to people who don't even know what source code is, I open an editor window and say "This is what we go through every time you find a bug!"
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I'd prefer to be under a proper Linux environment, but there it is - it's either Windows or OSX where I work and that's it. Windows wasn't really usable for my work and I need to get used to OSX to help the next intake who'll need to make the same transition, so I had to more or less switch.
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There is an associated learning curve or relearning curve. For my first Mac I had to get training wheels, which consisted of a number of plugins to make it behave more like windows. I had a neighbor who had never used a computer who got a Mac when I did, and she didn't have a lot of the translation difficulties I had. After a month or so, I stopped using the training wheels and remembered to hit cmd+q to close programs instead of trying to just red x the window. On my next Mac I never installed the training wheels, but I did still get a copy of Windows for bootcamp. My home laptop stopped being a Windows machine shortly after Vista was my only choice. There are a lot of things that tick me off about newer OS X, but in general I can use it pretty well. For me, the biggest thing that keeps me is the overall consistency of the interface.
To address a few of your niggles, depending on what you are trying to do with shutting down, you can always just hit the power button the keyboard. The OS X suspend to disk function is triggered simultaneous as the suspend to ram function, so the button doesn't really have to do the same duty as it would on a windows computer where you may need to have it set to suspend to disk so you have that functionality easily available.
The screenshot capability is pretty nice and Windows had to add a tool (snipping tool) to get the same functionality. Yes, you do have to remember the shortcut, but I get it pretty quickly even if I haven't used it in a while.
Your Finder issues might be related to the new version of OS X, which I haven't installed. I use two finger click and select rename or use the familiar way of selecting the name via single click and renaming it the same way I do in Windows. I'm not sure why you aren't able to cut/move things.
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Keith Barrow wrote: Nobody, in the whole world, will need more than 2 USB ports.
Nobody at all. Except me. I regularly use at least 7: wireless keyboard, wireless mouse (because the two I like are made by different companies), audio adapter, two MIDI keyboards, Nikon camera adapter, mp3 adapter, occasionally a thumb drive.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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Just hitting <ENTER> or <RETURN> on a file or folder in Finder actually puts you in Rename mode (equivalent to F2 in Windows), if you wonder how you execute / open it, its cmd+down.
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"Unfortunately" I have to agree with you ... OSX is "good", but not 2/3/4 times as good as W7/8/10. And yes, I've also noticed the similarity with Unity, though I think it's the other way round: Rather Canonical being "inspired" by OSX. Actually if you try using the newer Gnome (just try Fedora and you'll know what I'm talking about) you'll see even more similar stuff.
So, same as you, I've looked, I've tried, I've been pleasantly impressed with some of it, but no where has it given me any sort of "Wow! Now that makes it worth giving up food for the month!" To the contrary, those things which impressed me were more in line with ... ah! another guy's seen the light and made something similar to X. While the stuff that gives me the heebie jebbies - agh! not another one going down that path! So for the life of me, I cannot understand what the extra cost is for.
For my money I'll stick with KDE thank you very much! At least if it's KDE 4, 5 (with the new Plasma engine) should never have made its way out of alpha testing phase ... it's way too buggy to have a release candidate, never mind being a "default" in the new "Bright and Early" Kubuntu!
Hardware wise I agree, Apples look very nice, they tend to have decent performance, and the laptops are thin, slick and light! But only if you compare them to some manufacturers like Dell and HP ... e.g. if you want it on a diet then Samsung's Series 9 is even slimmer than the Macbook. Or even the new Dell XPS 15 compared to the MacBook Pro - 15mm instead of 16mm.
As for USBs ... when you go for such slim stuff there usually isn't any space on the sides, but also correct - why all those Thunderbolts, so all my peripherals HAS to be from Apple stores too?
modified 29-Jun-15 7:07am.
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I know this is old by now but how are you finding it after a couple of months?
btw, a couple of tips if you haven't found them yet:
- To rename in Finder, select the file and hit return.
- To see file path, View -> Show File Path (Once set, should become your default)
- Full Screen Shot (Shift-Alt-3). You can customise the location it saves to with a couple of commands:
http://osxdaily.com/2011/01/26/change-the-screenshot-save-file-location-in-mac-os-x[^]
hth
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