Top 10 Usability Highs for the Mac OS

smashingmagazine.com

6 points·makimaki··5 comments

The author's points are mostly general, subjective, unjustified, and unfair.

All OSes let you have multiple windows visible. Stating that OS X's use of 3D is good and Vista's is bad is not a convincing argument. Comparing Clippy to Spotlight is unfair.

Really poor article.

The start menu in vista works the same as spotlight.

I agree that windows is often annoying, but I find things in OS X annoying as well (such as sometimes having to read the application name in the menubar.)

Both OS handle preferences in a convoluted, unintuitive manner. There might not be an intuitive way to set up your TCP/IP settings, but neither OS has made a real attempt to find out.

An interesting article, but why does it seem like every time the good things in OS X are mentioned, a dose of "Windows Sucks" goes with it? It gets old.

I knew #6 was going to be on the list, and I've always hated that about the Mac UI. Yes, having one menu bar at the top of the screen makes it easier to get to with the mouse, but there's two problems:

1. Now you can't use the menus in unfocused applications

2. You really shouldn't be using the mouse to interact with menus anyway ( http://sysop073.blogspot.com/2008/03/i-posted-this-with-ctrl... )

System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts > Keyboard Navigation.

And in regards to that blog post talking about running a program, one can use Spotlight, Quicksilver or one of the various alternatives to launch a program.

Nobody said you had to use the mouse to interact with menus.

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