8 Mac Annoyances
1. Window maximizing. What is the point of that green button on the top of every window? Why does it not maximize the window to fill the screen, like on every other OS out there?
2. The startup chime. Sometimes you want to use your computer discreetly, or without disturbing others, why does the startup chime not have a control panel where you can turn it off?
3. Window resizing. Why can’t you resize a window from any corner? It seems like a very basic thing to be able to do. For a company that prides itself on usability, it’s downright criminal that you STILL can’t do this.
4. One button mouse? C’mon Apple. This is the 21st century. Get with the program.
5. File extensions and associations. I’ve been using a Mac for 8 years now and I still don’t fully understand how this works. For all it’s faults, even Windows gets this right. For example, I want all txt files to open with Textmate, no matter which program created them.
6. Inconsistent UI. While this is better in Leopard than it has been in the past, there are still tons of apps that just don’t look like they’re sharing the same OS. Take Safari & Preview for example, the toolbar buttons don’t even match.
7. The finder. While I’ve gotten used to the finder now, I still don’t find it as straightforward as it could be. Give me Windows Explorer any day (hell, give me File Manager from Windows 3.1).
8. The keyboard. Ok, fine the @ and ” keys are swapped (for a UK user) but some of the other keys on that thing are just plain weird. Perhaps I’m showing my ignorance here, but why do I need a key labelled ‘§’ more than I need one labelled ‘#’. Sorry, I just don’t get it.
There’s a lot of things that Mac does better than Windows (read: most things) but the list above consists of really basic stuff that simply needs fixing to make the Mac experience complete (IMHO, FWIW).
Hide your NTFS Boot Camp Partition
Before you start, ensure you read this whole post carefully, including the word of warning near the bottom of the post. I accept no responsibility if this screws up your computer in any way.
These instructions are based on Mac OS X 10.5.
Once you’ve installed Boot Camp on your Mac, assuming you used NTFS as your chosen file system during the install, you’re now stuck with a redundant icon on your Mac desktop. While you can’t write any files to the partition from OS X, you can read the files. But how useful is that to you? If, like me, you don’t need access to that partition, you may want to hide it from view. You can do this very simply, by booting into Windows and renaming your C: drive to something that begins with a full stop (or period) eg: .Windows
This is a bit of a kludgy hack. OS X (like most Unix based operating systems) assumes that all files beginning with a full stop are designed to be hidden. The partition does still get mounted though, and shows up in various other places inside the OS.
If you’re feeling more adventurous, a better way to do it is to stop the partition from being mounted altogether. To do this, you need to dive into the Unix underpinnings of OS X and edit the fstab file.
Open up a terminal and type
diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *232.9 Gi disk0
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS 240 GB IDE 151.9 Gi disk0s2
3: Microsoft Basic Data Windows 80.7 Gi disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_partition_scheme *465.8 Gi disk1
1: Apple_partition_map 31.5 Ki disk1s1
2: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 128.0 Mi disk1s2
3: Apple_RAID 465.6 Gi disk1s3
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_partition_scheme *465.8 Gi disk2
1: Apple_partition_map 31.5 Ki disk2s1
2: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 128.0 Mi disk2s2
3: Apple_RAID 465.6 Gi disk2s3
/dev/disk3
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_HFS 500 GB RAID *465.6 Gi disk3
/dev/disk4
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_partition_scheme *298.1 Gi disk4
1: Apple_partition_map 31.5 Ki disk4s1
2: Apple_HFS 320 GB USB 298.0 Gi disk4s3
/dev/disk6
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_partition_scheme *230.6 Gi disk6
1: Apple_partition_map 31.5 Ki disk6s1
2: Apple_HFS Personal 230.6 Gi disk6s2
This returns a lot of data, but what you’re actually looking for is labelled Microsoft Basic Data followed by the name of the partition (in this case “Windows”).
One you’ve found the identifier (in this case, “disk0s3″) you need to type another command
diskutil info disk0s3 (replacing disk0s3 with the identifier found in the above step)
Device Identifier: disk0s3
Device Node: /dev/disk0s3
Part Of Whole: disk0
Device / Media Name: Untitled
Volume Name: Windows
Mount Point:
File System: NTFS
Partition Type: Microsoft Basic Data
Bootable: Is bootable
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: SATA
SMART Status: Verified
Volume UUID: E0891F30-2D1A-4FC0-A26E-35CD27CA6756
Total Size: 80.7 Gi (86640836608 B) (169220384 512-byte blocks)
Free Space: 0.0 B (0 B) (0 512-byte blocks)
Read Only: No
Ejectable: No
Whole: No
Internal: Yes
Now, what you’re looking for is the Volume UUID, in this case E0891F30-2D1A-4FC0-A26E-35CD27CA6756.
Now it’s simply a case of adding the following line into into the fstab file.
UUID=E0891F30-2D1A-4FC0-A26E-35CD27CA6756 none ntfs ro,noauto 0 0
You can do this using pico, by typing
sudo pico /etc/fstab
and then pasting the above line into the file, ensuring to use your own UUID.
Once you’re done, press Ctrl-X and save the file, then reboot.
A WORD OF WARNING
Firstly, the fstab file determines which partitions and drives are mounted at startup. If anything goes wrong, you may not be able to boot into OS X.
Secondly, the drive will also be missing from the list of drives in the System Preferences -> Startup Disk preference pane. If you want to boot into Windows, you’ll have to hold down the Alt key when you hear the startup chime after switching your machine on, until you are presented with a list of drives. Note that this option doesn’t always work if you are using third party keyboards, or even an official keyboard not designed for your specific mac like the new ultra thin Apple keyboards.
Xbox 360 Blu-ray Player
I always thought that HD-DVD would win out over Blu-ray. My logic was that if people had to make a choice, it wouldn’t come down to technical ability, but more a familiarity with the DVD brand.
What I naively hadn’t taken into account was the weight that the film studios carry when it comes to media formats. While the HD battle was interesting to watch for the past year, I don’t think anyone could have predicted the speed at which HD-DVD finally crashed and burned.
Particularly Microsoft, it would seem.
They announced that they are ceasing production of their HD-DVD player for Xbox 360 and almost grudgingly stated that a Blu-ray player for the 360 was possible. But, frankly, each week that passes where people can choose between buying the PS3 with it’s built-in Blu-ray drive or the 360 with its standard DVD drive is another nail in the Xbox 360 coffin.
Don’t get me wrong, despite its flaws, I love the Xbox, but Microsoft have made a lot of mistakes with this generation of their console and I just hope they don’t add another one to the list by missing the Blu-ray boat.
Nintendo DS WPA
Nintendo Why!? We love you Nintendo, but you drive us crazy sometimes.
Need I remind you about the N64 controller or the Virtual Boy. What about the missing backlight on the GBA? The GBA SP finally got a backlight, but you removed the headphone socket!
We made a leap of faith to understand your logic when you decided to use cartridges in the N64 when everyone else had switched to CD-ROM. We loved the Gamecube, despite restricting developers with its graphics capabilities and mini-DVD discs. We know that sometimes you like to you fly in the face of convention and other times, you rarely stray from it. We can forgive the endless recycling and dilution of existing IPs because although sometimes you get it wrong, most of the time you get it very very right. But your inability to foresee the changing market during the SNES era meant that you were directly responsible for giving us the Playstation.
That’s a toughie to forgive.
We all mocked you mercilessly when you announced the DS. Okay, we admit it, you proved us wrong on that one. 65 million machines sold worldwide is a tough figure to argue against.
One question constantly niggles me though, Nintendo. Why, in the name of all things sane and sacred, did you limit the wi-fi connectivity of the Nintendo DS to just WEP encryption? If your answer in any way involves the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector, please make sure it also includes something about Mac drivers. With WEP easily cracked these days, encouraging its use is irresponsible and lazy. If Sony can regularly update the firmware on the PSP to include things like Skype, why can’t you fix something as simple as this?