Mac Malady

Apple is great, but is also becoming complacent and too much dependent on quick profit, disregarding its core values: fast, easy and solid software.

Here’s a quick list of instances in OS X 7.1 where Apple is so Un-Apple:

✓    Dock – Folder – ‘Open in Finder’ buried below all files/folders, instead of appearing in a convenient place. When the folder has many files and you have to hunt for the link by scrolling, you wonder “Is this Windows or Mac?”.
✓    Input sources in different languages per document – This feature has never worked correctly in any version of OS X. Switching from a non-English document to another App shouldn’t carry over the input source.
✓    Safari 5.1 – Inspector – Can’t grab the window from its full head, only the small title bar. Inconsistent with all other app windows.
✓    Safari 5.1 – HTML5 video fullscreen switching is blinking and slowing down.
✓    Tabs threading/memory management in Safari 5.1 is a disgrace, because closing an unresponsive tab makes all other tabs reload.
✓    No easy way to send a movie on iOS devices for later viewing. Forget about re-checking that presentation/pitch on the road.
✓    iPhoto is unreliable for large collections and invariably loses data.
✓    iPhoto sometimes does heavy processing, but uses only 1 CPU core; multi-core CPU marketing rings hollow.
✓    ‘Cancel’ button makes iPhoto crash when trying to stop a PDF export. In general, the ‘Cancel’ button rarely works properly.
✓    iPhoto – Quick Fixes – The top two buttons lack hover/action visual style, but the others do have it.
✓    Finder – Viewable video inside its thumbnail – such an ill-advised idea, especially when all you want to do is drag its icon.
✓    Finder – Sidebar items are too short – hard to point while dragging an object over them and easy to make a mistake – a basic UI problem you don’t expect to see in OS X.
✓    Finder and the Mac should never lock up because of network problems – how to explain that to a normal user?
✓    Apple is killing the DVD, but the OS X DVD player wouldn’t start without a DVD drive – when trying to play DVD files from elsewhere.
✓    On a fresh install, Spotlight indexing makes the Mac crawl – explain that to a user who is just getting his first impression.
✓    Lion full screen is an unfinished feature – Safari 5.1 cmd+/ twice loses the bottom bar. After sleep, full-screen iPhoto takes over the desktop instead of its own space.
✓    Why doesn’t the screen fade in smoothly after the famed “instant-on” on notebooks after sleep? Is this a case where they think too much about the machine experience and ignore the human experience? So Un-Apple.

And the list grows on… Incidents like the above should never happen, period. Unless Apple wants to turn into Adobe.