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Comment by martythemaniak | Hacker News Reader

I don't think I'll ever adjust to how terrible window management is in OS X.

- one menu bar for active applications: if you have many windows/applications open side-by-side you can't access (or even see) their menus until you switch to them. It's bad on a MacBook, I can't image the pain it is on a 27" or 30". If you're using Adium on a 30" monitor and you have it in the lower right-hand corner, the app's menu is 2 freaking feet away from the app!

-cmd+tab switches apps, not windows. you have to either use expose (slow) or cmd+tab, cmd+~. Minimized windows also don't cycle, so you can alt-tab to an app and still not get any windows, just the menu bar. Getting to a particular window shouldn't be so damned hard.

The windows/linux way - where each window is independent, equal and self-contained is much better IMO.

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Emphasis on the IMO. The experience is unique for every individual.

I switched to a Mac about four years ago, and I can't stand task switching in Windows/GNOME/KDE.

- Menu location: Having the menu at the top of the screen actually makes it easier/quicker to click (see Fitts' Law).

- Context switching: Context switching on OS X has more granularity. The up-sides of this are similar to the up-sides of tabbed browsing. Think about it for a moment. What's so great about tabbed-browsing? You can group windows and switch between tabs with ctrl-tab. On OS X, you have even more granularity:

App switching: cmd+tab

Window switching: cmd+~

Tab switching: app-context dependent cmd+<shift/opt>+arrow or ctrl+tab

My biggest complaint is that there is no consistency to the tab switching shortcut.

When trying to find a window in an environment where there are lots of windows, Expose is one of the rare times I find the mouse faster than the keyboard. I have key bindings for app and system-wide Expose, so depending upon my needs, I'll switch to the app containing the document and app-Expose, or I'll just use system-wide Expose.

It's more complicated, but when I use my computer, I feel like I'm playing an instrument. My muscles know where to go for any given task, and I can move around very quickly.

Much better, IMO.

- Menu location: Having the menu at the top of the screen actually makes it easier/quicker to click (see Fitts' Law).

I used to keep my Taskbar at the top of the screen in Win XP and Vista. Now, with the ubiquitous widescreen monitors, I keep it on the left-hand side, and wouldn't go back.

Menu location: Having the menu at the top of the screen actually makes it easier/quicker to click (see Fitts' Law)

While I see that this is true for smaller monitors, it becomes less true with today's large monitors. When I have a small window on the lower-right part of my large monitor, it becomes a hassle to move the mouse all the way over to the top-left of the screen, select my menu item, and then move it all the way back to the lower-right of the screen to continue working on what I was working on.

A note on tone: I don't mean for this to be a tit-for-tat. Just sharing things that work for me, so hopefully they'll benefit you :)

I work on a 24" display running at 1920 x 1200, so I've definitely experienced that long run to the menu bar. This is compounded by the fact that "Maximum" mouse speed on a Mac is a snail's pace compared to what I used to use on a PC. I grabbed a little utility called MagicPrefs to fix that issue:

http://magicprefs.com/

Outside of that, I've always been a keyboard junkie. There isn't much you can't do from the keyboard in OS X, and if you discover something you can't OS X has really robust Keyboard Shortcut customization. You can literally create or re-map any shortcut in any application from System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts.

Lifehacker article on that subject: http://bit.ly/11Z2c6

If I use a menu item more than once or twice a day, I memorize or create a shortcut for it.

one menu bar for active applications

Honestly, I find menu bars that don't respond to Fitt's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts_Law) to be almost unusable. Two feet away isn't so much when you can blindly shove towards the top of the screen and have your mouse hit the menu.

(edit: fixed URL)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts_Law

I'm inclined to agree with you regarding the menus. There is a powerful reason for the way it is in Mac OS X, Fitts' Law. Since the pointer stops at the top of the screen, it is easier to hit the menu target.

I wasn't an expose fan until I started to use a magic trackpad. It is a way of understanding what is happening on the computer that fits very well with a gesture interface.

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