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Comment by guynamedloren | Hacker News Reader

> Apple’s supposed to be the best at designing simple user experiences across hardware and software – and I believe they are.

As much as Apple is praised for simple user experiences, there's a lot about my mac that bothers me. For example, when I am browsing through photos in Preview (with arrow keys) and I come across one I do not want, I should be able to hit the delete key to delete the photo, but no, I can't do that. I have to stop browsing, find the photo in the side bar, right click and select 'Move to Trash'. Or, when I close all the windows for a given program (usually there is just one), the program stays open until I navigate through the menu to explicitly quit. I understand this is a design decision, but it just seems counter-intuitive, as does much else with this computer. Things like this annoy me all day long.

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> For example, when I am browsing through photos in Preview (with arrow keys) and I come across one I do not want, I should be able to hit the delete key to delete the photo, but no, I can't do that. I have to stop browsing, find the photo in the side bar, right click and select 'Move to Trash'.

Command delete works here. It makes some sense as it's not likely you'll accidentally delete one of your photos that way.

> Or, when I close all the windows for a given program (usually there is just one), the program stays open until I navigate through the menu to explicitly quit.

That's not necessarily true in Lion (through a feature called Automatic Termination which requires the app to explicitly support it). Take Preview again for example. Open a photo, close the photo and then go back to another app. Check the Dock. This actually drives me nuts as I commonly switch app context's with command-tab and having a disappearing app makes this difficult. It seems like an odd feature to me because the process actually remains alive (check Activity Monitor), it's just in a state that makes it easy to kill if resources become scarce. I have 20GB of RAM, resources very rarely become scarce so all it does is end up hiding stuff I'd rather see.

> It makes some sense as it's not likely you'll accidentally delete one of your photos that way.

Well the file would go in the Trash, so if you pressed delete accidentally it's not a disaster. I use Presbutan so pressing delete on its own works, and pressing enter opens the file, instead of having to use Command-O.

Command-Delete also makes sense as it follows the convention in the Finder / Desktop). Command-Z works to reverse both operations.

I'm browsing from my phone so I haven't been able to try this yet but it looks like you can disable Automatic Termination with:

  defaults write -g NSDisableAutomaticTermination -bool yes

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/48780/is-there-a-wa...

Beautiful. I applied it and now can have TextEdit remain open.

"...you'll accidentally delete one of your photos that way.."

Now you know, that's what I am hating about Apple right now. From hiding the Library folder, forcing reopening of apps and docs after I restart (talking Lion here - and yes I know they FINALLY fixed that. But it only took the 6 updates), to wifi dropping on the MBAir, STILL not being able to easily change the system font, low-end accessibly features (especially when compared to Windows), control the keyboard to prevent me from "accidents" - most of what I've learned about OS' came from fixing my mistakes! And you know, maybe I WANT TO delete photo's that way.

Look it boils down too: after 20 years on mac I am getting damn tired of this recent trend to of holding my hand and telling me how to use the machine.

Every new update of OSX = less control of my desktop. Now I spend most of my time in terminal. So what's the point of having a mac? I can buy a high end pc that will also last me 5 years and do what I want.

Controlling me on the phone is one thing. On my machine is another. Now I'm running Windows on my mac. That's how pissed I am about this.

Apple needs to add a dummy switch. They can call it what they want, "Enhanced desktop experience" - whatever. But something I can check (OFF). Cause not every one who uses a mac needs his hands held.

If it was the other way around I bet you'd be complaining that you accidentally deleted some photos by hitting the delete key. Reaching over and hitting one extra key should not cause you this many problems. After 20 years of using a Mac I would hope that you know that the Command key really is your best bet at doing something, the same way that the control key works on windows. I'd also hope that after 20 years you would have found the keyboard preference pane.

Unhidding the library folder takes one line in terminal, you could even set up a launchd job to run it every day so that you're sure that you aren't missing it. If you spend that much time in the terminal you would have looked up how to change the problems you're having with some easy defaults commands.

"f it was the other way around I bet you'd be complaining that you accidentally deleted some photos..."

Ahh no. That's what the trash bin is for. And backups.

"spend that much time in the terminal you would have looked up how to change the problems you're having with some easy defaults commands"

I know already. My point is I should not have to do type out commands with every install. A simple checkbox in preferences would be a better approach; allowing us "power users" to stay power users.

you can cmd+del to delete a file. cmd+q will quit a program, cmd+w will close a window/file either in finder or a piece of software. apple's always done it this way. personally, just because i've closed all of the files in a piece of software doesn't necessarily mean i want to close the software. i like the behaviour.

one thing on snow leopard that drove me nuts was selecting a folder, then hitting cmd+a to select all the files in it. but no, finder selected all of the items in the parent folder. thankfully, they fixed that in lion.

>Or, when I close all the windows for a given program (usually there is just one), the program stays open until I navigate through the menu to explicitly quit. I understand this is a design decision, but it just seems counter-intuitive, as does much else with this computer. Things like this annoy me all day long.

As you say, it's a design decision. You probably come from Windows -- their way is just as arbitrary, if not more.

One reason is to have it be explicit vs implicit (closing a Window just means "I want to close this Window", it should not mean "I want this application to quit").

Another reason is consistency: with apps with multiple windows, the close=quit behavior is only desirable for the last one. So the behavior would be inconsistent depending on the number of open windows for that app (some of which might even be minimized and hence invisible).

Finally, with Lion, you are not supposed to care if an app is open or not. Actually, it might even seem closed but still be loaded. This is because the OS is working behind the scenes loading and closing applications and will, to optimize responsiveness, loading time and memory use.

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