Henk van de Goor's Bloggers@large

I think the title of this post largely sums up what the difference is between Mac and PC. However, if you work long enough with both OS's - like I do - you'll find things you don't like with both platforms. Usually when I blog about computer annoyances, it is about Windows annoyances. But this time I'll write about a specific Mac OS X annoyance I endure every day. Just as a bit of background: back in 2002 I switched from one company (Lost Boys) to another (VGM). The first company was a full-fledged Internet company, the latter a pre-press company that also had a Internet department. I was also faced with the question: "what kind of PC do you want?".

I decided that I was going to switch to a Mac at work (I only used Windows up until that point). I got a nice Mac Powerbook G4 with OS X 10.1 Puma on it. Back then Apple also included a OS 9 emulator so people could still use OS 9 applications. As I never had worked with Os 9 before (although back in '90 I worked with Apple Classic) I had a fresh start with OS X. To be honest: switching from one OS to another didn't cause big problems. There where a few things that I had to get used to. The biggest issue I had in the beginning was, that closing a window did not close the application. So after a while my mac started to slow down a lot. It then occured to me that all applications I started where still in the dock. Duh! So after finding out that you need to do a "apple-q" that was solved.

Fast forward to today: I now have a MacBook Pro (Intel) at work and am running OS X 10.5 Leopard. I like my Mac a lot even though at home I keep using PC's with Windows XP, Vista and even Ubuntu Linux on them. I have a big love-hate relationship with Vista - the most crappy Windows version in Mickey$ofts history (can't wait till Windows 7 is ready). When it comes to stability I have to admit that Windows XP and Vista both are just as stable as OS X. However: OS X runs always smoother than either Windows OS when it comes to multitasking. I suspect that it is the OpenBSD based kernel that helps out here.

But I digress. So what is my #1 annoyance with OS X you might ask? Well besides the crappy Office 2008 (not Apple's fault off course) there is 1 thing that really keeps coming back. It's the gui where the maximize button - the (+) button - does NOT maximize and fills your whole screen. Both Windows & Linux and even OS/2 Warp back then, all maximize and fill your screen. Instead it just 'zooms' to the maximum hight of your screen. So in Mac OS X, the (+) button simply resizes the current window to what Apple thinks is its optimal width and height, taking into consideration the current window contents.

So each and every time that I want to browse full screen, or want to edit that Word document full screen etc. etc. I always find myself resizing the f****** window. Day in, day out. I would have thought that by now so many people have switched from Windows to Mac OS X that Apple would have included some kind of tweak or preference for this in the OS. But no. Instead you will have to find some (sub-optimal) third-party program (like Megazoomer).

So, dispite what my post title says, I do swear at my Mac. Almost every working day.