User Centered

One of the most common usability problems that exist in every home is right there underneath your computer desk. It's also right there attached to your cell phone charging and everywhere else you need to interface with your electrical outlets.


I hate cords. I hate power cords in particular. I recently moved and boxed up all my electronic components, chargers, external drives, cameras, etc. Sorting out which power supply went with each device was an exercise reminiscent of those kids games where you put the round peg into the round hole.

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Well, after a week or so of Mac-tastic exploration, I've now gotten to the point where I sit down at my computer and don't think it's a new toy... it's just my computer (although of course, I have TONS to learn still). Instead of poking into every preference menu and expose/dashboard crevice, I've got that "eh... now what?" feeling. Which I guess is good. That means I'm ready to get back to doing work.

Some closing thoughts and comments:

I still don't like the keyboard workings for manipulating my way around the finder window. I like to start typing out the name of the folder/file I'm looking for... in Mac I have to move from the "home key" arrangement to use the "command-down arrow." instead of just hitting enter to drill into the folders.

Although I'm used to the iTunes "all library view" with everything showing at once, I was entirely unprepared for the same approach to my iPhoto library. To my girlfriend: I'm sorry you had to see all the pictures of my ex at the top of my library (as they are the oldest). Nice job Apple... way to put me in the doghouse.

What's with resizing in iPhoto? I have to go to the "Share/email" menus to "fake" my way into just resizing the image? I guess most of you Mac guys have other image manip software, this just seems STRANGE to me.

Between the Dock at the bottom, the bar at the top and then the (what us windows guys call) the title bar, I'm missing the fact that I can't reduce on of them in Opera. I want the "turn menu bar off" option I had in Windows, but that doesn't make sense in Mac.

Things I won't be able to live without
-Quicksilver
-xGestures
-Expose

xGestures got me to install strokeit again for Windows.. neither aren't as "native" and smooth as Opera which is why I haven't used them before, but it's ok.

Quicksilver (which I was interested from Enso on Win), also led me to try Launchy on Win, but I've now settled with Find and Run Robot (FARR). Great launcher app for Windows.

Expose replaces the "Win-D or M" combo and the "Show Desktop" icon I have in my Windows Quicklaunch bar.

Most surprising things
"Close" is a minimize more than anything. Before I dropped my 2Gigs of RAM this was much more of an issue... oh yeah, that reminds me: the things I do to save 60 bucks (see right) like get my RAM from Crucial instead of Apple.

HFS (Mac file system) can't write to NTFS (Windows File system). I'm not sure how I've gone this long in my computing life without knowing this, my jaw dropped when I realized this.

I don't really see what all the fuss is about with Safari... I'll stick with Opera- although downloading apps and stuff just work better in safari than Opera (understandable). Also, I haven't yet installed

Oh- do I even need Norton antivirus at all?

I was configuring a PowerBook through Apple.com today when I noticed that they present a radio button (in IE) and a Select box in Opera for choosing preinstalled software. The problem is, they only allow you to choose one item from the list (as select/radio elements are prone to do) but the choices are not either/or combinations. They are iLife, Logic Express, and Final Cut. All these seem like they are not mutually exclusive of each other and should be allowed to coexist together (although I admit- I know very little about the software). It seems to me when I was building my PB that I would want both iLife and Final Cut Express. But I could only select one item. The next page ("Do you need anything else?") did not present software that I missed out on the previous page.



Am I missing something? Does the preinstall of lets say, Final Cut include iLife? It's not immediately clear to me what's going on here.