I worked with iBook G4 lately and was using it as a development machine for urgent work. My main environment is Windows 2003, so this was the chance to compare the two OS in full productivity mode. My usual working setup is file manager + HTML/CSS editor + FTP software + one or two browsers + whatever I need (like Photoshop). On Win, that means Total Commander (has built-in FTP), TopStyle Pro, Firefox and IE. On Mac, it’s SubEthaEdit or Dreamweaver, Finder, RBrowserLite, Safari.
Keyboard access
First of all, I use the keyboard a lot. In Win, I memorized the shortcut sequences for often used menu options – press Alt then a series of letters for the submenu option path. It means that I rarely move my hands over to the mouse.
In Panther, I constantly use the mouse. Unless I know the shortcut (and there is actually shortcut defined) I have no other means to select the menu option then using a mouse. Further, I’m so hooked on diverse Win context menus that I find the lack of two buttons on the iBook a serious problem. Even when I force myself to hold the Ctrl key, the options given are often disappointing. I’m a newcomer to Mac, so I might be missing some useful feature (or the general OS X philosophy), but then again, it’s how I see it now.
In reality, this means that I’m much less productive on the Mac than Windows. For instance, when you try to close the unsaved document, you are given the Yes / No / Cancel save dialog on Windows and Save / Cancel / Don’t save dialog on Mac. However, on Windows I can press n key and be done with the dialog, while on Mac I need to use the mouse to click on Don't save. In situations when I don’t have a mouse and need to use the touchpad, that is sloooooow. It’s the same with every other Mac app – serious lack of keyboard control.
I know that graphical interface and mouse control are Mac legacy (more or less), but that does not make them productivity champion in the developer hands.
File management
This is even more obvious when I throw in the fact that simply there is no good graphical file manager for OSX. One really need to use Total Commander for few days to realize how much faster and powerful two-pane interface is over a pile of directory windows. I can’t tell which implementation of file-management-through-windows is better (Mac or Win) as, in my opinion, they both suck, big time.
John Gruber wrote a lot about OS X Finder and problems as he saw them, but none the less I find window-based management tedious and time consuming. To work comfortably you need to have large screen space, to position both source and destination windows properly. In two-pane app, you have them instantly side by side. No manual positioning. One can compare directories just looking at them. Selecting, renaming, copying, moving, switching between dirs – all much faster in two-pane view than in two-windows mode.
Simple example: both Mac and Win versions of Firefox use the same bookmark.html file. So, when I want to sync them, it takes me over a minute to click through all the windows where the file is kept and copy the latest version of the file. In Win, it takes me less than 10s (1s when I have the directory path rememberd in TC’s hotlist).
The DOS legacy of Windows has this good benefit – bunch of file managers. From Norton Commander and Dos Navigator in the text mode to TC in graphical mode – file and network operations are light and fluent. Since I also have the tree copy plugin for TC, updating the live web site is amazingly quick. I tend to work for hours, and then: search for changed files in all sub dirs in last 6h, tree-copy them to temp dir in the left pane, open FTP access in the right pane, press F5 and copy the whole tree to live server. Simply can’t be faster.
Of course, if you use some integrated site management in BBEdit or Dreamweaver, this might not be the strong argument for you. But try to update multiple sites on various network locations. Or when you need to copy different sub-groups of changed files to different servers.
This ability goes beyond web site management. Previewing files, changing attributes / name, zip and unzip – file managers make this so easy and quick, all in one place. I really wish there was something like that for OS X, it would make it so much better and productive. Unfortunatelly, my two fav apps – TC and TopStylePro – are written in Delphi, thus being port-less to Mac.
I can’t believe that there are great utilities for various purposes (Transmit, Unison, Quicksilver etc.) but there is not a single file manager worth mentioning.
A flashlight?
It’s a shame really, because I find OS X to simply rule when it comes to ease of use, especially when you move from one place to another and connect to some unknown modem/ISDN/printer/scanner. In such situations, Mac simply works, while for Win I often need to deal with drivers, setup and other tedious stuff. There are other subtle things done better in OS X, on the system level. Especially (de)installing which is a dream.
Now, as I started this post several days ago when I recovered enough from my dad’ passing to be able to work a bit; thus it was several days in making. Today, I searched again in hope to find a TC-like utility and this time the search was not fruitless…
I’m testing the app and will write about it in a day or two.
I am using MacOSX as main working enviroment and now I cannot imagine working without 5 or more Terminal windows. I use bash scripting a lot (I didn’t found time to learn Apple Script yet) wich is something I cannot do in Windows (yes, i know for SFU and MSYS and I use them when I need to do some work in Windows enviroment).
But the main part of my working enviroment that help me to be more productive is window manager and Expose actions. On simple keypress I can view resized windows of currently active application or all windows etc. It is very quick&easy and yes you can use keyboard to do all of that.
As I came from GNU/Linux I have all programs that I am used to (over Fink, or from Apple Developers Tools) and I am always mixing up Control and Windows key when I take a walk to some PC computer…
You make some very valid points on where the Mac OS X interface needs work. Mac OS X has never had extensive keyboard navigation, but it is getting better.
You may not know this, but there is a way to enable lots of extra keyboard navigation. You need to go into the Keyboard & Mouse System Preference Panel. Go to the Keyboard Shortcut tab, and enable full keyboard access. This will let you use tab to naviagate around interface elements. You then use the space bar to select the highlighted elements like buttons.
You’ll also notice that there is a list of keyboad shortcuts there. You can use this panel to add your own shortcuts to any application you want. There’s also a utility from Unsanity that makes adding shortcuts even easier.
As for the prompt to save, you can press the escape key to cancel the operation, or you can presss Command-D to select “Don’t Save”. This may not work in all applicaitons though.
I can’t argue too much about your issues with the Finder. You can speed up access to frequently used directories by adding them to the Finder bar on the left side of the window. Then it only takes one click to get to the directory. You might want to try out Path Finder to get the other features you want. It’s a more advanced file manager, but it’ll cost you extra.
As noted, to NOT SAVE when the dialogue appears, hit escape. To SAVE, just hit return.
Goran, Expose rulez, no doubt about that. When I have more than three windows open, it’s the quickest way to change the active window. The fact that it is usable with keyboard is the best part of it. On the iBook, there is no middle key I can use to activate it, so it was probably a must for Apple.
Rich, thanks for the tip about “full keyboard access”. I enabled it, so will see how it works in the following few days until I return to my regular comp.
You could use Midnight Commander, afaik fink is not good, keyboard works badly. Get sources from mc homepage (whenever it may be..) and compile them was advice to me from our local mac group.
oops, you probably do not know what fink is — look at http://fink.sourceforge.net/…
MC is terminal application, if I remember correctly. It’s good, I used it before when I played with Linux, but being what it is, it’s far from Mac experience.
But of course, on the other hand I still use NC on my win laptop. Nothing beats old&good DOS NC experience…when you need to do something quickly.
Well, on the Mac, simply press “D” will do…
Mr. Lucassen, I don’t know what Mac you’re working with? As you can conclude from the other comments on this page, it’s Command + D.