Mac Annoyances... what annoys you about your Mac?
I remember getting the press release about O'Reilly's upcoming book "Mac Annoyances" but I really didn't think too much about it. The release invited all Mac users to send in their annoyances for the soon-to-be published book. I ran the blurb in the InfoManager and went on about my business.
When the book came we immediately reviewed it and posted it in both the User Group Bookshelf and the Design Bookshelf. What a great idea, to interview people and find their annoyances -- then publish a book with fixes to those annoyances. I dug into the book trying to find answers to some of my annoyances. In retrospect, I now wish I had sent some of them in.
I've become gun shy of asking questions, and I guess that was the case with Mac Annoyances. I was afraid of asking a stupid question that had an obvious answer. My brother always ribs me about my stupid questions -- I really don't mind asking him -- and his curt retort is usually "... it's a new system, get used to it!" ... or something like "Duh! Just look under the [this or that] menu!" And, once again I'm abashed for asking such a stupid question. For one who has spent the last fifteen years fielding stupid questions from the User Group Network info list and contact forms, I certainly have asked my own fair share of equally stupid questions!
Author John Rizzo must be a kind soul indeed, to field the thousands of stupid questions and boil them into this wonderful little book without stepping on anyone's toes. Bravo, John: you've provided solutions to scores of common problems faced by Mac owners -- and included tips, tricks, and workarounds -- most importantly hassles associated with Mac OS X and Mac hardware.
Asking silly questions: One of the all-time true annoyances to me is any software which asks a silly question. Microsoft is the worst. When I save a file and go to the effort of pulling down the options menu and selecting "Plain TEXT" why does it then ask "Are you sure you want to save it as text?" Certainly I would not have selected it had I not wanted it, right? But to add insult to insult, when I click YES, it comes back one more time and warns me again that "Saving as text will loose all formatting... are you sure?" That's the epitome of a stupid question in my humble opinion. Maybe it's okay for the first-time user. But every time is too much.
So immediately upon upgrading to OS X, I'm astounded that now Apple has picked up Microsoft's bad habit of micromanaging me. Apple seems to think that when you select "Shut Down" you may not really want to shut down. Or, when you intentionally add the dot-html (or, dot-pdf, dot-jpg, dot-tif or any other) extension to a file name, that it's not what you really want to do, and that Apple has a better suggestion for the extension. Sorry Apple, it's got to be dot-html or it won't be seen on the web. In my humble opinion there should be a way to turn all those annoying dialogs off. But I haven't found it yet.
iPhoto = iStupid: So my brother is beaming over how fabulous iPhoto is, and that I no longer need iView for my photo archiving, right? Then I take my 512K compact memory card from the Cannon digital camera with close to 300 photos from my recent trip to Africa and plug it into the PowerBook. Apple asks if I want to use iPhoto (One of those dialogs again) and this time I say yes. After some time of churning and moaning it downloads all my files, then presents me with a screen of thumbnails. Great! It worked.
But now comes to the arduous task of figuring out what the Dickens iPhoto did with the photos. It seems to only allow me to SORT them, and then sorts them backwards -- rather than the correct chronological order. (Another stupid question I'm sure, with an equally stupid answer.) iView allows all kinds of sorting, day breaks and so forth. So does the photo-import software that came with the camera.
As I'm trying to break this folder of 300 photos, AVI and MPG files into logical sections, I finally discover how to make folders. (Cutely named "rolls" by Apple, hoping everyone knows what a roll is!) Sure enough I can select a range of photos and drag them into their target folders... er, uh, rolls -- but unfortunately, the photos STAY in the main window. So now I'm losing track of which ones have been moved to folders and which have not. An hour later I come to the conclusion that I've screwed this into a real mess! I'll stop and move them manually. But where did Apple actually put them?
After some doing I discover how Apple has actually arranged the files on the hard drive. I decide to delete the entire mess and return to iView.
Here's the killer: As I work through the files I begin to get the queasy feeling there are files missing. What happened to the Kampala Taxi Park? What happened to the Masai Village? To my chagrin I find there are no AVI nor MPG files here at all! Where did they go? Well, iPhoto downloaded ONLY the photos. Boy, my brother would have a heyday with this one.
My blind faith and stupid assumption that iPhoto would do the right thing could have resulted in a disaster. Thank goodness I hadn't erased either of the three media cards yet! Whew! So I reconnected the camera and used the old-fashioned, non-OS X method of making sure I got what I wanted... dragging and dropping the files from the camera into the folder on the hard drive. Now I knew I had them all.
You can bet I'll be re-reading O'Reilly's Mac Annoyances, and digging for my copy of the iPhoto Missing Manual before doing any more on this collection of photos. And, when you come to think of it -- that's what one should always do.
The point is before you let your computer annoyances get to you, or destroy valuable data, get the help you need. Apple's HELP menu is actually pretty good, as are the books from O'Reilly and Peachpit and many of the others. Peachpit's Visual Quickstart Guides are particularly excellent as are the Missing Manual series. I recommend them both highly.
Don't be afraid to ask questions about your annoyances that may seem stupid. There are no stupid questions! Except the ones you don't get an answer for. Also, be sure to see our full page on the Annoyance Books from O'Reilly
Until next time, happy mousing.
Fred Showker, Editor/Publisher UG Net News
Fred Showker is co-editor of "MUG Info Manager," the User Group Network News service, and a founding Apple User Group Advisory Board (UGAB) member. He was an original founder of the User Group Forum on AppleLink Personal Edition which became America Online in 1988 ... read more
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