In my mac there is a issue with USB-devices, they every morning after waking up my laptop from sleep, the USB devices wont fire up (Apple Keyboard and Asus DAC). Keyboard is rather annoying and sure, listening music from my speakers would be also nice 😉

Solution is to go back of my monitor and plug out, plug in and repeat until device starts working. As my knowledge there is no way to this like Windows way, and that is with Device Manager.

There is “System Report”:

But from there one can not do anything, it just is text information of devices. No way to “restart” USB Bus or check out if there is problem with drivers or something. Probably because Apple wants to give out impression that Mac does not need drivers, but that is not true. Anyhow that is a different subject for a different time 🙂

But for usability good old fashion Device Manager from Windows and some Linux distros would save the day. Sure it is a lot more “under the hood” than normal user will ever get, but for developers and other techy user it would really be golden:

(photo from Microsoft.com)

This one is a minor problem, but oh so annoying in everyday use. When you are mainly rocking a system with two displays, where other display is smaller laptop display and other is big 4K display there is are little design flaws here and there.

This one is pretty annoying, because when display sizes are not same, the cursor will stuck to the edge of the bigger display. You can move cursor from bigger display to smaller only in area where smaller display “exists”:

And this makes moving cursor from display to display a little annoying, because cursor often is not where mouse hand expects it to be as it was stuck on the edge of bigger display. This resolves to jerking mouse around to find the missing cursor, because cursor often hides itself to the edge of bigger display (when moving from left to right).

This little usability problem could be solved by always moving mouse cursor to the smaller display. When moving from outside of the smaller display area, the cursor would simple go to the bottom (or top) corner of smaller display, what ever is closest of the transition point.

Minor annoyance, but sometimes a real time waster; in Finder there is no way to add new file to folder:

For example creating a new .js file needs to be done via text editing program, and in there you have to navigate to the correct path again. Why not straight from Finder, where you already have folder open? Maybe like Windows does it:

This is the big one for me and the one that almost made MacOS unusable because my work includes a lot of Chrome windows and app-switching between Netbeans, Photoshop and different browsers.

But there lies the problem, MacOS does not support switching between multiple windows of one program with cmd+tab (Windows alt+tab equivalent). It just shows big icons of apps and there is no way to open for example third window of Chrome or Finder with just the right folder.

And as a further insult, there is no preview of windows at all, so even if you could have multiple windows shown here, there would not be any way to know what is the correct one.

However, there is Mission Control that shows all the windows minimised, but while it is a great looking, it just is not usable with just keyboard. So when i need to switch between Netbeans and third Chrome window, i just have no option else than grab my mouse and select the window from either Mission Control or right-clicking the dock:

Both ways are horribly slow and unergonomic when done thousand times per day. But i prefer Dock-method, because Mission Control is slow to open even on best of the best Macbook (maybe not if you are not heavy user).

Luckily there is a third party solutions:

https://bahoom.com/hyperswitch (free for now)
https://bahoom.com/hyperdock (costs about 10€)

These two make my life with MacOS much more usable, but as they are third-party apps they are not perfect. Preview images lag behind pretty badly and because they are just cached still images, they cannot include moving video or other live-updates (like Windows does from version 7).

Copying large number of files in Mac can be frustrating, because there is little, if none, indicators what is happening and how fast it is happening. And lack of pause transfers really forces me to use external applications when moving large amounts of files. Especially when using network drive, pause option is really handy for transfers that take up hours or even days.

Comparing Windows 10 and MacOS High Sierra copy dialogs makes the problem clear:

There is no visible way to pause copying or any indication what file is being processed. Also graph for speed-history is just neat for troubleshooting, but not really a “killer-feature”.

Also the lack of “overwrite”-methods are really annoying, but by holding Option-key one can get more options. But why is this feature also hidden behind key shortcut that is not indicated visually anywhere?

Mainly my biggest issue with MacOS is the way how it clearly does not want to copy good features from Windows. I don’t know if it’s some kind of attitude problem or are Apple developers just blind of the good sides of Windows?

Finder is (in my opinion) one of Macs worst apps in terms of usability. But lets start with simple example: there is no visual way to cut and paste files and usual key-shortcut (cmd+x) does nothing.

However, you can move items by copying and when in destination folder right-click while option-key pressed. Then “paste item” becomes “Move item here”:

But why is this hidden behind “option”-key? There is plenty of space to show both menu-items without any key-shortcuts.

And why is not cmd+x shortcut working? Apple uses that same shortcut  for cut&paste in other apps, like Apple Mail. Why not in Finder?

Another usability issue throughout Mac OS is useless key-combinations.  One rather small but impossible to figure out without help is reordering of menu-icons. Instead just drag & drop, you must press cmd-key down while doing it.

But why? Why just not simple drag & drop?

Lets start this blog with this tiny, but so annoying usability issue.

Security is important, but why there is no shortcut to just install the program? You must manually open up security settings and allow program.

Apple should just copy Windows and put “allow”-button on this popup. If security is a concern, that button could be hidden inside a dropdown-arrow or something like that.

In this blog i will publish all usability issues that people have discovered with current version of Mac OS X.

These problems are not meant boast how much better other operating systems are, but fact is that Mac OS X could use a lot of feature copying from other operating systems.

So if us users make enough noise, maybe Apple will fix these issues and finally the argument of “This is just how Mac works” dies.