Apple design has some ... holes.

Post #404,092 by static 8/17/15 12:30:08 AM Reply	Apple design has some ... holes. Principal is the fact that there is a lot you can't make OS X do, not necessarily because Apple have decided it's a bad idea, but because they can't easily conceive of why anyone would want to do that. This is a very extreme example, but I found a blog post a few years ago about some enterprising soul trying to create focus-follows-mouse in OS X. The TL;DR is: there is a basic assumption to the design of keyboard shortcuts that require the menu to be correct and it is this that prevents focus-follows-mouse from being implementable. And behind that is that Apple OS devs cannot understand what focus-follow-mouse is. Wade. Just Add Story http://justaddstory.wordpress.com/
Post #404,093 by Another Scott 8/17/15 12:48:52 AM Reply	I would have thought that NextStep (or NEXTSTEP or whatever) had it. Presumably that stuff could have been put in there, but the menu at the top thingy would have made it tricky. What would you want to happen if there was an unfocused window between the active window and the top-of-the-screen menu that you wanted to access? There apparently was freeware/shareware that tried to create work-arounds to various degrees of success - http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/5/how-can-i-make-focus-follow-the-mouse-cursor Cheers, Scott.
Post #404,094 by static 8/17/15 12:59:58 AM Reply	It's a complicated problem. The Menu at the top of the screen is one piece. Handling AutoRaise properly is another. Also, that blog post I mentioned was for several major versions of OS X ago - like 5 or 6. It is possible that something has been tweaked by Apple that makes it a lot more possible in more recent versions. But my point was that Apple has strong blind spots sometimes. Wade. Just Add Story http://justaddstory.wordpress.com/
Post #404,095 by Another Scott 8/17/15 7:09:26 AM Reply	Indeed. Yes, Steve had strong opinions about too many things, and OS X had and has some weird limitations as a result. An old friend at work was the group Mac expert. He ordered and set up one of the 1U Servers that Apple was selling for a while. He would tell occasional stories about how upgrading to the latest version of OS X would break all kinds of server-y things - unfortunately I've forgotten the details. The clear implication was that they didn't bother to test the changes because they figured nobody would do that... Over the weekend J was trying to remember how to (effectively) duplicate a music CD. I got her a copy of "Toast" to do that a few years ago, but I vaguely recalled that iTunes has a way to do it. Naturally, there have been so many changes to iTunes over the years that the cheat sheets one can find don't seem to apply any more. And it's not at all obvious how one does it through the menus now. I ended up clicking and poking to explore a little and did my usual, "Command-Click", "Option-Click", "Shift-Click" exploration and an extensive menu popped up for one of them. "How did you do that??" - she said. She's been using Macs since her grad-school days and still has to relearn stuff because Apple continuously hides functionality away in their attempt to make things "easy"... She eventually got it done, but I always dread when she wants to make a CD because it always involves an hour or two of wasted time and increasing frustration, and it's always a little different from the time before. Oh well. If they weren't continuing to change it, nobody would buy machines to run new versions I guess... Cheers, Scott.
Post #404,112 by static 8/18/15 6:54:22 AM Reply	Oh I know the upgrade problem. I use a Bluetooth mouse on my work MBP. This worked perfectly on 10.8 (Mountain Lion). However, Apple, in their infinite wisdom, did something to the BT stack for Mavericks. Now it has trouble re-connecting to the mouse upon wakeup unless the mouse is already on, as well as other re-connection bugs. I found evidence that Apple are actively ignoring the problem. They just don't fucking care. And no-one can even figure out why. Wade. Just Add Story http://justaddstory.wordpress.com/
Post #404,113 by Another Scott 8/18/15 7:28:47 AM Reply	Yup. :-/

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