Hello Operator

“So it only works on Windows and Mac? Uh, no, sure, it’s not problem, there’s a spare Mac lying around here. I’ll install the token client and install a JDK on it right away.” I said with a sense of dread and foreboding. I had recently been subjected to Apple software when I dropped my Android and was given a spare iPhone by the office. Times have changed, I told myself, plenty of people are using Macs these days. Besides, I’m a technical professional, how bad can this be?

It wasn’t as bad as I thought. It was much, much worse. At first I thought OS X might have been poorly designed through incompetence, after all, I know all too well that even good developers can create a poor result if the planning and design is shoddy. But as the hours with the MacBook Pro wore on it became increasingly clear that this was a system designed by Satan himself.

This is not a rant by a Windows fanboy. I haven’t used Windows in years, and it’s got it’s fair share of problems too. I’ve been using computers (and therefore operating systems) since the 80s. Things were pretty bad back then, but if we're to measure by the standard of our times, OS X is truly amazing. Amazingly bad.

As I was replacing Apple’s JVM with a real one, I was happy to see the Linux-like Terminal app. It’s almost as good as the Linux terminals from the late 90s. No reverse-i-search, no idea where you are in your file system, no idea what these guys were smoking. Switching to the smiley-faced Finder app is when I realised that I was dealing with some seriously stupid design decisions. Navigating with the arrow keys worked fine, shame there is no home or end key. Once I had my folder selected I hit return and was prompted to rename the folder. I called the folder “assface” and put my hands on the touchpad to open it the slow way, found the log files I wanted to clear and hit delete. Nothing happened. The retard-faced finder just smiled at me.

I alt-tabbed to the ‘terminal’ to get back to a relatively sane environment, opened a new tab and tried to switch back to the first one. Alt-1, control-tab, option-tab, alt-option-tab, fn-control-tab, forget it, back to the touchpad. Alt-tab back to Finder, no not this Finder, the other Finder window.. where is it?? Ah, you have to alt-tab to Finder, then alt-` to the right Finder window! Brilliant! Navigating through windows is so much better this way, I’m not in a hurry anyway. I mean, why do we even need a keyboard? I’ll just select letters from an on-screen keyboard.

This system is built around the touchpad experience, you know that. Stop trying to be fast and efficient with your antiquated keyboard antics, cramp your wrist up in front of your chest and sit on your left hand and you’ll be loving OS X in no time. I clicked my way to the ‘browser’ and scrolled down a page of keyboard shortcuts using a two fingered-scroll. Trouble is, it scrolled in the wrong direction. You can change it back to normal in the settings, where it gives you two options: natural (wrong) scrolling or not. Yes, all of the cursor and scrollbar scrolling in all of the history of computing has been wrong ladies and gentlemen. Finally someone has come to school us about what is natural. Finally.

While I was in the settings I thought I could try to make my life in this OS hell a little better. Let’s see, I need to see hidden files and folders… hmmm… well I guess people who like this steaming pile of crap shouldn’t be trusted with hidden files anyway. Hmm, well at least I’m not going to get lost in the settings, I guess it’s only fair to subject everyone to the same terrible window management equally. Ah, an alert popped up… let’s try and tab to ‘no’ and hit enter… what the hell!?!?! But hey, at least there are multiple desktops now, like we’ve had on good operating systems since literally last century.

I’m sure there are people out there who really like OS X. But forcing users to use the touchpad really slows them down (yes, it really does) and there is no good reason not to also include keyboard shortcuts that aren’t completely stupid. Switching to a Linux kernel was likewise a great move, but then why did they have to smother it in so much crap? I have met so many mac users who have no idea where their files are actually stored. Why should they need to know? Because they are programmers! Yes, programmers are actually using this junk.

Luckily, I found a great workaround for all of the problems I was experiencing with OS X, you can download it here: http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

That ship has sailed