In the midst of the press storm around the passing of Steve Jobs, I received my brand new Mac Book Pro. Let me start out by saying what I love about my new machine, and Macs in general. First, I do a lot of video editing - in my work life and personal life - and NOTHING beats a Mac for video work. I have never found a Windows Firewire driver that does not give me a Blue Screen of Death. Also, no one can deny the hardware is just beautiful and wonderfully engineered. Nothing else in the market comes even close - but of course you pay for it. I also really love the smooth and intuitive gestures on the track pad. As beautiful as this aluminum monolith is, lets start our critique with hardware. The first thing I noticed as I laid my hands on my new Mac Book is, the beautiful hard edge of aluminum cuts into my wrists! After just a few minutes of work I had a line across my wrists. I am actually quite worried that this is going to be a major ergonomic issue long term. This could have been solved with just a slight, elegant bevel. Or, one can create their own bevel.
I should also say that I am an equal-opportunity computer user. I have multiple Windows PCs and multiple Macs at both home and work. I even have a Linux server in my garage (I know, Nerd Alert!) Nothing irks me more than Apple fan-boys that gush at everything Apple produces and fail to see the warts that are staring them in the face. Most of my issues lie with the operating system itself. And to be fair, I have begun to notice that Apple is addressing some of the items on my long-running gripe list. So let us take a look at the list (It's nice to be on the sending end of a "wish list" for once!)
Tabbing between controls
For some inexplicable reason, while tabbing between controls in a form in Safari, drop down lists and buttons, check boxes and radio buttons are all skipped. When I am filling out my address on-line for the 1 millionth time, I always press the tab key to quickly move through the form. In Safari, when I get to the ubiquitous "State" drop-down, the tab key skips right over it! BTW, this works well in Chrome - not sure about Firefox. Even worse than Safari, you cannot tab through controls in most OS X dialogs. This is really basic UI 101.
Alt - Tab does not show individual documents
This one is probably because I have been a Windows user most of my life. But the Alt-Tab interaction is really weak in OS X. If I have a bunch of images open in Photoshop, it sort of picks the last one when I Alt-tab to it. The dock provides a list of multiple open documents, I don't see why Alt-Tab does not.
Menu bar only across the top
I find myself going back and forth on this one. On one hand, having the menu bar across the top provides some level of placement consistency. It also makes individual windows a bit cleaner and shorter. However, it violates Fitts law which "predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target." In other words, the File menu, while always being in the same spot, is almost always farther away than if it was docked on the top of the active window.
Window management
Pressing the Plus sign does not really expand the entire window. This one always perplexes me. Probably because of my heavy Windows use, but I always expect the green plus sign to go full screen. Also, I think Microsoft really outpaced Apple in Windows 7 when they greatly improved their window manager with the side-by-side docking, drag to top to maximize and 'shake' to isolate. That said, I really like Expose, especially some of the subtle improvements in Lion.
You must resize windows from the bottom right corner only. Finally fixed in Lion! 
The Dock
The Dock is OK. But again, I think Windows is superior here. When you minimize a document in Windows it minimizes to it's parent icon on the dock. In OS X, it minimizes to this ghetto off to the right by the smelly trash can. I find that I do not minimize windows in OS X because I inevitably forget where they went. I know you can hold down the Dock icon to see the list, but I think this minimize behavior creates an unnecessary cognitive disconnect between the document and it's parent application.
The Finder
When I type a term into a Finder window it defaults to "My Mac" finding all files that match that word. This is fine behavior for the Spotlight seach in the menu bar, but when I am in a folder, I am usually searching for a file in that folder. Speaking of Spotlight, when I search for files across my entire Mac, it would be really nice if I could right click and go to the folder where that file lives. This is available in Finder searches, but inexplicably missing from the Spotlight search results. Sometimes I think that right-click behavior is the red-headed step child of OS X. Something they had to begrudingly adopt, but hidden behind a sleek one button door with no affordance of it's right-clickiness.
Copy/Paste does not work on files. Argh.
Delete key does not delete files. Double Argh!
iLife
Ok, for this one I should just accept that I am not the target user for this suite and leave it at that and be happy with the fact that Picasa works on the Mac.
Hey look, I know I am coming across as grumpy...and trust me, I am not sending this thing back! But as with all of you Reviteers out there, it's all out of love of the product (right?) And of course, there is always Bootcamp and Parallels!
_tom
Tom,
Welcome to the As a 100% Windows user for 15 years, and a recent (4 years) Mac convert, I suspect that you will eventually just get used to the differences, and either be neutral or actually come to prefer the Macish way. I know I was frustrated as hell with the new scrolling in Lion. For about two days. Now it really does make a lot more sense.
Two things that may help.
Control down arrow will show you all documents for the current app via App Expose, while Control up arrow is a shortcut to Mission Control. Four finger swipes up and down work the same magic on the track pad. Once you get used to it it really is very elegant. The five finger pinch (actually a thumb and three fingers) for Launchpad and spread for Show Desktop are a little more awkward but also less needed.
Also, in Finder Preferences, under Advanced, you can set your search to search the Mac, the Current Folder, or the previous Search Scope. I am with you, Current Folder is the better setting. I also turn off all the file access stuff on the desktop, which the old school macheads consider to be very windows of me. ;)
Have fun with the new toy! Maybe someday we get an OS X native Revit this way.
Gordon
Posted by: Gordon | October 13, 2011 at 06:23 PM
Tom,
I too have spent most of my computing life (25 years) in the Microsoft world, with only the last 4 using Macs. At first some of the restirctions/differences annoyed me as well, but the fact that I now spend much more of my time on the computer being productive vs. rebooting, reinstalling windows, dealing with incompatible dll's, drivers, etc., I've come to realize it's worth it. I'm calmer, and don't have the urge to hurl my computer out the window!
Anyway, a couple of (additional) things that may help (Snow Leopard)...
1) In the Dock settings, checking the "Minimize windows into application icon" checkbox will cause the windows to do just that, keeping the ghetto a little cleaner ;-)
2) If I understand you correctly regarding [Alt]+[Tab], to cycle between open windows within an application on the Mac use [command]+[~]
P.S., Autodesk's recent release of AutoCAD for Mac had me pretty excited, even though I don't use AutoCAD anymore... just got me hopeful that this would eventually carry over to the Revit family of products... I know, hopefull ;-)
Cheers,
Rob
Posted by: Rob Danner | October 13, 2011 at 08:39 PM
Autodesk's release of autocad for mac got me excited too, but then it turned out to be the most sluggish memory glutton app I've ever installed. It's barely usable.
Posted by: Tom | October 14, 2011 at 07:43 AM
Rob and Gordon, thanks for the tips! This actually made my list a bit shorter :) Of course, I forgot about another big one: the End key does not actually go to the end of a sentence. I know, you can use Command+>, but why even have an End key? Actually, my 4 year old iMac has the End key, I notice now that my new Mac Book does not...
Posted by: Tom Vollaro | October 14, 2011 at 02:10 PM
I've used a MacBook Pro a year after bootcamp was initially released. That time the macbook pro could only hold 4GB of ram and didn't supported Windows XP 64 bit not Vista 64 bit. Using Parallels or Fusion was useless on mid size to large Revit projects. Bootcamp was ok, but missed some crucial drivers and since I worked mostly in Revit, I couldn't justify the use of a Mac since I worked only in Windows. Therefore I sold my Mac 9 months later and went back to a PC.
That said, even though things have improved and Autodesk supports Revit on a Mac, I don"t see the point in using a Mac. First of all, you will always have to take a performance hit if you work in Parallels or VMware. Revit is the slowest software I've ever used, which needs all resources. If you work in Bootcamp, which does use all resources, you might as well buy a windows machine. I have the Dell Precision M6600 laptop which allows you to have a raid configuration which increases performance. But most importantly, this laptop could have up to 32 Gb of Memory, which is a huge benifit to Revit. Not to mention the choice in graphic cards.
So, unless something has changed, I would like to know what drives Revit users to use Apple products?
Posted by: Ralph Mayham | October 15, 2011 at 05:40 AM
Hi. In addition to what's been written you should know about Cinch, a $7 shareware utility that copies Win's windowing (top=max, Lt, Rt=split). Works with multiple monitors. I've seen some other similar apps.
On those occasions when MS develops a nice UI trick that you just must have on your Mac you can always find something that does just that, and usually more, for ten bucks or less.
Oh, and to answer Ralph, a lot of us are Mac users for, like, ever. So it's not a question of why would a Revit user switch to Mac. It's why would a Mac user switch to Win just for Revit?
Posted by: Geoff Briggs | October 17, 2011 at 11:34 PM