** Ubuntu (on any window):

CTRL + H (toggles on/off hidden files).

OS X, the paradigm of usability MY ARSE.

(And please don’t embarras yourself saying that Mac users don’t need to know about hidden files)

Again, Linux and Windows behave almost the same way, but some geniuses at Apple decided to go creative, and this time not in the nice way. To name a few:

* There’s a Ctrl key, but doesn’t work as you’d expect.
* There’s CMD key that you don’t know what’s for.
* You have the F keys but they don’t work as you’d expect either.
* You have end/beginning of line, PageUp and and PageDown keys, but guess what? You bet your ass they don’t work as you’d expect.
* If you want to select words in a line instead of just letters, the key combination is Alt + Shift instead of Ctrl + Shift.

Not enough? Then check this out: even though you can solve some of these features editing dark configuration files somewhere in your hard drive the changes are NOT consistent through all your applications. Some of them follow that new configuration file, like TextMate, some others don’t, like Firefox or the console.

Apparently it has to do with being a Cocoa application, but I’m going to play here the “I’m a dumb user, don’t give a shit about your geeky stuff” card and say: “I don’t give a shit about your geeky stuff, all I want is that my applications behave consistently”.

The reason for this odd behaviour on Macs? I have no idea. What I think is that this feature is not an advantage (like a nice innovation as, let’s say, the iPhone interface), just a different way of doing things, a deviation from the standard. Why keep using it? Remember that defaults are arguably the most important design decisions you’ll ever make as a software developer.

I switched from Windows to Ubuntu and I didn’t have a single usability problem. Full stop*. I had many problems, but not usability related. So here comes the first round of the Incredibly annoying Macs.

Desktops or spaces (Apple’s marketing team dixit) work in Linux as you would expect. For example, this is my usual working environment in Ubuntu:

Desktop 1: Working stuff, usually involving Firefox opened with whatever I’m doing.
Desktop 2: Music player kicking plus Firefox opened with GMail opened.

Nice’n'easy. Now, let’s go to the Mac. Open FF in desktop 1, switch to desktop 2, click on FF and……. ops! I’m taken to desktop 1. WTF???? How on earth you justify from an usability point of view that opening an application switches desktops? C’mon…

You have to Google the problem to find out that you can go to Preferences > Exposé and spaces > Spaces and click on “When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application”. Fuck me. What about “Keep all application’s windows in the same space”?

Anyway. I have a ton more, I’ll post them as soon as they hit me again. Of course feel free to blog about “incredibly annoying Windows” or “incredibly annoying Ubuntu” or “incredibly annoying whatever”. The difference is that they don’t proclaim themselves as the most usable system in the world.

Have a nice day!

* Ok, I shouldn’t lie. In Windows when you are on the console both “cd ..” and “cd..” work. In Linux (and Macs!) only “cd ..”.