I was browsing around on the goog this morning while supping on some coffee, and noticed this posting by Peter Elst. He just bought a Mac, and while he likes it, he hit a few of the differences between Mac and Windows. So far everyone I know that has made the switch (as it is called) has run into a few of these things as well. People generally get into the Mac flow within a week or so and these annoyances become some of the best features. Kind of like when you get a new pair of shoes, you sometimes have to get used to them (or break them in however you want to see it).

I thought I’d give the equivalent of how my work flow works to kind of counter / help with the annoyances. Much like my post on the Mac introduction movies, but more focused on these particular issues because A) I see them quite often and B) I couldn’t find anyway to comment on Peters Blog :-/.

So here we go:

Maximize window is actually fit to content – I wont go into why I personally think this is a better way to handle windows, instead I’ll just point to this application called Think. It takes over your whole desktop and lets you use just one application at a time (I don’t use it however). I truly think if you just try using “the Mac” way, after a few days you’ll see why it’s nicer. On a side note, applications can force the Windows style behavior. Eclipse, for example will “Maximize” instead of “Zoom”.

Closing a window doesn’t close the application – Closing the window doesn’t Quit the application, no. The reason for this, I believe, is because you often use the same couple of applications every day. Be it an IDE, a word processor, terminal or whatever. When you want to switch back to that application later in the day when you “re-open” it, most of the code is already loaded so you get a nice response time. Office does this kind of thing on Windows, but most other applications don’t (or they do and start to bring your system to a crawl with all the startup stuff they add to Windows startup).

What I do, when I want to really quit an application is use AppleKey+tab (or AppleKey+shift+tab), highlight the application and while keeping your thumb on the AppleKey press the Q key (for quit). This will keep you in AppleKey+tab mode and quit that application.

Along the same lines, I don’t minimize applications. I find hiding them works better for me. To do this press AppleKey+H. You’ll notice the application is gone, and not on the minimize dock area. Now AppleKey+tab back to it’s icon, and it will become visible again.

I am not sure what his last issue was, so I’ll just fill it in with a few finder things people seem to get confused with:

F2 doesn’t rename a file – highlight the name and hit Enter. That will put you into rename mode; hit enter again when you are done.

Enter doesn’t movie me into a folder – use AppleKey+Down arrow to go into a folder and AppleKey+Up arrow to go to the parent.

Another good one is you can start typing a file name, and it will start to jump to the file as you are typing. Windows does this too, but the delay between letters seems much more usable on Mac. For example, open up your hard drive icon, and before you click anywhere start typing “Users” on the keyboard.

I have no idea where I am in the finder, how do I see the path to the current directory? – hold down the AppleKey and click the title bar.

Hey, that’s neat, but how do I copy and paste the path then? – click and hold on the title bar icon, once it turns gray drag it to your text editor or terminal (note Textmate and Eclipse don’t handle this correctly). The “click and Hold” is another way to bring up other menus as well. For example, click and hold on the iTunes icon in the dock when it is running (similar to right click in this example).

Every time I drag a file it moves it, I want to copy it – Start the file drag, then hold down the alt key for the rest of the drag that will change it to a copy operation (you’ll see a little plus sign on your cursor)

What are “Spring Loaded Folders” – this is a pretty cool way to move around when moving a file. Grab a file and hover over a folder while you are dragging. As you move over folders you’ll see them flash then open. You can navigate all over the place this way – then when you get were you want you can drop the file.

I hope that helps translate a bit for people moving to the Mac – have fun!

( Maybe it was better I couldn’t find the comment button on Peter’s site, I got a whole post out of it :D )