One of the problems with the Mac interface is that it has separated the menu bar from the application window. With the Finder application being the desktop, you are always tempted to leave something of the desktop exposed rather than use the entire screen for your application window.

But by doing that, you allow those little desktop items to start distracting you. Windows, of course, has a very simple way to fix this: Expand the window to full-screen. Just double click on the title bar or click the maximize icon or right-click on the button in the Taskbar and select "Maximize." Suddenly, your desktop vanishes, the only thing you can see is the application upon which you're working, and there are no desktop distractions to get in the way.

For even more space, set the Taskbar to autohide. It'll get out of the way and only make its presence known when a window is trying to get your attention.

And even better, move the Taskbar from the bottom of the screen to the side. The buttons will then stack up vertically rather than horizontally. You can then size the Taskbar to something very wide so that you always have a good description of what each button is, even if you have many windows open. And since you've set it to autohide, you are left with a full-screen app and all your other windows are a flick of the mouse away.

Need something on your desktop? Sure, you can minimize all your windows with the "Show Desktop" button in the Taskbar, but why not simply add a flyout menu to the Taskbar that's pointed at your Desktop? Windows lets you do this out of the box and that way, you don't have to minimize anything to get to something on your desktop.

Who needs a virtual desktop?* Windows has the basic concept of a virtual desktop built in: It's called "full-screen." You simply need to use it.

* Yes, I know there are very good reasons to have a virtual desktop. For those reasons, use a virtual desktop program. I'm simply referring to what he original article is commenting about: Getting rid of distraction. Windows provides an easy way to hide everything except the program you're working on.

Not only does Rrhain's post sound like a ad for Microsoft, but EVERY SINGLE FEATURE he claimed was Windows-only is on a Mac. Even the auto-hide taskbar and the taskbar-to-the side business. And most of the Mac features are easier to access and, IMHO, prettier.

I dunno if it's Zen, but my desktop is solid black with an oval portrait of Fatty Arbuckle smiling at me from the center of the screen. This alternates with a picture of Charlie McCarthy kissing Marilyn Monroe. You have no idea what an energy boost this turns out to be.

My everyday programs and files are on the (hidden) taskbar (called "the Dock"), everything else is in my "Favorites" folder, one click away. No special programs needed.

Right now I have four tabs open - this one, a website for Daniel Pinkwater that Scott Simon just mentioned (open it now, get to it later), BBC 7 for when WHYY gets to the gardening and gourmet shows, and an Old-Time-Radio site so I can download Fibber, the Shadow, and Lights Out to listen when I do the dishes.

Total cost - zero

Maximize/full-screen in bad design.

A window should never be larger than needed to display its contents. For writing, sometimes the "contents" need to be as big as the entire screen. But this is no kind of "exception" to the usual rule, just the application of it to weird facts.

My word yes Mr. Whistler. Between that shill and degsme yonder the ol' Microsoft barf-o-meter is never shy of popping. Then again I find it so difficult to differentiate between rampant and blinkered fanboyism and some corporate-hound in a dingy basement. Considering our dear columnist was at pains to point out the precendents one wonders why these people bother. Now you'll excuse me while I ctrl-shift-left onto my next virtual desktop.

But it's still true that basic Windows designed its interface to be much more distraction-free than the Mac did. Things might blink on the Windows Start taskbar, but icons don't start hopping around the way they do on a Mac (is that supposed to be endearing or something?) Further, maximizing a window on a mac just transforms it to a frustrating size that is neither here nor there, and if I manually stretch it, it never gets to quite the perfect size to fill up my screen, either. And what is the justification for the rule that a window should never be larger than is needed to display its contents, when all the stuff behind a small window is distracting?

I want to like Macs, I really do. They're prettier, cooler, and thinner. But Excel on a Mac is enough to drive anyone insane. And, while I'm on the subject, why does Word on a Mac always automatically start so that even Times New Roman point 12 is barely visible unless one magnifies the window to 125% or invests in a magnifying glass? And, speaking of cluttered desktops, why does everything automatically download to the desktop, not some other folder?

The column itself was much more of a fanboy article than a review or a discussion of evolution of the product and the feature/function tradeoff.

I don't work for Microsoft and my take on Microsoft could best be summed up by:

Microsoft writes some of the crappiest code in the world. The problem is that almost everyone else writes crappier code.

1-2-3 was an improvement over Multiplan only because it gambled on the dominance of the IBM PC. But then they wrote Symphony.

The reason that Excel and Word were the two apps that sustained the Mac for many years was because Microsoft refused to use much of the MacOS graphics and memory management libraries - wrting their own and dramatically improving performance.

Novell Netware was groundbreaking - providing much more affordable networking than any of its competitors. But then Novell came out with its own server OS that made it a bitch to build Client Server apps (and they fought like mad to make it hard to network Macs).

Lotus Notes was much much better than MS-Mail/Outlook+Exchange. But then Microsoft came out with Sharepoint, which made Notes and Exchange Public Folders largely obsolete.

etc. etc.

I personally wish there WAS a good office suite competitor (and no, Open Office is to Office as Gimp is to Photoshop). - because that would make Microsoft do some real innovation instead of this stupid Ribbon crap.

In someways though I think Open Source efforts are to blame. Too many cooks with quirky ideas that are sufficiently incomplete that any good gets drowned out in the amateurishness

You're missing the point: If the desktop is distracting you, then you get rid of the desktop. The simplest way to do that is not to get a virtual desktop to shove everything onto. It's to make sure that the one thing you are supposed to be focusing on is the only thing you see.

Full-screen is brilliant design. You're stuck on the idea that you need to see the desktop. I'm trying to point out that you don't. The only time I ever see my desktop is when I need to shut everything down and/or reboot my machine.

Who pays me? A private company.

Where I support Windows, Mac, and UNIX.

You mean the Mac copied the Windows interface. Windows has had the Taskbar since 1995. Yes, I know the Mac has the Dock...and it is a pale imitation of the Taskbar. About the only thing the Dock does better than the Taskbar is that you can rearrange the icons in it (which is an extremely good thing to be able to do...that the Taskbar doesn't allow this is a huge problem.)

And while we can quibble on what is "easier to access" (right-clicking is "difficult"? Well...when you don't actually have a two-button mouse, you have to fake it, but that's neither here nor there), the point is that it is easier to go full screen on Windows than it is on the Mac specifically because the Mac has separated the menu bar from the application. The way Windows and the Mac treat the screen is fundamentally different and thus, they don't behave the same way. There is no "Maximize" on a standard Mac window. Instead, there is a toggle between a user-defined state and the standard state. You can resize your user-defined state to be at maximum size, but that isn't the same. If you're lucky, the programmer may have set up the standard state to be full screen, but that is rare.

Me? I never see my desktop. Everything is always full screen. Need to drag and drop between apps? No problem: Drag to the Taskbar, hover over the button I want to drop into, it pops to the foreground, and I go from there.

Yes, there are times when you want more than one window showing. That's why they let you resize windows and move them around. But remember, we're talking about working such that you don't have distractions going on in the background. The simple solution to that is to cover up all the distractions by making your primary window(s) take up all the screen space so that nothing behind it can blink at you. And it is quite elegant, too. However, the Mac makes it difficult to do this because its original concept is that you shouldn't go full screen.

And you're right: It does cost nothing. As I said, there are reasons for using a virtual desktop, but you don't need to in most cases if you know how to use the system you were given. If you don't want distractions, set your computer up so that it doesn't distract you.

Frankly, I have no idea what igravious said, even though (I think) he agreed with me.


All this fancy-shamcy stuff. I dunno. I just use Apple's TextEdit and size everything the way I want it. A few clicks let's me control the font and it's size (14 for reading and 12 for printing). If I want to keep it I put in in a folder. If I want to make a PDF I can. If I want to shuffle paragraphs around, I put them on stickies - sized and shaped and colored as I desire, with my choice of fonts and font color, too.

There is also the free word-processing program called iText (and it's feature-laden $15 cousin called iText Pro (or some such thing). There is nothing it cannot do. Mac or PC.

I do not understand slatestalker's "Things might blink on the Windows Start taskbar, but icons don't start hopping around the way they do on a Mac (is that supposed to be endearing or something?)"

Gee, Wally. My icons stay just where I put them. Arranged the way I like them. Snapped to a grid or not, as I please. And changing their size and font is a gaziilion times easier than on a PC - just two clicks. What was THAT all about?

slatestalker says: "maximizing a window on a mac just transforms it to a frustrating size that is neither here nor there, and if I manually stretch it, it never gets to quite the perfect size to fill up my screen, either."

Gee, Wally. There's a little triangular gizmo on a Mac that lets you make the window any size and shape you want. You only get rectangles, though. I myself would prefer ovals if I had the option.

Or did he mean that it is impossible to fit most wide-screen websites like Slate, Salon and the NY Times onto ordinary monitors?



slatestalker complains: "speaking of cluttered desktops, why does everything automatically download to the desktop, not some other folder?"

Dunno, son. My Mac asks me where it wants me to download stuff and I just tell it where to go (so to speak).

The honorable Rrhain pleads: "Windows has had the Taskbar since 1995. Yes, I know the Mac has the Dock...and it is a pale imitation of the Taskbar. About the only thing the Dock does better than the Taskbar is that you can rearrange the icons in it".

Well, actually, it is bright, not pale. And the icons are much clearer. And you can magnify any icon you run your mouse over. And you can resize the Dock as you like with two clicks. And it automatically resizes itself so you don't have to follow those arrows to see what's there like on a PC.

Rrhain then asserts: "There is no "Maximize" on a standard Mac window. Instead, there is a toggle between a user-defined state and the standard state. You can resize your user-defined state to be at maximum size, but that isn't the same."

Why the hell not?? I am the user, so I define the state to be full-screen. As I only need to set it once, it is no different than a PC - except that the Mac's toggle is round and pretty.

Rrhain boasts proudly: "Me? I never see my desktop. Everything is always full screen. Need to drag and drop between apps? No problem: Drag to the Taskbar, hover over the button I want to drop into, it pops to the foreground, and I go from there."

Which is just how things work on a Mac. You drag your document to the printer icon on the Dock .... eh voila. It prints. I even get to control how long things hover before they open.

SO WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? What is Rrhain's bizarre anti-Mac fetish? (I was sorely tempted to say: "A Mac does everything a PC can do, only backwards and in high heels", but I won't.)

Me? I find blinking stuff very distracting. I would love to find a way to get the blinking character insertion bar (or whatever it's called) replaced by something bigger, more colorful and unblinking.


Like the man says: "f you don't want distractions, set your computer up so that it doesn't distract you". When all else fails, read the directions.

I agree that the Dock has flash, but you can't eat flash. We're talking about usefulness, not how much we can tax the GPU. Why do you need to magnify the icon? Why not just have it be at a visible state? Why does it have to shrink and stretch? Why not just have it be as big as the screen so you don't have to worry about it?

Oh, that's right...flash. Style over substance. That's the Macintosh way. The Mac has combined the Taskbar and the Start menu into a single piece, the Dock. But, it makes more sense to separate them. Once you have your apps open, you're primarily dealing with window management, not program management. It is better to use the space for window management rather than have it be sucked up by program icon management.

And why is manual resizing to a full screen state not the same as having an actual "Maximize" function? Because I don't use only one computer. Yes, if the only computer I ever use is this one, then I can set my user state to a full-screen version and never have to worry about it again. But silly me, I use a computer at both work and home and have a laptop on top of that. Then there are the computers in the conference rooms at work, my friends' computers that I might borrow when over there, etc. In all of these cases, if I want a maximized screen, I have to do it manually every single time and in the process, screw up the user-defined view so that the next user will have to move it back.

So no, it isn't the same. I can get to the same place, but it takes much more effort on a Mac. A better interface would be to provide a built-in, single-action method of getting the screen to full size without having to screw up the secondary size. On a Mac, if you want full screen and the base window isn't already in the upper left corner, first you have to move the window to be there and then use the single sizing control to stretch your window. Would it really be so difficult to add a blue light to the red, yellow, and green lights? Would it be too scary? (And yes, that is an actual reason why Apple doesn't do certain things.)

No, not drag-and-print. Drag and drop between apps. F'rinstance, I've been sent an email with data in it. I need to enter that data into a form in a web browser. Rather than copy and pasting, it's easier to drag-and-drop. So you highlight the text in the email, drag it to the Taskbar, hover over the app you need to paste it into which pops to the front, and then drop it into the field on the form. This is a common action and if you have your apps set up to be side-by-side, then it's direct.

But remember the original article: We're trying to set up a desktop with minimal distractions away from the application you are using. A simple and elegant method is to go full screen on all your apps. But this means you lose the side-by-side windows. You can either reset your windows (which, if you're doing a lot of dragging and dropping between windows is the smart thing to do and if you're on Windows, it's easy to have a "side-by-side" state and a maximized state that you can toggle between whereas Mac only gives you your personal state and the programmer's preferred state) or just use the Taskbar. Who needs a virtual desktop?

Do I really need to explain a personal dislike of an aesthetic? Isn't that why it's called a "personal" dislike? I don't like the Mac interface. I never have. I have always found it to be user-vicious. I know too much about computers to appreciate the coddling of the Mac interface. As an example, why does a Mac have only one button on the mouse? "Because two buttons are confusing." Yes, that is the actual reason why. The PARC interface Apple stole from Xerox (with some amount of blessing) came with a three-button mouse. Horrors! But, I'm smart enough to know my left from my right, even on my right hand, and so a single button is a user-vicious solution, treating me like a child. Yes, I know that you can get multi-button mice for the Mac and yes, I know that the Mac has (FINALLY) adapted its interface to take advantage of multi-button mice, but the point remains that out of the box, you get a one-button mouse because two-button mice are scary. On the laptop, you get a one-button trackpad...that doesn't accept taps! AUGH! Does nothing on a Mac work right?!)

I am quite aware that there are many people who love this "Let me do the thinking for you" concept of the Mac, but I find it maddening.