There seems to be an ever increasing trend in people complaining about the OSX interface. Now some of these are valid and I have no problem with that. Most of these are in regards to the Finder, even though I personally don’t have a problem with it. I use it for one thing, accessing file. For me it does that job very well. A lot of people complain about it not being like the OS9 Finder, yet I used that Finder for years and I switched to OSX and didn’t really find a huge difference. I actually pefer the new Finder to the old one, mostly due to the sidebar but also due to the column view.

But then you get people complaining about inconstancies that aren’t there. Hadley Stern over at Apple Matters posted on Friday what could amount to nit picking, but with out any nits to pick. For example:

And one of those things [Microsoft does better] is how Windows handles, well, windows. In OS X some interface elements have curves, other do not. For example, the top toolbar in Photoshop is nice and straight-edged, but the document window itself has curved edges. This is and of itself is bothersome, but what drives me more bonkers is that windows don’t automatically line up perfectly with other elements of the Application GUI.

Now there is only one app that I can think of that has this problem and it isn’t Photoshop. It is in fact iChat. Rounded windows are in fact that.. windows. When you switch apps windows stay visible. Square windows are pallets. These are things that hide when you switch apps. This is because you don’t need them when you are in another app. For example, I am in TextEdit and I have the Font pallet open. If I switch to Safari then the font pallet hides. Why would I need the TextEdit font pallet in Safari? What I might need is the text I’m writing now. But like I said, iChat is the exception, the transfer pallet doesn’t hide when you switch away. In theory it should be a rounded window, because it is info you’ll want to see when you switch apps.

He also complains about how Windows maximise feature is more consistent that OSX’s zoom feature. Well of course it is easier to be more consistent when you are moving a window to full size than when you are putting one to the ideal size (I would go on a rant about how people should not compare maximise and zoom and how I feel that zoom is more superior to maximise but that’s for another day). What he complains about is how the window shifts position when you zoom in Word, but it stay’s in the same place in Photoshop. That would be because Word doesn’t follow the rules. You go and zoom any Cocoa app. The top left corner stays in the same place.

Complaining that the Mac has an inconsistent interface because 3rd party developers don’t follow the rules would be stupid on it’s own, but to then go and say that Windows is superior is verging on lunacy. If you were to take a selection of 10 Windows apps and 10 OSX apps and you were to compare them the OSX apps would be more consistent. Sure, they wouldn’t be perfect, but nothing is. Basically I’m just annoyed that people feel like they need to complain about non-existent or 3rd party caused consistencies. If you really want to do something useful then get on Apple’s back over the fact that the top two corners of iTunes aren’t anti-aliased.