Ten Things I Hate About Apple Apps

• By Owen Linzmayer
• Mar 31, 2006

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The applications that Apple generously bundles with Mac OS X are widely regarded as some of the best in the industry, often comparing very favorably to competing commercial products. Nonetheless, at the risk of being accused of looking a gift horse in the mouth, in this article I spell out 10 things I can’t stand about some of Apple’s applications.

Many readers will no doubt rush to Apple’s defense, belittling my quibbles as minor irritants, which is exactly my point. The reason these things annoy me so much is because they would be so easy for Apple to address. For the most part, I’m not asking for incredibly complex new features; instead I point out rather small improvements to streamline otherwise universally acclaimed programs.

1. Overprotective Safari

I appreciate the fact that Safari now contains various improvements to protect against unsafe downloads. What I don’t like is that after downloading an application in Safari, it always insists upon acting like an overprotective mother, asking if I really want to continue downloading (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Don’t question me every time.

OK, you and I both know that this is an attempt to prevent users from infecting their Macs with malware, but shouldn’t the dialog box explicitly say so for the benefit of all? And because I’m a pretty savvy user who doesn’t go around downloading files from suspect sources, I would appreciate it if there was an option to suppress this warning in the future.

Furthermore, the dialog box pops up after the download is complete, so it’s literally incorrect to ask if "you want to continue downloading." The wording should be changed to "Are you sure you want to open" the file in question.

Also, instead of leaving the Download window open when the task is complete, why not offer a preference to close it automatically, as is present in Firefox?