Mac AppStorm

Suum cuique but some of your concerns really aren't:

> In OSX you can only resize a window in the bottom right corner, in Ubuntu I can resize from any corner, or I can hold Alt and middle click anywhere near a corner of a window to start resizing it. No more hunting for the resize sweetspot.

They changed that in Lion to every corner, every side. And you don't have to press ALT to do it.

> When I click the Maximize button on OSX, it doesn't actually maximize the window 99% of the time, it just picks a seemingly random size.

There's now a full-screen mode that takes care of that.

> Nautilus can access Windows network shares, SSH/SFTP/FTP access, and can mount NTFS, HFS, and pretty much any other filesystem type there is.

One of these might be for you: http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/utilities-roundups/5-alternatives-to-the-os-x-finder/

> On a new linux machine I can apt-get most anything, but if I do need to compile something I just apt-get build-essentials and I'm ready to go, on OSX you have to download a DVD just to be able to compile stuff from source.

Darwin ports? Fink?

> I just want to see hidden files in Finder, why is that so hard?

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE ?

Or just use the terminal ?

> And that reminds me, why can't I type a path in Finder?

CMD-Shift-G

> I like Home and End keys. Where are they?

Erh, fn-ArrowLeft/ArrowRight ?!

> In the default Terminal app, there are no shortcuts (at least none that I could figure out)…

I think his point is more along the lines that regulatory burden and concern for the possible cost of error disincentive for change that effectively borders on paralysis rather than it being a physical reason preventing changes. The same sort of obstacles you see with large companies, but with an extra layer of possible fines on top.

A few years back, a designer blogged about a similar redesign for American Airlines. He was contacted by one of AA's in-house designers, who wrote about the internal politics and hurdles that get in the way of changing things. AA later sacked the designer for violating his NDA and the articles were deleted from the blog, but the entire episode was pretty interesting. If you're interested:

Copies of the Dustin Curtis & Mr. X posts
http://www.flipthefunnelnow.com/dustin-curtis-%E2%80%93-dear-american-airlines/

Aftermath
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091106/0337536829.shtml

Even if a redesign doesn't touch any of the regulatory verbage and requirements, it still has to go through largely the same pipeline of internal approval as if it did. So even minor changes are viewed the same as significant ones.

Take the boarding pass. Given the limited amount of information present, redesigning them for a better experience should be a fucking no-brainer. No matter how long you search, I doubt you'll find anyone genuinely satisfied with their boarding pass. They're big, ugly, and reasonably unclear at a glance. You see tons of redesign experiments…

I am in the same boat. It's actually really interesting, after some careful though, I've realized that I've cultivated a habit where I come home from work and watch TV while eating some dinner. Afterwards, I always plan on doing work.

The problem is, that habit of watching TV with dinner causes me to sit down and get sucked into my TV habit. For example, last night I decided to do that and ended up watching 3 episodes of random shows and then going to bed, instead of doing what I wanted to do.

When I eat dinner and listen to a podcast, I still have a bit of an urge to watch TV but I find it much easier to sit down and get to work afterwards.

Maybe you have this type of habit in your own life? Try thinking about what you do every day when you come home from work, and identify your 'triggers'. If it's like mine and you are watching TV while eating dinner, listen to/watch a podcast or TED talk instead. If you end up spending a ton of time on YouTube or Facebook, set up something like SelfControl (or the PC equivalent Cold Turkey) to make sure that you can't use those things during times that you have blocked off for work.

For mac users, here's a list of stuff that you can use (note that I'm not vouching for any app in particular, but they all seem useful to someone): http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/productivity-roundups/15-mac-apps-to-help-you-focus-and-work-productively/

Hi Sergiotapia,

there are reviews:
MacAppStorm: http://mac.appstorm.net/reviews/web-dev-review/css-hat-turn-photoshop-layers-into-css3-code-with-a-click/

The Next Web: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/06/28/sweet-css-hat-turns-photoshop-layer-styles-into-css3-now-available-on-windows-and-mac/

Design Hack: http://designshack.net/articles/css/css-hat-a-magic-button-that-turns-photoshop-styles-into-css/

Or you can watch video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZcukMGBeXCE

+ you can still read what CSS Hat users says about it on Twitter: https://twitter.com/search?q=%22csshat%22%20OR%20%22css%20hat%22&src=typd

Hope it helps in decision process :-)

For designers, just including a JS file that does the compiling on the fly seems why LESS gets more love from that group. And also that Twitter Bootstrap uses it as default (although there are SASS ports of Bootstrap).

For beginners/designers to the whole precompiling CSS scene, setting up Ruby for the SASS/Compass toolchain could possibly be daunting. Although there are nice GUI alternatives: http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/internet-roundup/5-mac-apps-that-make-css-preprocessors-easier-to-use/

However I agree with other comments that it seems there are more tools/frameworks built on SASS (with Compass), that make it more appealing to me.