"defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall finder"
Command line-only setting to see hidden files in the GUI? Bad design.
If you like you can download a dumb little application to do it for you that one time. Or you can add a context-menu to do it on the fly. The vast majority of OS X users should not be seeing hidden files, it would only confuse their work. What's bad design is leaving that option around with all the others where they can discover and toggle it and then accidentally f*% up their systems.
Are you saying you want a "pro version" of the GUI to be bundled with the OS? I suppose that would be nice for you, but it would suck for developers, who now have to support two completely different GUIs for the same platform.
The scrolling behaviour is designed to work with touch pads, because they're the primary analog interaction device on OS X, I'd strongly suggest you grab one.
Far less precise. Works for people playing, not people working.
Don't knock those trackpads until you've tried them. It's actually possible to be very precise indeed, because the surface even senses changes in the "center of contact" of your finger, i.e. if you roll your finger forward slightly, that registers as movement. Compare this to the mouse, where your accuracy is limited to how slowly you can push an object on a flat surface by flexing your hand.
The difference here is like playing the guitar with a pick, and playing the guitar with your fingers.
Correct, exposÃf© is the right tool for this job. You can also use cmnd-` to cycle through windows within an application.
Extra work for a simple task, bad design
Not sure what you mean by "extra work". There are five different UI mechanisms for sorting windows on OS X.
1. command-tab plus command-~. Hold down "shift" to cycle up the stack instead of down. Mouse over an icon to select it in the stack.
2. Expose, via extra mouse button, trackpad gesture, or key combination.
3. Flip between screens, with trackpad gesture, or key combination.
4. Raise the dock, click on an icon
5. Command-H to hide your foreground app and send it to the bottom of the stack, bringing the next app into context.
Or if you really love spotlight, command-spacebar, a few letters of the app you want foregrounded, and the return key.
And of course there's the old favorite: Move the freakin' mouse and drag the window into view.
And here's a tip: Most of these, along with exposing the desktop, work from the keyboard while you're dragging something with the mouse. You can do some really sneaky things this way!
As I said above ctrl-a and ctrl-e. Also cmmd-left arrow and cmnd-right arrow.
Bad design. Home and End should work as in every other system, the other shotcuts should be the "Apple Custom" ones.
Given that "every other system" in this case probably refers to two other radically different platforms whose interfaces treat every other function key on the keyboard differently, it doesn't make sense to call this "bad design" just because it's different. 'Home' scrolls the window without moving the cursor, just like 'page up' right next to it, while 'command-up arrow' moves the cursor to the top, just like 'command-left' moves the cursor to the left side. From my subjective point of view, this is more consistent, more useful, and makes more sense.
As an aside, you may not realize it, but the days when Apple's OS design team needed to cater carefully to Windows 'switchers' are actually over.
So what you're saying is that on Linux you're willing to install the appropriate software to make the machine behave like you want it, but on Mac OS, having to install software is unreasonable?
No, you're misreading. In KDE, one sets options. In OS X, one hacks, if cusomization is possible at all.
Well, that's only if you consider "setting a built-in configuration option via a command line" as "hacking", and "installing any of your choice of 3rd-party GUI extensions" as an unreasonable burden for OS X, when it's practically the price-of-admission for KDE.
I'm assuming you're extremely familiar with doing things via the command-line. If you, or I, needs to be able to see a ".git" folder from a UI, or go poking into our own ".ssh" folder from a UI, we surely have the sk1llz to turn that option on without breaking a sweat.