#DFDBC3

http://www.tj-hd.co.uk/en-gb/languageswitcher/

Because if you want to use more than one language at a time on your computer you’re Doing It Wrong, because if you were doing it right, Apple would have provided a way to do it that way.

Astounding that this requires a 3rd-party application. Yes, it is possible to change the language in your document, but if you also use paragraph styles, they have a set languge.  And that set language doesn’t change when you set the language on the whole document.  And you can’t highlight the whole document of mixed languages and set the whole thing to one of them.  Usability at its finest.

Apple, some computer users do know how to operate computers.

I know that the standard when there is a problem with something Apple is that it’s the user’s (my) fault, but I’m not so sure on this one.  I’m trying to upload a Pages document to Basecamp.  Now, Basecamp is made by 37Signals, some of the most rabid Apple fans out there (but also the origin of Rails, so they get just a snicker on their stance).

It turns out Pages saves “documents” as a directory with several files below it (they call it a “package,” but calling my unwrapped Christmas presents wrapped Christmas presents doesn’t make it so).  I’m sure there is a reason for that, just as I’m sure there’s a reason for the obnoxious screen capture behavior built into OsX (OSx?  Who cares?).  The problem is that browsers don’t do folder uploads, so one can’t just upload their Pages document without first zipping it up.  Then, presumably one would have to unzip it to read it again.  Zipping/unzipping isn’t a terribly painful process, but neither is stubbing my toe– not exactly the gold standard against which I measure an action.

Of course, this could just be the fault of every browser, because if it weren’t, then it would be Apple’s fault.

Come on Apple! Or is that one should never have to transfer a Pages document?  Stuff written in Pages should only ever be viewed on that same machine?  Did Apple just miss the existence of the Internet, or do they expect everyone to only use Apple products which, presumably, are equipped to ship a folder around? If Pages is any indication of Apple’s quality (and it seems to be), why on Earth would someone want to switch?

Of course, on all the message boards, all anyone talks about is how bad Microsoft products are, WHILE THEY’RE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH AN APPLE PRODUCT! It would be funny if I didn’t have to work with Apple products.

So yeah, Mac OSX provides a screen capture utility that makes a cute little camera sound when a user takes a “snapshot.”  How sweet and usability-enhancing that is.

Well, it appears that Mac OSX makes the sound and then tries to take the screen grab.  Often I’ll take a screenshot to attach to a bug report at work.  I hit the buttons for the screenshot and then immediately go to look at the resulting file to make sure it was correct.  The problem though is that since it makes the sound BEFORE it has actually taken the screenshot, when I hit F11 to see my desktop, the resulting picture shows my windows on their way out to being hidden.

Apple, USE CONFIRMATION NOISES ONCE THE PROCESS IS COMPLETE!  It’s little things like this that are so frustrating with Apple because of how obnoxious the devotion of its acolytes are.