Using the bizarre fruit pastille mystery sweet-meat icons you can minimize and close windows just as you can in MS Windows. But the green pastille (the funny bitter tasting one that always gets left in the packet) doesn't maximize the window. It sort of moves it back to the default position, which doesn't fill the screen, leaving other applications visible behind it, which is distracting.
OK, I can hide the other applications but, really, I've asked this one to Maximize itself, because I want to look at this one, not admire the way that the Mac can show multiple windows simultaneously. Or does it really know better than me? When using Macoffice, zooming the document to 150%, maximize doesn't maximize the window to show the entire document width, so I have to do it manually. Perhaps years of using an inferior desktop system have conditioned me to expect the green pastille to be a maximize button, but actually it's the far superior "sort of vaguely put the window um, somewhere or other" button.
Now, apparently the Mac menu bar is easier to use than the Windows one, because it is "a mile high" - you just slam the mouse to the top of the screen and you can select the menu. No need to precisely target as with Win32. But why are the windows not a mile wide too? I seem to have picked up the habit of clicking on the left-hand edge of maximized windows to activate them: annoyingly, in OSX the left hand edge doesn't extend to the left of the screen, so I end up opening the Finder. Hello? If I'd wanted to open the Finder, I'd have done so using the Apple Menu, the Dock, Command-Tab, or the lovely Exposé. What is this 'feature' supposed to accomplish beyond raising my blood pressure?
Apparently this is a "Mac newbie" complaint. Presumably after being fully indoctrinated, you learn not to want maximized windows? I can see the argument that in a desktop fully capable of multi-tasking windows, it seems silly to revert to a single-tasking maximized window, but sometimes you just want to concentrate on one thing. (I'm typing this in a maximized window. My extended desktop has IRC and other distractions scattered around it).
