. Obviously, the way I work, I do not want any window maximized. Say I then move to a web site that requires a different window size to display its content without (horizontal) scrolling. With Safari, for example, clicking the green radio button enlarges the window just enough to cover the new content... with Firefox, it actually maximizes the whole window, blocking everything else on the screen. Mostly for that reason alone, I prefer using Safari to Firefox. Now, everybody is entitled to argue whether that is a flaw or feature, good or bad... I am just explaining how I find it useful.
Yeah, whatever. There is
no consistency to what a user can expect to achieve when clicking the green button on a window in OSX. Even in Safari, there is no consistency to how tall the window will become vertically after clicking the button, and there is no guarantee that the window will display without needing horizontal scrolling for the current site. Even if there is enough screen real estate to expand the window horizontally to fit the site, Safari won't always do so. Finder windows are even worse; the results of clicking the green button is basically random. No attempt whatsoever is made to ensure that all columns are visible, regardless of available screen space, and no attempt is made to keep the active window from covering up other windows. So after clicking the green button, you're pretty much guaranteed to have to manually move and/or resize the window anyway, which pretty much defeats the purpose of having a button to click. Since you have to manually move & resize the window anyhow, why bother clicking the button? If you actually LIKE this inconsistency, you're welcome to it. Give me a blue button (in addition to the ones already present) that does an actual maximize, and you can keep the green one and its inconsistencies.
IMO this is just as stupid as Apple's
decades of insisting on a single-button mouse, long after it became clear that 2-3 buttons were industry-standard. My Macbook has a single "mouse" button below the touchpad, even though the touchpad is multi-touch. So if I want to "right-click" I have to hold down a key on the keyboard while clicking the "mouse" button. That is not in any manner easier, more intuitive, or more efficient than simply dividing the existing huge button in half to make two buttons.
Now before you go getting all butt-hurt that I'm bashing Apple, let me be clear that Windows has its share of stupid design quirks as well. One that is particularly annoying to me right now is Vista's process for connecting or disconnecting a dial-up networking connection. You start by clicking the network status icon on the task bar, and a small window pops up showing you what connections are active (dial-up, wireless, or wired), with a link to "connect or disconnect..." a connection. Clicking the link brings op a larger window that shows all network connections, and whether they are active or not. So far, so good. The stupidity starts when you click on a connection to connect it. The list disappears and is replaced by a connection status dialog. Once the connection is made, the only option you have is to close the window entirely. You can't leave the list open to quickly disconnect the connection when you're done using it (or reconnect if your cellular connection drops and kicks you offline), you have to restart the process from the beginning. You don't have to deal with this if you have a wired or wireless connection to a router with an internet connection, but if you're stuck with dialup, you get to deal with this frequently.
My ultimate point with all this is that neither Apple nor non-Apple computers are free from stupid software and hardware design flaws; they simply have
different sets of design stupidities and bugs. Neither is unconditionally better for all users and purposes; the best choice depends on the software being run (some software is only available for one system or the other, and some software has critical bugs or feature limitations present in one version, but not the other), hardware requirements, user familiarity with one system or the other, and cost sensitivity.
