2. This is a common complaint I’ve heard. The issue is that the maximize button on the Mac tries to expand just enough to show all the content. This works wonderfully for apps like Photoshop. Why would I want to maximize the window when I just want to see all the image? In Windows, you’re much more apt to work in full-screen mode… the Mac is much more about multiple windows. It takes getting used to. I think in some ways the Mac way is better and in some ways it is not.

3. Installing an app actually mounts a disk image. That is the cruft. So, it is like you’re inserting a virtual CD in the drive to install. You’ll notice that the apps will show up in the sidebar of the Finder as mounted volumes. If you rebooted, the drives will not be mounted. But you do have to unmount them before deleting the image file which is kind of a pain. So, technically, it isn’t installing anything on your desktop… just mounting a volume if that makes sense.

4. I would have to see this behavior… I have never experienced that. Unless you have a mouse driver that changes the behavior, if you’ve clicked in the address bar of Safari it should retain the focus and accept typing. I just tested and can’t replicate that… One nice thing about Mac mouse focus is that you can scroll anything you are hovered only… including windows in the background.

5. The way to think of the red circle is that it closes the window and not the app. To me, this makes much more sense. I don’t like how, in Windows, the program’s menus are part of the document window. On the Mac you will always know where the program’s menus are. It unifies the UI, in my opinion. Just get used to using CMD - Q to quit. The placement of those keys is also very natural to hit (unlike ALT-F4). I understand that if you close the Address Book window that you most likely want to close the app… but that would not be the case if you have three Word documents open, for example. The Mac OS is about consistency… if it works one way in one app, it *should* work that way in other apps.

It seems weird at first, but it works for me because I usually have one instance of each dock app running anyway, so combining the launch and task-switch aspects kinda makes sense.