Things I Don’t Like About Mac: Focus Stealing

In early 2007 I got my first real job and with the money I earned I fulfilled a dream I had had for years: I bought a Mac. One of the newly introduced Intel iMacs, to be specific. It was a big change from the then four-year old Dell laptop I had that was literally falling apart (the hinge broke and the screen fell off). I had expected that all my frustrations from Windows were about to be completely solved. I realize now that was naïve of me.

If you’re considering switching to Mac from Windows, know this:

Switching to Mac from Windows isn’t going to end all your frustrations with your computer; you will merely experience new frustrations.

This is the first of a progressive series of posts about the dark-side of Mac, things which compared to Windows are annoying.

On Windows, I used a small, little-known app called TweakUI which Microsoft actually published on their website apart from Windows. It had many small little ‘tweaks’ you could do to Windows, such as hiding the curled arrow on shortcut icons. One rather obscure setting was called something like ‘Prevent other applications from stealing focus’. What this essentially meant was, while you were using one application, another couldn’t ’steal focus’ and pop up on top of what you were doing. Clicking this one checkbox would prevent that from ever happening in Windows.

In Mac, I haven’t found a quick fix like this, nor have I been able to explain it to a long-time Mac user well enough for them to suggest fixes. And actually, I think Mac applications are worse about stealing focus. With a Mac and its power, you’re tempted to do more things at once than you might have with a PC, and so the problem becomes worse. For instance, plugging in my iPod while talking to someone on Adium. I continue typing, when suddenly iTunes notices the iPod is there and iTunes jumps to the front. Suddenly, I’m typing into iTunes and not Adium. This usually leads to a chorus of error beeps because you’re not supposed to be typing there.