The cut-and-paste thing is really a basic feature for me and I think it was working in Mac Os 8+, we already have a copy-and-paste. I can't understand why they couldn't implement the cut-and-paste.
I don't understand how you can't miss it, unless you "mv" everything.
The maximize thing is not entirely Windows, I remember seeing it on some Linux distros. I hate to see the clutter behind my windows, especially if I have a browser open on some webpage with a blinking ad.
I find it much harder to focus on the app on which I'm supposed to work if I have other stuff behind.
This is partly historical. When MultiFinder was introduced to System 6, the Mac's primary difference from the PCs of the era was an emphasis on mouse manipulation, instead of keyboard manipuation (via DOS's command line, mostly). It was expected for end users to use drag-and-drop to move information between applications, instead of using the clipboard. (Something that Apple themselves didn't fully come through with regarding APIs until System 7.)
Since drag-and-drop requires visible targets to work, and users were expected to have to see data from two or more apps at the same time, it was considered "rude" to take up the entire screen. (Even apps that tried to do so were constrained by the OS to provide a 4-pixel gutter around the edges of the screen so the user could always option-click the Finder to the foreground.)
The notion that you only do work in just one app was considered "missing the point" for multitasking, which is part of the reason the original "Switcher" metaphor for multitasking in the classic Mac OS was abandoned.
Upshot: Apple's UI designers seem to regret adapting the newspaper publisher's concept of the clipboard, and have been trying to invent workarounds ever since, probably because it's a form of "hidden state." (See iPhone 1.x and 2.x for a more recent example.) The only time in recent memory Apple acknowledged the validity of a clipboard model was when they tried to adapt it to a "publish and subscribe" dynamic system in System 7, only to give up when implementation and UI complexities with the concept rendered that unpopular.
I feel the same way about maximize. If you complain about it, someone who defends every Apple decision will say "why would you want to do that? It doesn't make sense."
If you'd rather not use a proprietary program from a company that makes keyloggers, check out WrongZoom (downloadable link in the readme): http://github.com/spicyj/wrongzoom/tree/master
There were the first 2 things for me as well. While it's true that no maximized windows is just a design paradigm to improve multi-tasking, it's inconsistent (Mail maximizes all the way. So does iPhoto).
As for cut and paste... that's essential.
But the VERY worst thing is the lack of folder merging. Copy and paste a folder to a directory with a folder of the same name, and the contents of the destination will be REPLACED not merged with the source.
Now, you have version 1.0 of Cool.app, and version 2.0 Cool.app. 2.0 removes some files from the distribution, and adds some new. Cool.app is a bundle, i.e. folder that looks like file in Finder. Obviously, you want to replace the application completely instead of merging.
Right. But now we have another problem. Our Cool.app stores user documents in packages. We have "Work.cool", which is treated like a package in Finder. Now we send this document to a person who doesn't have Cool.app installed. Then we send him another version of this document. How would merge/replace work for him? Since he doesn't have Cool.app, ".cool" folders are not registered as packages, they look like folders to him.
I see one solution to this problem: let user decide what to do. Apple could add "Merge" button (or maybe a better title meaning "Replace files inside the destination folder with files in source folder") in addition to "Replace" in "what do you want to do" dialog. (Note that you can't simply name this thing replacing as in Windows, because it's really merging). This would also require some kind of comparison dialog to ask users what files to overwrite.
I think Apple just went with a simplest solution here instead of introducing the whole new concept of merging and new UI to users to potentially create a confusion ("hm... what should I do - what's Merge and what's Replace?"). I'm not sure if it's good or bad, but I personally never miss Windows-like merging mistakenly called replace.
The better thing to fix (unrelated to merging), I think is to put the replaced folder to trash instead of overwriting it, to allow users to undo their action (see http://daringfireball.net/2003/03/i_love_it_because_its_tras...). However, this creates a confusion again ("what's this thing doing in my trash, I didn't delete it")... UI is hard.
Technically, these files belong in the user-specific ~/ directory and not the package itself, according to the ADC specifications, if I'm not mistaken.
I guess the simplest solution would be to use metadata to identify a package as being a package and not a folder? That way it wouldn't matter what software was installed, etc?
