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Why was OS X designed this way?
- Thread starter steveyo
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Finder bar? Do you mean the Menu Bar at the top of the screen? It's there because it contains the controls for whatever app you're currently using. If it shows "Finder" near the left side, that means Finder is the "active app". If you click on a Safari window, the Menu Bar changes to show "Safari" and the menu items change to reflect that app's controls. It's just like Windows apps that have a title bar at the top of the app's window, except in OS X, all apps share the same bar and it's detached from the app's window so you can always find it.
OS X takes a bit of getting used to, but if your experience is like most others, once you learn your way around, you'll probably like it much more than Windows.
This may help: Mac Basics
The top bar which shows time, wifi etc. It won't disappear or hide without work arounds or third party apps
Thanks. First time I pressed enter and it didn't open a folder I thought I broke something
That is the Menu Bar and it's always visible by design, so you can access controls for the app you're currently using. See my earlier post.
why couldn't they have added a auto-hide option? Is it to do with them wanting more similarity between their IOS and OSX?
the menu bar has been around far longer that iOS....
if you put apps in full screen mode it will hide the menu bar
It’s a good question. The Dock can get out of the way, why not the menu bar? It is hidden in fullscreen mode too. I suppose, as with all things, Apple thought that most users would prefer to have the menu bar static on a regular desktop, because of the utility it has. Or they simply never thought of it, because the usage case didn’t arise. Not everything has a good explanation.
Alas, not possible natively. But I’m quite sure that there are apps out there which can do something like this. Just do a web search and see what comes up.
Alas, not possible natively. But I’m quite sure that there are apps out there which can do something like this. Just do a web search and see what comes up.
Maybe they thought that having menu bar always visible was a good idea? If you think about it, you might be able to understand why. Sometimes (actually, very often) configurability is not such a good idea.
And what does it have to do with iOS? OS X is around 15 years old now, with some of its design principles going much further back. The menu bar design goes back at least to first Macintosh computers and Apple Lisa with Lisa OS (1983), and it has never had an auto-hide option as far as I know.
It would make no sense at all to hide the menus you need to operate your computer.
You don’t ‘need’ them at all. Most applications can be operated just fine without the menu bar (hence why it is also hidden automatically in fullscreen mode). I can definitely see the benefit of an auto-hide feature similar to the Dock.
Valuable work space? Seriously? The Menu Bar is less than 3% of the height of the screen. What can you possibly do with 100% that you can't do with 97%? You can't hide title bars in Windows, so why would you expect to do that in OS X?
From what I've heard, the concept of menu bar comes from the days when computers could run only one app/software/program at a time.
When I switched to Mac 5 years, menu bar confounded me a lot. Now I'm used to it, and I think it gives unique personality to using a Mac. Not sure if it is better than Windows' title bar, it does have its advantages and disadvantages.
When I switched to Mac 5 years, menu bar confounded me a lot. Now I'm used to it, and I think it gives unique personality to using a Mac. Not sure if it is better than Windows' title bar, it does have its advantages and disadvantages.