Both of your examples are definitely worse on OS X than on basically every other OS in existence. And as proof, OS X is slowly but surely moving in the direction away from at least one of those, and I'd bet that within two or three revs of OS X away from both.
Menus just aren't that hard to hit otherwise all clickable items in a program should be on a screen edge. In fact, according to Fitts's law, they should be jammed into the corners of the screen since that's even easier to hit than a screen edge. But they aren't because it's not that hard for anybody who's bothered to use a pointing device in the last 20 years. More important than that, trackpads are becoming the de facto pointing device on Apple sold computers and Fitts's law works differently on a pad vs. a moving device like a mouse. The edge of the touch surface is the infinite target, not the screen. Since touch devices are not 1:1 mapped to screen area, all clickable interfaces should be at the edge of the pad relative to wherever the cursor starts.
Likewise, a second mouse button turns out to have been a great idea, so great that decades later Apple guarantees that they not only support right mouse buttons, but their default mouse not only ships with support for it, but they even have managed to cram a touchpad into it and their trackpad recognizes a two finger tap as a right-click. Why? Because decades into the great GUI experiment it finally dawned on somebody that interface complexity requires more than one button -- otherwise half of your interface gets buried behind a modifier button (or two or three) or a pile of menus and your sole button.
I've watched many dozens of users move to OS X and one of the first things they ask is "why is the menu bar way the hell over there?" -- with pointing to the top of the screen (or to an entirely different monitor depending) usually preceded by a series of questions about how to do some function that is clearly on the menu bar, but since it's not coupled to the actual program window, they assume it has a decoupled function from the program and don't realize what they are looking for is there.
It's an embarrassingly repeatable user interface experiment that's left me convinced that the only reason it's still part of the OS is to differentiate OS X from Windows.
Physically decoupling software interfaces from the software is almost always a bad GUI idea if you can help it. It repeatedly confused users, particularly new users. It's like putting the steering wheel of your car in your house, and the gas pedal in your back yard shed.
Everything from MDI to full screen apps are now slowly creeping into OS X because time and time again it's shown that users find those alternatives more usable than the old Apple way standby.
Lets stop tooting this "everything Apple does in UI is best" horn. Lots of stuff Apple does in UI is great, it's even the best, these things are simply not.
Menus just aren't that hard to hit otherwise all clickable items in a program should be on a screen edge. In fact, according to Fitts's law, they should be jammed into the corners of the screen since that's even easier to hit than a screen edge. But they aren't because it's not that hard for anybody who's bothered to use a pointing device in the last 20 years. More important than that, trackpads are becoming the de facto pointing device on Apple sold computers and Fitts's law works differently on a pad vs. a moving device like a mouse. The edge of the touch surface is the infinite target, not the screen. Since touch devices are not 1:1 mapped to screen area, all clickable interfaces should be at the edge of the pad relative to wherever the cursor starts.
Likewise, a second mouse button turns out to have been a great idea, so great that decades later Apple guarantees that they not only support right mouse buttons, but their default mouse not only ships with support for it, but they even have managed to cram a touchpad into it and their trackpad recognizes a two finger tap as a right-click. Why? Because decades into the great GUI experiment it finally dawned on somebody that interface complexity requires more than one button -- otherwise half of your interface gets buried behind a modifier button (or two or three) or a pile of menus and your sole button.
I've watched many dozens of users move to OS X and one of the first things they ask is "why is the menu bar way the hell over there?" -- with pointing to the top of the screen (or to an entirely different monitor depending) usually preceded by a series of questions about how to do some function that is clearly on the menu bar, but since it's not coupled to the actual program window, they assume it has a decoupled function from the program and don't realize what they are looking for is there.
It's an embarrassingly repeatable user interface experiment that's left me convinced that the only reason it's still part of the OS is to differentiate OS X from Windows.
Physically decoupling software interfaces from the software is almost always a bad GUI idea if you can help it. It repeatedly confused users, particularly new users. It's like putting the steering wheel of your car in your house, and the gas pedal in your back yard shed.
Everything from MDI to full screen apps are now slowly creeping into OS X because time and time again it's shown that users find those alternatives more usable than the old Apple way standby.
Lets stop tooting this "everything Apple does in UI is best" horn. Lots of stuff Apple does in UI is great, it's even the best, these things are simply not.