MacNoob

I listen to a ton of Mac podcasts, read many Mac blogs and visit lots of Mac forums in my quest to become a better Mac user.  One of the issues I’ve always had with the Mac, the Menu Bar, is one of the most touchy subjects one can mention when criticizing OS X. Real fanboys look down their noses at those of us who dare question Apple’s wisdom in locking down this most valuable piece of screen real estate.  If you’re one of those zealots, read no further, I’m about to commit blasphemy of the highest order.
First, I get it.  The whole Mac philosophy revolves around a stable, consistent user experience.  To that end, Apple needs to limit the amount of “tweaking” users can do to their systems.  I also understand that for reasons of efficiency, it makes sense to have a single, dynamic menu system that changes to display the menu of the focused application.  OS X’s menu design saves a ton of screen space when you tend to have many applications open simultaneously.  But what about when I don’t need to save space?  What about when I’m using a 30″ second monitor and it feels like a half-mile hike to mouse back to my laptop display to use a menu function I can’t remember the keyboard shortcut for?  Is it too much to ask for me to be able to move the menu bar to a more handy location?  Would it unbalance the space/time continuum were I to resize or auto-hide the thing?

Send your hate-mail to: bikerfunjoe@mac.com