* enter to rename files, best keyboard shortcut ever. someone please enlighten me on an easy way to rename in windows. *

F2. It's the universal rename key in almost every renamable control in the OS. You can also do two slow clicks. But the timing is fidgety. You can also right click and rename in most context windows in most pieces of software that have a renamable control.

* closing last window doesn't quit application. the decluttering effect of this is amazing. *

How precisely is leaving stuff around you aren't going to use decluttering?

* windows NEEDs maximize designed the way it is because all those fancy borders and menus are so full of CLUTTER. macs are more true to the "windows" philosophy, windows should be called "screens" from how i've seen people abuse maximize. *

Ugh, the visual cacophony going on the background behind my applications in OSX are so f-ing distracting, I spend most of my time on a Mac moving the damn windows around and individually minimizing them so I don't have to look at them all the time. I really really really don't need to see the last 4 photos I opened up in Photoshop, a terminal window and browser and whatever other random stuff I happened to have opened over the last 6 hours sitting around in my visual field in the background while I do something else. Really, I don't. There are times when having more than one thing on the screen in different applications is useful. But 90% of the time it's a visual distraction that breaks focus.

I always find this counter argument amazing coming from a community that made worshiping full screen minimalist text editors an art form. http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom

Doesn't anybody in OSX user-land want to read a document or write music in full screen so they can focus on it? Or is that only for writing (it's clearly not for any other kind of production work)?

Gah!

* as a follow up, people maximize on windows in order for the menus to comply with Fitt's Law. as noted, not necessary on mac. *

No they don't. They maximize the windows so they can focus on the thing their actually working on instead of the visual field garbage cluttering up their peripheral vision.

Side rant: I wish beyond all that's holy that OSX users would stop excusing the obviously bad OSX menu bar design by bringing up Fitt's law when that's pretty much the only place in the entire OS that concept is followed. Pick an application, ANY application, and they jam all kinds of controls all over the screen. Web browsers don't just line up links along the edges of the screen, they embed them all over the screen, Photoshop's toolkit isn't jammed against the side of the screen, it's a floating window, iPhoto doesn't just give you a linear list of photos along the bottom of the screen, iTunes playback controls aren't lined up directly along the bottom, Safari has almost no major control surfaces on the edges of the screen...etc. etc. etc.

If you rely on Fitt's law to save a novice mouse user from OSX's incredibly bad (and non-configurable) mouse acceleration curve, you'll be very sad. For all of the gods sakes (past and present), stop bringing up the example of the one singular interface component in the entire OS that happens to adhere to Fitt's law if nothing else in the operating system follows it. (btw, all those windows floating around that you can't maximize in OSX? yeah. those don't follow Fitt's law of an infinite mouse target either by definition)

Gah!