iTunes

Why is it that when my iPod synchronises with iTunes on OS X, the iTunes window insists on jumping to the front?
OnWinXP, I have iTunes minimised to the tray, so it doesn't even take up space on the taskbar, and remains tucked away during iPod syncing, so I can keeping doing whatever without interruption.

In OS X, not only does iTunes take up space in the dock when running (like almost every other program), but if you plug in an iPod or iPad, well of course you must want to watch your device synchronise. Because you, poor user, can only do one thing at a time, can't you. Apple understands this. So you want to synchronise youir iPod, here is your iTunes window showing you the synchronisation. What? You wanted to keep typing that email while the synchronisation happens? Now, now, just take some time to switch back to the email...yes, you will have to do it every time...no, I can't just quietly synchronise in the background...why? well...um...because you should change your Windoze ways!

VLC

The Video Lan Client, or VLC for short, is one of those essential apps that I install on any new machine, and carry with me as a portable app. It will play just about any video, image or audio file you can throw at it; and it's easy to use, realtively lightweight and does just work.
It's open source and cross platform, so you would think it would be the same across all platforms, at least in the major UI aspects.
BUT...for some unexplainable reason there is a very useful item missing from the OS X version of VLC. See if you can spot what is missing

Here is the VLC in OS X

 Here is VLC in Windows XP (strange that the frame wasn't captured - that is a weird thing in XP I guess)

And here is VLC in Ubuntu Linux

So the first thing you notice is the host of extra buttons available in the non-OS X versions; not surprising given the apparent Apple philosophy of less is more. But that's OK, I don't often use those options, and when I need to I don't mind tracking up to the menu bar to access them. But what is annoying is the run time, or absence of it. In the non-OS X apps, I can easily see that I am about 24 minutes in to a 1 hour 35 minute film; I know I've got about 1 hour 10 left to go.
In the OS X version, I have only a vague idea how long is left to go by doing some mental guestimation. Trust me, knwoing the length of the video is pretty darn useful to know, especially if I've got 2 hours free, I don't want to start watching a 2hour 20 min movie.
Just inexplicable.

Closing Apps

When I close an app, I expect to, y'know, close...stop functioning, stop using resources. If I wanted to keep it running, I would minimize it, but when I click close in OS X, it doesn't exactly close...it basically becomes a background process, sucking resource while not actually doing much. This isn't so much of an issue in these days of 4GB RAM computers, where you basically have resources to waste, but now my dock starts to fill up with all these "sleeping" apps, and when people use "saving screen space" as an excuse for not having borders on windows, you've got to question this apparent wasteful use of space.

I guess it just bugs me that the close button should be truthfully called sleep.