[HN Gopher] Impressions from a first-time Mac user ___________________________________________________________________ Impressions from a first-time Mac user Author : loganmarchione Score : 79 points Date : 2022-04-11 19:15 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (loganmarchione.com) (TXT) w3m dump (loganmarchione.com) | imwillofficial wrote: | As a decades long Mac user, all these points are fair and worth | reading. Apple, hope you're paying attention. | legitster wrote: | THANK YOU! | | I was recently forced to switch to a Mac for work. After 6+ | months I am still relatively unimpressed. | | I feel like such a big baby, and I know it's because I am | familiar with something else, but I cannot express enough how | much I hate Mac's window management. I constantly have to split | up my work between multiple Chrome windows and I am now resigned | to losing track of everything all the time. | | (Hardware wise - I might actually disagree. The device feels | nice, but I've found it to be fairly fragile and delicate. | Whereas you can drop a Thinkpad down a flight of stairs into a | pool of ice cream, a 6-inch fall onto a hard surface might total | the screen on the MacBook. But special shoutout to the speakers | which still impress me.) | 960design wrote: | I am a fan boy and did not find any of it offensive. Great write | up, actually. Windows simply does a better job at window | management. I use full screen and three finger swipe between 5 | separate desktops for work to overcome this weakness. The flash | drive did make me giggle... oh you poor windows laden idiot. | Flash drives... like from 1999? Most of your issues are just | growing pains. I did it when I migrated about 10 years ago from | my LeapFrog: no carry handle, screen too bright, no built in | songs, ect. | hprotagonist wrote: | i used to be totally fine with the macOS desktop manager | experience. | | then i went in _hard_ on i3. | | now, macOS feels ungainly. | spicyusername wrote: | > Package management | | This always floors me when I have to use a non-Linux computer. | The difference between package management on Linux and other OSes | is shocking. Dnf, Yum, Pacman are all so convenient and | straightforward. | | I can't understand why Windows and MacOS don't have anything | official that fills this gap. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | _> Windows and MacOS don't have anything _ | | Doesn't Windows have two official ones? Chocolatey and Winget? | dont__panic wrote: | Blows my mind that Apple doesn't buy up homebrew and turn it | official. I use it for everything, even my web browser! | brimble wrote: | Pretty much the only time I install something and it's _not_ | through Homebrew (unless it 's a dependency of a project, | which I manage separately, because I like having an easy life | and I'd do the same on Linux, for the same reasons) is when | it's some sub-100-stars GitHub project. And half the time, | those are on there, too. | bombcar wrote: | The main problem is that the majority of software in the | Windows and Mac world doesn't come in a "package-manager" | format, not really. | | For *BSD and Linux, the package manager is great because if you | can think of it, it's probably there ready to be installed; as | long as it's software like TeX or emacs or vi or something else | available in an open-source way. | | But stand-alone programs? Not even things like Photoshop, I'm | talking something written by someone and you want to install | it? That's not as compatible with the Linux method, but Windows | and Mac both have standard procedures and installers for them. | Snap tries to do something here, but it's a complete joke. | | And homebrew (and anything equivalent for WSL?) works pretty | well. | emn13 wrote: | I've not used macs for a few years, but has homebrew become a | lot better then? Because my recollection of it is that it | worked fine for small sets of well-maintained packages, but | it's much, much slower than the linux package managers, and | there were tons of compatibility issues once you even | slightly left the beaten path. Also, I remember fighting with | many apple CLI tools; they seemed to be wildly out of date | with the comparable linux tooling, to the point that you | sometimes needed to homebrew something technically already | part of the base OS just to get other things working (e.g. | IIRC bash) | | Incidentally, on windows there are the beginnings of package | managers nowadays, e.g. chocolatey. They're nothing like as | good as those in linux, but better than nothing. Chocolatey's | focus isn't quite the same as homebrew, however, so they're | not strictly comparable. | bombcar wrote: | It ... "works". For most things you may want, it works | pretty well, but it's not at advanced as even Gentoo's | portage, and once you leave the beaten path it can be all | sorts of hell trying to figure out how exactly to compile | something yourself. | | However, I've experienced the same on Ubuntu and RedHat - | if they don't have what you want in a repo already, and you | can't find one providing it, trying to roll your own can | cause all sorts of fun explosions. | | Anything GPL included with MacOS is stuck at the GPL v2 - | since many things like bash went to v3 they don't update | anymore; one of the reasons MacOS changed to zsh as the | default shell. | smoldesu wrote: | > But stand-alone programs? Not even things like Photoshop, | I'm talking something written by someone and you want to | install it? That's not as compatible with the Linux method | | There's definitely some room for improvement here, but fwiw | you can double-click executables on Linux to run them just | like you would on Windows (or to an extent, MacOS). I think | the "solution" here is not to rely on portable software, and | when you _do_ need to rely on it, use a packaging format like | AppImage. | | > And homebrew (and anything equivalent for WSL?) works | pretty well. | | I hate to burst your bubble, but Homebrew is genuinely awful. | The vast majority of Mac devops issues I've encountered stem | from a Homebrew issue, as a matter of fact. Oh no! Software | (x) isn't running on Mike's M1, but it runs just fine on | Melissa's x86 machine! The problem? Homebrew installs | software to different locations depending on your system | architecture. That's right, the same package will end up in | _different places_ when the only difference between machines | is CPU architecture. That 's just one issue, I have gripes | about reinstalling, leftover files, formulae syntax, Linux | "compatibility", UX and more... the author isn't wrong when | they say the experience simply doesn't compare to apt or | pacman. | bombcar wrote: | Yeah, homebrew isn't the greatest by any means, but it | seems to have more stuff and more people use it than fink | or macports anymore, so _usually_ there 's a workaround | somewhere. | | The MacOS "app bundle" is a really cute solution to the | installation/library problem, and I wish something like it | had caught on in the Linux world. It seems AppImage is | heading this way. | smoldesu wrote: | App bundles are neat, but when given the option of "an | app directory on top of a traditional Unix filesystem | layout" or "everything is packages", I'll tend to choose | the latter. It might just be an impasse situation; I | think the ideas of package management are developed about | as far as they can go, even newcomers like Flatpak can't | really bring anything new to the table. The only package | manager that's impressed me in recent years is Nix. I | think if most developers decided to throw their weight | behind Nix packages, we could live in the "it just works" | utopia that Linux and Mac developers alike have been | dreaming of for years. | bombcar wrote: | The bane of package managers is when you have to go | beyond what they supply for whatever reason - horrible | memories of trying to upgrade php on old versions of | CentOS still haunt me. | josho wrote: | They do. On Windows it's msi, and Mac it's pkg. But, for | whatever reason folks have preferred to build their own package | solution instead of learning the OS native approach. I'm | guessing because building your own makes for an easier end user | CLI experience. | jeroenhd wrote: | Microsoft made the mistake of adding non-deterministic | behaviour to MSI files, because without that the package | format is pretty much everything I'd want out of a software | packaging system. | | I think companies wanted to stuff branding and ads into their | installers, so MSI files fell out of use. Modern Windows | seems to prefer msix and other weird UWP-based formats, but I | don't think you can just install those. | | What Windows is missing though, is a clean way to manage | these MSI files. A reinstall or an uninstall shouldn't take | twenty windows and four different "next" buttons to process. | When Microsoft created the Microsoft Store, they neglected to | also add a command line option for installation (you can | manually install a package, but you'll need to do updates | yourself from what I can tell). Just add a Powershell command | like "MSStore-Install" and the entire ecosystem would be so | much nicer to use! | | I suppose this is what they're trying to do with WinGet, | after forking AppGet and leaving the original project to die. | For some reason they like to reinvent the wheel every time | someone thinks of a new way to install binaries onto a | computer. | pishpash wrote: | Because they are platforms on which open-source (including | dependencies all the way down) is not the norm? They do have | app stores. | brimble wrote: | Linux user for years before switching to Mac. | | I prefer Brew to every Linux package manager I've used. | | I like that it's totally separate from the base OS. | | I like the _insanely_ large package selection, including binary | [edit: that is, closed-source binary] packages. I almost never | install _any_ tool that 's not in Homebrew--usually I just | blindly try it, and sure enough, I got the package name right | and it does have it, and it installs no problem. Gentoo's | Portage and Arch's whatever-they-call-it are pretty close, but | those are... _higher touch_ operating systems, to put it mildly | (I was a heavy Gentoo user for a few years--I know Arch is less | of a pain than that, but it 's still got rolling-distro and | various DIY rough edges) | | I don't try to use it to install development dependencies like | some people seem to. It's not good for that, but doing that on | Linux isn't a great idea, either. Your project should manage | its own deps separate from your development system, or you're | gonna have a bad time sooner or later, unless you are _only_ | deploying to _exactly_ the system config that you 're | developing on. | [deleted] | jack_pp wrote: | I tried the m1 mini when it came out because I was hyped by all | the m1 HN talk. This was my first time using macOS and besides | the window management what I loathed was having to re-learn all | the shortcuts I've been using for 20+ years, how no one mentions | this is baffling to me. I tried to make it work more like | "normal" windows / linux but I didn't find any good options and I | always felt like I was running with my shoelaces untied. | | I'll stick with my linux i3 env for the foreseeable future | dmitriid wrote: | Shortcuts are maddening when you just switch. But then you | realise how much of the keyboard is underutilised in Windows. | Linux uses the Meta key, but IIRC it was very app-specific, and | not as comprehensively used. | | A lot of MacOS is keyboard driven [1][2], but it takes up to | two weeks to get comfortable (it took me at least that long | when I switched to MacOS in 2008). | | [1] But the new breed of "designers" at Apple no longer care | about that. All new first-party apps that Apple vomits out are | an abomination, UX-wise. And keyboard access there suffers as | well. | | [2] There are a bunch of shortcuts that will work the same way | across most apps (such as Cmd+<comma> for settings, or text | navigation shortcuts), and that is a blessing. You can also | assign custom shortcuts to any menu item in any app if you need | directly from settings. Or you can re-assign behaviour of | Ctrl/Caps Lock/Alt from settings as well. There are small | things like this all across the system, but it _does_ take | getting used to. | jack_pp wrote: | I doubt it could ever be as keyboard driven as linux with a | tiling WM | zamalek wrote: | Put Asahi on that M1, it's apparently great even though the | work they have done with the GPU is still disabled. | jack_pp wrote: | I returned it a long time ago and have no reason to replace | my work thinkpad t490 | Veen wrote: | It just takes time to get used to. I used Linux for a long time | before switching to a Mac about seven years ago. I nearly | returned my new MacBook to the store because I felt hamstrung | by the UI. But in a few weeks, once I'd become accustomed to | the application-centric windowing model, the keyboard | shortcuts, and especially the touchpad gestures, it all clicked | and I wouldn't go back now. | jack_pp wrote: | My linux workflow is almost entirely keyboard-driven, there's | no need for a touchpad than maybe doing things in the | browser. | nerdjon wrote: | I always find this interesting, my primary computing device that | I do actual work on is Mac (technically I guess my primary is my | iPhone or iPad if I go by time but I am not counting that). But I | have a Windows computer for gaming and a few Linux machines | lingering around. | | I constantly find myself frustrated by Windows because I am just | used to how Mac operates. I have been using it as my primary | compute device since Lion. | | However one of the things that I find interesting from the Window | management point that I don't see mentioned, touchpad gestures. I | cannot use Mac without gestures, even when I am using my laptop | as a desktop I use the Magic Trackpad. The few times I have tried | to use a mouse... it just feels wrong. I would highly recommend | taking a look at this and looking at the window management from | this prospective. Because of these gestures I never think I need | to snap things because switching windows is a quick swipe and and | a click. Then all the other gestures, hot corners, etc. | | That being said, I find the same issue with my partner. He has | never used a Mac (has an iPhone though) but sometimes he needs to | do something quick so grabs my laptop. It is fascinating watching | him struggle with the trackpad and other basics that to me I | don't even think about anymore. | colinmhayes wrote: | Yea, I think what OP is missing is that macOS was designed to | be used with a trackpad. I think three fingers up is what they | want when they alt tab. The green button makes the window full | screen because using three fingers sideways and the occasional | three fingers up is the best way to manage windows on small | laptop screens. Even on my external monitor I have every window | fullscreen. This was admittedly hard to get used to moving from | windows/linux, but it really is a much better way to do | windows/virtual desktops. OP should ditch the mouse. | nerdjon wrote: | I don't think it was necessarily designed this way to begin | with, they didn't really add these gestures until well into | OSX I don't think. | | But at the very least they have leaned very heavily into it. | Considering they sell 2 devices to add gestures when you are | not using a laptop. | | I find myself very rarely using cmd-tab because it just | doesn't fit my use. I can either more quickly do that my | moving my mouse to the bottom and accessing the Dock or 3 | fingers up and everything pulls out. Throw in hitting "space" | to quickly zoom into a window if I just need a quick piece of | information but not open the app completely. | | I am largely the same with 3 monitors. At least 2 tend to be | full screen apps with my center one being my mix of things, | but it depends on what is happening. Each monitor has a | desktop of scratch things (like notes) that I don't want full | screen but just sits somewhere. The native tab support in the | OS for things like VSCode helps a lot with this. | teilo wrote: | Someone needs to tell him about option-click on the maximize | button. | | Most of these "rants" really just amount to: "this different OS | doesn't work exactly the same way as the OS I am used to." That's | why 3rd party utilities exist to give you the functionality you | wish to have. That formula cuts both ways. | dont__panic wrote: | Yep, as someone who's gotten really really dependent on app | Expose on macOS... it's hard for me to switch to a keyboard for | things I'd rather do on the trackpad! | | I do have to agree, though, that macOS window management can | feel a bit clunky using a mouse and keyboard. That's a user | story that the macOS UI/UX team ought to look into, it wouldn't | be that hard to create some decent bindings in the OS itself. | jayd16 wrote: | This is Apple UX in a nutshell. Hidden power tools are not | intuitive. | Tagbert wrote: | In part it is about progressive complexity. The simple things | are exposed, more complex options require extra effort to | access. Certainly there are times when it would be nice to | make it easier to discover the more advanced features but | there will always be a tension between keeping defaults | simple for new users and exposing advanced features for the | more serious users. Often they do it correctly but sometimes | there are misses. | _aavaa_ wrote: | We can argue about them being intuitive or not, but at least | they exist. | darkteflon wrote: | Absolutely - these ranty invectives are so tedious. The idea | that something is fundamentally broken because it doesn't work | the way you expect it to. | | I struggle through each of my Windows sessions despite having | used Windows since the 80s and having built probably more than | 10 PCs over the past 30 years. I don't blame Windows for that. | I daily drive MacOS and that's what I'm used to. That's a me | problem, not a Windows problem. | thiagocmoraes wrote: | I've been using macs for 9 years and never knew about | option+click. Granted I've been using apps for window | management since forever as the native tools suck or are almost | hidden. | josho wrote: | Or double click on the window to perform the original Mac Zoom | function. | stouset wrote: | Or double-clicking the window chrome. | olyjohn wrote: | That works... most of the time. | lemoncucumber wrote: | I set up a custom "All Applications" keyboard shortcut for the | Zoom command, it's really handy. | simonbarker87 wrote: | Pretty reasonable write up to be honest. I think the window | management thing is reasonable when you come from a background | where that's a given. There are some great third party window | managers available, I use one of them and very happy with it. | It's called Magnet for those who are interested. | h3cate wrote: | spectacle will solve your snapping problems. gives windows / | Linux snapping. | itslennysfault wrote: | Except it's end of life so you should probably switch to | Rectangle (which the author mentions in the article explicitly) | Perolan2 wrote: | 100% agreed. I forget sometimes that spectacle isn't part of | MacOS proper. The snapping and management are amazing and | really add to the UX. https://www.spectacleapp.com/ | rubyist5eva wrote: | > On the other hand, macOS has a weird snapping implementation | where you need to click and hold the green "zoom" button, then | choose to "tile" left or right. But, once you pick another window | to fill the other half, both of those windows (together as one) | move to their own virtual desktop. I want them split on my | current desktop, not on a separate desktop. | | Hold the option key and it snaps on the same desktop. | | Or install Rectangle.app (free) which gives you mouse dragging | and keyboard shortcut snapping like Windows/Linux. | [deleted] | sofixa wrote: | I'm in the same boat, recently starting a job which provides an | MBP. I've last used macOS in school, a few years ago. | | It's mostly meh. I don't care for the OS conventions ( like the | cmd stuff) and I'm not going to force myself out of years of | muscle memory for one of my machines, but i can mostly tune that | ( with third party tools, but still). Cmd remapped to ctrl, | cmd+tab remapped to ctrl+tab. The only issues is Ctrl+C doesn't | work in iTerm, I've yet to fix that. | | However the UX is like something for children - what's with drag | and drop for installing a program?? The included tools range from | meh to garbage - Pages mangling .docx and saving them in its | proprietary format is inexcusable. And for some reason i can't | get the MBP to sleep when it's charging and an external screen is | connected - clicking sleep through the menu makes it sleep for a | second and then it wakes up. Oh, and it's _extremely_ annoying | that the scroll button on a mouse and trackpad have to share the | same scrolling direction. | | Honestly i find that macOS is OK. Slightly better than Windows, | but with annoying differences and stubborn "this is how things | are, the old way no longer works, you're holding it wrong" | attitude. Linux is best in terms of flexibility but has some | other downsides. | gen220 wrote: | Re: cmd+tab issues, consider trying cmd+space+(first letter or | two of the app), followed by cmd+`. | | Especially for touch typists, I think it's faster than cmd+tab: | doesn't require you to use your mental "app icon classifier", and | it's impossible to over/under-shoot the target. | | Scales O(N), where N is the number of windows open in the app | you're switching to, whereas cmd+tab + cmd+` is O(N) + O(M), | where M is the number of apps you have running. | ysleepy wrote: | Just use Hot Corners and "Application Windows"+"Mission | Control", its superior. | gen220 wrote: | It's a cool feature, but it does require touching the | trackpad/mouse! | zamalek wrote: | > Homebrew is a lifesaver on macOS and is the only thing not | making me pull my hair out. | | All credit due, Homebrew is amazing given that it doesn't have | the same opportunities for deep integration that Linux package | managers do. It certainly made MacOS bearable for me. _But,_ it | 's only good in a walled vacuum. There's almost nothing else on | the platform to compare it to. I have been using nix-darwin, but | packages routinely break on darwin (not that I blame them for | it). | | Windows might have never had a package manager, but there are | decades of workflows build up around not having one. Downloading | an .exe/.msi and installing is sub-optimal, dangerous, and | barbaric, but it does work. Linux has pacman, RPM, deb, nix, | ostree, flatpak, and more, which (from personal experience) are | all _amazing._ The Mac package workflow has been built up around | a second-class citizen: Homebrew. And the fact that Homebrew is a | second-class citizen shows. If you 've used almost any other | package manager as a daily driver you get an idea just how | wanting the whole MacOS ecosystem is. There are a few ones worse | than your options with Apple ( _cough_ Snap _cough_ ), but not | many. | | I wonder how many Apple power users understand just how bad they | have it with Apple. | paxys wrote: | File management is another one I'd like to add to the list of | macOS screwups. How can viewing lists of files and moving them | over from one place to another be so complicated? | bombcar wrote: | MacOS apparently caches directory views somewhere, and I can | routinely get the "Downloads" folder to not actually show what | is in the Downloads folder; often having to resort to "open" on | the terminal to access the file. I wish I knew how to force it | to refresh the actual contents instead of reading it from the | cache. | Tagbert wrote: | Do you have that folder set to sort by something useful like | "date added"? Then it should work. If you have it set to not | sorted then maybe the file is lower on the list and off | screen. | | ~\Downloads is always the first tab in Finder for me and I | almost always keep it to show the most recently added files | at the top. | bombcar wrote: | I always do date added, and it sometimes doesn't show new | files _in the file picker view_ most commonly - and then I | have to go somewhere else and back and it seems to refresh. | | The other weirdness is sometimes a file gets updated (think | "touch") and it won't change it's order in the list. | | Most of the time it works fine. It's like inotify or | whatever sometimes doesn't fire. | Tagbert wrote: | What is complicated about it? I typically keep a handful of | tabs open in Finder and drag and drop between them or to | applications. You can also always do CMD-C and then either | CMD-V to copy a file somewhere or OPT-CMD-V to move a file. | daok wrote: | I like that in Windows I can copy-paste the location from one | File Manager windows to another one. Something that you | cannot do in MacOs File Manager | dfxm12 wrote: | As someone who switches around between primarily Windows and | secondarily OSX, and GDM3, I find OSX to have the most intuitive | window manager. I don't like apps being maximized, and I feel | like I can always intuitively find the window I'm looking for in | OSX, just under the active window. I find myself arranging | windows in Windows like OSX might arrange them. Maybe Apple is | just using a different metaphor. I understand this is very | subjective though. | | _Apple products are supposed to be revered the world over as the | pinnacle of design, used by artists, engineers, professionals, | and creators._ | | Is this still really the case? Most of what I hear nowadays is | Apple's reputation is that their products are luxury status | symbols rather than a tool for creative types, outside of maybe | the camera on the iPhone. 10 years ago, you might have seen the | coffee shop filled with macbooks, but that's not the case today. | What artist is going to afford a $1900 monitor that can only be | height adjusted with a $400 upgrade? | jimbokun wrote: | But that artist might be able to afford a thousand dollar | MacBook Air with whatever cheap hand me down monitor they have | lying around. | | (But then the dongles they need to buy to attach to that | monitor or keyboard or what have you is the straw that will | break their financial bank!) | shaan7 wrote: | Funnily enough, for the ~5 years I used macOS, the Window | Manager was the most frustrating aspect for me. I could not | maximize apps (there was only a weird fullscreen/focus mode), I | would accidentally end up dragging a window very often etc. All | this gave ended up creating this feeling in my brain that the | windows are just "floating" on the screen instead of being | tightly bound to an arrangement. | rhinoceraptor wrote: | You're not really 'supposed' to maximize or even tile apps on | the Mac. In most cases it's a waste of screen space. The Mac | has always been focused around the desktop metaphor. | Historically applications were composed of multiple windows, | and focusing a window in an application brought all of the | other windows for that application to the front. You would | manually arrange each of the windows/palettes of your | application for multitasking, much like you would with | physical pieces of paper. | ysleepy wrote: | My recommendations for Mac Users: | | * Put the Dock left or right, vertical space is precious (trust | me, do it for a week and then decide) | | * Setup Hot-Corners (Settings -> Mission Control -> Hot Corners) | - Upper-Right Corner as Mission Control (Must be upper right so | spaces are immediately shown) - Lower-Left Corner as | Application Windows - just fling your mouse curser | into the corner (use std. gestures on the trackpad) | | This makes window management a lot better. | | * Maximise Windows by double clicking the Window title bar. | | * Disable auto-{correction, capitalize, etc}, smart-quotes under | Keyboard settings (if you want) | | * Learn about the screenshot shortcuts CMD+shift+{3,4}, 3: full | screen, 4: select area or switch to window select with hitting | space bar once. | | * Learn about CMD+space for launching apps | | * Set Key-Repeat to fast and shorten the delay | | * Disable spotlight for everything except what you want to use it | for. | | * Enable File-Vault | | * Disable "Wake for Network Access" under Energy | | * Enable the ssh server under Sharing "Remote Login" (If you | want) | | * Disable the visual/audible bell in the Terminal profile. | | * Install MacPorts/Homebew | | And one thing to internalize is that Apple is a little | authoritarian about some UX aspects. | | For example the snapping and window thing... Apple has a thing | with continuos freedom opposed to the discretisation one is used | to. I've come around to that view as well actually, free your | mind, nature is not a stepped slider. | | Cool Utilities: | | MenuMeters with a CPU usage graph. this allows you to see if | something is killing your battery. | | MonitorControl (on github) to set brightness of external | monitors. | | LittleSnitch ($$) for fellow paranoid control freaks | | IINA (github) best video player | | UTM for VMs (free on github) paid options are good too | | MacPass for KeePass databases | | Hope it helps. | darkteflon wrote: | Hot Corners for Mission Control and App windows is interesting! | Gonna try that today. | correct_horse wrote: | > Disable spotlight for everything except what you want to use | it for | | My friend's mac would "take off" (fan spun up crazy fast) after | every boot/login and I disabled full-text search of documents | to fix it. There was probably a weird, maybe not-to-spec | pdf/docx on the filesystem that spotlight couldn't parse and | got stuck. Kinda dumb that it would waste a 100% usage on one | CPU core for a couple minutes every boot though. | smoldesu wrote: | It's really abysmal. I had a similar situation: every time | I'd pull a monorepo, my machine would be flooded with | "mdworker" processes. The CPU would spin up and the machine | would operate at 85c for a few hours before finally cooling | down. The culprit was Spotlight, and the solution was to | disable search indexing. | AA-BA-94-2A-56 wrote: | Spotlight is a really good search tool, and it's worth | occasionally letting it build its index. You mostly only | notice this when you've changes a whole bunch of files or | setup the computer for the first time. It really is short- | term pain for long-term gain, because Spotlight is | phenomenal at finding anything on the Mac in a really short | amount of time. | | That being said, if you're in the dev-space, I'd recommend | using Raycast instead. I've dong some cool things with it, | like format my commit messages, generate UUIDs, and search | my bookmarks with a command (/w dev -> my company's | development application with a really long URL). | smoldesu wrote: | It's not worth it if my computer heats up to 85 degrees | for an hour and a half every few days. Really throws a | wrench in my productivity and has already made me miss a | couple meetings. Raycast looks neat, but I'm not | interested in adding Yet Another Random Closed-Source | Tool to my Mac. At this point I'm mostly using it as a | dumb terminal and even that is testing my limits with how | annoying Homebrew and the FreeBSD 4.1-ass kernel is. | _aavaa_ wrote: | Some really good ones missed: - iStat menu (better looking | MenuMeters) - Alfred (MUCH better spotlight) - BetterTouchTools | (keyboard, gesture, and other UX customization and macros, oh | and window snapping with mouse and shortcuts) | and0 wrote: | I couldn't imagine navigating macOS without gestures. Great on | touchpad, non-existent on any comfortable third-party mouse | (the magic mouse is made for toddlers apparently.. I don't even | have particularly large hands). | | Thankfully someone made an LUA script for the Logitech G app to | use one of the random buttons on my gaming mouse to imitate | three-finger swipes, which feels great: | https://github.com/mark-vandenberg/g-hub-mouse-gestures/blob... | | I also am not a huge fan of Finder. Might be able to tweak so | that the list view is default but crazy to me that you'd have | folders and files just floating around in space. | | All that being said I went from lifelong Windows user to being | fully onboard with Mac once I started developing | professionally. PC gaming is the only reason I have a Windows | machine at all. Windows is just gnarly, from the kernel to the | UI. | xisthesqrtof9 wrote: | 3 of the 4 items that the author mentioned can be solved with | using NixOS inside a VM on your mac :) | | Inspired by Mitchell Hashimoto's VMWare setup[0]. I setup my own | computer in such a way, I now have the best of both worlds. | Developing on a linux machine, where I can control everything if | I wanted (down to the OS) and the ease of Notes/iMessages | whenever I need it. | | Window management is a pita because of internal APIs and the fact | that Apple doesn't cater to people that actually care about these | tools. Check out Yabai[1] which btw requires you to disable SIP | (System Integrity Protection) if you want to use its full | potential. | | Instead you can run NixOS and choose your favourite window/tiling | manager (i3). | | Package manager: I still run Nix but I am not that happy with it. | Either I need to spend some more time or look for an alternative. | One of the problems is the ability to easily pin older versions. | | [0] - | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubDMLoWz76U&t=359s&ab_channe... | [1] - https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai | ppeetteerr wrote: | The only negative is around window management and you can install | helpers for this. | cudgy wrote: | > The entire design of macOS feels like the Gnome desktop: you | use what they give you, how they give it to you, using their | workflows, barely customizing anything. | | The user just started to use the OS: of course they have little | knowledge of customization plus they are using a computer subject | to corporate policies. Not a fair criticism. | | However, the critique of the window snapping mechanics is | correct. Very frustrating to have the window go full screen when | removing one half of the previously split screen. | ghostpepper wrote: | The window management grips are fair, although I don't find Cmd + | ` to be particularly burdensome - it's right above tab on the | keyboard, and my KDE Plasma desktop behaves the exact same way. | mattnewton wrote: | I don't know any Mac users who don't primarily use expose (or | is it mission control now? The thing where it tiles all your | windows open and you click the right one). Agree that windows | should snap even when not fullscreened but I think expose | solves this one better if you hand is already on the trackpad / | mouse | rconti wrote: | I don't use it, in fact I thought it was mostly abandoned. | | I hate window snapping behavior. I use rectangle, but cannot | for the life of me figure out why it makes sense to snap a | window to fullscreen on my 40" ultrawide the instant I get a | window somewhere near any side of my monitor. Who works like | this? You have to just leave a window floating in space if | you don't want it fullscreened? | mattnewton wrote: | I use Moom personally to tile windows. I feel like no one | tests the huge external monitor setup at apple compared to | just using the laptop screen, despite it's near ubiquity | among developers. Maybe the vast majority of mac's aren't | used that way? But Mac pros are. | linsomniac wrote: | I also recently got a MBP and it's the first time I've used a Mac | since the '80s, mostly using Linux for work and a Chromebook for | home. | | I agree with what this article has to say. Great hardware. For my | primary reason for spending the money on it, it runs rings around | anything else out there (video editing). | | The OS I find mostly ok, but a few things feel pretty rough: | | Updates. My terminal blocks updates from happening when I'm not | using it. Updates take an amazingly long time where you can't use | the system. I'm talking like the majority of an hour. It makes | Windows updates look speedy, and I hate how long Windows updates | take. Linux and ChromeOS do this right: You can use the system | while it is doing updates, then it's just a reboot into the | updates | | The app finder (3 finger pinch), I sure wish it was a little | smarter. In Firefox if I go to the URL bar and type "n" it knows | I probably want "news.ycombinator.com". Every time I 3 finger | pinch and type "b" it's like a babe in the woods, never having | met me before. Now, every time I type "blue", MacOS thinks I want | "bluetooth" until I add the "j" and it can figure out that, like | every time I've done this, I want the BlueJeans app because it's | meeting time... | | I still haven't gotten used to clicking the yellow window button | and the app "hides", the only thing on my screen is firefox or | whatever, but when I start typing it's still going to that hidden | app. | | That said, it's still a great box. Mostly I use it as a web | browser and a SSH terminal to my work machine. But, it has | absolutely solved an infrequent pain point for me: Editing videos | of my kids. Last fall I edited a concert video, the hour long | concert took me ~40 hours to do because my wife's laptop, | reasonably powerful but not the highest end GPU, required so much | time generating optimized media and churning, and even then | everything I did was slow as molasses. | | The Mac has handled all video editing tasks without breaking a | sweat. I feel like an idiot for spending the money for an | infrequent task, but it is a 100% solved problem now. | kemayo wrote: | I actually like the command+tab behavior, and miss it when I use | Windows. | | I'll explain: if you have a lot of windows open, I think it's | nice to silo them. When I have ten Firefox windows and six | Sublime windows and three iTerm windows, and a few other random | applications, it's generally easier to go first to the app I want | and then find the window inside it, rather than _always_ having | to shuffle through 19 different windows at the top-level. | | This is probably a matter of personal preference and habit, and | you can make a good case for either behavior. I just don't think | macOS' behavior is obviously _worse_... only different. | vnorilo wrote: | If you pin apps to Windows task bar, you can cycle through the | windows of the third one with Winkey-3 and so on. Currently | daily drive a mac for work, but the above is my preferred way | to switch windows on Windows. | sylens wrote: | Window management is still my number one complaint with macOS. | Windows has only gotten better with it since Windows 7 introduced | Aero Snap, and on Linux I can do whatever my heart desires, | including using a proper tiling environment. | deergomoo wrote: | Ironically, if you're looking to snap two windows side-by-side | (which I expect accounts for the majority of cases), iPadOS | with a keyboard is actually more capable for that specific use | case than macOS. I expect the same shortcut will make its way | into the next Mac release, I just hope they don't gimp it by | tying it to full-screen mode. | Sharlin wrote: | > Apple decided to grace the 2021 Macbook Pro with ports that any | PC laptop user has had for years (HDMI?! SD card reader?! gasp!). | | To be fair, MBPs also had those for years, until Apple in its | wisdom decided to ditch them in 2016, along with making other | questionable interface decisions that they've been gradually | reverting since then. I still use a 2015 MBP partially for that | reason. Now it's probably become a time to upgrade to a M1 model. | moonchrome wrote: | I've had a long background of Windows and Linux usage but I've | used MacOS a significant time as well - I'm daily driving a 2018 | MacBook Pro 15 and use a Windows Desktop for WFH because it's | much more powerful an silent. And I'm also developing on .NET | core right now which is a Microsoft tech. | | With that said I would say MacOS grows on you. On my 34 inch | screen using snapping is just not practical - I just move windows | around and have plenty of visual space and can quickly move my | head to move attention to a different window, find other windows | through overlaps - I prefer this to tabbing - and this is when | working on my Windows desktop. | | Returning to Windows after not regularly using it for last 3 | years it's sad to see that the UI has regressed with Windows 11. | For example windows had system calendar app that would connect to | the system calendar in the bottom right and show event previews | for the day and you could click on the day and get day summaries, | sort of like Itsycal but built in. They removed this in Windows | 11. | | I think MacOS is strictly better for most of my use cases : | | - The new right click UI is clunky and obviously touch optimized, | most of the OS is going this way and it's shit for desktop | usability | | - Dark mode support is hit-and-miss, much better in MacOS | | - PowerToys Run doesn't work reliably at all compared to Mac CMD | + Space which works without a hiccup | | - chocolatey is garbage compared to homebrew | | Where Windows beats MacOS for me : | | - Docker performance is much much better | | - WSL/linux integration is fairly nice (using OpenSuSe rolling | release to get relevant software, Ubuntu LTS they provide is | ancient) | IncRnd wrote: | I constantly use window snapping on my desktop Mac with two | widescreen monitors. But, I use keystrokes to do so, using | Rectangle, not the mouse. | moonchrome wrote: | For me even the vertical space fully extended is too much | visual area since I need to move my eyes/head to scan top to | bottom. but I do have a 5k panel relatively close at low | scaling so maybe your setup is different | IncRnd wrote: | It likely is different based on what you've said. I hope | you keep finding and using what works for you. It's often | different between people even who have similar | configurations. | darkteflon wrote: | Docker is still such a mess on Macs. Losing hope that they'll | ever sort it out. | rconti wrote: | IMO, command-tab and command-tilde are vastly superior to the | Windows method. It's less relevant these days due to applications | running their _own_ tabs inside of the app. I fought this for | years but eventually gave up because you really have to use tabs | these days. Many applications have wasted space for a tab bar | even if you refuse to use tabs. But I liked being able to switch | through windows in a given application vs switching applications | entirely. | | I still feel that tabs-everywhere is making up for a broken | window manager. Why should we offload this to each application? | kps wrote: | > _However, that keyboard doesn't have the Option ([?]) or | Command ([?]) keys like on my Macbook._ | | It does; they're just labelled 'Alt' and 'Windows'. | fit2rule wrote: | urbandw311er wrote: | My favourite tool to modify most aspects of the OS is | BetterTouchTool. | | I have it set to move the window under the mouse cursor when I | hold down Fn -- and if I also hold down shift then it resizes the | window under the mouse cursor until I release Shift | | It must have saved me, in aggregate, hundreds of hours as I no | longer have to care about finding the top or edge of a window to | move/resize. | | Try it! An absolute game changer for productivity. | aeturnum wrote: | I think Moom is one of the best reccs for OSX in general: | https://manytricks.com/moom/ | | Will let you snap windows the way you expect. | traceroute66 wrote: | The author makes a big deal of lack of snapping. Frankly I've | never seen the utility of it on OSs that do have it, infact I've | always felt it more of a hinderance than a help (gets in the way, | tries to snap when you don't want it to). | | The author makes a big deal that you have to do Command+Tab to | switch applications, and _then_ Command+` to cycle between | windows in that application. Well, frankly I think thats the | better way, I 'll give you an example: | | Let's say (as you do) you have a dozen browser windows open | (maybe in more than one browser) ... do you _REALLY_ want to sit | there hitting Command+Tab dozens of times ? No. Its quicker to | switch to the desired app and then cycle within the app. That way | you don 't cycle through the browser when you don't need to. | | Finally there are some, frankly bizarre, comments in the blog | post, such as: | | > However, that keyboard doesn't have the Option ([?]) or Command | ([?]) keys like on my Macbook. | | Well, yeah, its not Apple's problem if you choose to use a PC | keyboard with your Mac. Most people would either use the built-in | Mac keyboard or buy an external one (third-party Mac keyboards | are available from the usual suspects if you don't fancy an Apple | one). | | I gave up reading the blog post around that point ("The | Undecided" header to be precise). | deltarholamda wrote: | I get where the author is coming from, but I too prefer the | cmd-tab to switch between applications, and cmd-backtick to | cycle through windows in the application. I do more of the | latter than the former. | | Neither do I care that much for snapping. What I really prefer | is for my windows to be where I left them, and MacOS is pretty | good about keeping them that way. | pishpash wrote: | Probably because most of the "windows in the application" | these days is just the web browser. | hbn wrote: | > What I really prefer is for my windows to be where I left | them, and MacOS is pretty good about keeping them that way. | | Well, it is once you go into Preferences > Mission Control | and turn off "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most | recent use" | | I can't imagine why that's enabled by default, and I always | forget to turn it off when setting up a new machine and don't | realize it until I get confused for the 50th time, thinking | I'm losing my mind cause my desktops are in a different order | from what I thought | bombcar wrote: | I've never used snapping on any OS, but on MacOS I feel the | need even less, because the programs seem _really really good_ | about remembering my window positions once I have things setup | the way I want. | scns wrote: | Sorry for the snark in advance: Are you for real? I do want IDE | and documentation in browser next to each other on my 31.5" | 1440 screen, thank you very much. | lou1306 wrote: | > The author makes a big deal of lack of snapping. Frankly I've | never seen the utility of it on OS's that do have it, infact | I've always felt it more of a hinderance than a help (gets in | the way, tries to snap when you don't want it to). | | It may be useful for users of large external monitors, allowing | to make better use of the screen real estate. Then again, Macos | lacks per-application menu bars, which means you cannot do a | lot of tasks without focusing the app first, so IMHO lack of | snapping/advanced windows management is not as big as a deal as | it would be under Windows. | loganmarchione wrote: | > It may be useful for users of large external monitors, | allowing to make better use of the screen real estate | | OP here. This is exactly why I want snapping (I'm using a 27" | 1440p monitor) | AA-BA-94-2A-56 wrote: | There are Mac applications you can download to get this | behaviour. Magnet does it and is cheap, and Raycast | (spotlight alternative) does it and is free. | macrael wrote: | I have never spent much time on Windows machines but I _love_ | cmd-` on the Mac. I mean, I have a whole rant about how its | ordering behavior changed on Lion for the worse but I love having | windows grouped by application and picking the app I care about | before picking the window I care about. I have never understood | why so many people use a single chrome window for all of their | tabs but I think it comes from not being experienced with cmd-`. | For me, I group tabs in my browser by subject, most commonly, by | google search query, and then I can close them all at once when | I'm done with them. | | I've actually started braking more websites out into their own | fluid.app so that I can cmd-tab to them specifically. Jira, | Github, Gmail (well, when I used gmail) all get their own app so | I don't have to go hunting for that single tab in my browser, | making my browser window management that much easier. | | If you're interested in that, I pair fluid.app with choosy so | that links open in the correct fluid browser. | urbandw311er wrote: | Big fan here of "appifying" favourite Web apps too. I recently | discovered a programme called Web Catalog that is best in class | for this. | uuyi wrote: | This is a story as old as time. | | When you're used to something else the change hurts. I have found | it far better to not bring your mental baggage with you and meet | the new platform as its level rather than try and make it the | same as the old one. | | I have gone MOS > RiscOS > WinNT -> Solaris -> Linux -> Win7 -> | macOS and it hurt every time. | thanatos519 wrote: | Indeed, and the change that hurts me when I try to use a Mac is | the fact that there are things that I can't change. I prefer | focus-follows-mouse and no-raise on-focus, and those are | apparently structurally impossible in macOS. | | "I can't change it to work the way I like it" is a totally | legitimate complaint and Linux has a strong advantage in this | regard. | darkteflon wrote: | Focus-follows-mouse is great. That's the biggest thing I miss | from Linux. | major505 wrote: | I`m in a similar situation working as a android developer the | company sended me a macpro 2021 with the infamous touch bar. | | Diferent from the author I had some previous experience with | macbooks, since I did had a Macbook white many years ago, and | have some vintage apple computers like a clamshell laptop and a | G4 (I just think they are neat). | | While I`m in no way as productive with it as I`m with my thinkpad | runing Fedora there`s some mitigation I was able to do. | | The main wone with the window manager. While I do think Apple | full screen works well when working exclusive with the mac | screen, when connected to multiple screens is a pain in the ass. | | In this case Magnet solved my problems since it looks a lot with | the Windows / Gnome way of dividing the screen with multiple | applications. | als0 wrote: | > While macOS isn't POSIX-certified, it is Single Unix | Specification UNIX 03 registered and compliant. | | This sounds wrong. Isn't POSIX a mandatory subset of the Single | Unix Specification? Hence it is inherently certified. | thaway2839 wrote: | I think at this point Apple does not see macOS (from the user | perspective) like a traditional GUI OS. | | It used to be that OSes provided window management, file | management, some basic file handling, and APIs and framework to | build and connect apps. | | Apple, instead, sees the OS as an app launcher that provides a | framework to build isolated apps. | | IOW, it's reduced macOS to the Dock. | lbrito wrote: | >you use what they give you, how they give it to you, using their | workflows, barely customizing anything. Apple products are | supposed to be revered the world over as the pinnacle of design, | used by artists, engineers, professionals, and creators. Why do I | feel like there are training wheels on a machine I use for | productivity? | | Gosh, this is exactly how I felt in a similar situation. Really | hit the nail on the head. | | I've used Linux for a long time, and for a while I was kindly | forced to use a Mac (got a Linux laptop last week). It was a | painful experience that took a heavy toll on my productivity. | | My impression is that Mac has so many idiossincrasies that fans | just assume are "intuitive" while they're really not - they've | just been used to it for a long time. Personally I hated, hated | the usability. Can't stress it enough, it absolutely sucked. | Never again! | | Also the benefits compared to non-Macs are diminishing over time. | You can get great hardware and battery life with system76 for | instance. | imwillofficial wrote: | "You can get great hardware and battery life with system76 for | instance." The build quality of these two platforms is nowhere, | and I mean nowhere close. Apples (heh) and oranges. | | I'm rooting for system76, but they have a long way to go. | lbrito wrote: | Absolutely agree. Build quality is meh, not even good. But | the battery is _seriously_ good. Like 10+ hours good. | lolpython wrote: | Which model is that? My 2 year old System76 Galago Pro gets | 1 hour of battery life. | lbrito wrote: | This guy here: https://system76.com/laptops/lemur | | >Up to 14 hours of battery life per charge | | I routinely get over 10 hours. | count wrote: | 10+ hours isn't 'seriously' good anymore. I routinely can | get 18-20 hours on my M1 MacBook Pro. | sitzkrieg wrote: | they are cheap clevo laptops at a huge markup | scns wrote: | As a Linux user of 15 years now, i look forward to beeing | challenged by using a Mac, since for me energy efficiency is | more important than personal comfort. | lbrito wrote: | How does energy efficiency matter here? Or rather, why are | you implying that a Mac might be more energy efficient, and | enough to matter? Geniuenly curious. | scns wrote: | M1 coming secong at 10 watts shortly after a Ryzen at | several times that? Check out the reviews on anandtech. | NoraCodes wrote: | There is nothing inherent about having a bad window | manager that makes it more power efficient; Apple could | implement a better desktop environment and still have low | power use. | lbrito wrote: | Ryzen 5700 has 25W TDP https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD- | Ryzen-7-5700U-Processor-Be... | | IMO a 15-watt difference is basically negligible in this | context. It is so insignificant it can be offset by | pretty much anything. You know creating aluminum uses a | ton of energy; maybe that fancy aluminum case of the Macs | used more power than a tiny TDP difference will ever | save. | scns wrote: | It came second to the desktop processors at 3-4x25W TDP. | _aavaa_ wrote: | I think they were talking about energy efficiency in | terms of "how long battery lasts". | | And 15-watts makes a big difference when you have a | 60-watt-hour battery. | thanatos519 wrote: | "Training wheels" is my favourite description of the macOS GUI! | brimble wrote: | What are people doing with their computers that a Mac is so | stifling? I'm late to the Mac game, have been on it for about a | decade, and was a 15-year Windows and Linux desktop user before | that. Still, I don't even know what it might be. | sofixa wrote: | Docker Desktop is relatively bad compared to native docker on | Linux. If you spend your day doing that macOS is very | stifling. Or if you want to change a keyboard shortcut Apple | don't allow you to, like cmt+tab. | brimble wrote: | Ah--I've done a lot of Docker on Mac, but just with the | command line tools, so I don't know how Docker Desktop is | (on any platform). | | > Or if you want to change a keyboard shortcut Apple don't | allow you to, like cmt+tab. | | The only keyboard customization I do is something that Mac | makes at least as easy as Linux (use Caps Lock as an extra | control) but I bet it is frustrating if you want to | customize stuff outside the cases that they explicitly | support remapping. That makes sense. | ryukafalz wrote: | The options for package management on macOS aren't great in | my experience, coming from using Linux on all my personal | machines. Homebrew exists but it always feels bolted on and | I've had things break in interesting ways using it. Nix might | be better, I don't have much experience using it on macOS. | | Also, tiling window managers. | darkteflon wrote: | Cannot at all relate to this perspective. If you like PopOS, | that's great. But this nonsense about Mac fans being blinded by | their love of the brand is the edgelord meme that will not die. | | MacOS is fine. PopOS is fine. Windows is fine. They each ask | you to adopt a UI paradigm because how could they not. It's | natural that transitioning between them is costly. | | Every time I see comments like this I'm reminded of this great | quote: "The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything | else is learned." | smoldesu wrote: | > "The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything | else is learned." | | At least IBM took this to heart. | replygirl wrote: | system76? sounds cool can it run excel and apple music? | lbrito wrote: | I guess? | | System76 makes laptops. They come with their own Linux | distribution called PopOS. | anhner wrote: | Ah yes, apple music, the pinnacle of computing and benchmark | by which to judge all professional-level personal computers. | throwmeariver1 wrote: | I don't like what you like... | replygirl wrote: | alright how about framer | tetsusaiga wrote: | > give anything to replace macOS with Linux (or even Windows) | | I agree that this was a fair, measured post, but I find it | bizarre that a Linux enthusiast would ever want to replace their | Mac OS with Windows when the biggest complaint is... window | management? I feel like they left something out here. | Tagbert wrote: | I do understand that recent Windows has some pretty good basic | window size+position control. That is not something that really | comes default in Mac OS but there are several widely used | third-party tools that do that using different interaction | models (Moom, Better Snap Tool, Magnet). I suspect that | building that into the OS would hurt the third-party market at | this point. | sandwichinvest wrote: | Devoted fan of A tries B, is displeased. | m0shen wrote: | Since the author appears pretty savvy, I recommend trying out | https://www.hammerspoon.org/ and writing a little bit of lua to | customize his mac experience. Can even install it as a Homebrew | cask | jmull wrote: | I think it's more what you're used to. | | I use Windows and macos daily and I sorta prefer the mac's window | management, but they both work fine once you know what you're | doing. In some cases macos just has different keystrokes that the | author doesn't know yet, and in others you just manage windows a | little differently (or use an app if you don't want to adjust). | etchalon wrote: | "In summary, macOS does not behave like Windows or Linux." | thanatos519 wrote: | "In summary, macOS does not behave like Windows or Linux out of | the box, and it's difficult or impossible to change many of | those behaviours." | danaris wrote: | ...And can you easily change Windows or Linux to behave like | macOS, in these fundamental ways? | max599 wrote: | sometimes you can. | | A good exemple is Windows 8.1. | | Depending on who you ask, it's either the best OS Microsoft | has ever made or one of the worse. If you know how to | install a different Start Menu, you can get >95% of the | benefits of W10/W11 with no downside other than game | compatibility. If you are stuck with the menu provided by | Microsoft, it's almost literally unusable. It's so bad that | and hated by literally everyone that IMHO it deserved a | "fire managers/leaders who approved it" type of response. | sofixa wrote: | On Linux yes, absolutely. | ChicagoBoy11 wrote: | Despite the warning, I didn't find it nearly as "ranty" as the | author cautioned, and instead seemed like a fairly comprehensive | and fair take on his experience. | | Having gone through the same thing myself several years ago, the | UI aspect of it is something that I'd be curious to see how it | develops for the author. I think it is not uncommon for Windows | folk to find the windowing experience on macs rather painful, at | least at first. However, after a while, it sort of "made sense" | to me, if that makes any sense at all. There are some clear UX | philosophies that are very different, and the initial transition | can only be pretty jarring, but I'm curious what the author would | say about it after a month or two. | | Also, fwiw, I think most power Mac users also marshal the use of | some other programs to help along with some of that (or at least | to tailor it more closely to what they want the experience to | be). Rectangle is one of the first installs on any Mac I put my | hands on... makes window management so much more pleasant! | rwc wrote: | Not that it's right or wrong, but the behavior dates back to | the very first implementations of Mac OS and Windows. Mac OS | has always been an application switching interface, and Windows | has been a window switching interface. Takes getting used to | the paradigm shift. | drewzero1 wrote: | This reminded me of a post on Macintosh Folklore[0] about the | early development of application switching on Mac OS. It | certainly gave me some insight into why things work the way | they do in the Mac world. | | [0] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Switcher.txt | pmontra wrote: | Having used the very first Mac, it made sense on that tiny | screen. One application per time was almost more than it | could accommodate. The monitor got bigger after a few years | and the menu on top and the full screen interface started not | to make sense compared to the Windows PC next desk. | SllX wrote: | Nah, I'll defend the top menubar to the death. Infinite | height and top-speed cursor speed makes working with it | from the top versus from the window much more efficient for | me, and it wastes less pixels (the purpose of high res | monitors for me is to use all of the pixels) and gives me a | working area on its right side for various utility apps I | don't want taking up space in the Dock (which has enough | problems even with a relatively small working app set). | | What also helps though is that an under-appreciated aspect | of a typical set of Macintosh apps is how good the context | menu has gotten. Typically I'm using the context menu and | hotkeys much more than the menu bar because it is rare | there is an option I want that is unavailable in the | context menu. | loganmarchione wrote: | OP here. I like this perspective, I never thought about it | this way! | verelo wrote: | As someone that came from a windows world for the first | 10ish years of my career, i found this pretty frustrating | too. I honestly still do. Sometimes it feels like I just | cannot get to the window I want. | darkteflon wrote: | You don't have to live with it if you don't like it; open | source to the rescue: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ | lwkl wrote: | There is a separate shortcut to switch between windows of | the currently selected application cmd + ` or ctrl + down | arrow to show the windows. | | So you alt + tab to select the application and switch to | the right window. I personally think it's more reliable | than Windows especially if I have a lot of Windows open | (I used Windows for the last 10 years). On Windows I | regularly switched to the wrong windows because of my fat | fingers... | IncRnd wrote: | FYI, I always load Rectangle on my Macs for window snapping | using keyboard keys. It's fantastic! | wmf wrote: | I wonder how much of the difference between Windows and Mac | comes from the 1980s look-and-feel lawsuits. Microsoft | couldn't clone the Mac directly so they had to make it | gratuitously different and worse. | olyjohn wrote: | I can't get used to the fact that I can't alt-tab to a | minimized window. Nor can I figure out how to switch to any | particular minimized window. You have literally no way of | knowing that a minimized window exists other than right- | clicking the dock icon, or going to the "Window" menu after | you switched to the application. The dock was fine 20 years | ago when they released OSX, but they've literally done | nothing to make it better since then. | uuyi wrote: | I don't actually minimise windows on the mac at all. I just | sling them on a contextual virtual desktop and then triple- | swipe up when I need a different one. | | Not once have I had to sit there mashing alt-tab and | guessing then. | darkteflon wrote: | This will help: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ | colinmhayes wrote: | The solution is simple. Don't minimize windows. Everything | fullscreen on virtual desktops. Three fingers up and choose | the window you want if it's one you don't use normally. | Three finger swipe between frequently used windows. | Asraelite wrote: | I do this. It's absolutely insane that it's the easiest | way to do window management in MacOS. We have regressed | to the point of not having windows anymore. | hx833001 wrote: | One way of addressing this is to use the intended method, | which is to Hide the application instead of minimizing it. | Cmd H hides the application away, and it pops back to the | front with a Cmd Tab. | nerdjon wrote: | Has Mac changed its default settings? | | The Dock shows you any minimized windows on the right. | | If for some reason this is no longer default (I don't | remember the last time I setup a new Mac and didn't carry | over settings) Right Click the dock >> dock preferences >> | Uncheck "Minimize windows into application icon" | olyjohn wrote: | Well, that did work. But now I just have a massive pile | of minimized window icons... and still no keyboard | shortcut to switch to them. | s__s wrote: | On Mac you generally just don't minimize windows unless | you explicitly want that behaviour (sort of hidden and | available manually through the dock). It's just a | different workflow. | nerdjon wrote: | I guess like the other person mentioned I just don't find | myself minimizing that often on Mac. | | That being said there is an option. The first is if you | are in an application you can do control-down or (if you | enable it under gestures >> more gestures for your | trackpad) you do 3 fingers down you will see the | minimized windows for your current application at the | bottom. I did also just look it up and apparently if you | do cmd-tab and press up on an application it does the | same thing. | | Not exactly what you are looking for, but you can at | least do it on a per application level for anything | minimized. | K7PJP wrote: | I never minimize windows at all on the Mac, perhaps | because of this behavior. I hide apps with (Command-H) | instead, and use multiple desktops for managing different | workflows instead. | bouke wrote: | While the app switcher is highlighting the app with | minimized windows, press cmd+1 to switch to those | windows. | urbandw311er wrote: | Ok, so you can actually do this but the keyboard sequence | is a bit bonkers. | | * Hold down Command and press Tab until the application | icon representing the minimised window is highlighted. | | * Release Tab but DONT let go of Command. | | * Now press Option too so you are holding down Command + | Option | | * Now release Command so you are just holding down Option | | * Finally release Option | | Amazingly this will then maximise the window whose | application icon you selected in the first place. | | Sounds crazy but it works. Try it! | fiddlerwoaroof wrote: | You can also tab to the application, hit the up arrow and | use the arrow keys to select the minimized window then | hit enter. | | In fact, my command-tab workflow is: command-tab to open | the Switcher and then arrows to switch application/window | djkoolaide wrote: | You've literally improved my life with this comment. | Thank you. | Sharlin wrote: | Agreed. The distinction between applications and windows that | macOS/Mac OS has always made was jarring at first, but | definitely one of those things that after the initial | adjustment simply feel _different_ rather than objectively | better or worse. | goosedragons wrote: | I never got used to it after a year. I wasn't even a "new" Mac | user as I'd previously used Jaguar/Panther/Tiger/Leopard as | well as Classic and even NeXTStep. But while those were better | than XP time has marched on and I don't feel like MacOS | improved enough compared to the competition (with regards to | window management). If anything should have been Sherlocked it | should have been rectangle/magnet etc. | | I also feel like Apple cripples mice, it's a very trackpad | centered workflow and if you're not using one it suffers. Also | they really need to have a separate mouse scroll toggle built | in. | divbzero wrote: | What I miss most in macOS is _Super + Left_ and _Super + Right_ | to tile windows left and right.. | brimble wrote: | I've used Spectacle with the defaults, for years. It's not | actively developed but still works. There are actively- | maintained alternatives, but since it has _zero_ times done | anything weird or glitchy for me, even with multiple | monitors, I 've not switched yet. | | "brew install spectacle", start it, give it accessibility | permissions it needs in the Settings panel, set to start at | login (check a checkbox in Spectacle's settings panel). | Forget about it until you set up a new Mac. | | cmd+option+up/down/left/right for half-screen tile. | Cmd+option+F for the equivalent of maximizing a window in | Windows (not Mac-style fullscreen). Cmd+ctrl+left/right for | upper-left and upper-right quarter tiles. Add shift to make | it lower-quarter on that side. That's it. Was all available | to me instantly via muscle memory inside a month, don't even | think about it now. It's how I do nearly all my window | placement/resizing. | thatswrong0 wrote: | Spectacle is a must have IMO. | | I set mine up to be Shift+Ctrl+(QWE/ASD/ZXC).. where | Q/E/Z/C are for the corners, A/D left and right halves, W/X | for top and bottom halves, then S in the middle for full | screen. The mnemonic of the "box" formed by those keys on | the keyboard is easier for me to remember. | IncRnd wrote: | I used Spectable as well. The newer version is called | Rectangle. | cj wrote: | Check out the Mac app "Magnet" on the app store. | uuyi wrote: | You can add keyboard shortcuts to do that in settings if you | really want it. It still does that. If you run apps in full | screen mode it gives you a rudimentary tiling workspace on | each desktop with a tiled app on it. | | Just long press on the green button on the window for a | tiling menu. | nine_k wrote: | I can't shake off the impression that Apple does not offer | options for better window management to make your screen more | cluttered and thus sell you more displays. | | When using macOS, I _badly_ miss window management options | available on Linux. (And don 't get me started regarding font | rendering.) | itslennysfault wrote: | Honestly, for something with a disclaimer about it being a rant, | this read pretty positive to me. Pretty sure this guy will be in | love with Apple by the end of the year and will start weeing the | shortcomings in windows/linux. (at least that was my journey | anyways) | | For the cmd+tab thing I think it's a matter of taste and/or | something that the author will get used to. I think I found it | odd at first too, but now I get mad at Windows for not doing it | that way. I love being able to switch between windows of the same | program only. | jonnycomputer wrote: | All OS's should come standard with sophisticated windows | management. I use BetterSnapTool on my Mac, have done so for | close to 10 years now. I honestly don't know what I'd do without | it--and I'm not doing too much fancy. But keyboard shortcutting | to maximize, minimize, or tile (left right/corners/thirds) | elimintes 90% of the fiddly annoying this about dealing with the | too many windows I have open. But even this basic level of | control that the app affords doesn't seem to be important enough | for any of the major OSes to make standard. | reaperducer wrote: | _All OS 's should come standard with sophisticated windows | management._ | | Then people on HN would complain that the OS makers are driving | the small utility software shops out of business with walled | gardens and regulatory capture, or whatever the buzzword of the | week is. | colinmhayes wrote: | I'm pretty sure macOS was designed to have every window in | fullscreen 100% of the time and the user would three finger | swipe to switch windows. Seems like having a shitty experience | when trying to do anything besides fullscreen is kind of the | point, "do things the way we want you to or suffer." | danaris wrote: | No, it was actually designed to _never_ have _any_ window in | fullscreen. That behavior is a relatively recent addition to | the macOS windowing model. | colinmhayes wrote: | Ok I'll rephrase. I'm pretty sure that apple redesigned | their entire windowing system and related shortcuts around | 100% fullscreen when they implemented full screen windows. | Every short cut seems to be built with full screen windows | in mind, especially the track pad stuff. Even the snapping | that op complained about makes sense when considered | through the 100% full screen paradigm. | [deleted] | Tagbert wrote: | I almost never use that kind of full-screen mode in Mac OS. I | do too much work between apps and rarely restrict myself to | just one. Drag-n-drop has been a major interaction model in | Mac OS for many decades | colinmhayes wrote: | I do most of my work in many apps too. It's pretty easy to | remember to three finger swipe left twice to get to my | browser from tmux etc. and is faster than other methods | i've found. Plus I need all the screen space I can get, 16 | inches is barely big enough. | jihadjihad wrote: | I totally get the window switching thing, especially if one of | the windows is minimized. In that case, hovering over the window | using Cmd + Tab _will not_ open the window. You have to press | Option while simultaneously letting go of the Cmd key. | | The only other major thing is how terrible Finder is out of the | box. There are ways to make it less terrible, but it's still far | less than ideal in usability. | urbandw311er wrote: | Yes! I provided the same comment above with a step-by-step as | the sequence of key presses is a little hard to figure out the | first time. | | I've now finally committed this to muscle memory but I doubt | many people are aware of it -- it was really good to hear of | somebody else using it! | Tagbert wrote: | What problems do you have with Finder? I feel the same about | Windows File Explorer when I use Windows. If nothing else, I | keep looking for a way to add a tab for a different path. | | Admittedly, I tend not to use that many keyboard short-cuts. | Beyond the basics, I find the effort to learn more of them not | worth the effort unless it is an app that I use frequently. | File management is not one of those cases. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-11 23:00 UTC)