Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

char.gd

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 790 posts

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#281

Post by xorblurb »

Razengan wrote: post #234
xorblurb wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"macOS Finder": you are talking about that software that rename folders when you press the enter key? :p

Can you give a reason why Enter to open a file is ideal, other than just because it's how Windows does it? The Windows Explorer uses Alt+Enter to show the properties of something, and in games and other apps that shortcut means Full Screen. Also, why does Alt+F4 quit an app? What does F4 stand for? Compared to Cmd+Q to Quit or Cmd+W to close it's a lot less intuitive. And so on and so forth.

Don't worry I don't use "Enter opening something" as my only criteria to judge the discoverability and the ease of use of an interface -- and like you said Windows is full of arbitrary and/or curious keyboard choices -- but pretty much like all interfaces. (However, I still find enter => renaming really weird :p )

As for Cmd+Q and Cmd+W, those might be somewhat more intuitive, but only for some languages, and arguably only very vaguely intuitive for Cmd+W even for english speaking people.

But then again, I don't think there is a real notable difference in the end between most modern systems. It's more of a question of what we are used to.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#282

Post by eropple »

wingworks wrote: post #279
eropple wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> now that Windows has decent high-DPI support YMMV, but this is why I still use a Mac--because even Windows 10's high-DPI support is messy and not great. Applications act inconsistently and Windows is straight-up bad at handling different DPI on different devices (and when you've got two 27" 2560x1440 panels and the laptop's own panel, this is a pretty significant problem).

You're lucky with only 2560x1440, try a 5k screen on Windows 10, most (all?) modern apps work fine with Win 10 DPI scaling, but allot of the older, or less supported things like headphone software (looking at you Logitech) have 0 DPI support and are TINY or are scaled up, but pixelated (Looking at you Steam! Steam has updates like every 2nd day, but have yet to update the UI for proper DPI scaling) Logitech headphone…

Right - I meant that the big monitors are standard DPI, the laptop isn't.

On OS X, I've literally never thought about DPI.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#283

Post by plushpuffin »

madez wrote: post #156

> The new MacBook Pros (...) _where_ interesting (...).

Don't focus on the typo. Focus on the sentence, which contradicts itself halfway through. Apparently, the new Macbooks are interesting, except that they're not at all interesting.

> The new MacBook Pros, released in late 2016, where interesting, but something of a half-hearted shrug in the direction of users: they’re okay machines, but they sure aren’t interesting at all.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#284

Post by rusk »

euroclydon wrote: post #206
bradgessler wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too have become annoyed recently at really basic stuff not working in macOS, like I can't drag and drop a picture out of Photos app into Pixelmator to edit. In fact, dragging and dropping a picture out of Photos into any application is completely broken and doesn't work. Its as-if the Apple QA team no longer tests to make sure their applications play nice with each other in a way that has been fundamental to deskto…

Is it even possible to chose a photo out of your photo librry from a browser's file upload dialog? I don't think it is, when the photos are in iPhoto. How many steps does it take to get a picture off your camera, into iPhoto, then exported, and finally uploaded to Craigslist?

Photos should show up as an icon in the side-bar? Rather than navigating to the actual files I think you're meant to access them this way. It's a good idea and used to work better in my memory - these days it can be a bit finnicky to find the photo you want.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#285

Post by AsyncAwait »

freehunter wrote: post #255
AsyncAwait wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somehow I shut my laptop off and it booted backup to a failure message, I had to make another bootable USB and go online to find out how to do a fsck. I was using external monitors without issue for a month, and then one day the configuration changed to a point where I couldn't even use the laptop with it's built-in display. The sound and volume controls are a joke. I was prevented from installing any packages beca…

With great power comes great responsibility. If you want raw power, you can buy a car with 500 horsepower. But you handle all of that power, you'll need traction control and maybe stability control, and anti-lock brakes for when you need to stop it. But all of that limits the amount of power you have available, limits your control. Now, a race car driver would look at these driver assist tools and say "I'm sick of pe…

The thing is, you really don't need to "be stuck on the side of the road reading manpages" these days and what drives me crazy is the outdated evaluation of Linux, it's like saying, "but viruses and blue screen of death" about Windows in 2016.

Does it require some adjustment? Sure, just like any new OS. If you're going to try it, I think it's fair to require you to learn its ways. If you don't want to do that, why not stick with your old OS?

Mac requires adjustment too, has many problems, (ie WiFi drops, file system, temps etc.), however I feel the reason people are willing to adjust is because they paid solid money for it and so want to get the most out of their purchase. Because Linux is "free", there's no such incentive and thus it is judged much more harshly.

Hardware selection is another problem, with Mac you get custom tailored hardware, but with Linux, most people just purchase any random junk PC and expect it to work great, not really fair is it?

> Seriously, did saying "sounds like you're just inexperienced with Linux" sound good in your head? Because it certainly didn't sound good reading it

I am sorry if it sounded harsh, but constantly reading about novice problems I haven't had in a decade also doesn't "sound good reading".

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#286

Post by rusk »

pyreal wrote: post #151
jmcdiesel wrote: post #17

I used to be hardcore windows guy... Then 10 years ago I got a mac. I never went back.. But what am I saving money for right now? To build a nice PC again. Mostly because of the exact reasons in the article. I have a fondness for apple... but they have definitely lost their way. First, they were a computer company driven by a man who loved computers ("first" here is the Jobs return era) ... then they became a Compute…

I switched to Mac at about the same time as you. I can't see myself ever going back to Windows but if Adobe ever ports their application suite to Linux, I'd switch immediately.

I'm on a similar timeline as well. Thought I'd never go back, but have you checked out Windows 10? The gap has closed a lot.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#287

Post by uladzislau »

That's the most puzzling about current Apple - why intentionally ignore and neglect the most vocal and lucrative segment of the market? Maybe not in the terms of bean counting but in terms of the "promoters" and ecosystem - what Apple actually spent incredible amount of efforts to build and maintain in the past.

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#288

Post by Razengan »

keevie wrote: post #276
Razengan wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a reason why Enter to open a file is ideal, other than just because it's how Windows does it? The Windows Explorer uses Alt+Enter to show the properties of something, and in games and other apps that shortcut means Full Screen. Also, why does Alt+F4 quit an app? What does F4 stand for? Compared to Cmd+Q to Quit or Cmd+W to close it's a lot less intuitive. And so on and so forth.

Really, it doesn't make sense to you that enter would correspond to the most common, least destructive action? Alt-F4 makes little sense, true, but in almost all windows apps control-q or control-w does exactly the same thing as on osx. Also, having sane defaults for keys people are likely to press is much more important than /not/ having obscure keyboard shortcuts that users never have to know even exist.

> the most common, least destructive action?

Launching processes with a single keypress and no confirmation can hardly be called "the least destructive action."

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#289

Post by andai »

Razengan wrote: post #234
xorblurb wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"macOS Finder": you are talking about that software that rename folders when you press the enter key? :p

Can you give a reason why Enter to open a file is ideal, other than just because it's how Windows does it? The Windows Explorer uses Alt+Enter to show the properties of something, and in games and other apps that shortcut means Full Screen. Also, why does Alt+F4 quit an app? What does F4 stand for? Compared to Cmd+Q to Quit or Cmd+W to close it's a lot less intuitive. And so on and so forth.

I still haven't figured out how to actually open a file/folder in Finder (with the keyboard).

Re: Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up

#290

Post by saghm »

keevie wrote: post #278
saghm wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux file explorers (Nautilus, etc.) aren't exactly a pleasure to use, but then again, as a Linux user, if I have to open a GUI to do something with my files, I'm usually not happy about it in the first place.

Ever use ranger? Of course, not exactly comparable, but it's pretty amazing.

Oh, this looks interesting! I've never really tried out terminal-based file managers, but I could see myself using something like this. I'd definitely need to spend some time getting used to it though, not to mention learning how to do various things (show hidden files, etc.)
Post reply on HN