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How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

jeremyaboyd.com

21–30 of 638 posts

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#21
Once I got to a certain place in my coding knowledge, I stopped caring so much about the different OSes. Once you see the abstractions you know what layer to look for. Is the thing a UI problem or a network config problem? Normally it's clear once you've coded a bit.

I like my MacBook mainly because of the screen, and a little bit because of the touchpad. Those are both hardware considerations rather than OS.

In terms of using it, I have a terminal on shortcut, which I also do on my backup Linux machine. If I had a Windows as my daily machine I think I'd do the same. In terms of installed apps, all the IDEs are on all platforms, and all chat programs are on all platforms. Just about everything else is in a browser. So it hardly matters too much what you pick.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#22
post #4

Stopped reading after "and I still think windows is the superior operating system".

Is that an invalid opinion?

I'm forced to use Mac at work, and I find both Windows and Linux to be more powerful and less constrained as technical work environments.

Too much of MacOS is designed around hiding functionality and protecting non-technical users, but the way they do it is uneven and awkward. Building code requires you to accept license agreements in ten different inconsistent places, you have to hit hotkeys to delete things or mark them as executable. File paths are hidden unless you jump through hoops, Apple is always shoving Safari and iTunes down your throat, the context menu is littered with useless garbage like "Look up X", the desktop environment requires 3rd party plugins for power use, XCode is the single worst IDE I've ever had to use, ...

Finder is the worst file browser in the world. This is probably my top complaint and sums up why Apple is so frustrating. It's like Apple is trying to hide information from you and gives me the impression that they only care about the superficial appearance of their Finder app over its actual functionality. Explorer and Nautilus are miles better in every use case: finding files, listing files, managing files, navigating directory trees, mounting remove volumes, ... Finder makes all of these tasks incredibly tedious, hiding them as much as possible so the app looks minimal and uncluttered. It's horrible.

Apple even removed the escape key from their laptops at one point, which should go to show you that technical users are not their primary audience.

I'd recommend Mac for editing text documents, but not much else. Even file management feels second class to the point I'd want to work on video and 3d workflows in Windows instead. I'd never want to program on a Mac.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#23

Window management is even greater s*show. To the point that you need 3rd party apps to make it usable.

It's absolutely awful. My 2500$ macbook's window processing is at least 10 times slower than my 250$ thinkpad with linux. It's insane that such simple things don't work on such an established and valuable brand.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#24
post #2

Still light years ahead of whatever they use on Windows. To each their own.

I recently switched to a Macbook. Formerly used mostly linux, with an occasional boot into Windows for gaming now and then, so it's not like I'm comparing to some nirvana experience here (linux is laughably bad and unintuitive). I've used a macbook for work for over 6 years now, though.

The MacOS desktop is...a poor experience even compared with linux. And don't get me started on the Finder app. That has to be one of the most infuriatingly bad applications I've ever used. It's opinionated in mostly the wrong ways and is cumbersome to use to navigate around to actually find anything.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#25
post #14

I bought a Mac in 2014 after a lifetime of using Windows. I never understood why people called it easier to use than Windows. Maybe this sentiment is a holdover from an earlier era when people would mindlessly run executables and zip files attached in emails and AIM messages. From a UI perspective, it's 90% identical to windows. From a UX perspective though, something fundamental like Finder is still not up to the jo…

I started off as a Windows user, but in college I switched to I think OS X Tiger at the time. To me, it was a pretty impressive upgrade & I had a *nix terminal at my disposal. But imo macOS has been running on the same UX upgrade since it started calling itself OS X.

I think this sentiment largely comes from the era when Microsoft Windows XP was the dominant Windows flavor and also the ME/Vista debacles.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#27
My grandparents got iPhones (during COVID) because they were supposed to be easy.

Wow, that's just the marketing.

The jargon was outside their understanding, and unless we were physically looking at the phone, we couldn't guess what word in the Appstore meant Download.

And it got worse, the requests/requirement to login with Apple ID on various occasions were frustrating.

And from a tech geek, I had a work IPhone where I struggled to change settings and found annoyances with bugs.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#28
Intuitiveness is a strange topic. Think of moving to the beginning and the end on the command line in the terminal. This is done using Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E keys. Is this intuitive? Yes, it is for someone who was using Emacs for 20 years as it uses same keys. Is this intuitive for a typical MS Windows user who uses Notepad++ and MS Word? Hell, no.

Same with operation systems. For someone accustomed to Windows conventions things like lack of Ctrl-X on Mac for cutting files (so after Ctrl-V they are removed from old location) will be counter-intuitive. For people living in Mac ecosystem this is natural and does not affect their workflow (they are even epic discussions on the topic in the Internet).

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#29
post #15

The entire thing used to be super intuitive and consistent. Disk images were the mac equivalent of a compressed folder, e.g. zip. And I find the "compressedd virtual usb-stick" idea a lot more intuitive than the whole "we cram files into other files and loose all metadata" shenanigans. Apps used to be simple files in the finest unix tradition. No weird installer that does who knows what, no wizards, no special system…

Or "uninstalling" apps, always kind of confusing on Windows. Not on the Mac.

Still, I think it's not that the Mac is not that intuitive any more, it's that Windows has more or less caught up.

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