How Intuitive Are Macs Really? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#31

Post by scotty79 » Mon, May 24, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #18

rchaud wrote: 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…

> Why is it that when I click Finder, nothing actually opens? I'm not sure what you're doing wrong here - when I click the Finder icon it shows me the top Finder window, or opens a new one if there is no window. Is this not what it does for you?

Maybe it's a bug. I had plenty of those accumulating using mac for few months.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#32

Post by jermaustin1 » Mon, May 24, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

dsabanin wrote: post #4

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

I'm glad you made it almost to the end :) - thanks for at least reading that far.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#33

Post by killtimeatwork » Mon, May 24, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

arolihas wrote: post #26

whatever1 wrote: post #9

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

The fact that you can’t create a key binding for a window or even name it is ridiculous.

If the app lauching the window is placed as an icon in the task bar, you can pop its window app with Windows + (number of icon, counting from the start menu button). It doesn't work for some misbehaving apps which I guess didn't bother to do proper windows integration (Spyder IDE is one such example), but overall works great.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#34

Post by kristofferR » Mon, May 24, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: 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…

The way sort options works is pretty nice IMO. If you wanted to set sort options for a single folder you'd just right click and open Sort Options.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#35

Post by kristofferR » Mon, May 24, 2021, 1:39 PM UTC

CarVac wrote: post #12

I find the dock terribly unintuitive every time I use a Mac.

How so? It can't get much more intuitive in my view, it's a collection of your favorite apps with dots under each running one.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#36

Post by TulliusCicero » Mon, May 24, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: 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…

Also, by default Finder seems to hide directory structure from you. This seems to be Apple thinking it'll confuse people if they can see 'up' directories, but I think just as often it confuses people like me who are trying and failing to go up.

I use all three major desktop OSes regularly now, and overall Windows just feels like the most user-friendly and straightforward, though of course it too has issues (e.g. various settings/control panel options being randomly split between new style and old style systems).

Oh, and Linux seems to be by far the least stable. I have apps freezing the whole damn computer way more often there than the other two.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#37

Post by brainzap » Mon, May 24, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

What I like is that the System Settings stayed somewhat the same. What still hurts is the Finder, there is just something missing, file management is painful.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#38

Post by echelon » Mon, May 24, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

rationalData wrote: post #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 whe…

> I struggled to change settings

Apple's posture is that the defaults are good for most people. Their settings management is second class in all of their products compared to Windows and (especially) Linux and Android.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#39

Post by heresie-dabord » Mon, May 24, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

In the early period of Apple computers, they offered more affordance ("intuitiveness", the user's immediate sense of how to use the tooling) than $competingOS.

This is in part because of the simple WIMP [0] affordance, some humane design choices such as smiling faces and long filenames, and because a few applications were pre-eminent in their categories. Adobe Photoshop, for example. What people did with Apple computers, they knew how to do and what to expect.

The reputation for ease of use persisted for a long time after it became less of a differentiating characteristic. "Reputation" is sometimes perpetuated by marketing, not by a consensus of thoughtful users.

An OS such a ChromeOS can make a claim to "ease of use" by limiting the user's ability to cause damage.

These days and for some time, I use Linux (Debian), Android, ChromeOS, and M-Windows in that order of frequency. Linux gives me all the tools that I want, Android is mobile, ChromeOS is hard-to-break for restricted computing. For M-Windows, the typical driver requirements make it necessary.

[0] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing)

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#40

Post by goldcd » Mon, May 24, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #16

It's unfortunate that the intuitive user interface for a new user is the goal for commercial reasons. Many people use computers 2-8 hour per day for their whole life. It would be worth of the effort to create secondary consistent UI that takes weeks to learn, even if it would increase productivity just 5%.

But I don't think there are people out there happily burning 5% productivity to compensate for poor UI.

Normally people are burning productivity by not learning/knowing what their existing UI provides.

e.g. In windows windows-key+arrow, lets you snap windows to the side of the screen (or minimize, mazimize, shift monitor etc). Now I've absolutely no idea when this feature was introduced - but plenty of people are still reaching for their pointer device to drag stuff about.

It's a nice feature. You don't forget it - but it's bad UX as I swear usage of it only spreads by word-of-mouth. No idea if MS invented it - or it was 'borrowed' from another OS.