The dmg install process has always been a mess.
But note that Little Sister was pretty instinctively going to the App Store. If Chrome was in there she would've probably gotten it with no problems.
How Intuitive Are Macs Really?
101–110 of 638 posts
Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?
#102Funny, I remember 20 years ago people being excited about the "Drag to Applications" to install and calling it an example of extremely good -- as they would call it today -- UX.
Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?
#103I 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…
First, not going to claim that macOS is "intuitive", because my in my experience, "intuitive" usually means very different things to different people.
As a long-time Mac, Windows, and Linux user... I'll say that there are plenty of random broken things on the Mac, but there are also a few nice things that work very consistently on the Mac, but you'd never think to try them because you're used to them not working on Linux or Windows. So if you have been using Linux or Windows a long time, you will probably find macOS frustrating, just for the reason that it is different from what you are used to, and not because there are fundamental flaws with macOS or Windows.
Just an example of a couple simple things that are easy on a Mac, but hard on Linux/Windows: saving a file to a specific location. Let's say you have a Finder window open, and an unsaved document open in an application, and you want to save the open document to the folder that's open in the Finder.
1. You could go to the app and hit save, bringing up the save dialog, and then drag the folder (perhaps from the icon in the title bar) into the save dialog. This moves the save dialog to point to that folder.
2. You could save the file somewhere else, and drag the file (perhaps from the icon in the title bar) into the folder.
3. You could save the file on the desktop, and then move it into the desired folder.
I have not really ever figured out a nice way to do this on Windows. I often end up having to navigate through save dialogs on Linux and Windows and it seems unnecessary. Windows certainly doesn't let you move files that are open, which is a frustrating restriction when you run into it.
> Why is it that when I click Finder, nothing actually opens?
It brings Finder forward, and opens a new window if there are no Finder windows open, which is the same behavior as other Mac apps.
> Don't even get me started on the sort options. What kind of file manager applies a Sort view to every single directory, instead of the one you actually set the Sort view to?
Command J lets you set the view options, it's per-directory and includes sorting & grouping. Per-directory options don't do anything in column view. I'm not sure what you're doing, so I don't know what's missing. I switched to column view in the early 2000s and only occasionally switch to list view when I need to sort a massive folder by file sizes (which, unfortunately, requires command-J and checking "calculate all sizes", which is not something you'd know to look for).
Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?
#104I 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. vari…
> 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.
Kind of ironic considering all the research Apple did that led to the spatial finder.
Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?
#105I'm not sure I agree with this at all. Just to test I donwloaded the .dmg for Chrome. Like A LOT of .dmg based "installers" there is a Chrome application and a link to /Applications, with a nice obvious "arrow" between them. I've always found this to be pretty self evident that I must put the Chrome app into the Applications folder.
My sister interpreted that as drag it onto the application icon that was in her task bar, so she kept trying to drag it onto the App Store icon because it looked kind of similar.
Yeah, it's easy to understand if you already understand it (some will have a "Drag to Applications" text to help) - but I prefer the applications where if you start it from the DMG it asks if you'd like to move it to Applications, and then does so and ejects the DMG for you.
How many times have we found a friend's Mac with 10-20 DMGs mounted?
Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who recently switched to MacOs (not by their own choice) there are hundreds of little annoying, broken or inconsistent OS things I find. One of my favorites just happened yesterday with finder - I was trying to figure out how to rename a file, well the usual fx keys aren't doing it so the common process was to go to the toolbar context menu where hotkey is indicated next to the action's text. Rename for so…
> well the usual fx keys aren't doing it When you say the 'usual' function keys... do you really mean some other system's function keys? Why would you expect macOS to use the same function keys as a different system? There's no standards body for these things.
> There's no standards body for these things.
Yes there is -- it's called CUA (Common User Access)
"The subset of CUA implemented in Microsoft Windows or OSF/Motif is generally considered a de facto standard to be followed by any new Unix GUI environment."
Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?
#107I 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 Finder isn't great. You might take a look at Pathfinder.
Yeh when I switched for work, I though this is in some ways worse than filemanger in windows 3.1 !
Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?
#108The iPad is increasingly the personal computer 2.0 for so many people (not all), and it’s quite a step up in usability
Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?
#109I just helped a friend who is a lifetime windows user set up her new MBP M1. I was reminded how un-intuitive things are and how useful UI elements are hidden in the name of "simplicity". A lot of it for her is centered around the finder and accessing files in general. The two biggest issues she had was: 1) finder not easily acting as an image viewer. Eg, she had an SD card from her camera, and wanted to quickly scan…
1) Just use [spacebar] on any view to open up the image in spotlight?
The problem with the mac is that much has been done on top of older patterns, etc....
If you're a hardcore user though, I'd take Mac over windows or linux any day.
Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that you can’t create a key binding for a window or even name it is ridiculous.
I could be mistaken but I'm pretty sure you can't name windows in Gnome, KDE, and Windows either.
You can change the window title in X, though chances are the window manager will just change it back next time it's refreshed.
xprop -f _NET_WM_NAME 8u -set _NET_WM_NAME "New Window Name"