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How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

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Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#391

Post by tsimionescu »

cdcarter wrote: post #367
bane wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You successfully managed to confirm all of the parent's complaints by showing that they aren't achievable in Finder, or don't follow a consistent convention and have to be done some other way.

What's wrong with command-up to go to the enclosing folder? As the poster stated, you don't even need to use the keyboard shortcut, there's a menu item.

If I'm in a GUI app, I'm navigating with the mouse. Having to take my hand off the mouse to type Cmd+Up is not good UX for such a common command as "cd ..".

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#392

Post by dmitriid »

bayindirh wrote: post #291
throwaddzuzxd wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Finder is atrocious. It's the worst default macOS app and probably the worst program period I've ever used. It's been so dumbed down that it's basically unusable for anyone slightly experienced. - There's no way to create an empty file - There's no easy way to cut a file/folder (Cmd-x doesn't work) - There's no (?) way to keep everything consistently sorted and aligned - ~~Tags are useless and just take up space…

> There's no way to create an empty file This is one of the features I never miss and don't use on any other DE (like KDE). I just open the app, create the file and save. Maybe it's just habit, but I personally doesn't find it as a needed feature. > There's no easy way to cut a file/folder (Cmd-x doesn't work) Just drag it where you want while pressing CMD? I know it's not cut but it prevents a lot of errors I think.…

> It's called "Clean Up By". Available in right click menu and in the top menu probably.

And you cannot apply it to all folders across the entire system. Why they still haven't fixed tis, is beyond me.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#393

Post by jbverschoor »

blackoil wrote: post #390

For me maximize to full screen and multiple desktops is most useless feature of Mac. For me cmd+tab never works even for 1st party apps like Terminal if it is maximized. Cmd+tab always shows all apps so you can't use multiple Desktops for mental separation. and being Mac you can't change default behaviour of button to maximize

I agree about the mental separation. However, there's only 1 app instance.

tbh, my ideal desktop situation is 2 or 3 computers with synergy in between. separation of applications / tabs.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#394

Post by dahart »

D13Fd wrote: post #357
dahart wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true, this is a bizarre choice that tells the user that renaming a folder is more important and more frequent than navigating. It makes keyboard navigating in the Finder pretty annoying (unless you only live in column view, which feels very claustrophobic to me). IMO the Finder has a bunch of bad UX, it’s like they never figured out what to do with it during the OSX transition, and then refused to improve it or do…

All it means is that to rename you press enter, and to open you press command-o. It works perfectly fine for keyboard navigation. After using both for a long time (Windows for 30 years (!) and Mac OS for 16), I actually like the Mac OS way a bit better. In my usage renaming is a very common operation and I don't have F keys on my usual keyboard (renaming in Windows is F2).

I don't disagree with your opinion, there's nothing wrong with liking command-o for nav.

But what I mean is that Finder navigating uses an unintuitive key chord you have to learn, while renaming uses a single key, and a large and very common/obvious/intuitive one. This does in fact mean the UX is declaring which one they expect to be more common. I'm not saying renaming is uncommon, but for me it's nowhere near the usage of navigating into a folder. Are you saying you're renaming folders more often than browsing into them? (How do you get to the folder you want to rename?)

Both Windows and Linux GUI folder browsers use the Enter key to navigate, and so do many other tree browser UIs including our web browsers. It's very common and very reasonable to expect Enter to navigate to the thing you've selected. This expectation and ecosystem of navigating this way means that Mac's Finder stands out as different and unintuitive, even within a Mac-only set of applications. I love my Mac, and I've also used both Windows and Mac since they first existed ... both for 35 years. But today's Finder is definitely weird and anachronistic compared nearly all other modern file browsers.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#395

Post by tsimionescu »

dsego wrote: post #374
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s another UX paradigm I have to remember (and usually don’t) instead of using the standard one which is second nature to me.

Nobody is forcing you to use macs. Doesn't make the mac any less intuitive if it doesn't follow what alternative operating systems are doing.

It does make it less intuitive if it is hiding common interactions behind keyboard shortcuts (cmd+up instead of an Up button) or if it is inconsistent with common paradigms (different shortcuts for copy vs cut + single shortcut to paste is universal outside finder, which uses an entirely different paradigm).

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#396

Post by eptcyka »

I can't stress enough how bad apple devices are for the uninitiated. I got my mom an iPad for her birthday, as she needed something to read medical books with color and watch YouTube. It took her a week to get youtube working, and copying over PDFs is still done piecmeal - sending each file from her Windows PC one by one using a messaging app. She tried to install apps, but the app store progress thing was just spinning. With no indication as to what she was doing wrong. Turns out she just needed to upgrade to the latest iOS. And the instructions that I had looked up before buying the iPad on how to copy PDFs to an iPad have been deprecated as of the latest iTunes release. And iCloud Drive's upload button is greyed out, with the tooltip informing us that _uploading is disabled_. Since I can't travel 1000 miles to help her out in person, the fact that I have to debug this over a video call is even worse.

Why is copying a file such a hard thing to do? Why is updating the iPad something my mother would have to think about? This is the UX I'd expect from some cheap Samsung tablet, yet I'm sure that with a Samsung tablet, copying a file onto a device over USB wouldn't be an issue.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#397

Post by selimthegrim »

speeder wrote: post #161

I concluded Mac interface designers are out of touch with reality when I found out that to "eject" pendrives you had to drag them to the trash bin. I mean, now they do show a convenient "eject" symbol next to the name of the remove-able drive on the Finder, but the "drag to trash" thing still work, and it always surprises people, they always assume it means you want to delete all files in a disk, not that you want to…

That has been around since classic MacOS

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#398

Post by jbverschoor »

ForHackernews wrote: post #129
agustif wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Just use [spacebar] on any view to open up the image in spotlight? Just press a random key on the keyboard? How exactly is that intuitive? Keyboard shortcuts are the absolute worst for discoverability.

Most of the shortcuts are right there in the menu. For quicklook it's cmd-y and a hidden space.

Use the Help menu. Read the menus.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#399

Post by alanbernstein »

drewg123 wrote: post #96

I 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) Finder is an excellent image viewer. You want gallery view, which is one of the prominent buttons visible by default in the OS version I'm using. Maximize the window, and images will be nearly full-screen. No hidden UI elements needed. It's crazy to me that there is nothing like this (?) by default in Ubuntu. In the case that icon view really is what you want, you can adjust icon sizes with the slider in the bottom right corner - still no hidden UI elements.

2) Agreed, this is silly. This is likely fixed by one of the items in this very long list of power-user tweaks: https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.macos

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#400

Post by moogleii »

LocalPCGuy wrote: post #244
FabHK wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> trying and failing to go up Cmd-click on the folder in the Finder window title, and go up as far as you want?

This is the thing about Macs - people think they are intuitive because they have learned how to use them over X number of years. Including, I believe, those building the OS at Apple. But for a person who isn't familiar with them, they are absolutely not intuitive. And any time there is a complaint, the community is like "Oh, dummy, just do this thing that is not obvious at all, how could you not figure that out?"

It goes both ways. I agree cmd click on the title is definitely less intuitive (hell, I just learned that now). If I were guiding a new user to macOS, I would instead show how to reveal the Path Bar on Finder which requires less memorization from the user. Not sure why that isn't enabled by default.

That or explain the arrow-key centric keyboard navigation, which has fewer exceptions than Explorer.

But there are plenty of shortcuts on Windows that are the way they are for historical reasons, not because of user-centric design.

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