How Intuitive Are Macs Really? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#421

Post by tsimionescu » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #336

throwaddzuzxd wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think you've ever actually used a Mac. For the last 2 years I've used a Mac professionally and personally. I switched from Windows because lots of things are better. Finder is not one of them. And your answers should give you a hint why it sucks. An empty file is a file that is empty, with the name and extension I chose on the moment I need it. >And yes you can cut. Cmd-C, Cmd-Opt-V. With the wrong keyboard…

> With the wrong keyboard shortcut, the correct one universally being Cmd-X. I think no matter what you do here, you have a problem. When you press ctrl-x on a file in Windows explorer; you're not really cutting it; nothing happens til you paste! (Unlike using cut anywhere else). Both Windows and MacOS end up with a bit of a strained metaphor here; I don't think it's at all obvious which way is _correct_.

That's not true at all! The moment you cut a file on windows it is marked as hidden, which makes it disappear with default settings. It's treu that unless you paste it it will remain there in practice, but the UX gets it right.

Furthermore, you can cut once and paste to several places, with predictable semantics identical to every other implementation of cut+paste (though performance of the first paste will be different from subsequent ones).

Edit: I was entirely wrong about the second part, which does undermine my point considerably.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#422

Post by tsimionescu » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

robertoandred wrote: post #345

throwaddzuzxd wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think you've ever actually used a Mac. For the last 2 years I've used a Mac professionally and personally. I switched from Windows because lots of things are better. Finder is not one of them. And your answers should give you a hint why it sucks. An empty file is a file that is empty, with the name and extension I chose on the moment I need it. >And yes you can cut. Cmd-C, Cmd-Opt-V. With the wrong keyboard…

Cmd-X would be inconsistent with every other move/copy action on the Mac. Option is the modifier that switches between them. And what is the "correct" way to go up a folder? What would be easier or more discoverable than Go -> Enclosing Folder?

A button? Even Unix considers that accessing the parent dir is a fundamental operation that deserves a dedicated file in the API (..) .

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#423

Post by rashil2000 » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #271

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…

It's not that Windows Explorer is much better, though. I hate how it prefers to display everything as icons instead of details. How it hides files and directories, doesn't show extensions, etc. But there's one thing it gets right: it shows you where you are, and you can edit that to go anywhere. Finder can do that too, but it doesn't show you it can do that. You have to know. I recently got a Macbook from work, parti…

> I hate how it prefers to display everything as icons instead of details.

It's actually the opposite. The view for each folder is dependent on what's inside, and if Explorer is unable to decide, it defaults to Details view.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#424

Post by tsimionescu » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #222

TulliusCicero wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Linux rarely crashes. What it does do is handle low memory situations really badly. Simultaneously browsers have got way more memory hungry. I have left firefox overnight and had a tab decide it would like to eat all my memory. Linux does have an oom killer to deal with out of memory situations but it will kick in halfway to the heat death of the universe and you will reboot first. Oom looks just like a crash the UI…

I think a much more common problem than OOM is X itself. It ties programs tightly together, making it trivial for one badly behaving process to take down all processes with a GUI.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#425

Post by samatman » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #403

samatman wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the same thing though. macOS has those also, programs can live on the menu bar. But in macOS, closing the last window basically never exits the program. Even for a program like Element, which is just an Electron view, closing the window doesn't quit the program, even though what's left over is useless: there's no way to relaunch the Electron pane except to quit and start it again. This is just how macOS wo…

> But in macOS, closing the last window basically never exits the program There's plenty (an increasing number, IME) of Windows apps that work that way, but mostly if an app exists to facilitate some kind of user interaction via a UI and there's no worries open there's no reason for it to be open, so no windows = closed app is a fairly same convention. > Even for a program like Element, which is just an Electron view…

Eh, I don't entirely agree.

I mentioned that Element is just an Electron view because it doesn't behave like a native Mac app. The correct thing to do is to offer a menu item which would bring the view back.

VLC is a good example of an app which works correctly in this way. There's only the one window, which shows either the playlist or the video. If you close it, VLC stays open, and there's a menu item which will bring it back.

Of course VLC can also open files, so Cmd-O is useful here, and Element doesn't happen to support more than one window... because it's a browser view dressed as a Mac app. If it were native, it would be a no-brainer to support multiple windows, each with a given user account.

So yes, there are some edge cases where an application offers exactly one window, and there's no reason to close that window instead of closing the app. But the Mac-native thing to do is to offer a menu item to bring that window back, instead of breaking consistency by having that program just disappear on you when you close the window.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#426

Post by derefr » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:38 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…

> From a UI perspective, it's 90% identical to windows.

That's convergent evolution. The UIs started off very different. MacOS's current set of UI abstractions was mostly enshrined in an era when its competitor was Windows 3.1.

> Why is it that when I click Finder, nothing actually opens?

I was going to give a few justifications for this, but I just tested it, and clicking on the Finder icon in the Dock does open a new Finder window for me. (In Big Sur. This definitely wasn't always the case; I'm not certain when it changed.)

But those justifications, for the long period where it didn't, are still kind of interesting/relevant:

1. the Desktop is a Finder window. IIRC, on some versions of macOS, using a switcher to focus the Finder would — if you don't have any open Finder windows — focus the desktop (insofar as keyboard navigation goes.)

2. You can do useful things with the Finder without any windows open. IIRC, Apple's HIG only recommends creating a new window in response to a click on the app's icon (and or having a Cmd-0 accelerator), if the app is useless without having a window open. But the Finder has a bunch of menu-items in the "Go" menu (with keyboard accelerators) to open windows showing specific locations, or to open dialogs for connecting to networks, etc. It'd be annoying if you wanted to open one of these, but focusing the Finder always opened a default window you had to get rid of first. I personally often focus the Finder and then press Cmd+K to mount an SMB share on my NAS, then immediately close the resulting window, because the point was to get it mounted for command-line use.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#427

Post by kevinob11 » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

Interestingly after reading other comments I think I agree that it isn't very intuitive. I say that as someone who switched from windows to mac about 6 years ago and don't really want to go back.

I think Windows is more intuitive when you first sit down in front of it. You click an app and it opens, click it again and you get another one (usually). All context for the app is on the window for the app, physically connected. The start menu allows you to get to almost everything, things are in 5 different places on a mac (dock, spotlight, apple menu, etc.). I think all of that adds up to make windows vastly more intuitive (discoverable?), especially for a first time user.

Where I really love my mac is in the first tier of shortcuts and features below the discoverable level. I find the hotkeys to be more reachable and intuitive (easy for my brain to remember the associations) than the windows equivalents. I love spotlight and find it to be much better at opening programs than windows search, though this seems largely fixed in windows 10 I think. I really like the swipe gestures on my touchpad, enough that I bought a magic trackpad for use when at a desk. Swiping between workspaces is glorious. I'm a consultant, and jump between client meetings all the time. I set up each client in a workspace and just slide over to that workspace when I'm ready for that meeting or work session. Then I can jump to the next client without cleaning up and just do a full cleanup later in the day of all of them at once.

I have no idea how I lived before cmd+left and cmd+right go to start and end of line without taking a hand off the home row to reach over to home / end. As I say this though I realize the arrow keys are just below home and end, so maybe it's weird that I love this. Better on a mobile keyboard I suppose.

I'm not someone who could never see going back to windows, I like it plenty, but the M1 has probably locked me in for the next few years.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#428

Post by m_mueller » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #328

tomtheelder wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing at all wrong with the behavior, and it's perfectly logical once you understand what is going on, but it's certainly not intuitive. It's a bit of an odd mental model that's (as far as I can tell) specific to OSX. I find OSX to be generally pretty logical and easy to understand, but certainly no more _intuitive_ than something like Windows. Another way of saying this: if I took someone who didn't know h…

I don't think desktop GUIs can or should be 'intuitive'. They should be consistent, discoverable, and customizable. I give macOS full marks for consistency, and a passing grade for customizable, but it's hardly discoverable! I read these kinds of HN posts because of all the little tips and tricks I find. Operating systems used to come with a thick manual, and you could buy an even thicker "missing manual" book at the…

I actually find MacOS applications far more discoverable than equivalent windows or Unix tools. That's precisely thanks to the consistent menu structure, which always includes a help menu with a search option, including both the help files as well as the menu itself. Having help show you where to find a particular option so you can learn it for next time is precisely what I want.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#429

Post by allenu » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

cmiller1 wrote: post #379

allenu wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one example of really bad app behavior when the last window is closed and it's one that Apple makes themselves: QuickTime Player. If you open up QuickTime Player and then play back a video, then close the video, as soon as you background the app, it auto-quits itself. I wonder if they made it behave this way at some point to get around a memory leak. It's such an unexpected thing and it infuriates me each ti…

Just tested and QuickTime Player stayed open, not sure I've ever seen this happen.

Did you open and play back a video first? If you just open QuickTime Player and don't interact with it, it does stay open if you switch apps. If you open a video, then close it, the app closes if you switch to a different app. I just tried it again and that's how it behaved. (I'm running Catalina still, so they may have fixed it in Big Sur.)

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#430

Post by samatman » Mon, May 24, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #361

samatman wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drag and drop has steadily gotten harder to use over the years. I have no explanation for it, it's maddening. Not cutting files is deliberate, I think. What should the OS do if you cut files, and then don't paste them and cut something else? Put them back, put them in the Trash? A sibling comment pointed out that there's a magic incantation for "paste and delete", but clearly the Mac way to do it is drag and drop. Wh…

"Cutting" is a no good, terrible idea, but a good idea would be to allow a "Grab", and then let the user navigate elsewhere and "Move grabbed item here." Mac doesn't have that because it breaks the visual/spatial metaphor. Of course, "Copy" does too, yet Mac allows that...

I don't think that's why it doesn't exist, it's more that copy/cut/paste makes sense for most things, and the cut part is bad for files, so 'grab' wouldn't be very reusable elsewhere in the OS. Or if we're being real, they just don't have it because changing Finder is a very low priority for the company.

But I agree with you that it would be a good feature for Finder! Finder is missing a lot of useful stuff, it basically hasn't changed, and when it has it isn't for the better.

While we're dreaming, a great implementation of "grab" would be to have a differently-shaped window with just a doc handle and a close button on it, and the grabbed documents jump from the Finder window to the grab window. Then you can drag and drop the doc handle, or hit the "move grabbed items" hotkey, and the grabbed files/folders would jump into the new location. Or if you close the grab window they all jump back to where they were.

Grab window floats on top of everything else in Finder, so you can't lose track of it, and if you close it the files always go home, and you can only have one at a time.