How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

It's been like this since long before the App Store existed. Google's got a pretty good attempt at "here is how to install this thing" on their download page (https://www.google.com/chrome/thank-you.html?statcb=0&instal...) though evidently it could use some improvement given that Little Sister still couldn't parse those images properly.

I do wonder how "intuitive" the process for installing something a Windows user downloaded outside of their app store is now. I've been a Mac girl ever since I gave up on the Amiga so I really have no idea how easy it is for someone to fuck up if you're at the same level of general computer knowledge + OS-specific knowledge as Little Sister is for Macs.

Same here. This is one of the biggest selling points for macOS as a power user. I've used Windows and linux for years, and continue to do so on a daily basis. But on macOS, one can absolutely fly due to the consistent keyboard shortcuts.

- Standard keyboard shortcuts across all apps: done

- Standard Unix/bash shortcuts for moving the cursor/manipulating text: done

But, to the OP's point, unless you invest the time to learn how they work in macOS, they'll largely remain hidden and unknown.

When helping friends and colleagues transition to macOS, explaining how keyboard shortcuts work (and how powerful they are!) is the first thing I do--followed by the window/app paradigm, and then Finder.

As far as discoverability, you can use Command+Shift+/ pretty much anywhere. That keyboard shortcut displays the Help menu for the current application, with the search box already focused.

So, for example, in the Mail app, if you wanted to forward an email:

  Command+Shift+/. Start typing "forward"

Then hover your mouse over the "Forward" result. You'll immediately see the location in the menu bar, along with the corresponding keyboard shortcut: ⇧⌘F (Shift+Command+F), in this case.

And, of course, Command+; will open the Preferences for any application.

Apple actually has fairly great documentation on standard keyboard shortcuts [0].

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236

It seems intuitively true that you would always have SOMETHING acting as a go between video driver and all clients and if this crashed your graphical interface goes down unless you have something that acts as an interface that can in turn restart the component. A buggy client already shouldn't actually take down your X server but a bug in X obviously can.

It sounds odd to me to describe applications relying on a toolkit like QT/GTK which can run in dozens of different environments which in turn run on both X11 and Wayland which in turn can talk to a variety of different GPU drivers as tightly coupled.

> 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.

IMHO, it's mainly holdover from when Windows was DOS. For a very long time using a Mac was kind of like a religion (they even had explicit evangelists), and many people who used Macs were irrationally attached to the platform. One of the main tenets of the faith was that Macs were much easier to use than PCs (because GUI and no autoexec.bat and IRQ assignment, etc). I think that meme has gotten stuck in popular consciousness, even though Windows has had literally 30+ years to catch up. Also, especially since the OS X era, I think the usability of Macs has stagnated or even regressed in many ways.

All of our Macs have a utility installed to remap the keyboard to make it match a PC to the extent possible. When you use multiple platforms with some frequency it is a real pain to have to deal with MacOS idiosyncrasies.

What's interesting is that Apple explicitly chose to ignore what I will go-ahead and call the de-facto standard established across pretty much every desktop GUI by a range of vendors. I have worked on Solaris, Irix, IBM OS2, Amiga OS (owned an original machine signed by the development team), Linux, Windows and MacOS. The odd duck is anything Apple made.

No reason for it whatsoever. Proof? Billions of non-engineers around the world do not seem to have any issues whatsoever operating a Windows machine, which inherits from all of the standards I mentioned above.

The gist of the thread was to somehow characterize Macs as easier and intuitive to use. That simply isn't and has not been the case for a very long time. Expert users, engineers, coders cannot be the test subjects for this evaluation. You just said that a tool you use is easy to remember because the shortcuts mimic VIM bindings. That is beyond foreign to average or below-average users like my mother, father, uncle, the local doctor, teacher, restaurant employee, etc.

No issues with the average user running MacOS on a single small screen. The abstraction works well there. The problems start once you expand beyond that.

I was recently involved in a display characterization project where we had somewhere around eight 4K+ displays attached to a PC. We also evaluated Apple's Pro Display XDR connected as the second display on an Apple laptop (I forget which one).

Using the PC (running Windows) to address every display, run calibration tools on each one and run custom characterization code was an absolute breeze. Doing the same with the Apple XDR was an ordeal. And, to make things worse, using the touchpad to navigate across the entire canvas was just horrific.

I do like Macs. I just don't think they live up to the hype. Easy and cool to use for unsophisticated users on a single screen up to a point. The problem with not making users learn anything is that they will always remain naive users.

Imagine if everyone was forced to use a GUI text editor with simple controls and you did not have the option to use VIM. That's the difference. One assumes the user is an idiot. The other considers the idea that users can actually do more than point and click with a single button on a single menu bar.

Not trying to be nasty at all. I just think Apple takes things to an undesirable extreme at times. They carry this through to the iPhone, where you now have such overloading on controls that nobody knows what they do. I lost track, I think we got up to triple-clicking the home button? And no camera shutter button (no, the volume button isn't a good solution, as the many pictures of my left foot can attest).

Anyhow, good technology. I just don't agree with the choices they seem to make again and again.