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How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

jeremyaboyd.com

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Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#611

Post by hnfong »

robomartin wrote: post #579
qubitcoder wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I fully understand the workflow here. I use three large 4k monitors with macOS, and it's straightforward for the most part. Then again, I basically never use the menu bar, since keyboard shortcuts are so consistent across apps. I just keep the dock on the primary display. The only occasional pain point I encounter is when apps like Zoom automatically switch to "full screen mode". There's also the option…

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…

> No reason for it whatsoever.

The Mac had a functioning UI in the 1980s before the “defacto standards” appeared (I believe would be in the 1990s) would that explain some of the discrepancies?

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#612

Post by Krisando »

m_mueller wrote: post #428
samatman wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you give some examples of applications you're comparing?

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#613

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

sudosysgen wrote: post #150
cytzol wrote: post #113

This post illuminates two ways in which users' expectations of computers have changed since the '80s, which is when this UX was designed: 1) Users don't deal with external storage nearly as much anymore, so the "disk image" paradigm feels out of place. Before the Internet, it was more common to insert a floppy disk, drag the application from the disk to the hard drive, and then eject it again. Users were accustomed t…

But you haven't described how to uninstall an app. You described how to remove the program directory, which would be the same as deleting the folder in Program File on windows. Changes to system config won't be rolled back and other files won't be cleaned up. That's why on Mac OS you sometimes have to get an uninstaller, which sucks because now you have an inconsistency.

From the UI standpoint proper uninstalling can be tied to deleting the app.

Otherwise a user-level app only used to have a preferences folder and uninstalling an app should not delete the preferences -- maybe you'll reinstall it later. Or at least it should ask for it.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#614

Post by mcv »

qubitcoder wrote: post #555
mcv wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can also drag and drop files/folders from Finder into a Terminal/iTerm window. That'll expand to the full path in the terminal. For example, dragging the Documents folder into a terminal pane becomes: /Users/ /Documents

I haven't used this yet, but I do remember it as a really cool feature of my previous macbook.

But dragging a file doesn't seem to be so easy anymore; half the time, it wants to rename the file instead. No idea why. I also thought it used to be possible to drag a pdf or other document that I have open in an app, to an email and attach it that way. That doesn't seem to work anymore.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#615

Post by totalZero »

mirthflat83 wrote: post #383
adolph wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long time Mac and relatively recent cross platform user, native window snapping is a joke in macOS made tolerable by Magnet. Option just changes the green button mode from new workspace (or whatever its called) to whole screen. In most Windows OSes the eponymous key plus an arrow will cycle the UI window through helpful positions of whole, half, quarter. The sibling comment challenges the parent regarding the impo…

I have honestly never felt the need for snapping for almost a decade. Just use multiple monitors if you really need that screen estate

I use multiple monitors and that simply means I have to do more work to snap windows. The windows sometimes migrate from desktop to desktop upon startup and wake, and there are more of them to deal with when I want to rearrange things.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#616

Post by ninkendo »

crazygringo wrote: post #549
m463 wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dmg is just one drag. Meanwhile an installer flow seems to be more of a gauntlet you have to get through. For macos it is several mostly standardized pages, for windows it is more annoying, complete with dark patterns.

Just one drag? More like unzip, double-click, drag, close, open a Finder window if you're on the desktop, find the mounted volume, click to eject, close window, select DMG and/or ZIP, delete. I think it's having to locate the mounted volume and eject it in order to delete the DMG that is the dumbest part. How a regular user is supposed to even figure that out is a mystery to me. And, I mean, they don't: https://discu…

The package installer now asks you if you want to move the installer to the trash after installation (it's been this way for a few OS releases now). This will eject the .dmg and delete it for you as well. I think it only does this if the .dmg is in the Downloads directory though.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#617

Post by Hammershaft »

jcelerier wrote: post #532
hagg3n wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Should whether an application is running or not be a concern to you? Why would you ever want to actually quit an application? Granted, I understand that in reality the app might be misbehaving, hogging resources and whatnot and that the underlying OS isn't perfect and we should absolutely have control over how our hardware is utilized, but from a UX PoV I think the notion of a running process isn't o…

> Should whether an application is running or not be a concern to you? Why would you ever want to actually quit an application? same reason why I want the parts of my house that I rarely go to to be tidy ?

I mean, you'd achieve the same thing if an application closed after you completed the tasks that used it?

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#618

Post by jolux »

pantulis wrote: post #592
jolux wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How do you even decide when do you remove those? I think as a developer you have to take pains to keep them all in one place, and delete them when uninstalling.

Would you expect that uninstalling any Unix tool, would remove your .rc files in your $HOME?

That's irrelevant because I create my own rc files, and uninstallers should definitely not delete user-created files. Additionally most software that people install is not Unix tools, and most users have no idea what an rc file is.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#619

Post by m_mueller »

Krisando wrote: post #612
m_mueller wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you give some examples of applications you're comparing?

it doesn't really depend on the application. every MacOS application has a menu in the same style, and with the menu & help file spotlight search that I described. I find almost no Windows app has something equivalent (as in a menu search), plus they have a multitude of differently shaped menus with various guidelines for how to structure them.

Re: How Intuitive Are Macs Really?

#620

Post by [deleted] »

cytzol wrote: post #113

This post illuminates two ways in which users' expectations of computers have changed since the '80s, which is when this UX was designed: 1) Users don't deal with external storage nearly as much anymore, so the "disk image" paradigm feels out of place. Before the Internet, it was more common to insert a floppy disk, drag the application from the disk to the hard drive, and then eject it again. Users were accustomed t…

[deleted]
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