There seems to be some kind of a negative space exponential law. Margins and paddings increase with every release because designers can’t resist minimalism over density and usefulness.
macOS Monterey
141–150 of 647 posts
Re: macOS Monterey
#142A lot of these changes seem to be pandemic-driven, which makes sense, but it's telling that smaller competitors hacked together all these same features within weeks of WFH and the largest and most advanced company in the world is finally here 18 months later.
> hacked together That’s the thing. Apple doesn’t want a feature to look like a hack, and they also have to consider how every feature plays with everything else in their OS and ecosystem.
> Apple doesn’t want a feature to look like a hack
That means they care about their reputation more than actually helping user. I don't think feedback is valued (more than their designers' opinions), so no reason to ship fast.
Re: macOS Monterey
#143A lot of these changes seem to be pandemic-driven, which makes sense, but it's telling that smaller competitors hacked together all these same features within weeks of WFH and the largest and most advanced company in the world is finally here 18 months later.
> hacked together That’s the thing. Apple doesn’t want a feature to look like a hack, and they also have to consider how every feature plays with everything else in their OS and ecosystem.
That's what they want, but if you read the rest of the thread and the common comments on Big sur, that's not how it seems to be.
Re: macOS Monterey
#144It is frustrating to see how stagnant desktop OS's have become. Both macOS and Windows 11 have added incremental features that are surely nice to have, but no one dares to improve on the human-computer-interaction which has remained the same for decades now. With the advances in AI and the ridiculous compute power of modern CPUs, we should be able to have OSs that are Digital Assistants. Just one example: - file mana…
I don't like hero worship, but I happened to hear a Steve Jobs clip the other day, where he said: a great idea is only 10% what you think it's worth; the 90% is the implementation details and craftsmanship that goes into it.
I don't want an OS that "doesn't make me pick between iCloud or ~/Documents". That just means turning macOS into ChromeOS. An OS with just a search bar would break a ridiculous amount of uses, from shared computers or cloud drives where everyone knows to put the files in the right folder, but your colleagues have weird naming conventions, so you can't search by name, but if the files were side-by-side it would be common sense which one you want; to the dangers of ambiguity between cloud and local storage; to the reality that many use personal computers for work and would get fired if certain personal files/media showed up in a File Search for work documents. You imply that iOS-style file management is easier for average users, but at a previous workplace, there was a central Mac that had important text files with .odt extensions, all organised on the desktop, that opened in TextEdit since LibreOffice/OpenOffice was for some reason never installed. How would TextEdit show those files if all you had was the Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion-esque TextEdit iCloud open box? The documents wouldn't show up, since it would only show TextEdit documents, i.e. rich text files (.rtd). If it makes sense to keep multiple types of files together, like text files and spreadsheets, you'd have to put them in a folder, not app-specific storage. But that sounds identical to what we have now. How would I open any random local text file in Google Docs? Wouldn't that be a huge privacy flaw, that Apple would never build into Safari anyway? You'd just end up with silos within each app, with no idea how to move things around, since I think the iOS metaphor is actually less intuitive than putting folders on your desktop with things inside them.
Everyone likes imagining better ways to manage files, but no one has been able to come up with one that's intuitive, not even Apple with iOS. The only reason they get away with it, is very few people actually ever interact with files on iOS. Instagram, Snapchat, Reminders, Clock, Safari don't involve documents, and for many people, that's what they use their phone for, period. Google Docs are in the app; how would they open in any other app anyway? As for iPad users, people might create something in ProCreate, and then export it. I don't think iPads are used as file storage devices, just as inputs to bring somewhere else.
Re: macOS Monterey
#145MacOS major version release are so underwhelming to me. They're not so much OS updates as they're updates to built-in apps I don't use or use at a very surface level: Safari, Facetime, Apple Maps, Messages, etc. I'm not really sure what I'd want out of a new MacOS, though. It's been stable and (for my purposes) feature-complete for many years now. I don't remember the last time a MacOS upgrade added a feature I wante…
I'm impressed. People really will never be satisfied. A relatively low-key, under-the-hood Mac release? "Man I miss when the Mac was innovative. These releases are a snooze fest." A big release, packed with features? "Man I miss when Apple cared about their OS stability. We need a new zero features snooze fest like 10.6. Take me back to Snow Leopard :(" Only HN can pull off such astounding mood swings. I know this si…
This reminds me of a conversation I heard once in London.
I was in a line for some food at a Puppet (the config management tool) conference and two guys in front of me were chatting about their Puppet runs.
One turned to the other and said, "My Puppet runs are really slow. It takes 10-15 minutes for it to run and apply state to all 15,000 servers."
I couldn't believe it. The guy was complaining about having to wait 15 minutes to apply state to 15,000 operating systems.
What is wrong with people? You haven't got to go back far to take all of this innovation away and still people aren't pleased.
Re: macOS Monterey
#146It is frustrating to see how stagnant desktop OS's have become. Both macOS and Windows 11 have added incremental features that are surely nice to have, but no one dares to improve on the human-computer-interaction which has remained the same for decades now. With the advances in AI and the ridiculous compute power of modern CPUs, we should be able to have OSs that are Digital Assistants. Just one example: - file mana…
> "iCloud" or "OneDrive" or "C:\" or "Document" or "Desktop".
Desktops have been slowly edging in that direction, but I don't think it helps. I guess it depends on what kind of brain you have, but I can't do this. I need something spatial, a quite rigid structure. I use shallow hierarchies (folders!).
Re: macOS Monterey
#147Funny that they used a very clunky looking Windows laptop and a pretty dated looking Android phone to show off Facetime.
Looks about like the hardware you'd get for a N2040 laptop or a prepaid unlocked phone. Half of the stuff on the shelf at Walmart looks like this today. Just because Apple doesn't make entry-level hardware doesn't mean they're under any obligation to pretend that other companies don't. I think the image illustrates quite well what this update means -- FaceTime isn't just a rich-kid platform anymore.
So I just took a few minutes to lookup for the picture of an "N2040" (or various random low cost laptops, N4020 seems more likely if it's about a Celeron CPU, but I actually found one laptop model named "N2040") and they have bezels clearly thinner than what Apple shows for the laptop PC picture.
Ironically, during my research I also found this marvelous few years old MacBook Air https://fr.shopping.rakuten.com/offer/buy/2076960204/portabl... , which is not too far.
So I'm not really convinced that attempt of an excuse makes any sense...
Re: macOS Monterey
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was hoping someone would mention this. Shoving everything into a sub-menu made device statuses invisible and involved extra clicks to interact with them. It's user-hostile design.
Did you know you can drag the controls out onto the menu bar?
"show bluetooth in menubar" checkbox in bluetooth prefs also works as it always has.
Re: macOS Monterey
#149I've been away from MacOS for about 10 years. Big Sur now. Kinda hate it. I keep accidentally invoking extra layers of UI everywhere. That's fine I guess. But what I ran into that I LOVE is making EVERY app full-screen, pretending there is no desktop or window management, and just swiping right/left among them. I wish there was a way to smooth out the UX so that this feels first-class and I stop accidentally breaking…
I think window management in Mac leaves much to be desired (hot key and snapping floating windows). But associate fullscreeen window/split with a new workspace is actually one thing it does right. I installed an addon on Gnome just to emulate that. Split is kind of useless with an ultrawide monitor though, I wish it was 3 columns
In all seriousness, there is an app for macOS window management. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580?mt=...
Re: macOS Monterey
#150Still no MST.
Is this a hardware or software limitation?