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macOS Monterey

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Re: macOS Monterey

#601

Post by mulmen »

Angostura wrote: post #487
mulmen wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using Macs daily for a decade. Big Sur is a big reversion in usability. Easily the worst MacOS update I can recall. The UI is a lot clunkier and slower and just harder to make sense of. They will throw it all out in 2-4 years and start over, that's about how long the UI stays stable.

I think the obsession with making everything white, with no clear distinction between window contents and window chrome makes it quite confusing. I'm hoping they revert this. Not everything has to be flat.

Yeah, modern UX designers need to come down out of the clouds and pay attention to how people actually do work. It isn't just Apple either. Mozilla is doing the same thing with Firefox. The entire industry seems to have their heads screwed on backwards. Second to HR they are the people I trust the least.

Re: macOS Monterey

#602

Post by MrWiffles »

rsync wrote: post #347
josephg wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well a few months ago I needed to fill out customs form 5106. This form uses some kind of proprietary Adobe PDF form creation software thing PSA in case anyone doesn't know this: the built-in Preview app on MacOS can be used to fill in any PDF form. You can type into text boxes on some forms. But even if they're not there, you can add text anywhere on a pdf. You just have to drag your own text boxes to wherever you…

Unfortunately, this is incorrect. I have seen weird pdfs that only display “help” messages when opened in preview… you have to follow a link and then open it in actual acrobat.

Yep, this has been my experience too. I remember having such a hard time trying to fill out a form I-9 for starting a new job last year that I had to not only download Acrobat, but for reasons I no longer recall I had to BUY A NEW PRINTER and PRINT the damn thing on paper to fill it out by hand! Absolutely batshit crazy nonsense!

Re: macOS Monterey

#603

Post by MrWiffles »

zephyr9 wrote: post #406
forgotmyoldname wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Photoshop for art. Unfortunately, all other desktop software just isn't good, but thankfully Procreate is absolutely amazing software that I can use on my iPad (if you're reading this, devs, please port it to macOS. There are countless artists that'll pay to switch to a non-subscription based, non-Adobe piece of software that doesn't suck). But for desktop, I really have no choice but to buy into the Adobe sche…

> I use Photoshop for art. Unfortunately, all other desktop software just isn't good I see this "I've tried one solution and I'm all out of ideas" approach a lot. I used Photoshop for many years. Pixelmator is hands down better than Photoshop in every regard and much cheaper.

I agree that Pixelmator Pro is fantastic. However, I'm not an advanced photoshop(-like) user or photographer in the slightest, so there may be some advanced features in modern versions of Photoshop that Pixelmator, being a product from a much smaller company, just can't ship as fast or as well. I'm not outright saying there absolutely are, just saying that's possible.

As for other alternatives, I've had good experiences with Affinity Design for vector work. Sketch is a favorite with many designers as well (although I personally am not fond of its workflow/concepts but that's just me, clearly it works for most folks). GIMP, while venerable, is aptly named because it's so butt-ugly nobody with any actual artistic talent cares to use it. Seriously, never have I seen anything created with GIMP that looks, aesthetically, competitive with designs created with commercial tools (this isn't the fault of the functionality within GIMP, just an unfortunate side effect of having engineers do art; we suck at that). I've heard good things about Krita but haven't used it seriously because the other tools here do a great job so I've never had to bother.

It's a damn shame Photoshop and other Adobe tools are essntially malware these days. They used to be fantastic back in the day.

I swear I still have left-hand muscle memory for Photoshop editing baked into my hand even now, 20 years since I last used it routinely. ESC, hold space, click + drag, V, hover, click to select layer...

Re: macOS Monterey

#604

Post by hughlilly »

runjake wrote: post #155
nsonha wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

One free option for Mac: https://rectangleapp.com/

Ooh! Now all I need is a replacement for Better Touch Tool.* Anyone know of anything?

* which I use almost exclusively as open/close new tabs in Safari and Finder with the top right and left corners of the trackpad respectively; plus three-finger-swipe left/right gestures to move between tabs

Re: macOS Monterey

#605

Post by hughlilly »

roryokane wrote: post #441
egypturnash wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh awesome, thanks! Now if only there was a way to also make it default to searching for filenames instead of text contents.

That feature exists as well. Press ⌃⇧⌘F in the Finder to activate File > “Find by Name…”.

I didn’t know this was a feature. No matter how many modifier keys I press with the File menu open, “Find” never changes to “Find by name”. (Searching the menu options through the Help menu does find the function, though.) Wonder why? (Edit: Never mind, BetterTouchTool was blocking it somehow!)

Re: macOS Monterey

#606

Post by iggldiggl »

danielrhodes wrote: post #474
MrWiffles wrote: post #181

I haven’t seen this anywhere when I’ve looked, so I’ll ask here on the slim chance maybe they really added something I badly want and somebody knows… Is there any application forced sandboxing feature yet? Something users can control to forcibly stop bad behavior from certain “must have” apps. Chrome, for example, has been caught doing entire drive scans on Windows, and I’m not sure I entirely trust Zoom either. So I…

My belief is that Apple will eventually try to lock down macOS entirely or move to something similar to iOS sandboxing. This would more or less solve your problem and not hurt the majority of people’s experience. However, to make the OS good enough for software development, Apple will make it easy to create virtualized environments. This to me seems like the correct trade off and might actually be a net win for most.…

> My belief is that Apple will eventually try to lock down macOS entirely or move to something similar to iOS sandboxing. This would more or less solve your problem and not hurt the majority of people’s experience.

Strict file-level-granularity sandboxing breaks all kinds of multi-file formats [1], because users will want to simply open the respective main file just as usual (especially if launching the file from the desktop or a file explorer window) and then expect that the program of course should be able to access not just that particular file itself, but any associated files, too.

The OS however cannot be expected to know the peculiarities of each and every file format, so how is this supposed to work without either degrading the user experience or else weakening the sandbox up to a point where it is possibly almost pointless?

Plus it also makes editing file paths in programs more annoying, because you can no longer directly edit a path (or paste it in from elsewhere) if it's displayed in a text input and instead always have to spend a few additional clicks because you must go through the OS file picker. (Though admittedly this latter issue might be more of a power user problem)

[1] Multi-part archives, multi-part video files, playlists, videos with separate subtitle files, HTML documents containing links to other local HTML documents or referencing various sub-resources (images/videos/audio/style sheets/scripts/...), Audacity projects, images with metadata in external sidecar files, ditto for georeferenced images, QGIS projects, ...

Re: macOS Monterey

#607

Post by empressplay »

kappuchino wrote: post #531

If you own an apple computer that has just dropped support, try the open core legcy patcher ( https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/ ) after doing a backup(always!). I just upgraded my dear MacBook Air 11 from 2014 to Monterey and it just runs ... so 3 more years of patches for this machine :-D.

mid-2012 MBP 13 inch, used OCLP and Monterey works at least as well as Catalina (better in many respects)

Re: macOS Monterey

#608

Post by nonamenoslogan »

chanc3e wrote: post #530
tim333 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question from someone who doesn't know about this stuff - If I need photoshop can I get away with an old version pre creative cloud - cs5 or 6 or something?

I think on a Mac you'd struggle to get anything to pre-creative cloud to execute. Windows might be a different story? If you are doing basic PS work - the open source alternatives are more than capable. Some non-adobe applications can open PSD files in a reasonably sane fashion.

The Photoshop 7 Educational version I bought in college still works on Windows 11.

Re: macOS Monterey

#609

Post by aednichols »

hanche wrote: post #496
concinds wrote: post #122

SharePlay to Mac (I tested audio) is utterly broken. Shockingly so. I just tried it again, and my music isn't paused, yet is stuck at 0:02. Pausing and unpausing it, and the song starts ticking, 0:03, 0:04, and so on, but you can't hear any audio. Pause it again. It goes back to 0:02. Now try this with AirPods connected to your Mac. Connect your iPhone's Apple Music to AirPlay to Mac. The YouTube video you had playin…

This is a bit off topic, but moving up to an M1 macbook pro has been an unmitigated disaster for me, as far as AirPlay goes. (But I am very happy with it otherwise.) I play my music though an Airport Express at home. It has always been a bit flaky at times, but most of the time, it worked fine. With my M1 mac, though, it pretty much stopped working. If I try, the airplay icon in the Music app turns from blue to black…

Seeing the same problem with my M1 Air and Airport. It works from boot until the first time I put the computer to sleep.

Please consider filing a bug report with Apple via Feedback Assistant referencing my feedback FB9723470. Maybe they can figure something out from the logs.

Re: macOS Monterey

#610

Post by nsonha »

tfsh wrote: post #300
nsonha wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you're looking for a good OSX window manager, Yabai [1] is excellent. If you're willing and allowed too you can get greater control by disabling SIP. However even with system integrity enabled (which bars access to certain WindowServer APIs - space control, removing shadows, multi-monitor integrations) Yabai functions great. It uses a messaging passing API to interface with a local service, so it's completely prog…

hey forgot to say thanks for the recommendation and I'm giving yabai another try. I think just ignore the binary stuff it's pretty neat and mouse-friendly. One downside is there is no indicator on menubar.

Your config is a great starting point

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