Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Impressions from a first-time Mac user

loganmarchione.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 756 posts

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#71

Post by Tagbert »

jayd16 wrote: post #30
teilo wrote: post #5

Someone needs to tell him about option-click on the maximize button. Most of these "rants" really just amount to: "this different OS doesn't work exactly the same way as the OS I am used to." That's why 3rd party utilities exist to give you the functionality you wish to have. That formula cuts both ways.

This is Apple UX in a nutshell. Hidden power tools are not intuitive.

In part it is about progressive complexity. The simple things are exposed, more complex options require extra effort to access. Certainly there are times when it would be nice to make it easier to discover the more advanced features but there will always be a tension between keeping defaults simple for new users and exposing advanced features for the more serious users. Often they do it correctly but sometimes there are misses.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#72

Post by scns »

lbrito wrote: post #51
scns wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Linux user of 15 years now, i look forward to beeing challenged by using a Mac, since for me energy efficiency is more important than personal comfort.

How does energy efficiency matter here? Or rather, why are you implying that a Mac might be more energy efficient, and enough to matter? Geniuenly curious.

M1 coming secong at 10 watts shortly after a Ryzen at several times that? Check out the reviews on anandtech.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#73

Post by 960design »

I am a fan boy and did not find any of it offensive. Great write up, actually. Windows simply does a better job at window management. I use full screen and three finger swipe between 5 separate desktops for work to overcome this weakness. The flash drive did make me giggle... oh you poor windows laden idiot. Flash drives... like from 1999? Most of your issues are just growing pains. I did it when I migrated about 10 years ago from my LeapFrog: no carry handle, screen too bright, no built in songs, ect.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#74

Post by uuyi »

olyjohn wrote: post #64
rwc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that it's right or wrong, but the behavior dates back to the very first implementations of Mac OS and Windows. Mac OS has always been an application switching interface, and Windows has been a window switching interface. Takes getting used to the paradigm shift.

I can't get used to the fact that I can't alt-tab to a minimized window. Nor can I figure out how to switch to any particular minimized window. You have literally no way of knowing that a minimized window exists other than right-clicking the dock icon, or going to the "Window" menu after you switched to the application. The dock was fine 20 years ago when they released OSX, but they've literally done nothing to make…

I don't actually minimise windows on the mac at all. I just sling them on a contextual virtual desktop and then triple-swipe up when I need a different one.

Not once have I had to sit there mashing alt-tab and guessing then.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#75

Post by dont__panic »

teilo wrote: post #5

Someone needs to tell him about option-click on the maximize button. Most of these "rants" really just amount to: "this different OS doesn't work exactly the same way as the OS I am used to." That's why 3rd party utilities exist to give you the functionality you wish to have. That formula cuts both ways.

Yep, as someone who's gotten really really dependent on app Exposé on macOS... it's hard for me to switch to a keyboard for things I'd rather do on the trackpad!

I do have to agree, though, that macOS window management can feel a bit clunky using a mouse and keyboard. That's a user story that the macOS UI/UX team ought to look into, it wouldn't be that hard to create some decent bindings in the OS itself.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#76

Post by emn13 »

bombcar wrote: post #41
spicyusername wrote: post #28

> Package management This always floors me when I have to use a non-Linux computer. The difference between package management on Linux and other OSes is shocking. Dnf, Yum, Pacman are all so convenient and straightforward. I can't understand why Windows and MacOS don't have anything official that fills this gap.

The main problem is that the majority of software in the Windows and Mac world doesn't come in a "package-manager" format, not really. For *BSD and Linux, the package manager is great because if you can think of it, it's probably there ready to be installed; as long as it's software like TeX or emacs or vi or something else available in an open-source way. But stand-alone programs? Not even things like Photoshop, I'm…

I've not used macs for a few years, but has homebrew become a lot better then? Because my recollection of it is that it worked fine for small sets of well-maintained packages, but it's much, much slower than the linux package managers, and there were tons of compatibility issues once you even slightly left the beaten path. Also, I remember fighting with many apple CLI tools; they seemed to be wildly out of date with the comparable linux tooling, to the point that you sometimes needed to homebrew something technically already part of the base OS just to get other things working (e.g. IIRC bash)

Incidentally, on windows there are the beginnings of package managers nowadays, e.g. chocolatey. They're nothing like as good as those in linux, but better than nothing. Chocolatey's focus isn't quite the same as homebrew, however, so they're not strictly comparable.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#77

Post by dmitriid »

jack_pp wrote: post #31

I tried the m1 mini when it came out because I was hyped by all the m1 HN talk. This was my first time using macOS and besides the window management what I loathed was having to re-learn all the shortcuts I've been using for 20+ years, how no one mentions this is baffling to me. I tried to make it work more like "normal" windows / linux but I didn't find any good options and I always felt like I was running with my s…

Shortcuts are maddening when you just switch. But then you realise how much of the keyboard is underutilised in Windows. Linux uses the Meta key, but IIRC it was very app-specific, and not as comprehensively used.

A lot of MacOS is keyboard driven [1][2], but it takes up to two weeks to get comfortable (it took me at least that long when I switched to MacOS in 2008).

[1] But the new breed of "designers" at Apple no longer care about that. All new first-party apps that Apple vomits out are an abomination, UX-wise. And keyboard access there suffers as well.

[2] There are a bunch of shortcuts that will work the same way across most apps (such as Cmd+ for settings, or text navigation shortcuts), and that is a blessing. You can also assign custom shortcuts to any menu item in any app if you need directly from settings. Or you can re-assign behaviour of Ctrl/Caps Lock/Alt from settings as well. There are small things like this all across the system, but it does take getting used to.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#78

Post by cj »

divbzero wrote: post #47
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #2

Despite the warning, I didn't find it nearly as "ranty" as the author cautioned, and instead seemed like a fairly comprehensive and fair take on his experience. Having gone through the same thing myself several years ago, the UI aspect of it is something that I'd be curious to see how it develops for the author. I think it is not uncommon for Windows folk to find the windowing experience on macs rather painful, at le…

What I miss most in macOS is Super + Left and Super + Right to tile windows left and right..

Check out the Mac app "Magnet" on the app store.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#79

Post by dont__panic »

spicyusername wrote: post #28

> Package management This always floors me when I have to use a non-Linux computer. The difference between package management on Linux and other OSes is shocking. Dnf, Yum, Pacman are all so convenient and straightforward. I can't understand why Windows and MacOS don't have anything official that fills this gap.

Blows my mind that Apple doesn't buy up homebrew and turn it official. I use it for everything, even my web browser!

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#80

Post by [deleted] »

colinmhayes wrote: post #62
jonnycomputer wrote: post #3

All OS's should come standard with sophisticated windows management. I use BetterSnapTool on my Mac, have done so for close to 10 years now. I honestly don't know what I'd do without it--and I'm not doing too much fancy. But keyboard shortcutting to maximize, minimize, or tile (left right/corners/thirds) elimintes 90% of the fiddly annoying this about dealing with the too many windows I have open. But even this basic…

I'm pretty sure macOS was designed to have every window in fullscreen 100% of the time and the user would three finger swipe to switch windows. Seems like having a shitty experience when trying to do anything besides fullscreen is kind of the point, "do things the way we want you to or suffer."

[deleted]
Post reply on HN