141–150 of 756 posts
It used to be that OSes provided window management, file management, some basic file handling, and APIs and framework to build and connect apps.
Apple, instead, sees the OS as an app launcher that provides a framework to build isolated apps.
IOW, it's reduced macOS to the Dock.
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 l…
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.
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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.
Having used the very first Mac, it made sense on that tiny screen. One application per time was almost more than it could accommodate. The monitor got bigger after a few years and the menu on top and the full screen interface started not to make sense compared to the Windows PC next desk.
What also helps though is that an under-appreciated aspect of a typical set of Macintosh apps is how good the context menu has gotten. Typically I’m using the context menu and hotkeys much more than the menu bar because it is rare there is an option I want that is unavailable in the context menu.
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"In summary, macOS does not behave like Windows or Linux out of the box, and it's difficult or impossible to change many of those behaviours."
...And can you easily change Windows or Linux to behave like macOS, in these fundamental ways?
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Has Mac changed its default settings? The Dock shows you any minimized windows on the right. If for some reason this is no longer default (I don't remember the last time I setup a new Mac and didn't carry over settings) Right Click the dock >> dock preferences >> Uncheck "Minimize windows into application icon"
Well, that did work. But now I just have a massive pile of minimized window icons... and still no keyboard shortcut to switch to them.
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> Disable spotlight for everything except what you want to use it for My friend's mac would "take off" (fan spun up crazy fast) after every boot/login and I disabled full-text search of documents to fix it. There was probably a weird, maybe not-to-spec pdf/docx on the filesystem that spotlight couldn't parse and got stuck. Kinda dumb that it would waste a 100% usage on one CPU core for a couple minutes every boot tho…
It's really abysmal. I had a similar situation: every time I'd pull a monorepo, my machine would be flooded with "mdworker" processes. The CPU would spin up and the machine would operate at 85c for a few hours before finally cooling down. The culprit was Spotlight, and the solution was to disable search indexing.
That being said, if you're in the dev-space, I'd recommend using Raycast instead. I've dong some cool things with it, like format my commit messages, generate UUIDs, and search my bookmarks with a command (/w dev -> my company's development application with a really long URL).
It's mostly meh. I don't care for the OS conventions ( like the cmd stuff) and I'm not going to force myself out of years of muscle memory for one of my machines, but i can mostly tune that ( with third party tools, but still). Cmd remapped to ctrl, cmd+tab remapped to ctrl+tab. The only issues is Ctrl+C doesn't work in iTerm, I've yet to fix that.
However the UX is like something for children - what's with drag and drop for installing a program?? The included tools range from meh to garbage - Pages mangling .docx and saving them in its proprietary format is inexcusable. And for some reason i can't get the MBP to sleep when it's charging and an external screen is connected - clicking sleep through the menu makes it sleep for a second and then it wakes up. Oh, and it's extremely annoying that the scroll button on a mouse and trackpad have to share the same scrolling direction.
Honestly i find that macOS is OK. Slightly better than Windows, but with annoying differences and stubborn "this is how things are, the old way no longer works, you're holding it wrong" attitude. Linux is best in terms of flexibility but has some other downsides.
>you use what they give you, how they give it to you, using their workflows, barely customizing anything. Apple products are supposed to be revered the world over as the pinnacle of design, used by artists, engineers, professionals, and creators. Why do I feel like there are training wheels on a machine I use for productivity? Gosh, this is exactly how I felt in a similar situation. Really hit the nail on the head. I…
What are people doing with their computers that a Mac is so stifling? I'm late to the Mac game, have been on it for about a decade, and was a 15-year Windows and Linux desktop user before that. Still, I don't even know what it might be.
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> The author makes a big deal of lack of snapping. Frankly I've never seen the utility of it on OS's that do have it, infact I've always felt it more of a hinderance than a help (gets in the way, tries to snap when you don't want it to). It may be useful for users of large external monitors, allowing to make better use of the screen real estate. Then again, Macos lacks per-application menu bars, which means you canno…
> It may be useful for users of large external monitors, allowing to make better use of the screen real estate OP here. This is exactly why I want snapping (I'm using a 27" 1440p monitor)