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Impressions from a first-time Mac user

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Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#161

Post by darkteflon »

lbrito wrote: post #20

>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…

Cannot at all relate to this perspective. If you like PopOS, that’s great. But this nonsense about Mac fans being blinded by their love of the brand is the edgelord meme that will not die.

MacOS is fine. PopOS is fine. Windows is fine. They each ask you to adopt a UI paradigm because how could they not. It’s natural that transitioning between them is costly.

Every time I see comments like this I’m reminded of this great quote: “The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else is learned.”

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#162

Post by smoldesu »

AA-BA-94-2A-56 wrote: post #147
smoldesu wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spotlight is a really good search tool, and it's worth occasionally letting it build its index. You mostly only notice this when you've changes a whole bunch of files or setup the computer for the first time. It really is short-term pain for long-term gain, because Spotlight is phenomenal at finding anything on the Mac in a really short amount of time. That being said, if you're in the dev-space, I'd recommend using…

It's not worth it if my computer heats up to 85 degrees for an hour and a half every few days. Really throws a wrench in my productivity and has already made me miss a couple meetings. Raycast looks neat, but I'm not interested in adding Yet Another Random Closed-Source Tool to my Mac. At this point I'm mostly using it as a dumb terminal and even that is testing my limits with how annoying Homebrew and the FreeBSD 4.1-ass kernel is.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#163

Post by _aavaa_ »

lbrito wrote: post #99
scns wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ryzen 5700 has 25W TDP https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-7-5700U-Processor-Be... IMO a 15-watt difference is basically negligible in this context. It is so insignificant it can be offset by pretty much anything. You know creating aluminum uses a ton of energy; maybe that fancy aluminum case of the Macs used more power than a tiny TDP difference will ever save.

I think they were talking about energy efficiency in terms of "how long battery lasts".

And 15-watts makes a big difference when you have a 60-watt-hour battery.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#164

Post by nine_k »

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…

I can't shake off the impression that Apple does not offer options for better window management to make your screen more cluttered and thus sell you more displays.

When using macOS, I badly miss window management options available on Linux. (And don't get me started regarding font rendering.)

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#165

Post by _aavaa_ »

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.

We can argue about them being intuitive or not, but at least they exist.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#166

Post by mattnewton »

rconti wrote: post #126
mattnewton wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know any Mac users who don't primarily use expose (or is it mission control now? The thing where it tiles all your windows open and you click the right one). Agree that windows should snap even when not fullscreened but I think expose solves this one better if you hand is already on the trackpad / mouse

I don't use it, in fact I thought it was mostly abandoned. I hate window snapping behavior. I use rectangle, but cannot for the life of me figure out why it makes sense to snap a window to fullscreen on my 40" ultrawide the instant I get a window somewhere near any side of my monitor. Who works like this? You have to just leave a window floating in space if you don't want it fullscreened?

I use Moom personally to tile windows. I feel like no one tests the huge external monitor setup at apple compared to just using the laptop screen, despite it's near ubiquity among developers. Maybe the vast majority of mac's aren't used that way? But Mac pros are.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#167

Post by _aavaa_ »

ysleepy wrote: post #87

My recommendations for Mac Users: * Put the Dock left or right, vertical space is precious (trust me, do it for a week and then decide) * Setup Hot-Corners (Settings -> Mission Control -> Hot Corners) - Upper-Right Corner as Mission Control (Must be upper right so spaces are immediately shown) - Lower-Left Corner as Application Windows - just fling your mouse curser into the corner (use std. gestures on the trackpad)…

Some really good ones missed: - iStat menu (better looking MenuMeters) - Alfred (MUCH better spotlight) - BetterTouchTools (keyboard, gesture, and other UX customization and macros, oh and window snapping with mouse and shortcuts)

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#168

Post by smoldesu »

darkteflon wrote: post #161
lbrito wrote: post #20

>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…

Cannot at all relate to this perspective. If you like PopOS, that’s great. But this nonsense about Mac fans being blinded by their love of the brand is the edgelord meme that will not die. MacOS is fine. PopOS is fine. Windows is fine. They each ask you to adopt a UI paradigm because how could they not. It’s natural that transitioning between them is costly. Every time I see comments like this I’m reminded of this gr…

> “The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else is learned.”

At least IBM took this to heart.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#169

Post by darkteflon »

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.

Absolutely - these ranty invectives are so tedious. The idea that something is fundamentally broken because it doesn’t work the way you expect it to.

I struggle through each of my Windows sessions despite having used Windows since the 80s and having built probably more than 10 PCs over the past 30 years. I don’t blame Windows for that. I daily drive MacOS and that’s what I’m used to. That’s a me problem, not a Windows problem.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#170

Post by throwmeariver1 »

anhner wrote: post #90
replygirl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

system76? sounds cool can it run excel and apple music?

Ah yes, apple music, the pinnacle of computing and benchmark by which to judge all professional-level personal computers.

I don't like what you like...
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