Live data from Hacker News

Impressions from a first-time Mac user

loganmarchione.com

301–310 of 756 posts

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#301
Lots of "I don't like how it tastes/feels, therefore it must be bad" packaged in a rant, as usual. Essentially only useful information if you are a clone of the author, in all other cases your milage will vary... drastically.

There isn't much of a point in attacking or defending taste in such a way, but neither is trying to objectively score something because it's not the objective score that matters, it's how it feels to the user, and users aren't all identical.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#302
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nah, I’ll defend the top menubar to the death. Infinite height and top-speed cursor speed makes working with it from the top versus from the window much more efficient for me, and it wastes less pixels (the purpose of high res monitors for me is to use all of the pixels) and gives me a working area on its right side for various utility apps I don’t want taking up space in the Dock (which has enough problems even with…

While I do appreciate those benifits the confusion caused as soon as there are multiple windows on the screen doesn't seem worth it. I have enough trouble managing keyboard focus I don't need to add another layer (which somehow seems even harder for me to comprehend)

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#303

Lots of "I don't like how it tastes/feels, therefore it must be bad" packaged in a rant, as usual. Essentially only useful information if you are a clone of the author, in all other cases your milage will vary... drastically. There isn't much of a point in attacking or defending taste in such a way, but neither is trying to objectively score something because it's not the objective score that matters, it's how it fee…

What a useless comment. The post is from someone new to Macs. You have completely failed to grasp the context and got immediately defensive.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Window…

These responses are also tedious, in that a negative opinion can't be valid and the user just didn't 'do it properly.' The author went to the effort of providing the rationale for his opinion at least. Per your second point. Why is that not a Windows problem? Because a lot of other people don't experience it? Just because a whole heap of people can work with Windows might mean they just got used to it, rather than it…

I can see that my comment did look like it was accusing the author of TFA of engaging in a rant. That’s my bad - I was instead responding to parent’s second paragraph.

As to your second point: I agree. Those specific discussions around what people like and dislike, and why, are interesting and thought-provoking. The low-effort “loll Apple drone” hot-takes that pop up on all of these threads, less so.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#305

Lots of "I don't like how it tastes/feels, therefore it must be bad" packaged in a rant, as usual. Essentially only useful information if you are a clone of the author, in all other cases your milage will vary... drastically. There isn't much of a point in attacking or defending taste in such a way, but neither is trying to objectively score something because it's not the objective score that matters, it's how it fee…

Right...like if I made a blog post about my experience using Windows when I'm forced to, it'd surely be more than a few paragraphs long. The UI in MacOS isn't perfect but it's a lot better than the state of Windows 10, not even close.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> and the solution was to disable search indexing.

It isn’t clear to me from that text, so just in case you don’t know: you can disable Spotlight indexing for specific directories (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchlp2811/mac)

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#307

I am overwhelmed with how many of the comments in these discussions are of the form: 'this thing is super hard to do on a Mac' responded to by, 'actually it's super easy; all you have to do is cast this magic spell.'

In this case, the OS issues are just window snapping and window switching. No spells to be cast here!

Frankly, if native window snapping is your largest OS concern, that's probably a great sign.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#308

Nice article. Coincidentally we have the same computers, even the same specs. I’ve been on macOS for 11 years now, so I’m biased. On window snapping: why on earth would you want to obscure your desktop with two huge panes? I usually have ‘small’ applications on my desktop ‘workspace’ (terminal, reminders, messages, finder). I always see ex-windows users cluttering their desktop workspace and not utilising more worksp…

> On window snapping: why on earth would you want to obscure your desktop with two huge panes?

OP here. I typically have a browser with documentation on one half, and a terminal/IDE in the other. I'm on an external monitor, so I want the space.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#310
post #32

I always find this interesting, my primary computing device that I do actual work on is Mac (technically I guess my primary is my iPhone or iPad if I go by time but I am not counting that). But I have a Windows computer for gaming and a few Linux machines lingering around. I constantly find myself frustrated by Windows because I am just used to how Mac operates. I have been using it as my primary compute device since…

Yea, I think what OP is missing is that macOS was designed to be used with a trackpad. I think three fingers up is what they want when they alt tab. The green button makes the window full screen because using three fingers sideways and the occasional three fingers up is the best way to manage windows on small laptop screens. Even on my external monitor I have every window fullscreen. This was admittedly hard to get u…

> Yea, I think what OP is missing is that macOS was designed to be used with a trackpad.

OP here. Yes, I'm starting to get that from reading these comments. Does everyone who uses a Mac with an external display also purchase the Magic Trackpad?

Post reply on HN