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Impressions from a first-time Mac user

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Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#341

Post by banana_giraffe »

aspenmayer wrote: post #325
yakubin wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My experience is that Windows has far better UX for pretty most end users. UPDATE: After seeing a reply to this comment, I googled some screenshots. It seems that Macs normally do display a hint for the shortcut to delete files. I'm not sure why mine doesn't. Windows is also more learnable. On Mac at least today you're just supposed to know stuff. The most basic operation: deleting files. Seems like an operation yo…

Finder tells you the keyboard shortcut to Delete a file in the menu. Most every menu item on macOS that has a keyboard shortcut exposes it in this way through the menu, which is one nice feature that macOS has that Windows doesn’t have, but could have.

Yep, it's cmd-backspace, which is unfortunately cumbersome, but it works and it's easy enough to remember.

That said, how the menu items appear always baffles me. Want to search for a file by name? Hit Ctrl-Shift-Command-F. How did I discover this? Open the menu and start banging different modifier keys till "Find" turns into "Find by Name..." I'm sure this behavior is as old as Macs, but it's an odd quirk, one that I still stumble over from time to time.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#342

Post by robszumski »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #243
Aardwolf wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a mac user (but a linux user who chooses desktops with the windowing paradigms of like windows 2000 or so plus multiple desktops) so have no idea how it's like in practice, but: These days it's very common for more than half your work to take place in a browser, with many browser windows, each having many tabs Every window of the browser almost is like its own application for the user, yet they're all from th…

This is where the value of electron wrappers and web apps installed as PWAs comes in. It offloads app management duties from your browser and puts them back in the hands of the OS. The former of those two can also get rid of redundant menubars (as seen in e.g. Figma) which is a nice bonus.

I love doing this but my personal hell is when my Google account(s) are constantly signed out of my PWA for Meet, Chat, Work Gmail, Personal Gmail 1, Personal Gmail 2.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#343

Post by t00ny »

noway421 wrote: post #329

You don't need an app for window splitting. If you hold Option ⌥ key and hover over the green circle, there will be "Move Window to Left side of the screen" and "Move Window to Right side of the screen" options presented instead of "Tile Window to Left of Screen" and "Tile Window to Right of Screen" options. Those don't create a new virtual desktop.

TIL, thanks!

This is an issue on MacOS, a lot of features like this one are not easily discoverable.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#344

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#345

Post by guelo »

Yep, as a user of both the window manager is the main area where mac loses. Also keyboard shortcuts are more comprehensive and available on Windows. But that's about it, MacOS is superior on most other things.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#346

Post by sooheon »

Sharlin wrote: post #11
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…

Agreed. The distinction between applications and windows that macOS/Mac OS has always made was jarring at first, but definitely one of those things that after the initial adjustment simply feel different rather than objectively better or worse.

Better or worse depends on use case, but I will say that a tree is a much better semantic fit than a flat list.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#347

Post by justinlloyd »

flatiron wrote: post #195
brimble wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you are used to using gnu user land you’ll be using a utility like brew to install the gnu components. The bsd counterparts are just off enough to find something a bit off on most of them. I really dislike finder. I’ve not found a sane replacement. Updates for me took 10-15 minutes. Rebooting a few times. Relegated to answering slacks on phone during that time. Office is also awful on the Mac. I wound up using off…

I am not saying it will solve your problems, but I like PathFinder on the Mac. I use Directory Opus on Windows. They fulfill the same niche & need for me. I find Finder and Explorer to be anemic in terms of functionality.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#348

Post by avidphantasm »

I’ve been using DOS, Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and now macOS over the past 30 years. macOS is still the least shitty OS out there from a user point of view, in my opinion. Window snapping on Windows and various Linux environments makes my blood boil, so I have never missed that in macOS. Also, it’s hard for me to accept that Windows has better UX than anything. There are at least two different UI frameworks at play in Windows, the new Windows 8-derived stuff, and the classic Windows 2000/XP Win32 UI, with abrupt transitions between the two. I don’t know how this ships. Microsoft certainly has the resources to fix this, but chooses not to. They just don’t care. So I suppose Steve Jobs was right, they have no taste. In a strictly utilitarian sense, none of this matters, but if the user-facing side is this bad, what are they allowing to slide under the covers. In addition to the vastly different UI idioms in Windows, there is a lack of organization and level of convolution that makes relatively simple things hard (finding how much RAM a system has), and somewhat more technical tasks maddening (e.g., changing the MTU on a network interface). I’ve used Windows 3.1, 95/98, NT 3.51, NT4, 2000, XP, 7, and 10 over the years, and it just keeps getting worse. Maybe I will try ReactOS one of these days.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#349

Post by noway421 »

vmception wrote: post #340
noway421 wrote: post #329

You don't need an app for window splitting. If you hold Option ⌥ key and hover over the green circle, there will be "Move Window to Left side of the screen" and "Move Window to Right side of the screen" options presented instead of "Tile Window to Left of Screen" and "Tile Window to Right of Screen" options. Those don't create a new virtual desktop.

yeah its weird they didn't look them up. they got 90% of the way there by already being a power user on Windows and then just gave up? I think the strength of MacOS is that non-power users would get 90% of the way there too. But definitely just ask around and look up how to do things you are accustomed to! They even found the AltTab package somehow, even though I couldn't figure out what was missing... MacOS' minimiz…

I minimise them quite frequently these days for something I want to tuck away. A good way to surface them is the "App Exposé" feature (Preferences -> Trackpad -> More Gestures). Shows all the hidden windows for the current app.

It's different to Windows though. If they're looking for something more similar to Windows, maybe Command+H (hide the active app) is a better alternative.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#350

Post by majormajor »

CSMastermind wrote: post #257

There's a lot of people in comments defending macOS saying that the difference in switching between operating systems will lead to a bad experience no matter what and people just need to power through and learn the new system. I'll say that I've used Windows and macOS both personally and professionally for two decades now (longer for Windows). I'd consider myself a power user in both OSes, I know the keyboard shortcu…

In fairness, I don't think most end users are plugging in four monitors, cut and pasting folders, or playing 25 year old games.

And all those things are very user-specific and better for some than others in different places. I have a Dell from 2017 that won't run an external monitor with the lid closed out of the box, it'll go to sleep. I tried playing Total Annihilation (another 25 year old one) off GOG on it and it didn't work - using either Linux or Mac (I forget which one it was) worked because the emulation layer it was using for Windows was more compatible with an ancient game than real Windows 10.

I think today's "average end user" for a Mac would propose examples more like "the Messages and Photos apps is synced with my iPhone out of the box."

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