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Impressions from a first-time Mac user

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Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#581

Post by dsego »

kaetemi wrote: post #570
dsego wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side by side view, eg. terminal + code editor. Or when I want two finder windows in sort of a total commander fashion, so I can copy/move hundreds of files around and visually inspect the results so I don't accidentally lose anything.

I always just size the windows as needed. Snapping for me is just this annoying non-feature that attempts to be more clever than me and interferes with my flow.

I don't use native snapping, just Rectangle, mostly through shortcuts (ctr+alt+left/right, and then ctrl+alt+backspace to reset window), because it's quicker than manually resizing for me.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#582

Post by mastazi »

yesenadam wrote: post #487
_skel wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs movement keys generally work. Ctrl-A for the start of the line, Ctrl-E for the end, Ctrl-K to kill a line...

Yep, or CMD + left/right arrow. Option + left/right arrow goes back/forward one word. Hold down Shift doing these to select what you move over.

in my experience, Cmd + left/right arrow behaves like a pgup/down. Goes to the very end of the page, not end of a single line

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#583

Post by mastazi »

Destiner wrote: post #488
mastazi wrote: post #469

I think this is a pretty fair article. I'll add one more: in MacOS there is no unified way to get to the beginning or end of a line. In Linux and Windows this is done with the Home and End keys. In Mac, there are some shortcuts but they are not universal, what works in terminal may not work in a browser textarea and so on. Some programs interpret the same shortcut as "go to the very end of the text (as in a PgDown ke…

Cmd + left/right works everywhere for me (except the terminal)

doesn't work for me https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31000315

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#584

Post by borland »

This is full of stuff that isn't actually a problem, he just hasn't learnt how to use macOS yet.

> Snapping

Yes, macOS does suck in this regard. I can only hope they address it in the future.

> unlike Windows or Linux, you can’t “maximize” a window using the green “zoom” button

Hold down option when you click the green button. Annoying that Apple made this undiscoverable, but nevertheless it works and is built-in

> Command+Tab

macOS does this differently than windows or linux. I prefer the macOS way. Shrug? This is not a problem in macOS though. Your cheese got moved, deal with it :-)

> However, that keyboard doesn’t have the Option (⌥) or Command (⌘) keys like on my Macbook. This makes using keyboard shortcuts difficult due to the keys being switched, but I don’t blame Apple for this. I tried changing the modifier keys in System Preferences–>Keyboard, but that broke other keyboard shortcuts.

I'm not sure what he did here, but I've been using system preferences to swap the Windows and Alt keys so they match Option and Cmd, for over a decade and it works flawlessly. I can only assume he's misunderstanding something?

> However, plugging in a mouse with a scroll wheel means the scroll wheel is “backward”. Thankfully, I was able to download Logitech’s Options software to reverse this.

There's a checkbox in system prefs for that, you don't need any crazy logitech junk!

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#585

Post by scns »

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.

> In the overall multi-core scores, the Apple M1 is extremely impressive. On integer workloads, it still seems that AMD’s more recent Renoir-based designs beat the M1 in performance, but only in the integer workloads and at a notably higher TDP and power consumption.

Apple’s lead against Intel’s Tiger Lake SoC at 28W here is indisputable, and shows the reason as to why Apple chose to abandon their long-term silicon partner of 15 years. The M1 not only beats the best Intel has to offer in this market-segment, but does so at less power.

I also included multi-threaded scores of the M1 when ignoring the 4 efficiency cores of the system. Here although it’s an “8-core” design, the heterogeneous nature of the CPUs means that performance is lop-sided towards the big cores. That doesn’t mean that the efficiency cores are absolutely weak: Using them still increases total throughput by 20-33%, depending on the workload, favouring compute-heavy tasks.

Overall, Apple doesn’t just deliver a viable silicon alternative to AMD and Intel, but actually something that’s well outperforms them both in absolute performance as well as power efficiency. Naturally, in higher power-level, higher-core count systems, the M1 can’t keep up to AMD and Intel designs, but that’s something Apple likely will want to address with subsequent designs in that category over the next 2 years.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#586

Post by tethik »

I had to use a Mac for my last job and it was awful. Coming from a customized tiling window-manager setup on Linux that I've slowly tinkered with over the years, everything UX-wise was such a slog for me.

I'm not recommending linux for everyone. Far from it. But if you want the best experience and don't mind tinkering, I think it's the best you can get currently.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#587

Post by vbezhenar »

For me many macos things are weird.

One of the latest ones: to create new window for safari you have to press Cmnd+N. But if safari is maximized, you have to press Cmnd+Alt+N. Why? No idea.

And the fact that I have to manually adjust safari window width to make it full screen without hiding other interface elements is even more weird. Some apps support alt+maximize, some do not. Safari is latter. Definitely no technical reason.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#588

Post by herrkanin »

vbezhenar wrote: post #587

For me many macos things are weird. One of the latest ones: to create new window for safari you have to press Cmnd+N. But if safari is maximized, you have to press Cmnd+Alt+N. Why? No idea. And the fact that I have to manually adjust safari window width to make it full screen without hiding other interface elements is even more weird. Some apps support alt+maximize, some do not. Safari is latter. Definitely no techni…

You can double click on the top bar to maximize it. Far from discoverable, though.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#589

Post by baq »

wink wrote: post #559
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…

I have 3 monitors connected to my Windows machine and I have to switch all 3 of them on before logging in or weird things happen. It's only a little bit better on Linux and I don't have a mac to try. I'm actually blaming the modern connectors and how digital inputs are handled, this was never a problem with D-SUB (i.e. you could move the mouse to the empty space where the switched off screen is, but it won't move you…

I have an opposite problem - I turn off my monitor and it doesn't want to disappear... before you ask, I switch between inputs because consumer grade KVMs naturally don't support anything more than 1080p@60Hz.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#590

Post by j00pY »

yesenadam wrote: post #487
_skel wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs movement keys generally work. Ctrl-A for the start of the line, Ctrl-E for the end, Ctrl-K to kill a line...

Yep, or CMD + left/right arrow. Option + left/right arrow goes back/forward one word. Hold down Shift doing these to select what you move over.

These shortcuts were my favourite thing about moving to a Mac.
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