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Impressions from a first-time Mac user

loganmarchione.com

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Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#711

Post by throwaway675309 »

chillacy wrote: post #356
JoelMcCracken wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“France is really dumb because I can’t understand what they are saying. Look, even England does it the way I know!”

"Impressions from a first-time english speaker" > A little background on me: I’ve been speaking French and Spanish my entire professional life ... > The Bad > I’m accustomed to gendered pronouns in both French and Spanish, so it was nice to see that in English. However, the lack of gendered nouns is awful. French and Spanish both have what I would call “sane” gendered nouns (shown in this dictionary), where you know…

I hate that idea, it's effectively overloading a noun that objectively speaking should only contain information that is intrinsic to the properties of the noun itself. A chair or other inanimate objects do not have genders, and forcing a non-native speaker to conjugate a noun correctly just adds to the mental complexity.

Side note: this is why I love grammatically simple languages such as Chinese.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#712

Post by ibiza »

colinmhayes wrote: post #159
olyjohn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get used to the fact that I can't alt-tab to a minimized window. Nor can I figure out how to switch to any particular minimized window. You have literally no way of knowing that a minimized window exists other than right-clicking the dock icon, or going to the "Window" menu after you switched to the application. The dock was fine 20 years ago when they released OSX, but they've literally done nothing to make…

The solution is simple. Don't minimize windows. Everything fullscreen on virtual desktops. Three fingers up and choose the window you want if it's one you don't use normally. Three finger swipe between frequently used windows.

I use a variation of this approach. Make all windows exactly the same size (I'm using Hammerspoon). Hide applications (Cmd-H) instead of minimizing windows. Cmd-Tab to whatever app you want. Cmd-` to whatever window you want.

Sometimes the silly shadow around the top window gets too big, but then you can Option-Cmd-H to hide all other apps.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#713

Post by danaris »

cycomanic wrote: post #693
danaris wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, personally, I keep a lot of windows open on my screen because I work well that way. It's similar to the "cluttered desk" method—it may look messy, but I've got everything available to me and even if you don't know where anything is, I do. But I recognize that's more of a personal style than general usage. I've been a Mac user since before the system even had proper multitasking, and the general answer to your q…

> Well, personally, I keep a lot of windows open on my screen because I work well that way. It's similar to the "cluttered desk" method—it may look messy, but I've got everything available to me and even if you don't know where anything is, I do. > But I recognize that's more of a personal style than general usage. > hiding an application that we're not actively using and don't need to have cluttering up the screen.…

Hiding an application, very simply and straightforwardly, just takes the application out of the foreground and makes all its windows disappear. They are still considered to "exist", in the same desktops/spaces, and no state is lost—when you switch back to the application, all its windows reappear exactly as they were when you hid it (assuming no background processing changed them, of course). They are just not visible for as long as you keep the application hidden.

The difference between this and minimizing is that a) it affects all windows of the application, not just a selected one, and b) a minimized window either goes into the side of the Dock, or into the application icon on the Dock (depending on your set preferences); hidden windows, as I said, are completely invisible.

There is also a "Show All" option under the application menu (the one just to the right of the Apple menu, with the name of the foreground application) that will un-hide all currently hidden applications.

Virtual desktops are a relatively recent addition to the Mac; this hiding behavior has been around and worked consistently since the mid-'90s, well before Mac OS X.

(As a final random tidbit, one of my most common methods of hiding an application—particularly if it's the one I'm using at the time—is to simply option-click on either the desktop or another application's window, as that is a longstanding shortcut for doing so.)

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#714

Post by danaris »

loganmarchione wrote: post #310
colinmhayes wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I use a MacBook Pro, and when I'm not just using the laptop on my lap, my usual setup has it connected to a dock with an external keyboard and a Magic Mouse. The Magic Mouse doesn't give access to all the different gestures the trackpad does, but it does let you use two-finger swipe left & right for switching spaces, and a two-finger double-tap for activating Mission Control (showing all the windows of the active space, as well as the active spaces along the top).

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#715

Post by ask_b123 »

pombrand wrote: post #707

Apple believes they always have the best way, and rarely gives you options to do things in other ways..sometimes they're right, but not always. I switched from Windows last month, after installing rectangle, bettertouchtools and speeding up all animations possible, I'm left with the following gripes. 1. No magnetic windows the way windows does unless in the clunky fullscreen mode. 2. No way to turn off animations for…

4. You can press the option key when pasting to move the files or you can drag the files (you can enable drag with drag lock to make things easier: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-mouse-trackp...)

5. Why do you need a standalone app to make screenshots? cmd + shift + 5 (or 4) work fine imo.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#716

Post by rwc »

faller wrote: post #579
pcthrowaway wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you haven't made the active window full screen, or the window you want to switch to, then yes, it works. But it is painful :P

> As long as you haven't made the active window full screen, or the window you want to switch to, then yes, it works. But it is painful :P What's being described as "full screen" windows on macOS is not exactly that, and it's very different than full screen windows on Windows or the standard Linux window managers. On macOS, when we click on the little green button on top of a window, that window becomes full screen *…

You can "Maximize" the app (to put it in Windows parlance) by Option+Click the green button (you can observe during the hover state for the green button the change from "full screen" to "maximize" by pressing Option).

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#717

Post by [deleted] »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #699
kevincox wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't resist. Although if that was an option I may have considered. And after a year of daily use are work it was still tripping me up. It's possible for an interface to be widely used and still have sharp edges. I consider this one of macOS's. It doesn't need to change, it may well not be worth it. But at least some people will end up in the menu of the wrong application.

It's easy to run into this situation if you regularly have two windows side-by-side, and switch back-and-forth between them so that the focus could be in either window at any given moment. If you only have windows maximized (as I suspect GP does) it's not something you'll ever run into.

[deleted]

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#718

Post by SllX »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #699
kevincox wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't resist. Although if that was an option I may have considered. And after a year of daily use are work it was still tripping me up. It's possible for an interface to be widely used and still have sharp edges. I consider this one of macOS's. It doesn't need to change, it may well not be worth it. But at least some people will end up in the menu of the wrong application.

It's easy to run into this situation if you regularly have two windows side-by-side, and switch back-and-forth between them so that the focus could be in either window at any given moment. If you only have windows maximized (as I suspect GP does) it's not something you'll ever run into.

Nah. Many windows, from many apps, but typically two or three at the front side by side. I’ll leave Full Screen videos open as a kind of running queue in Mission Control but that’s about the extent of it.

There’s no secret, I just don’t lose track of which window I’m focused on in software because that’s the one I’m immediately focused on.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#719

Post by kemayo »

bdougherty wrote: post #512
mkl wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice to silo windows when you have lots open, but I think grouping all browser windows together is not a sensible way to do it. Some browser windows go with my IDE, some with spreadsheets, some terminals, etc. Grouping all browser windows (including web apps, email, etc.) because they happen to use the browser is like grouping all windows whose title starts with "A" or something.

Once you have your browser focused, you can use App Exposé (ctrl+down) to show all the windows from it.

You can also get to that directly from the cmd-tab switcher -- if you press up or down while the switcher is open it jumps straight to exposé for the focused app.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#720

Post by wwalexander »

> macOS has a weird snapping implementation where you need to click and hold the green “zoom” button, then choose to “tile” left or right. But, once you pick another window to fill the other half, both of those windows (together as one) move to their own virtual desktop. I want them split on my current desktop, not on a separate desktop.

This functionality is actually built into macOS by default, though it’s not very discoverable. The Tile Window to Left/Right of Screen options (which can also be found in the Window menu in the menu bar) change to Move Window to Left/Right of Screen when you are holding ⌥, which will move and resize the windows as desired without entering full screen. (For windows whose minimum width exceeds half the screen width, the left edge will be aligned properly while the right edge will overflow into the other half of the screen or off the edge of the screen respectively).

> Also, unlike Windows or Linux, you can’t “maximize” a window using the green “zoom” button, it will only make the current window fullscreen (and again, on its own desktop). Confusingly, you need to again click and hold the green “zoom” button, then choose “Zoom”. Apple calls the green button “zoom” in their documentation, but its default function is fullscreen, not zoom.…For all the Apple fanboys screaming “There’s an app for that!”, I hear you, but remember, this is a work machine and I need to get everything I install blessed by IT security.

While it is unfortunate that Apple doesn’t provide any shortcuts for these features, you can set them up yourself without any extra software via  > System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts. I have the following “missing” shortcuts set up, kind of like the tiling shortcuts on Windows but with more modifier keys.

Move Window to Left of Screen: ⌃⌥⌘←

Move Window to Right of Screen: ⌃⌥⌘→

Zoom: ⌃⌥⌘↑

Tile Window to Left of Screen: ⌃⌘←

Tile Window to Right of Screen: ⌃⌘→

Enter Full Screen: ⌃⌘↑

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