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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

#731

Post by yesenadam »

mastazi wrote: post #726
yesenadam wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no way to select a line Hmm yeah I never noticed that. Fastest way to select a line I know is: click at the start of the line, then Shift + down arrow.

Good one! It might select the first word of the next line in some cases, but it's easy to deselect it with the left arrow. Thank you!

It never selects the first word of next line for me.. Hmm anyway, while clicking at the start of the line, may as well just drag down to next line. :-)

Also, TIL that you can hold down CMD and drag over various words/letters on the screen, non-contiguous, then CMD-C copies them all to the clipboard. Must be handy for something!

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#732

Post by bdougherty »

kemayo wrote: post #719
bdougherty wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You learn something new every day! Thanks.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#733

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

godelski wrote: post #495
turbocon wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, I'm not sure why people don't talk about as much but Finder is awful and I've not been able to find a replacement.

Yeah I've been surprised no one cares about this. It is great going forward from your cwd but hard to move back and where is home?

Back is left. (In column mode, at least). Home is cmd-shift-H, or using the general purpose path navigator with cmd-G it's just tilde

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#734

Post by 2143 »

pschastain wrote: post #698
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But whatever frustations you have, irrespective of what you feel is the time commitment, you can actually fix in Linux. With Windows/Mac you are stuck with those frustrations as 'prescribed' by however did the UX.

We're talking "out of the box" here, and while I'm not a fan of a lot of the UI changes in macOS it still "just works". Linux doesn't i.e. the wifi on my laptop dies after sleep & the only "fix" is a reboot. I've tried everything the internet can suggest, to no avail. You say you can "actually fix it in Linux", but this isn't true; sometimes the "fix" requires a level of technical knowledge that ordinary users don't…

I agree that Mac is much better out of the box. And nearly everything "just works".

I like Macs, though my personal machine is currently the latest Fedora Beta running on a ThinkPad. It's too early to tell if there are issues, but first impressions are looking good.

Over the years I have discovered that — especially with laptops — some machines work better than others with Linux.

For instance, some Dell machines and nearly all ThinkPads work pretty well with Linux without any of the usual issues (sleep/suspend/bluetooth/wifi problems). However, that's not the case with all manufacturers. For an anecdotal example, I had to resort to witchcraft to get Debian to run on my non-technical friend's ASUS laptop.

> sometimes the "fix" requires a level of technical knowledge that ordinary users don't have

True statement.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#735

Post by TheFlyingFish »

MattRix wrote: post #453
rwc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that it's right or wrong, but the behavior dates back to the very first implementations of Mac OS and Windows. Mac OS has always been an application switching interface, and Windows has been a window switching interface. Takes getting used to the paradigm shift.

It’s worth noting that Microsoft has moved more towards an “application switching interface” with Windows 11. Multiple windows for a single application are always forced to be grouped in the taskbar. I hate it.

Hasn't this been the case since Windows 7? I know 7/10 had the option to disable it, and it sounds like Windows 11 has removed that choice, but it's been clear what Microsoft has had in mind for a while now.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#736

Post by FranksTV »

edanm wrote: post #513
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

That's one of the reasons I never make windows full-screen. Except for that annoying quirk, I actually find the interface better (though it definitely took time to get used to it).

I prefer windows to be full screen. Then I three-finger swipe between apps on my trackpad.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#737

Post by FranksTV »

philsnow wrote: post #535
sooheon wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just the difference between a depth=2 tree and a flat list. What's better depends on your access patterns, but at least semantically, the tree makes a lot more sense to me.

I just wish "spaces" worked like xmonad workspaces [0], specifically that in xmonad there are some number of workspaces (9 by default) and each display is a view into _any_ of those. Macos has a checkbox "Displays have separate Spaces", and neither checked nor unchecked gives the behavior I want. Let's say I have just two monitors. That box being checked means I have spaces A1 A2 .. An and B1 B2 .. Bn, and monitor A…

You can drag whole screens from one monitor to the next. Open command center and then just drag the whole screen over in the top bar.

For me it's a two-finger double tap on the mouse (I think--not at my computer at the moment.)

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#738

Post by macrael »

urbandw311er wrote: post #153
macrael wrote: post #56

I have never spent much time on Windows machines but I _love_ cmd-` on the Mac. I mean, I have a whole rant about how its ordering behavior changed on Lion for the worse but I love having windows grouped by application and picking the app I care about before picking the window I care about. I have never understood why so many people use a single chrome window for all of their tabs but I think it comes from not being…

Big fan here of “appifying” favourite Web apps too. I recently discovered a programme called Web Catalog that is best in class for this.

Ooh, I'll check that out. I've also experimented with Flotato

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#740

Post by edanm »

FranksTV wrote: post #736
edanm wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the reasons I never make windows full-screen. Except for that annoying quirk, I actually find the interface better (though it definitely took time to get used to it).

I prefer windows to be full screen. Then I three-finger swipe between apps on my trackpad.

I get that. I just use an app that lets me maximize windows with a shortcut (I use Size-up but there are many great options). I then make sure to maximize everything, so effectively all my windows are always maximized.

It's not the same as fullscreen, because it still has the top mac bar, but that's fine, and it gives me the ability to cmd+tab / cmd+tilde through my windows.

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