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The erosion of the Mac experience

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Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#171

Post by account-5 »

frou_dh wrote: post #155
lastangryman wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, it's all preference, I'm not making a case to say it's objectively bad, just I find it inferior. The monitor is a ultrawide LG that works perfectly on windows. A Google for "blurry text external monitor MacBook Pro" turns up many people with the same issue (edit: it's a 1440p monitor) Thanks for the finder tip, that will help.

> I'm not making a case to say it's objectively bad, just I find it inferior. That's good, because usually in this kind of debate there's an undercurrent of "I've been using X for decades (and so know it inside out). When I try Y, anything that differs from X is objectively wrong"

Which is generally all the Mac os just works statements are in my experience.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#172

Post by isametry »

threeseed wrote: post #52
Nathanba wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion on this is that it's purposefully slower to browse through titles so you can't ever create a full mental map of all available titles. That way it feels like you could still find something new if you just tried harder.

They also put the same content in different categories with sometimes different thumbnails. If you had everything on one screen it would be much easier to pick this (and their many other tricks) out.

> They also put the same content in different categories with sometimes different thumbnails.

And I thought I was going crazy! And seems like it does work, at least on me. From the frontpage, the Netflix catalog always feels like twice its actual size — and it only occurred to me now how they do it.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#173

Post by carabiner »

incanus77 wrote: post #5
anonymouse008 wrote: post #2

This guy has no idea what he’s talking about. One language, one gui framework, and one API paradigm - unified across all contextual devices - is exactly what Apple should do. SwiftUI is not it by any means, but to say that the idea of SwiftUI tries to achieve is a bad aim is completely wrong. The aim of UIKit on all Apple devices is 100% correct; and allows developers to go deep into the API forest to create mystical…

It's not the mystical interactions or feel of widgets, layout, and function that are the problem, it's bad UX paradigms, declining consistency between apps and across versions (a Mac hallmark), buggy software on an aggressive annual schedule, holes and rot in developer documentation, constant treadmill of Xcode and device updates, and general lack of attention to detail in Mac apps. I've been a Mac user and dev for t…

Messages sync has been giving me problems for months. I'm receiving SMS messages on my MBP that are not being sent to my phone for some reason. Then when they show up in MacOS, they're labeled as iMessages even though they're green bubbles from Android users. This is definitely degradation of the Apple experience for me. I just don't get it.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#174

Post by gsinclair »

Lio wrote: post #136
chongli wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m paying like $4/mo for iCloud storage. All my files are backed up there. I don’t get any ads. Is there an option like that on Windows?

The point is not that paying $4 a month rent isn’t useful to some people. It’s that another group of people want to own a computer that doesn’t beg for rent at all. The old macOS provided that the new Mac, not so much.

The old macOS didn’t provide any cloud storage option, and the new one does, for a fee. That seems like progress, not begging for rent or a reason to be nostalgic.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#175

Post by hot_gril »

geysersam wrote: post #131
drawingthesun wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moved on to where? Windows has adverts in the start menu! Desktop Linux GUI is still painful and really only suitable for those who love to tinker. Since I moved to Mac from Windows I’m thankful for macOS even if it could be better, it’s still much more usable than the alternatives. I find myself spending more time on my professional work and less time fixing driver issues or fighting annoying in OS ads.

Used Ubuntu for almost a decade now. Wouldn't call myself a tinkerer with respect to the OS, the defaults are totally fine. Drivers are rarely an issue ime. Maybe things have become better since last you tried?

I installed Ubuntu on my Acer laptop a few years ago. Fans didn't work after waking from sleep, so it'd overheat. Wifi was finicky. I didn't even try Bluetooth. Couldn't run Adobe Flash and thus couldn't watch the World Cup on the only legit website to watch in the US (Fox Sports).

Yeah, "not the OS's fault" etc. But Windows did all of that fine.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#176

Post by atoav »

lastangryman wrote: post #133

I feel like I may be the only developer that prefers Windows to MacOs. I really, really just do not get the "Mac Experience". It feels so clunky and counter intuitive. - Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the projec…

Not a Mac developer here, but I spent significant time on both plattforms and run Kubuntu/Linux since 4 years.

It depends probably on what you are developing, but when you are doing stuff for backend, it will very likely end up running on a Linux box. This means having your platform, terminal and so on closer to Linux is useful (e.g. you have bash).

Windows has WSL now, so this would be a way as well.

From all UIs I like KDE Neon the best. It is truly a good experience.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#177

Post by jesseryoung »

lastangryman wrote: post #133

I feel like I may be the only developer that prefers Windows to MacOs. I really, really just do not get the "Mac Experience". It feels so clunky and counter intuitive. - Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the projec…

I'm with you, I'm a dev who prefers Windows over Mac. I'm convinced that most Mac users don't use multiple monitors and they're completely fine with the really poor window management. It boggles my mind; I am objectively less productive with a single monitor than I am with multiple.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#178

Post by ricardobayes »

lastangryman wrote: post #133

I feel like I may be the only developer that prefers Windows to MacOs. I really, really just do not get the "Mac Experience". It feels so clunky and counter intuitive. - Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the projec…

The design choices to be different really grind my gears. For example the window close buttons. There's no reason for a western user group to put action buttons on the top left of the window, but Mac did it, to be different.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#179

Post by Lio »

shp0ngle wrote: post #114
brundolf wrote: post #63

Putting myself in Apple's shoes: I just don't see the financial incentive to invest a whole lot in the native GUI story for the Mac in 2022 Regular people mostly use iOS. Many don't have traditional computers at all. That was originally the Mac's core market. It still has a strong professional market- but many of the serious professional tools (Adobe, Blender, IDEA, etc) use their own custom in-house GUI frameworks,…

This. People just are not building, crafting and using desktop apps specifically for Mac anymore. That ship has sailed. They either use their own frameworks and build on all 3 platforms, or use Electron. On a lot of daily things people use iOS. I am thinking what apps I actually use on my Mac the most. It’s Chrome, VSCode, Terminal. I still use Preview a lot though… I hope the Swift pushers won’t touch that . If they…

This.

I had a contract a while back that meant I had to work on desktop Linux for the first time in years.

The experience on my XPS13 is not as good as macOS[1]. It’s not far off though …and FOSS is always improving.

They have the edge right now but if Apple keeps neglecting macOS, degrade it to be more like iOS[2] or keep adding rent seeking nagware, Linux will be “good enough” for me.

1. Seriously, why can’t I have subtitles off by default as a preference in Gnome Video again?

2. Why is there an unused dictation toggle on my iOS keyboard but no undo key? Why can’t I copy and paste in every iOS app? Why is the spell checker so hard to trigger? etc, etc

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#180

Post by faebi »

poloniculmov wrote: post #158
lastangryman wrote: post #133

I feel like I may be the only developer that prefers Windows to MacOs. I really, really just do not get the "Mac Experience". It feels so clunky and counter intuitive. - Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the projec…

I have to use a Mac for work, after not really touching the Apple ecosystem. I was amazed that every other dev I talked with had a list of tiny apps that you need to install in order to have a nice experience. On the latest versions of Windows, things just work (or I'm very good at fixing my annoyances).

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