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The erosion of the Mac experience

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Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#351

Post by dangoor »

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,…

The Mac is a nearly $40B annual business: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263428/apples-revenue-fr...

It's small compared to iOS, sure, but I think it's still an important part of Apple's overall portfolio. It's currently what all of the iOS developers need to use. Its what Apple's own people use for their work.

I guess the difference of opinion may turn on the phrase "invest a whole lot". I have no idea what kind of investment Apple is making in Mac native GUI frameworks. It's obviously non-zero and is likely what most would deem non-trivial, but I'd argue that it's worth a decent size investment because it is still a potential differentiator for a $40B part of their business.

I will also note that there are some excellent professional native Mac apps, even beyond Apple's own. Things like Pixelmator and the Affinity suite, for example. I'm definitely running a combination of native Mac and Electron apps right now, but I still appreciate the native apps when they're available for the job at hand.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#352

Post by vikingerik »

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…

FYI for anyone who doesn't know: that other shortcut is Command+` to cycle between windows of one application.

It's totally nondiscoverable (I read about it here), but once I learned that, it felt amazingly intuitive to separate the concerns of application-switching and window-switching. And Command+` works consistently on MacOS, unlike on Windows where every app reimplements its own multiple-document interface and so Ctrl-Tab hardly ever works.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#353

Post by theonemind »

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…

Mac has weak multi-tasking and window management UI. The Dock also sucks: https://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html .

Strengths:

1. Really nice trackpad. It tracks smoothly. Really well integrated trackpad gestures. It makes a difference.

2. It is literally UNIX

3. Native-app developers that care (eroding year-by-year, but software companies like Panic, Omni, BareBones make first-class software that belongs on the platform). (Windows certainly has more apps, and probably more high quality apps by volume, but Mac apps tend a bit more toward high-quality-density in a more limited application pool)

4. Drivers. I swear, I get laptops from manufacturers with bad Windows installs, glitchy drivers, poor configuration, etc. I also hate cleaning crapware off of new machines and fresh installing OSes.

5. Lack of options. Few people explicitly value this, and sometimes, the Mac way is dumb, but since it's often the Mac way or the highway, it takes some cognitive overhead out of computing.

Overall, I find the Mac less of a hassle. Most things are pretty good, and you mostly can't fiddle with them too much, so you get the strength of that on the whole, not in one particular dazzling thing (except the trackpad.) Garbage window management and multi-tasking indisputable, though.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#354

Post by giantrobot »

personjerry wrote: post #124
runjake wrote: post #43

The key point in this Twitter rant is that the SWEs who understood the Mac (and NEXTSTEP, for that matter) have aged out. Most everyone has retired or moved onto other opportunities. There's very few of them left at Apple. And they're often overruled by younger managers. Apple is hiring tons of fresh new SWEs who have no understanding, nor desire to understand "The Mac Way". I'm not saying this is right or wrong, the…

But don't the product designers define the Mac Experience rather than the SWEs?

Yes, but people are ranting about stuff. Don't interrupt a good uninformed rant.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#355

Post by kitsunesoba »

vikingerik wrote: post #352
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…

FYI for anyone who doesn't know: that other shortcut is Command+` to cycle between windows of one application. It's totally nondiscoverable (I read about it here), but once I learned that, it felt amazingly intuitive to separate the concerns of application-switching and window-switching. And Command+` works consistently on MacOS, unlike on Windows where every app reimplements its own multiple-document interface and s…

Separate management of applications and windows is a powerful and underrated tool in my opinion. Once you become accustomed to it, the Windows style of a big vat of random windows feels like a chaotic mess in comparison.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#356

Post by bradleyjg »

theonemind wrote: post #353
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…

Mac has weak multi-tasking and window management UI. The Dock also sucks: https://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html . Strengths: 1. Really nice trackpad. It tracks smoothly. Really well integrated trackpad gestures. It makes a difference. 2. It is literally UNIX 3. Native-app developers that care (eroding year-by-year, but software companies like Panic, Omni, BareBones make first-class software that belon…

I’ve used dos, windows, linux, and mac. I appreciate the fact that macs are not very tweakable.

I won’t speak for others but for me endless customization of everything supposedly for optimization was just another form of procrastination.

I also appreciate that it mostly either works or it doesn’t. Either it’s broken and I need to swap it for a refurb or it works. Not much staying up late reading obscure stack overflow posts (in the old days webforums, in the old old days newsgroups) and trying this one more thing to fix the problem de jure.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#357

Post by kitsunesoba »

wodenokoto wrote: post #194
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 using a windows machine for work and I hate it. Explorer and outlook change application icon depending on what you are doing. I can never find them when I alt-tab. I can never find anything in word or excel or any other application that use windows style menus. On Mac you at least get a real menu. I never got used to macOS’ alt-tab when I switched more than a decade ago, but now that I’m back on windows I find th…

> I can never find anything in word or excel or any other application that use windows style menus. On Mac you at least get a real menu.

I’ll never understand why it’s so common for Windows and Linux GTK apps to go so far out of their way to avoid using a tried and true menubar. Hamburger menus are probably the most common substitute, and they’re strictly worse in every way, being basically junk drawers in software form.

That’s one of the things I love about the global menubar on macOS: because it’s owned by the system, third party devs can’t try to delete it out of some misguided pursuit of minimalism. Several cross platform apps that lack menubars on Windows and Linux have proper menus on macOS as a result.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#358

Post by jononomo »

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…

This is the least relatable comment I have ever read on Hacker News. When I switched to a Mac from a Windows machine it was like switching from living in a van to living in a luxury condo. I will never go back.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#359

Post by justin66 »

lapcat wrote: post #260
arvinsim wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rumor has it that Mac will soon have ads on the AppStore

There's no such rumor. I'm sure that Apple would put ads in the Mac App Store if it were profitable for Apple. But it's likely not a big enough market to be worth it.

> There's no such rumor.

Well, there is now.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#360

Post by ris58h »

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…

If you need Windows like alt tab, check out https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ It's free and open-source https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos
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