Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can discover so many things on Mac by Option-clicking! It’s used in many places to give an ‘alternate’ function to buttons and the like.
Try the volume and wifi icons!
I just audibly gasped after clicking.
Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?
381–390 of 573 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only Apple device I use is the laptop I was given for work, and I've always disliked that the button that would "maximize" the window on other OS instead makes the window "fullscreen" (getting rid of the menu and everything else that entails). I recently discovered that I am actually able to "maximize" by double-clicking the top bar of the window, but I have no idea if this is something that works by default or i…
Once I got used to gestures, I actually like macOS window management more than Linux/Windows for single monitor. It seems a bit clunky if you have multiple monitors Cmd Left/Right to change between fullscreen windows. Cmd Up Arrow to show all of the fullscreen windows. Using the trackpad, 3 finger swipe up to show all the windows. Either 3 finger or 2 finger swipe left/right to switch between them. When 2 windows are…
Is there a way to make Cmd+Tab work with fullscreen windows? If I can't remember if I've made an app fullscreen, I have to three-finger swipe up to see the list of maximized applications and if it's not there, start Cmd-Tabbing to find it. Because I don't use macOS exclusively, what often happens is I try to Cmd+Tab, can't find the window, assume I'm not actually running the software I think I am and then eventually discover it's fullscreen somewhere. I'd really love to find a way to be able to Cmd+Tab through all windows, fullscreen or otherwise.
Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?
#383Well, because it has? Hover over the green stoplight, you get a popover with fullscreen options. Press Option and the fullscreen options mutate into snap left/snap right/zoom. These can also be found in the Window menu. Again, press option to mutate the fullscreen ones to snap. And since these are menu options, one can set any keyboard shortcut of their choosing through the keyboard shortcut prefpane+. So it is not "…
I feel like this solution was designed for someone who is going to snap two windows just one time and work with them for several hours at a time, if not the rest of the day. Whereas I am constantly needing to snap different windows together, making this process feel tedious and cumbersome compared to Windows
Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?
#384Can an Ask HN self-post be clickbait? Apple isn’t refusing to do anything. They just haven’t done some minor thing that you personally would like. The fact that you’re “shocked” by something as banal as “lack of window snapping” is kind of funny actually.
"The fact that you’re “shocked” by something as banal as “lack of window snapping” is kind of funny actually."
No, his point is a very specific one - how do the employees of apple themselves manage their own work ?
One answer is that they have alternative tooling or special features enabled or some other inside track to making (for instance) triple and quad monitor setups work in any sane way whatsoever.
I hope this is the answer.
Because the other answer is:
They are not power users by any definition. The reason they aren't decrying multi monitor support is because they don't use multiple monitors. The reason they don't fix window management is because they really are infantile GUI mousey-mouse for everything users.
The reason 'X' doesn't work is because they never need X.
I hope that's not the answer.
Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it is simplistic from a certain point of view. If we rewind to the mid-to-late 80s with the Lisa and original Mac, which do you think most users at that point would find more simple and natural: windows that act as analogues of physical papers on a desk, or windows that have no real life equivalent and resize to fill empty space under arbitrary conditions? Granted, that was ~40 years ago and things are differen…
My main issue with this workflow is that if I alt tab to terminal, then it brings all of the terminals to front, rather than the one I wanted. Now one inactive terminal may be blocking the previous app that I want to use as reference for my active terminal. The only workaround is to resize and drag all the terminals around which I usually don't want to do. So I have to make the previous app fullscreen to move it to a…
It sounds like you're maybe not using virtual desktops, in which case I would strongly suggest giving that a try. Moving windows between desktops is faster than switching to/from fullscreen and in many circumstances you can have just one terminal window per virtual desktop windows makes it easy to command-tab to.
The other thing I tend to do is to keep the windows I'm actively using peeking out to click on to foreground which sidesteps the issue of command-tab foregrounding all windows.
Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?
#386As with anything, there's always a third party app to fix what the trillion dollar companies can't.
Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea behind macOS window management is to not manage windows at all, instead letting them exist at sizes that fit their content in whichever position they land on your desktop, stacking and overlapping like papers on a desk, letting relevant bits peek through without requiring the entirety of their host windows being visible. Exposé/Mission Control are there when a window gets lost, and virtual desktops are meant…
This is true. Which is what is so bizarre about it. Everything else about Apple is about cleanliness, focus, minimalism, simplicity. Yet the windowing system is designed so that everything's overlapping, it's hard to pick out your foreground window from 20 other background windows of varying shapes and sizes and positions, and bringing up Expose/Mission Control shows you something like a detective's corkboard as he t…
> it's hard to pick out your foreground window from 20 other background windows of varying shapes and sizes and positions
I’d argue this probably means you have too many windows open. Part of the abstraction for macOS programs is that the program isn’t the window, and vice versa. You can close all of a program’s windows without closing the program itself. This frees you up to close windows willy-nilly and know that you can just open them back up again if you need to. Keep just what you need for the current task-at-hand open on your desktop and close everything else.
Personally, I’ve actually been using Stage Manager, which takes rapid-unitask- switching toward its maximum level. Just one app open on each screen at a time. Other windows hanging out in-sight, but not cluttery. Switching’s just a click away, and of course all the keyboard shortcuts work nicely, too.
Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you look at old screenshots of how people used desktop computers [1], it was rare to see fullscreen windows, even on the tiny monitors of the day, and when most people used only a single monitor. Today, we all have gigantic monitors, many have more than one, but for whatever reason people want to maximize or tile windows. Maybe it's the influence of the fullscreen only, unitasking paradigm from phones and tablet c…
I keep my browser fullscreen because websites usually break (read: horizontal scrollbars, or ridiculously narrow columns for content) or go into a mobile view if I don't. I keep my terminal (read: text editor) fullscreen because then I have enough horizontal space to have two panes open next to each other (sometimes with an additional directory viewer to the left). 99% of the time, I'm in the terminal or the web brow…
Can you name a website which does this? I use everything except games and my IDE in windowed on different machines and I have never experienced this problem in 10+ years of doing so. It can only happen if you make the browser window extremely narrow.
Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple refuses to do things all the time. Aside from the aforementioned window-management gaffes, here's what I think is the most ridiculous design defect of the iPhone, which I reported first as an engineer there and repeatedly as an independent dev: It does not provide audible notifications of MISSED CALLS. I mean... WTF? A 1990s StarTAC (and probably most other phones) provided this obvious feature. So did 1980s an…
If your parents had an emergency why would they call once and only once? Every person thinks that their missing feature is the most important feature ever and they’re mad Apple hasn’t implemented it yet. You have even resorted to incorrectly labelling a nonexistent feature as a bug. Imagine what iOS would be like if Apple actually implemented the billions of niche edge-case features like this. It would be an absolute…
What a dumb argument. As I already pointed out, this is a feature that was standard for years on EXISTING PHONES and other products, which Apple "forgot." In the modern world, it is expected that if you call someone, they will be notified. Why on earth should someone have to call every few minutes until he "gets through?"
Do you think this is the '50s, where someone tells the operator "Keep trying!"
Not to mention, this is an OPTION, one that Apple already added for TEXTS. Why is it OK for texts, but not phone calls? Are you similarly outraged over the option for texts?
Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple refuses to do things all the time. Aside from the aforementioned window-management gaffes, here's what I think is the most ridiculous design defect of the iPhone, which I reported first as an engineer there and repeatedly as an independent dev: It does not provide audible notifications of MISSED CALLS. I mean... WTF? A 1990s StarTAC (and probably most other phones) provided this obvious feature. So did 1980s an…
I would HATE if my phone kept on informing me of missed calls or messages when I’ve put it down somewhere. I’ll check it in my terms; that’s why it’s not in my hand
That's why it is an OPTION. An OPTION. As I said, Apple already implemented this exact feature for TEXTS. Are you outraged over that?
Nobody said you'd be FORCED to endure the horrible nightmare of being informed of missed calls.
What world do you live in?