Live data from Hacker News

Make macOS consistently bad unironically

lr0.org

31–40 of 398 posts

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#31
post #9

Between the rounded corners that don't reach the edges of the viewport, and the behavior when opening a new app for the first time, it feels like Mac's UI is optimized around the assumption most users won't expand windows to fill the whole screen, but rather leave them half-sized somewhere in the middle. Does anyone actually do this? Especially for heavy-duty applications like my web browser and IDE, this has always…

Probably not the norm, but I use a large 4K monitor and no scaling. I haven’t maximized a window in years. They look ridiculous like that. Especially web pages with their max width set so the content is 1/4 the screen and 3/4 whitespace.

I have three 27" screens (iMac in the center and two thunderbolt displays on each side) and I use most of my "daily driver" applications fullscreen (single monitor). So, things like Xcode, VSCode, web browsers, mail, Quicken, Spreadsheets and Word Processing, and so on. This gives me usually at most 3 things to do at once. Occasionally, for smaller apps, like calculator, messages and so on, I won't fullscreen them. But for my main workflows, it's fullscreen all the way.

My actual biggest pet peeve with this setup is the vast number of web sites that deliberately choose to limit their content to a tiny column centered horizontally in my browser, with 10cm of wasted whitespace on each side.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#32
post #16

I must say that all this fuzz about the corners actually reflects rather well on macos. If the biggest flaw of a OS is the border radius of its windows, you've got yourself a pretty decent OS! It's not gonna make me leave my darling Linux, ofc, but i think this whole debacle can only be interpreted as praise. On second thought, it might also be considered a mediation on people's tendency to bike-shed.

> If the biggest flaw of a OS is the border radius of its windows, you've got yourself a pretty decent OS!

There are loads of other flaws with the OS. It just so happens that people care a lot about the design of Apple's products, so people talk about these details.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#33

One of my claude code projects was going to be "theghostofsteve", a social media platform where people post things they love and hate about appleOS things. Likes/Dislikes would be "genius/it's shit". And in all likelihood, the platform would surface that most users think "it's shit." The platform would aggregate by major/minor version, and you could see in totality whether the current version of macOS/iOS would make…

Wouldn’t “insanely great”/“it’s shit” be more Steve than “genius”/“it’s shit”?

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#34
> disabling MacOS system integrity [protection], which results in making them possibly vulnerable

Not really, if you have malware that has root access on your system I think you're already pretty screwed, especially considering that you don't even need root to read all your saved passwords and personal files https://xkcd.com/1200/

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#35
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not the norm, but I use a large 4K monitor and no scaling. I haven’t maximized a window in years. They look ridiculous like that. Especially web pages with their max width set so the content is 1/4 the screen and 3/4 whitespace.

I use a 40” 4K screen. If I ever accidentally full screen a window, and it’s not in night mode, I am instantly blinded by a wall of mostly white empty background!

Do you have the brightness on your monitor set really high or something?

I frequently use macOS on a projector, it doesn't quite fill my wall floor to ceiling but it comes close. I don't use full screen often, but I do it occasionally as a focusing strategy, and it's fine.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#36

I love that there are people who are observant enough to notice these kinds of things, a vanguard for those of us who are blithely unaware and protected due to their vigilance.

Apple used to know this. You don't notice these things, but your subconscious does. You start to trust it less when things get inconsistent and don't "just work".

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#37
post #16

I must say that all this fuzz about the corners actually reflects rather well on macos. If the biggest flaw of a OS is the border radius of its windows, you've got yourself a pretty decent OS! It's not gonna make me leave my darling Linux, ofc, but i think this whole debacle can only be interpreted as praise. On second thought, it might also be considered a mediation on people's tendency to bike-shed.

The biggest flaw is that the system is opinionated, so you cannot change anything you dislike.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#38
post #9

Between the rounded corners that don't reach the edges of the viewport, and the behavior when opening a new app for the first time, it feels like Mac's UI is optimized around the assumption most users won't expand windows to fill the whole screen, but rather leave them half-sized somewhere in the middle. Does anyone actually do this? Especially for heavy-duty applications like my web browser and IDE, this has always…

Probably not the norm, but I use a large 4K monitor and no scaling. I haven’t maximized a window in years. They look ridiculous like that. Especially web pages with their max width set so the content is 1/4 the screen and 3/4 whitespace.

I too have a huge monitor. How anyone can use one without a tiling window manager is beyond me

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#39
post #9

Between the rounded corners that don't reach the edges of the viewport, and the behavior when opening a new app for the first time, it feels like Mac's UI is optimized around the assumption most users won't expand windows to fill the whole screen, but rather leave them half-sized somewhere in the middle. Does anyone actually do this? Especially for heavy-duty applications like my web browser and IDE, this has always…

I actually feel the opposite? The current green button action not only makes the window fill the entire screen, it also hides the menu bar AND creates a new virtual desktop and hides all of my other apps. And it seems to me that's what the majority of people want.

Meanwhile, I want to use my graphical, mutli-window preemptive multitasking operating system to, you know, use multiple applications at the same time.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#40

I love that there are people who are observant enough to notice these kinds of things, a vanguard for those of us who are blithely unaware and protected due to their vigilance.

Apple used to know this. You don't notice these things, but your subconscious does. You start to trust it less when things get inconsistent and don't "just work".

Never trust people who play mind tricks like this.
Post reply on HN