Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Make macOS consistently bad unironically

lr0.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 398 posts

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#81

Post by al_borland »

Reason077 wrote: post #44
_jab wrote: 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…

It depends very much on the size of the screen. On a small 13” laptop screen? Sure, you’re going to be running apps full-screen a lot of the time. On a big desktop monitor? No, except for games and playing movies, I’ll almost never expand an app to fill the entire screen.

Last time I had to work on just my laptop screen (16”), I actually found Stage Manager pretty useful. On a larger screen, or for more casual use, I do not.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#84

Post by FroshKiller »

_jab wrote: 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 use a MacBook and a Mac mini personally, and I do not generally maximize any application that isn't implicitly a full-screen experience (e.g. a video player or a computer game).

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#85

Post by al_borland »

crest wrote: post #73
_jab wrote: 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…

Yes. I think the assumptions are made by people with two displays of at least 32" and ≥4K resolution.

I think it’s more of a carryover from the original Mac’s in the 80s.

Trying to maximize a window, even 23 years ago when I first moved to OS X, was a completely manual process. It was designed around windows, not walls. And screens were much smaller and lower res back then.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#86

Post by mabedan »

rafram wrote: post #4

This isn’t a part of macOS 26 that bothers me, honestly. I don’t spend a lot of time stacking windows and measuring their corners.

To me it's a little like the situation with charging the Mighty Mouse. It's become a meme to post a picture of it on its side being charged, but if you own one it doesn't really matter, as you charge it once a month for 15 minutes while you're at lunch.

There are things which definitely do bother me like the Liquid Glass, but the window corners really don't bother me. And I'm into design and constantly inspect parts of ui with Digital Color Meter app.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#87

Post by SunshineTheCat »

amarant wrote: 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.

I was thinking the same thing. I actually agree with most of the complaints people have made about the corners, but it seems so small compared with literally every interaction I have with Windows.

As someone who works on Windows, Mac, and Linux; Windows stands alone in my opinion as the "stepping on legos with no socks on" of operating systems.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#88

Post by jiehong »

thesuitonym wrote: post #39
_jab wrote: 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.

One issue with windows maximised with the green button is if you have more than 1 window of the same app: you might alt-tab to the app, but cmd-` is not switching to the other window of the same (while id does if not maximised.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#89

Post by zackmorris »

Not to mention that WindowServer seems to take 100+% cpu since the upgrade. Also I can't paste filenames in the save file dialog in some apps. And the URL field in Safari is just weird.

My computer was running so slowly that I had to minimize transparency in system preferences somewhere. I think I also turned off opening every app in its own space. And I hid the icons on the Desktop in Finder settings somehow, which helped a lot. There are countless other little tweaks that are worth investigating.

I also highly recommend App Tamer (no affiliation). It lets you jail background apps at 10% cpu or whatever. It won't help with WindowServer or kernel_task (which also often runs at 100+% cpu), but it's something.

I can't help but feel that there's nobody at the wheel at Apple anymore. When I have to wait multiple seconds to open a window, to switch between apps, to go to my Applications folder, then something is terribly wrong. Computers have been running thousands of times slower than they should be for decades, but now it's reaching the point where daily work is becoming difficult.

I'm cautiously optimistic that AI will let us build full operating systems using other OSs as working examples. Then we can finally boot up with better alternatives that force Apple/Microsoft/Google to try again. I could see Finder or File Explorer alternatives replacing the native ones.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#90

Post by peacebeard »

_jab wrote: 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…

Yes, all the time. I understand that if you have a setup where you do everything in your IDE you could reasonably leave it full screen all the time and I get why that works for some people. I'm not one of those folks and I use separate IDE, terminal, browsers, and other windows and use window management to allow myself to see multiple of them at the same time and switch between them by clicking on what I want.

Also just want to be 100% clear: Tahoe is bad and I hate the changes and I don't think the OS should prefer one way of working over the other. I just hope it's helpful to explain my perspective.

Post reply on HN