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Make macOS consistently bad unironically

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111–120 of 398 posts

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#111

Clearing notifications on macOS Tahoe is ridiculously tedious. The "Liquid Glass" button is slow to respond, the notifications hang for a bit before being cleared, and then sometimes you have to jiggle the cursor to clear the next one. It's absurdly frustrating. And the updates to Music (formerly iTunes) are so bad the entire team should be dressed down, Steve Jobs style.

The notification buttons have always felt a little squishy and unresponsive since they were added. They’re terrible.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#112
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've seen half a dozen Mac users and none of them maximized the window very often. They usually had a mishmash of like 12 windows open and randomly all over the screen. Then they used the Alt-Tab to get between them. Basically wherever it opened is where it stayed.

Window management is one thing that MacOS has long been weirdly bad at.

I think there's a conflict between the users who use it on studio displays and users who use it on 13 inch laptops. The Mac team at apple won't pick a side or come up with two solutions.

That's not completely true, they've been pushing swipe between fullscreen apps for a while.

But that doesn't make any sense on an iMac.

So the recommendation from pro users is to use Alfred to manage windows.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#113
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’s very rare that I maximize an application. I’m always stacking. However, I don’t think it’s an optimizing assumption: I am frequently fighting with the window manager as I rearrange my windows and it automatically maximizes them because I got too close to an edge of the screen

In general my browser is dead center or slightly to the right so I can access my other windows (terminal, throw away text editor, etc) easily where command tab is insufficient (when I have multiple terminal windows, eg)

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just installed Kubuntu last week so I could get the additional shift-drag targets to split my 34" ultrawide into 3 sections, or bump to the edges for the half filled.

Install i3wm, it will change your life.

I’m currently using Krohnkite [1] to get dynamic tiling in KDE, and Klassy [2] to get i3wm-like pixel borders instead of full window decorations.

[1]: https://github.com/esjeon/krohnkite [2]: https://github.com/paulmcauley/klassy

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#115
post #70
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 IMO, this has been their assumption for years, and it actually turned me off when I tried getting used to Mac circa 2006-2007. Coming from Windows at the time, I just couldn't get over a weird anxiety that my application window wasn't maximized,…

As a 38" ultrawide owner myself, I use vscode or intellij maximized most of the day, depending on the codebase I'm Browsers only ever get maximized to the left/right half screen for me too Which is something macos should really improve on though, the ux is pretty bad compared to Windows and Linux there

I split a vs code window and a browser or a browser and terminal window on my 13" mb air. Usually need additional context on the same screen.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#116
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…

Maximizing everything whether the document fills the screen or not is very Windows user behavior. macOS is not meant to be used that way.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#117
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…

macOS only recently got an option to make windows fill the screen. For most of history what most people would assume is a maximize button (the green one) was actually a zoom button. It sized the window to what the OS thought was appropriate for the content (to the best of my knowledge and experience with it). Apple then made things go full screen, but in a special full screen mode, so macOS worked more like the iPad.…

You can double click the grab handle area of a window (which is less obvious than ever in Tahoe) and it'll fill the window to the display.

Except Safari, which just fills out the window's height vertically. Kinda weird to make an exception like that but I don't hate it, because I generally use Safari for reading, and shrinking the browser's width forces lines of text to not get too long if the website's styling isn't setting that manually.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't maximize anything on a monitor that wide, I do appreciate Window's snap to half/quarter functionality for monitors that wide, and I wish Mac had the same ability natively.

> I wish Mac had the same ability natively Hover over the green button in the top left of the window. I recently found out about that menu for moving a window between screens, which is also an option it has. (I also just found them in the Window menu if you prefer that. I dont; the options take an extra level of hovering to get to.)

You can also long-click the button instead of hovering. Also, see the menu bar entries related to window management, which replicates these same functions but can be bound to keys in the system settings.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#119
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…

for the longest time I never did this, but then I got a gigantic 4K screen, and I realized that it was almost giving me vertigo having apps like my IDE fullscreened, because I literally have to move my head in order to look everywhere.

so in response I changed my windowing strategy to having a set of windows floating around at exactly the size I want them, and then the advantage of the enormous screen is just how many windows I can have open at once

that being said, I use KDE not MacOS, and 90% of Mac users I'd guess are on laptops, so using this strategy sounds completely insane to me. On laptops I still default to fullscreening or "half-screening" most apps.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#120
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! After many years of using only linux or windows machines, I was assigned an iMac at an internship and noticed the friction with fullscreening things. I decided not to fight it and spent the next year happily working in little windows and making frequent use of the "mission control" gesture.

However, after the internship I went right back to fullscreen/window tiling in linux, so I can't say I really preferred it. Even now as a Gnome user with a big monitor and magic trackpad on my desk - which gives me ~equal access to either approach - I fullscreen everything.

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