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Make macOS consistently bad unironically

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Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#121

Post by bigyabai »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #55

With only a little sense of self aware irony, one thing I hate about so much dialog these days is how vehement opinions are. I don't particularly like the rounded corners, and think it's a regression. It's also... fine. It's not the difference between usable and entirely unusable. And I see this kind of attitude all over the place now. A slight change, some slightly non-ideal behavior and all of a sudden a product is…

I feel the opposite. macOS has had excellent UI in the past, and the rationale was usually that Apple took designer feedback seriously. Designers told Apple that advertisements in the notification menu was a no-no, they warned about layering text on low-contrast glass effects. They stopped OSX' UI from becoming visually bloated and low-density like the eventual Big Sur+ design language. We only get these kinds of issues when the chain of communication is cut: https://noheger.at/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/scrambled... https://noheger.at/blog/2026/01/11/the-struggle-of-resizing-...

If you want ads in Spotlight or Launchpad, telling people to tolerate "opinionated, and likely worse but also not breaking" features is exactly how you get it. It's how Windows got there.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#122

Post by kogir »

_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…

MacOS assumes you won’t full screen every app because all of them ship with large enough, high enough resolution monitors that full screening a single app is a waste of valuable space. Unlike on cheap laptops with 1080p screens.

I suppose you could splurge for a Mac desktop and then get the cheapest, smallest screen possible, but I hope it’s rare.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#123

Post by hbn »

pram wrote: post #5

I'm not a fan of the look in Tahoe (especially Apple Music wtf happened there) but most of it I can totally ignore, and don't even notice anymore. Except for the tabs. I have Sequoia and Tahoe machines, and the tabs in Tahoe are so unbelievably bad in comparison. Like this ugly pill shape. I rarely hear this get brought up but they're astonishingly ugly, worse than the previous design in every way.

You're not alone, I was calling out how ugly Safari is in Tahoe a few weeks ago!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47282085#47310011

Probably my least favorite redesign in the whole update. Why is everything an oval? It's just bizarre.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#124

Post by kellpossible2 »

kogir wrote: post #122
_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…

MacOS assumes you won’t full screen every app because all of them ship with large enough, high enough resolution monitors that full screening a single app is a waste of valuable space. Unlike on cheap laptops with 1080p screens. I suppose you could splurge for a Mac desktop and then get the cheapest, smallest screen possible, but I hope it’s rare.

writing this reply on a 13 inch macbook air...

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#125

Post by sunnyps »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #93
zackmorris wrote: post #89

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…

> Not to mention that WindowServer seems to take 100+% cpu since the upgrade That's because some app is spamming window updates. It's been an ongoing problem for many releases. AFAICT, WindowServer 100% CPU is a symptom, not a cause.

But apps shouldn't be able to hammer WindowServer in the first place. If your app is misbehaving, your app should hang, not the OS window compositor!

FWIU there's really no backpressure mechanism for apps delegating compositing (via CoreAnimation / CALayers) to WindowServer which is the real problem IMO.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#126

Post by bombcar »

daemonologist wrote: post #120
_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! 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.…

I don't know what it is, but fullscreen on Mac (even dock-showing "fullish screen") feels wrong in a way that fullscreen on Windows/Linux feels "right".

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#128

Post by LeifCarrotson »

kogir wrote: post #122
_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…

MacOS assumes you won’t full screen every app because all of them ship with large enough, high enough resolution monitors that full screening a single app is a waste of valuable space. Unlike on cheap laptops with 1080p screens. I suppose you could splurge for a Mac desktop and then get the cheapest, smallest screen possible, but I hope it’s rare.

I run 27" 4k and a 34" ultra wide monitors on my desktops, and my main laptop is a P16S with a 16" 3840x2400 OLED typically docked to one of those screens when not on the go, and I almost never use windows that are not snapped to fullscreen or at the very least to halves or quarters. "Large enough" scarcely applies to a MacBook Air or Neo with a 13" display, and I bet a TON of those get docked to cheap 21, 24, and 27" 1080p screens.

I'd like to be able to snap things to the middle third, especially on the ultrawides.

Only little calculator widgets, property panels, and modal dialogs that get immediately closed after use don't get maximized or at least docked to fill some region. I hate the cluttered, layered feeling of having a bunch of non-full-screen windows overlapping, I want to have a dozen apps open and making optimal use of the available display area.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#129

Post by karlgkk »

_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…

> 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

The assumption is that the window should be the size of the content of the document inside.

It turns out that this approach works well for many applications, especially what the mac was designed for in the 80s and 90s. And it's horrid for modern "pro" applications.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#130

Post by achandlerwhite »

al_borland wrote: post #78
_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…

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.…

by only recently do you mean 15 years ago with Lion?
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