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

161–170 of 398 posts

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#161

Post by aetimmes »

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…

I think we're already seeing the operating systems that AI can build, and I don't think they've been an improvement.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#162

Post by kibwen »

layer8 wrote: post #153
amelius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s not only that it’s opinionated, it’s that it’s idiosyncratically opinionated. It would be different if it had a boring, middle-of-the-road opinion.

It's not that it's idiosyncratically opinionated, it's that its idiosyncratic opinion is insane, user-hostile, and flies in the face of decades of experience crafting user interfaces.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#163

Post by kibwen »

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.

In other words, MacOS is fine as long as you're undiscerning and not at all detail-oriented. Imagine telling Steve Jobs that this was the prevailing attitude needed to make using a Mac bearable.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#164

Post by bigyabai »

justonceokay wrote: post #160
intrasight wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> compared to Windows I never said that

Well sure we can compare it to niche OS like Linux or vaporware. But without comparison then we probably aren’t taking into account the real life complexity of a desktop OS. As a related anecdote, my friend said my car was ugly. I asked him what cars he thought looked good. He said “I don’t like cars”. As a result I realized his opinion was worthless

You can compare it to prior versions of macOS, if you insist on assessing it from a relativistic standpoint. Apple didn't have this issue 10 years ago.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#165

Post by [deleted] »

anthk wrote: post #137
moron4hire wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, anything that has an MDI metaphor going on should be ran fullscreen. Otherwise, what's the point? If the idea is to use the OS desktop space as the application window organizational space, then don't let people make apps that have different document panes. This goes towards something that I've felt for a little while: at some point in time around the early 2000s, operating system vendors abdicated their respons…

Opera had tabs. Tabbed under Unix had tabs. Dillo had tabs. TCL/TK had damn tabs in 1997.

[deleted]

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#166

Post by moron4hire »

anthk wrote: post #137
moron4hire wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, anything that has an MDI metaphor going on should be ran fullscreen. Otherwise, what's the point? If the idea is to use the OS desktop space as the application window organizational space, then don't let people make apps that have different document panes. This goes towards something that I've felt for a little while: at some point in time around the early 2000s, operating system vendors abdicated their respons…

Opera had tabs. Tabbed under Unix had tabs. Dillo had tabs. TCL/TK had damn tabs in 1997.

Thank you for the additional examples of how the major OS vendors failed to respond to clear need within the market.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#167

Post by [deleted] »

dbatten wrote: post #23
_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 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,…

[deleted]

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#168

Post by michael_storm »

_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…

Some users switch apps by dragging windows around the screen, like a messy stack. A friend of mine didn't even know about Cmd+Tab to cycle through open apps. Users are weird.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#169

Post by moron4hire »

anthk wrote: post #138
moron4hire wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did, but those were static tabs. It was pretty easy to create tabs as a form of sub-organization. But the treatment of tabs as documents was new-ish to Chrome/Firefox. Other applications treated multiple, concurrent document views as whole, resizable, sub windows inside of an "MDI" panel. Look at how older versions of Word, Excel, and Visual Studio worked. The tool trays stay consistant as you move between documen…

Virtual desktops in Unix predate Visual Studio. I'm pretty sure there was a concept of tabbed interfaces somewhere in the Amiga or BeOS or any other OS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(interface) Don Hopkins himself can enlighten us about it (NeWS) better than me literally anyone in this thread, jut wait.

What does that have to do with my criticism of the two most popular operating system that they failed to innovate or adapt in areas that showed obvious need?

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#170

Post by kccqzy »

_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 hate maximized windows. I like it when my windows are not maximized but I usually do have significant overlap between windows. Then I switch between windows based on the sliver of window that’s visible even when other windows are in focus. It’s the spatial way of thinking; just like how Finder purists think each folder on your disk should remember its own window size and location so you use your spatial memory to locate Finder windows. I find that this is significantly faster for my brain to process compared to the Windows style where almost all windows are maximized and people use Alt-Tab to switch between windows.

I would in fact say that the culture of not maximizing windows was a small reason why I switched to Mac OS X in the early 2000s.

Post reply on HN