I've been running Sonoma and it's going to stay that way for foreseeable future.
wish I did that :(
Make macOS consistently bad unironically
211–220 of 398 posts
Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand how we keep hearing so often here about Apple OSes being so amazingly simple, approachable and cleverly designed with a lot of attention paid to detail, while every practical productivity advice involves some undiscoverable trick, or combinations of tricks, that seems so arbitrary and obtuse. I don't like Mac, in large parts because of that. No amount of marketing and peer pressure will convince me…
Every system has its issues. It's really a question of which issues you can live with and which system ultimately fits your workflow best. After I got used to working in windows instead of full screen all the time, I can't really go back. Even on Windows I find myself working the way I do on macOS. Full screening every app made more sense on a 1024x768 screen (or smaller). Once I moved to a widescreen display (which…
The problem I have with this is that I was using a 1600x1200 21" display in 2000, and got used to workflows for it back then.
I am currently running a 16" display at a similar fractional scaled resolution (because Apple stopped understanding DPI after shipping the first LaserWriter, apparently).
Over that time, my eyes have not gotten better to match display DPI, so I'd rather have web sites just adjust the font size so that there are a reasonable number of words per line instead of rendering whitespace.
Non-full-screen windows would make more sense if Apple supported tiling properly, like most Linux WMs and also modern Windows.
MacOS sort of supports tiling in a "program manager shipped it + got promoted" sort of way, but you have to hover over the window manager buttons, which is slower than just manually arranging stuff. If there are any keyboard shortcuts to invoke tiling, or a way to change the WM buttons to not suck, I have not found them.
Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically
#213Earlier 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
MacOS has a built in 4x4 window tiling which works for this purpose for me. I don’t find ever wanting more than 4 windows open on an ultrawide. Definitely not as powerful as something like xmonad but useful for the majority of my use cases.
Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically
#214One 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…
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were a team, and Jobs would regularly tell people their work was "shit" if it didn't make sense.
Apple traditionally burned out its talent, and is no longer structured to follow Jobs original vision. There is a lot of goodwill with the users, but just like Sony/HP/IBM/Microsoft/Sun it can't last forever. The process-people entrench themselves, and ruin everything... just as Jobs predicted. =3
Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically
#215Between 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) eas…
> 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
Strange, I constantly get annoyed by how slow and unresponsive the Mac's tiling is when dragging windows to the edge. At the top it has at least half a second delay for no reason. But at least the newest version now has caught up with Windows 7.
Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about the minimize and maximize buttons being swapped without any way to customize it. That one drives me crazy.
What do you mean swapped?
That usually, maximize is next to the close button and all buttons are usually on the right side of the window bar
Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically
#217Between 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.
> full screening a single app is a waste of valuable space
Any space not used for the task I'm focused on is wasted. For me the actual problem is that switching apps/windows is too slow because of UI animations.
Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, Macs always have had the premise of "spacial window management" (or that's what Siracusa called it), so that's probably how you are 'supposed to' do it. Full Screen Mode was their answer to maximize, going back many years now (10.7).
The spatial Finder was something different: having each folder open a new window, and that particular folder's window always re-opening in the same position on screen, with the same window size and same layout of files inside. Having the position of each folder remain consistent and persistent allows you to remember a file's spatial location much as you would for a printed document on a physical desk (exactly where y…
With the classic OS, all the windows were supposed to work this way. And it seems most apps still do remember their window positions, making it easy to find them. (Expose even keeps the positions consistent when you 'zoom-out'.) Which is why Mac users tend to position their windows rather than relying on alt-tab or the dock or another app-switcher.
(IMO the spacial Finder was designed around floppies and small folders and didn't work so well with hierarchical folder views, so no big loss...)
Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically
#219Between 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 l…
> compared to the Windows style where almost all windows are maximized and people use Alt-Tab to switch between windows
Or just use the taskbar, which is literally made for switching between windows. Or it was, before Microsoft forgot its purpose.
Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 l…
> compared to the Windows style where almost all windows are maximized and people use Alt-Tab to switch between windows Or just use the taskbar, which is literally made for switching between windows. Or it was, before Microsoft forgot its purpose.
Still not my style though. When you close a window, all windows to the right of it in the taskbar get moved leftwards. This breaks spatial memory.