Make macOS consistently bad unironically • Hacker News Board

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#251

Post by raydev » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:19 AM UTC

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.…

It's been more than 10+ years that I've been able to Option+Click the green button to fill the screen. Works for any app, and always has, unless that app explicitly disallows resizing. That's not recent.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#252

Post by zadikian » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:27 AM UTC

drivers99 wrote: post #104

bobthepanda wrote: post #72

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.)

Option-clicking the green button maximizes it similarly to Windows, rather than going fullscreen. I never used fullscreen just because of the slow animation it used, and now it makes even less sense on my new MacBook with the notch. It basically replaces the menu bar with a blank bar.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#253

Post by zdragnar » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:34 AM UTC

JSR_FDED wrote: post #248

markdown wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Don't be a child

Vulgarity aside, I can sympathize. For years I've been told by designers that discoverability and intuitive interacting patterns are so important, yet every aspect of modern design focuses so much on minimizing "distractions" that features go undiscovered. We get forced into suboptimal workflows and usage patterns because everything gets over-fitted to the lowest common denominator.

This is the biggest reason I love Linux. I can choose my own desktop, or even forsake the desktop entirely for a simpler window manager, without changing operating systems. Some are hyper focused on a tailored experience (gnome) while others let you configure to your heart's content (kde).

There's sacrifices to be made, of course, but not having to live under the oppression of Apple's beneficiary dictator designers is absolutely worth it for me.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#254

Post by AlexandrB » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:37 AM UTC

raydev wrote: post #251

al_borland wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

It's been more than 10+ years that I've been able to Option+Click the green button to fill the screen. Works for any app, and always has, unless that app explicitly disallows resizing. That's not recent.

Wow, I learned something new.

Why is it that some of the most useful features in Apple products are impossible to find on your own? I recently also learned about "three finger swipe to undo" in iOS instead of shaking the damn thing like it owes me money.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#255

Post by noisy_boy » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:42 AM UTC

ddtaylor wrote: post #195

I have never been happier to be a long time Linux user. Our systems are working significantly better than ever before and I have personally converted more people to Linux in the last year than the 15 years before that.

Particularly KDE. They have had some ups and downs but finally they have built a great foundation with Plasma and Plasma dark mode with Breeze is such a great balance of flexibility and fairly consistent look and feel. I stuck around with Gnome for too long in the name of simplicity but once you appreciate that Plasma gets out of your way once things are exactly how you want it, I have come to appreciate not having to install extensions for everyday "normal" things a lot more.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#256

Post by bigyabai » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:51 AM UTC

nomel wrote: post #249

zarzavat wrote: post #237

People obsess about SIP but just remember that SIP does nothing to prevent the most common type of malware (ransomware). If you use SIP and use package managers (npm, cargo, pip, etc) outside of a VM you are substantially more vulnerable to attack than someone who doesn't use SIP and doesn't use package managers. So if you want to fix your corners, you can do it guilt-free by adopting some better security practices a…

Sure, if you run software from strangers on the internet, while explicitly giving them access to your systems, bad things can happen. But SIP is definitely a net good that makes many things directly impossible. Do you have a system in mind that prevents the user from doing this?

> Do you have a system in mind that prevents the user from doing this?

Sure, macOS could adopt an iPad-style security system that refuses to run all software outside the App Store. It works on iPhone and iPad just fine, all the prosumers love it.

It's not like native darwin triples are a popular compilation target. There wouldn't be any vast tragedy if the macOS shellutil authors were told to use zsh in a VM instead, it would separate the parts of macOS that Apple cares about from the parts they don't seriously support. WSL and Crostini achieves this on vastly weaker hardware with great results.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#257

Post by g3dar » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 5:02 AM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#258

Post by halapro » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 5:15 AM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #237

People obsess about SIP but just remember that SIP does nothing to prevent the most common type of malware (ransomware). If you use SIP and use package managers (npm, cargo, pip, etc) outside of a VM you are substantially more vulnerable to attack than someone who doesn't use SIP and doesn't use package managers. So if you want to fix your corners, you can do it guilt-free by adopting some better security practices a…

SIP protects the OS, not you nor your files. If you run third party software that can run `rm` of course you're vulnerable to data loss. Apples and oranges.

SIP guarantees that you will be able to turn on your computer in safe mode and remove the malware, whereas without it your OS is toast.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#259

Post by stackghost » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 5:20 AM UTC

I feel like the only dude on the planet who uses fullscreen workspaces on Mac.

The number of times I have noticed the corner of my windows is precisely zero because each important application gets its own workspace, so the window frame doesn't get rendered. Sometimes I'll tile two windows side by side on my external monitor but even then this is a complete non issue for me.

Are you guys just running everything on the one desktop workspace in windowed mode? That seems like madness.

Re: Make macOS consistently bad unironically

#260

Post by annie511266728 » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 5:33 AM UTC

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.

Or maybe people focus on corners because it’s one of the few visible things they can actually complain about — the real issues are harder to pin down.