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Preview, the Mac app people forget about

fourth-wall.co.uk

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Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#161

Post by atonse »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #136
atonse wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tell people this is one of those features which is why people are fans of macOS. Stuff is just part of the system for years and years and we take it for granted when other systems don’t have these kinds of features.

This is sometimes true on a hardware level, too. For example, I was using a Bluetooth Plantronics headset for voice chat on my iMac G5 in 2005 because Macs had come standard with Bluetooth for a year or two at that point. It wouldn't be for another 5 years or so for midrange-and-above prebuilt laptops to start coming with BT and it wasn't until the past 5 or so years that enthusiast motherboards and desktops started…

I've been using Thunderbolt since TB 1, was it 2011? It was mind blowing at the time. With the original Apple TB Display it was so great to be able to just connect to the display and also get ethernet and my laptop charged.

I want Apple to have healthy competition to keep them on their feet but they often just run a different race.

(I have LOTS of complaints about Apple stuff, I am not a fanboy, but as a technologist, I like that they push the envelope and raise the bar in many areas).

I'm especially glad that we seem to be out of the Jony Ive era where every design decision was a head-scratcher.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#162

Post by sixstringtheory »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #130
hedgehog wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gotta say, for all of my (many, many) criticisms of macOS the save dialog seems fine to me. I almost always have the destination folder already open in Finder, if anything the improvement would be to put a list of Finder's open folders into the save dialog. Dragging it over works ok though.

A list of open Finder windows in the sidebar would indeed be lovely.

Not quite that, but macOS' new tabs-in-windows is close. I personally don't love keeping them all in tabs in a single window, but I can always select the Window > Merge All Windows option to gather all my disparate Finder windows together for this purpose.

(ETA: This wouldn't work in the save dialog though, I missed that detail)

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#163

Post by ask_b123 »

Something else I found (by browsing the linked page) is that you can drag (while pressing cmd) and drop one of your apps to the top of the Finder.

Removing the app by dragging it back results in a poof animation that I can only describe as adorable. It is so cartoony!

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#164

Post by leodriesch »

MawKKe wrote: post #43
josephg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to scan a document and have an iphone handy, you can also right click in Finder and "Scan document... from iPhone". It opens a UI on your phone that I've never seen before, and "scans" (photographs) pages of a document. When you're done the results end up in a new PDF wherever you clicked.

That iOS scan feature is "hidden" in the Files app. Open it on your phone and press the three dots in the top right corner and it should have "scan documents" option. You can also select "black & white" mode for text documents which saves a ton of space

You can also add Notes to your control center in settings. You can then long press the notes icon in control center and choose “Scan document”.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#165

Post by jitl »

solarkraft wrote: post #128
jitl wrote: post #7

Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems, and contributes to that “Mac has good UX” vibe. Last time I opened the Windows equivalent, it tried to sell me on Microsoft’s PDF-alike format… and asked me to connect Office365. Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, th…

> On other OSs, this moves the file to the directory shown in the dialog, or does nothing Apps on Linux (Gnome?) do it too.

Nice! The last time I used Gnome/Ubuntu as my daily driver (2019?) that wasn’t the case — or maybe wasn’t consistently the case.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#166

Post by herodotus »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #148
herodotus wrote: post #53

I really enjoyed working with the Preview team before I retired from Apple. My small group created a private framework that added "document reconstruction" to PDF documents: basically an inferred DOM based on whatever information (mainly geometric) we could use in the PDF document. Our moment of fame game at WWDC 2009, when Bertrand Serlet talked about Snow Leopard during the Keynote. At around the 5:10 mark he talks…

Ha ha, I know you. (And I retired just this last year, FWIW.)

It was fun, wasn't it? I am thinking of driving down some time this summer. Hope to see you!

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#167

Post by Bondi_Blue »

Another underrated feature: add Quartz Filters to a PDF file by Choosing File > Export, click the Quartz Filter pop-up menu, then choose a filter. You can create custom Quartz Filters in ColorSync Utility.app (Note: these are not the same as Quartz Composition Filters, which live in Automator workflows and Photo Booth.app).

For some inspiration: https://github.com/joshcarr/Apple-Quartz-Filters

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#168

Post by JKCalhoun »

herodotus wrote: post #166
JKCalhoun wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha ha, I know you. (And I retired just this last year, FWIW.)

It was fun, wasn't it? I am thinking of driving down some time this summer. Hope to see you!

I'm in Nebraska now — back in the midwest. I miss it though. I'll pop out this year again too but I suspect I'll miss you.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#169

Post by rbanffy »

solarkraft wrote: post #128
jitl wrote: post #7

Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems, and contributes to that “Mac has good UX” vibe. Last time I opened the Windows equivalent, it tried to sell me on Microsoft’s PDF-alike format… and asked me to connect Office365. Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, th…

> On other OSs, this moves the file to the directory shown in the dialog, or does nothing Apps on Linux (Gnome?) do it too.

I think it makes more sense than opening the file - you are looking at a place in the filesystem after all.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#170

Post by drcongo »

saagarjha wrote: post #66
hnlmorg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, this moves the file to the directory shown in the dialog, or does nothing. The reason other OS's don't support that macOS feature is because their open and save dialogue is usable on its own. In my opinion the open and save dialogue is one of the worst designed interfaces on…

What do you not like about the existing dialog?

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