Impressions from a first-time Mac user • Hacker News Board

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#171

Post by darkteflon » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

ysleepy wrote: post #87

My recommendations for Mac Users: * Put the Dock left or right, vertical space is precious (trust me, do it for a week and then decide) * Setup Hot-Corners (Settings -> Mission Control -> Hot Corners) - Upper-Right Corner as Mission Control (Must be upper right so spaces are immediately shown) - Lower-Left Corner as Application Windows - just fling your mouse curser into the corner (use std. gestures on the trackpad)…

Hot Corners for Mission Control and App windows is interesting! Gonna try that today.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#172

Post by darkteflon » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 10:13 PM UTC

thanatos519 wrote: post #29

uuyi wrote: post #18

This is a story as old as time. When you’re used to something else the change hurts. I have found it far better to not bring your mental baggage with you and meet the new platform as its level rather than try and make it the same as the old one. I have gone MOS > RiscOS > WinNT -> Solaris -> Linux -> Win7 -> macOS and it hurt every time.

Indeed, and the change that hurts me when I try to use a Mac is the fact that there are things that I can't change. I prefer focus-follows-mouse and no-raise on-focus, and those are apparently structurally impossible in macOS. "I can't change it to work the way I like it" is a totally legitimate complaint and Linux has a strong advantage in this regard.

Focus-follows-mouse is great. That’s the biggest thing I miss from Linux.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#173

Post by darkteflon » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 10:14 PM UTC

moonchrome wrote: post #118

I've had a long background of Windows and Linux usage but I've used MacOS a significant time as well - I'm daily driving a 2018 MacBook Pro 15 and use a Windows Desktop for WFH because it's much more powerful an silent. And I'm also developing on .NET core right now which is a Microsoft tech. With that said I would say MacOS grows on you. On my 34 inch screen using snapping is just not practical - I just move windows…

Docker is still such a mess on Mac. Losing hope that they’ll ever sort it out.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#174

Post by linsomniac » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 10:16 PM UTC

I also recently got a MBP and it's the first time I've used a Mac since the '80s, mostly using Linux for work and a Chromebook for home.

I agree with what this article has to say. Great hardware. For my primary reason for spending the money on it, it runs rings around anything else out there (video editing).

The OS I find mostly ok, but a few things feel pretty rough:

Updates. My terminal blocks updates from happening when I'm not using it. Updates take an amazingly long time where you can't use the system. I'm talking like the majority of an hour. It makes Windows updates look speedy, and I hate how long Windows updates take. Linux and ChromeOS do this right: You can use the system while it is doing updates, then it's just a reboot into the updates

The app finder (3 finger pinch), I sure wish it was a little smarter. In Firefox if I go to the URL bar and type "n" it knows I probably want "news.ycombinator.com". Every time I 3 finger pinch and type "b" it's like a babe in the woods, never having met me before. Now, every time I type "blue", MacOS thinks I want "bluetooth" until I add the "j" and it can figure out that, like every time I've done this, I want the BlueJeans app because it's meeting time...

I still haven't gotten used to clicking the yellow window button and the app "hides", the only thing on my screen is firefox or whatever, but when I start typing it's still going to that hidden app.

That said, it's still a great box. Mostly I use it as a web browser and a SSH terminal to my work machine. But, it has absolutely solved an infrequent pain point for me: Editing videos of my kids. Last fall I edited a concert video, the hour long concert took me ~40 hours to do because my wife's laptop, reasonably powerful but not the highest end GPU, required so much time generating optimized media and churning, and even then everything I did was slow as molasses.

The Mac has handled all video editing tasks without breaking a sweat. I feel like an idiot for spending the money for an infrequent task, but it is a 100% solved problem now.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#175

Post by IncRnd » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 10:19 PM UTC

moonchrome wrote: post #151

IncRnd wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I constantly use window snapping on my desktop Mac with two widescreen monitors. But, I use keystrokes to do so, using Rectangle, not the mouse.

For me even the vertical space fully extended is too much visual area since I need to move my eyes/head to scan top to bottom. but I do have a 5k panel relatively close at low scaling so maybe your setup is different

It likely is different based on what you've said. I hope you keep finding and using what works for you. It's often different between people even who have similar configurations.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#176

Post by replygirl » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 10:26 PM UTC

anhner wrote: post #90

replygirl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

system76? sounds cool can it run excel and apple music?

Ah yes, apple music, the pinnacle of computing and benchmark by which to judge all professional-level personal computers.

alright how about framer

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#177

Post by lwkl » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

verelo wrote: post #52

loganmarchione wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here. I like this perspective, I never thought about it this way!

As someone that came from a windows world for the first 10ish years of my career, i found this pretty frustrating too. I honestly still do. Sometimes it feels like I just cannot get to the window I want.

There is a separate shortcut to switch between windows of the currently selected application cmd + ` or ctrl + down arrow to show the windows.

So you alt + tab to select the application and switch to the right window. I personally think it's more reliable than Windows especially if I have a lot of Windows open (I used Windows for the last 10 years). On Windows I regularly switched to the wrong windows because of my fat fingers...

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#178

Post by gen220 » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

ysleepy wrote: post #102

gen220 wrote: post #40

Re: cmd+tab issues, consider trying cmd+space+(first letter or two of the app), followed by cmd+`. Especially for touch typists, I think it's faster than cmd+tab: doesn't require you to use your mental "app icon classifier", and it's impossible to over/under-shoot the target. Scales O(N), where N is the number of windows open in the app you're switching to, whereas cmd+tab + cmd+` is O(N) + O(M), where M is the numbe…

Just use Hot Corners and "Application Windows"+"Mission Control", its superior.

It's a cool feature, but it does require touching the trackpad/mouse!

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#179

Post by rubyist5eva » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 10:39 PM UTC

> On the other hand, macOS has a weird snapping implementation where you need to click and hold the green “zoom” button, then choose to “tile” left or right. But, once you pick another window to fill the other half, both of those windows (together as one) move to their own virtual desktop. I want them split on my current desktop, not on a separate desktop.

Hold the option key and it snaps on the same desktop.

Or install Rectangle.app (free) which gives you mouse dragging and keyboard shortcut snapping like Windows/Linux.

Re: Impressions from a first-time Mac user

#180

Post by max599 » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

danaris wrote: post #108

thanatos519 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In summary, macOS does not behave like Windows or Linux out of the box, and it's difficult or impossible to change many of those behaviours."

...And can you easily change Windows or Linux to behave like macOS, in these fundamental ways?

sometimes you can.

A good exemple is Windows 8.1.

Depending on who you ask, it's either the best OS Microsoft has ever made or one of the worse. If you know how to install a different Start Menu, you can get >95% of the benefits of W10/W11 with no downside other than game compatibility. If you are stuck with the menu provided by Microsoft, it's almost literally unusable. It's so bad that and hated by literally everyone that IMHO it deserved a "fire managers/leaders who approved it" type of response.