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KDE beats macOS

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201–210 of 308 posts

Re: KDE beats macOS

#201
post #6

Intuitiveness is just what you are used to at this point. If you've been in the Apple ecosystem your whole life, then their UX seems intuitive to you. If you haven't, then it makes absolutely no sense. I first touched an apple device in my 20's, there was nothing intuitive about it. I couldn't do anything and was extremely frustrated. I'm sure the same applies to apple folks trying gnome/KDE/windows. People are getti…

MacOS is interesting in that I know regular users who have used it for over a decade who still don’t grasp some of its basics. For example, the post actually makes a mistake when mentioning macOS doesn’t have Alt+TAB window switching. It does. You just have to do Alt+’. That being said, even though the OP is wrong, there’s a massive kernel of truth in that the majority of ordinary Mac users are unaware of this. Anoth…

> MacOS is interesting in that I know regular users who have used it for over a decade who still don’t grasp some of its basics.

This is true for every OS. Go observe non-tech office workers using Windows some time. I'm not certain things like hierarchical FS layouts (you know, the way every halfway-common filesystem and file browser works, and has approximately since desktop computers started existing) are really understood by a majority of people who've been using computers for a decade or more, let alone deeper concepts.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#202

I hate the Mac*, but even so, nothing on that list of complaints is valid. Here's an example of what I consider a valid complaint: the placement of a Mac's app menubar at the top of the screen, instead of the top of an application window, is wrong. Two pieces of evidence: (1) it leads to confusion with multiple monitors and (2) new Mac users invariably have trouble remembering to look for app-specific choices at the…

Fitt's Law is a factor, BUT I think the always-on-top menu bar made more sense when smaller screens were the norm. With a 4K monitor at the highest-possible resolution, it can take a loooong time to get the cursor all the way up there from the window I have tucked on the lower half of the screen.

I'm not saying you're right, but you're less wrong than you would have been when low-resolution monitors were the norm. That is, when Fitt's Law was developed.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#203
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have used/owned the macs at various points in my life. The user interface has remained consistent over the years, but it has poor usability compared to even Gnome due to the accompanying legacy baggage. Here's an example. Closing all document windows doesn't close the app. This is a design decision from 1984 (at which point we knew far less about the usability of Desktop UIs than we do now) which imho hasn't quite…

>Closing all document windows doesn't close the app I love this about macos. Its consistent: eg, you close documents with cmd+w one by one, until they're all gone. Then you press cmd+n to create a new document. This is consistent and logical. On other OS, cmd/ctrl+w does something different if you're closing the last document. Another example of the inconsistency it causes is in browsers when you close the last tab a…

Familiar != consistent. Mac is app-centric, all other mainstream OS's are window-centric, and they're all internally consistent. If you grew up with one system, the other feels alien and broken.

For example, on MacOS, alt-tab not cycling through the list of windows feels so absurdly broken to me that I don't even bother trying to use that shortcut anymore. Focusing apps that don't even have a visual presence on screen is also a source of heightened frustration.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#204
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree. I have an Android, and when I go to a product page on the app store, there is this huge "install" button clearly in a different color. Very good UX. I remember receiving a company iPhone years ago. I went to an app store product page, and couldn't find any install button. Totally confused I looked for some menu options or whatever. Turned out you had to click the "free" text behind the app title. Not a…

To expand on this, when you click that install button, you get a progress bar and a notification with that progress, so you can know what's happening and where it's at. Just got an iPad through work, and i tried to install an app - there was just a loading circle animation, without any context or information. Guess what, it didn't work (but of course it wouldn't say it isn't working, it just kept spinning for tens of…

> Similarly, on macOS, the scroll direction cannot be changed between mouse and trackpad.

Ha that's funny, because I'm also struggling with that one!

The general idea that Apple is good at UX is very wrong.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#205
post #6

Intuitiveness is just what you are used to at this point. If you've been in the Apple ecosystem your whole life, then their UX seems intuitive to you. If you haven't, then it makes absolutely no sense. I first touched an apple device in my 20's, there was nothing intuitive about it. I couldn't do anything and was extremely frustrated. I'm sure the same applies to apple folks trying gnome/KDE/windows. People are getti…

I don't agree. I have an Android, and when I go to a product page on the app store, there is this huge "install" button clearly in a different color. Very good UX. I remember receiving a company iPhone years ago. I went to an app store product page, and couldn't find any install button. Totally confused I looked for some menu options or whatever. Turned out you had to click the "free" text behind the app title. Not a…

Probably iOS 7 or shortly after. They murdered what had been hands-down the best UI for non-nerds of any OS I've ever seen, with that version. Lots of "buttons" that were just text and other terrible flat-UI garbage. They undid some of that since, but it's still not back to being as good as 6 was.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#206

I had to stop the job interview when suddenly they said that I must use Mac. They ship MacBook to you and you have no choice of using Linux or anything else. Corporate policy. It's literally unusable for me after 15+ years on Linux with KDE (mostly). Tried Mac for 4 months at one of the previous jobs but escaped to a comfort zone. Sometimes habits are too strong, and alternative is not appealing enough.

I find some of these "use a mac at work" companies do it because boring companies are trying to be "hip and cool". One place i know uses Java exclusively, but the devs all have macbooks because they are cool? How/why does a macbook improve java app development vs the standard issue Lenovo's? It is like these old and boring companies think that by using macs they are suddenly "trendy and hip" and the millennials will…

It is dramatically, nearly infinitely easier for an IT team to support a single platform, and forcing all employees to use Linux is an absolute non-starter.

Oh, you say, I'll maintain my own Linux laptop! But no, all company-owned computers must be managed by IT, and many of the tools they use to do so don't support any flavor of Linux. So what you're asking for is really quite a lot more work for IT, if possible at all, and not worth it, despite occasionally losing people as an employee.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not him but I share the same opinion. I've recently tried Windows 10 and 11 and the thing is trying to make you sign in to a Microsoft.com service from the moment you finish installing it. Dark patterns everywhere during the setup and in order to create a local account you must do weird stuff like inserting invalid Microsoft.com accountname or disconnecting the computer from the network during setup. Are you sure you…

I agree, but will add that you can avoid most of the consumer-focused adware junk by just installing Windows Server 2022. E.G., it is compulsory that the first account is a local account named "Administrator". Overall, it is a very minimal default install, with the focus being on reducing the attack surface.

The problem with that, aside from the licensing questions already raised by siblings, is that some things don't work on it, although they do work on regular win 10 / 11.

One such example is the Fortinet VPN client. It refuses to connect when running on Win 2019 and 2022 for some reason.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#208
post #171

The article seems ignorant of native tools built right into macOS. For example, it claims macOS is missing: > Missing native Alt+Tab and individual window switching (only does app switching) This is simply false, and the whole list is by someone who just hasn't made an effort to learn how to use a new OS they are not familiar with. For example, I just use Command-tilda, two keys right next to each other, to switch be…

What keyboard combination do you use to switch between all windows of all apps in one single UI? (Note: that keyboard combination should also make sense on ISO keyboards and be available without third-party apps)

By default that's Control+F4 (switches focus between all visible windows in all visible Spaces) and it "making sense on ISO keyboards" is irrelevant because (contrary to your claim in a different comment that macOS is not customisable) you can in fact change every keyboard shortcut that shows up in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts as well as remap your modifier keys in System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#209
post #6

Intuitiveness is just what you are used to at this point. If you've been in the Apple ecosystem your whole life, then their UX seems intuitive to you. If you haven't, then it makes absolutely no sense. I first touched an apple device in my 20's, there was nothing intuitive about it. I couldn't do anything and was extremely frustrated. I'm sure the same applies to apple folks trying gnome/KDE/windows. People are getti…

MacOS is interesting in that I know regular users who have used it for over a decade who still don’t grasp some of its basics. For example, the post actually makes a mistake when mentioning macOS doesn’t have Alt+TAB window switching. It does. You just have to do Alt+’. That being said, even though the OP is wrong, there’s a massive kernel of truth in that the majority of ordinary Mac users are unaware of this. Anoth…

> For example, the post actually makes a mistake when mentioning macOS doesn’t have Alt+TAB window switching. It does. You just have to do Alt+’.

Alt-Grave is not Alt-Tab. Alt-Grave only cycles between windows for a particular app. Standard Alt-Tab behavior should cycle through all possible windows. Apple copied the behavior incorrectly.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#210
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is the author of this article making statements like this that reveal they have not put in any effort to learn a whole new OS. Imagine if I switched to KDE and soon wrote an article bashing KDE because I just couldn't figure out how to do basic things. Some effort is necessary to see what an OS offers, and this author clearly hasn't done it.

macOS has no customizability, claiming that this makes it more "intuitive" and you don't need "effort to learn" it. If you need to spend "effort to learn" anyway, you might as well just go with something like KDE, where on top of having learnt the environment, you can now also customize it.

> claiming that this makes it more "intuitive" and you don't need "effort to learn" it.

just out of curiosity opened: https://www.apple.com/macos/ventura/ . Not a word on intuitiveness and effortlessness.

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