Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

noheger.at

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 1001 posts

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#221

Post by storus »

Saline9515 wrote: post #114
foxandmouse wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is not exactly in a position to attract switchers. Yes, but Linux is finally in that position, not to mention we're seeing silicon from intel and amd that can compete with the M series on mobile devices.

Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently). Let's not even talk about the case when you have monitors that have different DPI, something that is handled seamlessly by MacOS, unlike Linux where it feels like a d20 roll de…

I recently bought a MacStudio with 512GB of RAM and connected it to a LG 5k2k monitor. For some reason there was no way to change the font size (they removed the text size "Larger Text ... More Space" continuum from the Display section of settings) so I ended up with either super small or super large fonts without anything in-between. In the end I had to install some 3rd party software and mix my own scaled resolution with acceptable font size. This has never been a problem on Linux in the past 10 years, all I needed to do at worst when it wasn't done out of the box was to set scale somewhere and that was it.

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#222

Post by carlosjobim »

foxandmouse wrote: post #57
signal11 wrote: post #9

Tahoe is a macOS mis-step on par with Windows 8 or Windows Vista. If you’re from Apple and reading this, my feedback is pretty succinct: “I don’t recommend others upgrade. I wish I didn’t.” Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is not exactly in a position to attract switchers. Let’s see if Apple can turn things around. iOS 8+ did improve on iOS 7’s worst bits.

> Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is not exactly in a position to attract switchers. Yes, but Linux is finally in that position, not to mention we're seeing silicon from intel and amd that can compete with the M series on mobile devices.

Linux doesn't have much in the way of quality apps for people who aren't programmers, server administrators, or gamers.

Most people want to get productive work done with their computer, and OS X has top tier apps for every need possible.

No good e-mail app, no good office apps, no good calendar app, no good invoicing app, no good photo editing app, no good designer app, etc

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#223

Post by drob518 »

Apple really screwed the pooch on this last set of UI upgrades. They have been known as UI experts for decades and then they produced this unusable mess. I’ve upgraded my iPhone and iPad, but I’ve been delaying upgrading MacOS, hoping that they will fix most of the mess before I switch. If I was Tim Cook, I’d be looking for a scalp. This is as bad as the butterfly keyboard mess in terms of usability, IMO.

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#224

Post by Daneel_ »

blinded wrote: post #182

I game on windows because of anti cheat software requirements. Windows is garbage. The windows + tab order is never consistent. Not having a good built in shell and don't get me started if you ever have to edit the registry for anything. Super poor experience.

I fully agree, but the winkey + tab order is simply in order of last used, with the most recent being at the upper left and oldest at the lower right.

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#225

Post by keyringlight »

lateforwork wrote: post #41

This behavior is similar to Windows 11. You have to position the mouse just outside the window. It is non-intuitive and awful. These are problems humanity solved over 35 years ago (see NeXTSTEP). Why are these designers breaking basic features that worked for over 35 years?

IIRC, win8 was the last windows to have thick graphical window borders, and that was after they got rid of the texture/aero look from vista/7, so at that point you at least had something graphical to grab onto which (mostly?) matched where the cursor was. Then in win10 onwards they shrunk the border down to one pixel with the zone around it where you can click off the window but still affect it.

On the back of my mind I think part of this was the move to fit scaling to large resolution monitors (i.e. 4k+) work better, as a graphical border of a fixed pixel width will shrink proportionally compared to a border that is as thin as it can be. For a while I've felt that it's a missed opportunity on high res displays to not use more detailed art for window chrome as pixel wide will only get smaller and more difficult to distinguish, such as the minimize/maximize/close icons which remain pixel wide line art even at big scaling.

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#226

Post by smrq »

ziml77 wrote: post #152
Nextgrid wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Vista comparison is unfair. I think a lot of the bad rap Vista got was from trying to run it on underpowered hardware thanks to marketing XP-era machines as "Windows Vista Capable". I actually ran it on good HW (the kind that could run Crysis) and I didn't have anything bad to say. Yes, UAC could be considered as annoyance by some but it's no different than "sudo" on single-user Linux machines and we seemingly ha…

> Yes, UAC could be considered as annoyance by some but it's no different than "sudo" on single-user Linux machines and we seemingly have no problems with that (I wish we'd move on past that because it is damn annoying and offers no security benefit). It was wild to me when I was testing out if I wanted to move over to Linux as my full-time desktop OS how much it was asking for my password. And it didn't even have a…

Give your user NOPASSWD if it's really that bothersome. You can also potentially set it up to use a fingerprint reader if you have that hardware.

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#227

Post by drob518 »

kristopolous wrote: post #51

I swear, this reign of visual artists as dictators has to stop. I'm sure people noticed this issue internally and brought it up but some thing by some designer was seen as biblically sacred and overruled all reason. I've been at companies were you get severely punished... sometimes fired for subordination for fixing an obviously broken spec by a designer emperor. It's normal to be "I guess 2+2=5 here, whatever" as if…

Yea, the programmers aren’t to blame here. In fact some of the visual effects they have achieved are pretty cool. The designers are at fault because they prioritized visuals over usability. Literally nobody I know thinks “Liquid Glass” has been an improvement. The feedback is universally negative.

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#228

Post by 1f60c »

projektfu wrote: post #206
lynndotpy wrote: post #18

This post is very well presented and it highlights how absolutely bizarre the latest update was. The video demonstration was also very well done. I remember a few years ago, people complained when Apple merely made the entire operating system uglier. (Something about a gradient on the battery?) A lot of people would talk hyperbolically ("apple KILLED macos!"), and that's indistinguishable to an outsider when an updat…

I especially liked the part with the hand trying to grab the plate. Perfect imagery.

Me too, made me chuckle :)

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#229

Post by bsimpson »

lunar_rover wrote: post #193

Are we reaching the death of UI design? Feel like we're now at the point where being mid-bad makes something one of the best for many. I miss Windows 7 and OS X.

Scott Jenson - who worked on the classic Mac for Apple, and Android for Google - recently gave a talk on this:

https://youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQ?si=BVOxUPjoULhwiclE

The tl;dw is that copying UX lets others invest energy in identifying the paradigm. Linux, which tends to be starved for resources, has historically been reasonably well served by letting Apple and Microsoft define UX, while Linux focuses on implementing it. However, those headlining companies haven't been investing in desktop UX excellence in recent years. It's time for open source projects to embrace experimentation and take the mantle of cutting edge UX, because Apple et. al. aren't paving the way anymore.

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#230

Post by imiric »

amelius wrote: post #187

Why does the UI have to change all the time? Can't they just keep it the same? If cars were like computers, the steering wheel would be in a different place after every maintenance check. Anyway, I'm on Linux, using Gnome Classic as my WM, and I don't have these stupid "everything is suddenly different now" issues.

Cars have similar UX issues as well. See the whole touchscreen saga.

It's also an issue on Linux, to an extent. GNOME has a tendency of forcing UIs on users, and Ubuntu with Unity, now GNOME again, etc. Though, thankfully, since the user is free to choose their own desktop environment and window manager, it's not as pressing of an issue.

I realized many years ago that simpler UIs deliver the best UX. This is a large reason why I love the command line so much. Most programs have a fixed and stable interface, and can be composed to do what I want. For graphical programs I prefer using a simple window manager like bspwm on X, and niri on Wayland. These don't draw window decorations, and are primarily keyboard-driven, so I don't need superfluous graphics. I only need a simple status bar that shows my workspaces, active window, and some system information. I recently configured it with Quickshell[1], and couldn't be happier. I plan to use this setup for years to come, and it gives me great peace of mind knowing that no company can take that away from me. I will have to maintain it myself, but there shouldn't be any changes in the programs I use to break this in a major way.

[1]: https://github.com/imiric/quickshell-niri/tree/main/fancy-ba...

Post reply on HN