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No Start Menu for You

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Re: No Start Menu for You

#271

Post by IIsi50MHz »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #60
rightbyte wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Win10 at work and the Calc app lags for like 10s when opening before I can type in it. I firmly remember it started to do that after some reboot update ...

The new calc app has always been a travesty. Taking at least a full second or more to load, with an obnoxiously large interface. The original calculator opened instantly and had a completely functional ui. I get angry every time I need to launch calculator on a machine I have not configured with SpeedCrunch. Almost better to use Excel.

> Almost better to use Excel.

Ouch! I hope you mean Excel 2010 or earlier; all the later ones are so slow to launch or open document that I tend to leave Excel and files (that I'll need to access quickly) open until something forces a reboot or until I bork Excel's state by QAing or triaging somebody's unfortunate VBA (sometimes even mine, too; shhh!). This remained true on a performant gaming computer while working from home. It was always a delight, remoting into somebody's machine that still had a functional Excel 2010 on it.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#272

Post by sizzle »

The lagging inputs in Windows reminds me of the concept of a “Windows Minute”

Definition: A reference to time where the culculated period bears no connection to the reality of that time span. Used to understate the significance of accurate measurement.

Origin: Microsoft Windows' inability to convey an accurate file download, or transfer, time.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Windows%20mi...

The lag in Windows is what made me switch to Mac, Using Finder and Spotlight and managing applications in the Applications folder made me never want to experience Windows again.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#273

Post by bradgessler »

zwaps wrote: post #34

I think search is hard generally. I switched to an M1 Mac pro recently, and it has its own set of challenges. For instance, there is no start menu but a search bar called Spotlight. You do your quick math in there (where you'd call calc.exe in Windows). However, it only accepts your query as math... sometimes. Like 50% of the times. Otherwise it searches the web. If you search for a program, it takes just that tiny s…

> If you do consider switching, one warning about Mac is this: Window management is utter garbage. Maximizing is actively discouraged. Tiling left / right etc? Doesn't exist. Everything must be random size and overlap weirdly. Instead, each new version brings a new quick switch or workspace functionality that I have never seen anyone use.

There’s a $0.99 app in the App Store called Magnet that solves these problems.

It’s absurd that Apple doesn’t build this into their OS and wastes so much time on stuff like Stage Managed, but it is what it is. I highly recommend Magnet.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#274

Post by yzydserd »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #237
oriolid wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When this happened to me, I was told that the memory can't be replaced without replacing the entire motherboard. Which means that after warranty period has passed the machine is either very expensive to repair or unrepairable.

Which is why I pay for the monthly AppleCare.

TL;DR - Apple makes a huge profit on selling AppleCare.

Recent estimates [0] shows that in 2021 Apple had revenue of $8.5B on Applecare while claims cost $2.6B. Also, the claim rate has been dropping YoY while revenue from AppleCare has been growing YoY.

Almost always, insurance schemes are profit generators (ie not sold at a loss). The reason to buy into a scheme like AppleCare is because you couldn’t recover from an immediate loss. e.g. The only non-mandated insurance I pay for is House Building insurance.

This is why I do not pay for AppleCare.

[0] https://www.warrantyweek.com/archive/ww20211104.html#:~:text....

Re: No Start Menu for You

#275

Post by andrewmackrodt »

zwaps wrote: post #34

I think search is hard generally. I switched to an M1 Mac pro recently, and it has its own set of challenges. For instance, there is no start menu but a search bar called Spotlight. You do your quick math in there (where you'd call calc.exe in Windows). However, it only accepts your query as math... sometimes. Like 50% of the times. Otherwise it searches the web. If you search for a program, it takes just that tiny s…

Regarding a lack of start menu, I find it useful to pin the Applications folder to the dock Once pinned, right-click and set your preferred view mode, e.g. grid or stack. However this approach is limited in that it is a folder view, so will omit anything in your user's ~/Applications folder.

I enjoy macOS' maximize (fullscreen to new workspace behaviour) as I usually use it only when using a single screen with a trackpad. However, double clicking the titlebar will maximize more conventionally like Windows, Gnome or KDE.

BetterTouchTool is IMO a must have application on macOS. It supports window tiling.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#276

Post by paulcapewell »

avx56 wrote: post #210
paulcapewell wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see an Explorer folder under that path on my installation.

That's a Windows registry path, you can use regedit to edit the values. Microsoft has a reasonable guide for it: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-serve...

No, I know - thank you - but I mean there is no Explorer at that path in regedit for me.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#277

Post by iggldiggl »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #60
rightbyte wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Win10 at work and the Calc app lags for like 10s when opening before I can type in it. I firmly remember it started to do that after some reboot update ...

The new calc app has always been a travesty. Taking at least a full second or more to load, with an obnoxiously large interface. The original calculator opened instantly and had a completely functional ui. I get angry every time I need to launch calculator on a machine I have not configured with SpeedCrunch. Almost better to use Excel.

It's also worse for mixed keyboard and mouse operation [1], because some of the buttons (2nd, the trigonometry, functions and history submenus) now retain input focus after clicking on them, so pressing Enter operates that button again instead of completing your calculation.

[1] If you can't remember the shortcuts for some of the more obscure functions – never mind that they're also badly documented and you have to find the list of shortcuts by searching for them yourself on the web. I have a memory that way back – possibly not even in Windows 7, but only XP – the calculator included an offline help with all the keyboard shortcuts listed. Nowadays the Windows 10 calculator doesn't include any sort of help at all, not even a link to the online help.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#278

Post by LelouBil »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #268
ptx wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been in the process of happening, albeit very slowly, since 1996: https://reactos.org/

I've heard of ReactOS, and it's not what I meant—the 'pipe dream' was Microsoft itself open-sourcing Windows and all its components, from the NT kernel to every single tiny program in Windows, like the various MMC plug-ins, Aero shell, Explorer, Task Manager, etc. It's highly unlikely, ergo 'pipe dream'.

The new terminal, and more importantly conhost [0] are open sourced, that's why I believe some day far in the future it will happen.

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

Re: No Start Menu for You

#279

Post by gcbirzan »

acdha wrote: post #166
gcbirzan wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't know what they're talking about, I had a mac until recently and very often I'd get up to 500ms delay in writing in a Chrome text box.

Anything more than roughly 10ms from the key being depressed to the display updating is not normal on a Mac. If you’re seeing 500ms that’s either something specific to Chrome (the timing is slow enough I’d believe a network call for something like spell checking or suggestions) or some kind of extension interfering with the normal system behavior. I’ve heard about that with some security software so it can be useful…

It's not specific to chrome, it's just worse in chrome. Iterm doesn't have this problem, but pretty much everything else I use does: intellij, slack, chrome, Firefox. We use crowdstrike, but even before that I had this problem.

My mac is just painfully slow, if I start docker it becomes almost unusable. This is a 2019 Intel one, btw, it might not be so bad on m1s, but when I got the job (and the mac) , only the original one external monitor m1s were available.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#280

Post by acdha »

gcbirzan wrote: post #279
acdha wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything more than roughly 10ms from the key being depressed to the display updating is not normal on a Mac. If you’re seeing 500ms that’s either something specific to Chrome (the timing is slow enough I’d believe a network call for something like spell checking or suggestions) or some kind of extension interfering with the normal system behavior. I’ve heard about that with some security software so it can be useful…

It's not specific to chrome, it's just worse in chrome. Iterm doesn't have this problem, but pretty much everything else I use does: intellij, slack, chrome, Firefox. We use crowdstrike, but even before that I had this problem. My mac is just painfully slow, if I start docker it becomes almost unusable. This is a 2019 Intel one, btw, it might not be so bad on m1s, but when I got the job (and the mac) , only the origi…

Interesting, there's definitely something abnormal about that system — the old 2012 Mac Book Air I used to use still has an order of magnitude better latency than what you're reporting.

If I owned that I'd run a full hardware diagnostic[1] and would strongly consider doing a clean wipe and reinstall. One easy thing to try would be booting in recovery mode[2] and seeing what the latency is like in the built-in applications there after it starts up. If that's normal speed, you could create a new user and see if that's affected to see whether it's something like a problem with the spelling dictionary, etc. (it's possible that this has nothing to do with text input and is just a general problem, too, but that's the first thing which came to mind).

1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731

2. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-macos-recovery-...

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