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The Mac Pro Lives

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Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#351

Post by georgespencer »

issa wrote: post #318
Eun wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Window management in OSX is horrible. Finder is even more horrible. It reminds me of the Windows 95 Explorer. A network drive hangs? Good luck with Finder..., the whole system halts.

My number one complaint about OSX is also window management. I've never found anything comparable to the way Windows 7 let you use the left/right arrows to line up windows on half the screen. That is the only thing I miss about Windows, but it's a pretty big one. Also, when dis/connecting monitors on OSX, windows often get lost. ps- if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

Not sure what specifically you're talking about here, but if you wanna line up two windows side-by-side you can long click on the green "full screen" traffic light button in the top left of an app's window (e.g. Word), and choose which half of the screen you want it to maximise in. Then do the same for another running app in the other half and it'll split the screen between two apps at full size.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#352

Post by zeveb »

jamesrcole wrote: post #66
alexkadis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oasqjPHpxyI Obi-Wan: "That boy is our last hope." Yoda: "No...there is another..."

I know the reference, but I don't understand what is meant by referring to it as "the last hope" and what/why something else is an alternative to that. That a Linux based system is an alternative for a powerful Unixy system?

> That a Linux based system is an alternative for a powerful Unixy system?

As I noted elsethread, it really is. I used to use Macs exclusively, and I'll never willing leave Linux now: it really is that much better. The problem is that Windows & macOS are too constrained by their installed base: they don't have the freedom to be really revolutionary in their UIs, nor can they afford to support deep customisation (GNOME & KDE have similar problems — but one needn't use either GNOME or KDE to use Linux). Linux, meanwhile, offers a user true freedom: I can use a tiling WM, I can write code and bind keys to do anything I want. A Linux box running StumpWM and emacs is the closest thing the modern world offers to a Lisp machine, and it's awesome.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#353

Post by scholia »

m_mueller wrote: post #290
SippinLean wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X Specifically? People typically point to the telemetry and forced updates, but I've managed to disable both, using what were admittedly much-too-difficult procedures or third-party software. It's annoying, but not that annoying. I really like Finder and Spotlight, but not enough to be tied, via licensing, to any specific hardware. Less cluttering--I can uninstall apps…

Specifically: * HiDPI support in all apps, whethere they are aware of it or not. * Built-in PDF editing and creation from all printable content. * POSIX scripting and CLI. * Very clean and consistent configuration system (defaults). Reset an app to factory? Delete one plist file and potentially an app support folder. Got a new Mac? You could even boot it up from the old harddisk. Good luck doing that with windows reg…

> The best keyboard-only UI (although ribbons were a big step backwards in that regard - very hard to discover now)

Use the Alt key.

For example, open Word and press Alt to show the keyboard commands. If you want the keyboard commands for the Home tab, press H as shown.

Alternatively, to open the Ribbon and show the keyboard commands for the Home tab, press Alt-H.

So, if you want to center some selected text in Word, press Alt, H, then AC

If you want to insert an image, press Alt, N, P and so on.

The Ribbon makes Office programs much easier to use, so you probably won't want to learn many of these key sequences. However, the ones you already know will almost certainly work.

For the record, I much prefer Windows 10. However, the fact is that Apple doesn't sell any of the hardware I use. It doesn't make a proper tower desktop and it doesn't make a small rotating-screen laptop that doubles as a touch tablet.

Even if I was willing to compromise on hardware, less-functional Apple products would cost 2x to 4x more.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#354

Post by jerf »

Keyframe wrote: post #238
csomar wrote: post #178

Am I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X. And please, don't tell me Ubuntu or other linux flavors. They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). Also god forbid you have a problem (especially a har…

From my perspective: If MacOS had: up-to-date OpenGL support, Nvidia made drivers that supported new cards for it, was not locked into Mac hardware - that would be tremendous. On the other hand, if Windows had a proper shell and cli tools, like cygwin with zsh, but native and not Ubuntu layer inside - that would be tremendous. If Linux, any desktop variant (Fedora my poison), had Adobe's support for their DCC apps an…

"if Windows had a proper shell and cli tools, like cygwin with zsh, but native and not Ubuntu layer inside"

With my understanding of the Windows architecture, such as it is, there isn't a great distinction between "native" and "Ubuntu layer" because the "native" is really already a "'native' layer". If they continue to polish the Linux support, it will basically become as native as the core of Windows already is.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#355

Post by audunw »

chefandy wrote: post #162
jlgaddis wrote: post #5

For me -- and, I suspect, many others -- this is too little too late. Just a few months ago, I spent somewhere around $4500 (all-in) putting together a new workstation. It runs Linux instead of OS X and this has led to me using my (4-year-old) ThinkPad more than my (18-month-old) MacBook Pro (when I'm "on the go"). I actually plan on selling the MBP; I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm sure this is great news…

Especially since the whole virtual escape key thing– being a default layout vim user for 20+ years– I'd love to follow suit, but I need Adobe Creative Suite. The tools available on Linux aren't even ballpark. Getting OS X on a VM has always been fussy and frustrating, and if I wanted to work with Windows I'd just use a Windows laptop. On top of that, the apple magic trackpad is just great. Fussing with extracted boot…

> Especially since the whole virtual escape key thing– being a default layout vim user for 20+ years

I really don't understand how there can be vim users that haven't remapped escape.

Like, if you care about ergonomics enough to complain about making a rarely used key into a touch key, how can you not care enough to remap that key if you use it more often?

And Mac OS even has built-in support to remap caps-lock to escape, and has had for a long time I think.

Funny side-note: I've broken the keycap for my escape key (on a TypeMatrix keyboard).. yet I haven't bothered to try to fix it. It's just not worth the trouble.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#357

Post by notduncansmith »

issa wrote: post #318
Eun wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Window management in OSX is horrible. Finder is even more horrible. It reminds me of the Windows 95 Explorer. A network drive hangs? Good luck with Finder..., the whole system halts.

My number one complaint about OSX is also window management. I've never found anything comparable to the way Windows 7 let you use the left/right arrows to line up windows on half the screen. That is the only thing I miss about Windows, but it's a pretty big one. Also, when dis/connecting monitors on OSX, windows often get lost. ps- if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

I use Spectacle for this, simplest thing I've found so far: https://www.spectacleapp.com

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#358

Post by inDigiNeous »

Keyframe wrote: post #238
csomar wrote: post #178

Am I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X. And please, don't tell me Ubuntu or other linux flavors. They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). Also god forbid you have a problem (especially a har…

From my perspective: If MacOS had: up-to-date OpenGL support, Nvidia made drivers that supported new cards for it, was not locked into Mac hardware - that would be tremendous. On the other hand, if Windows had a proper shell and cli tools, like cygwin with zsh, but native and not Ubuntu layer inside - that would be tremendous. If Linux, any desktop variant (Fedora my poison), had Adobe's support for their DCC apps an…

Agree on the OpenGL support. I really wish Apple would just update OpenGL to the newest OpenGL so I wouldn't have to change platforms completely in the near future.

Then again, developing for Apple currently means more compatibility with old hardware and drivers, but OpenGL 4.3 (which Apple doesn't support) includes Compute Shaders, something I would really like to explore, but can't as Apple supports only 4.2 with a limited amount of extensions.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#359

Post by Karunamon »

yokohummer7 wrote: post #226
phyrex wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's terrible to script, you cannot make use of the billion unix command line utilities (and there is no equivalent eco system either), you need to use the mouse too much, and it's awful to program with in any but a small number of sanctioned programming languages.

> It's terrible to script I'm pretty sure you didn't try PowerShell. It is at least as good as bash, if not better. > you need to use the mouse too much I find this more problematic on macOS. I was forced to use a mouse much more on macOS. It doesn't even allow me to press the yes/no dialog only using a keyboard. On Windows nearly every item has a shortcut, sometimes even better than GNOME (but worse than KDE, IMO).

Powershell might have some neat features, but the verbosity of the commands (don't bring up shortcuts here either - you need the full commands as that's what everyone else is using) just drives me batty. I find that they don't lend themselves well to mnemonics or easy memorization.

Who needs ls when you have Get-ChildItem?

Who needs grep -r 'pattern' when you have Select-String -Path c:\ -Pattern pattern?

Now that I think about it, Powershell has a conceptual similarity to Applescript. A proprietary, verbose, and hard-to-discover English-like syntax belying a great amount of power over the target platform.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#360

Post by rrdharan »

issa wrote: post #318
Eun wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Window management in OSX is horrible. Finder is even more horrible. It reminds me of the Windows 95 Explorer. A network drive hangs? Good luck with Finder..., the whole system halts.

My number one complaint about OSX is also window management. I've never found anything comparable to the way Windows 7 let you use the left/right arrows to line up windows on half the screen. That is the only thing I miss about Windows, but it's a pretty big one. Also, when dis/connecting monitors on OSX, windows often get lost. ps- if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

I use Optimal Layout and the sadly-now-discontinued-but-still seems-to-work Zooom/2 for alt-window dragging:

http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ http://www.coderage-software.com/index.html

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