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The erosion of the Mac experience

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Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#391

Post by mattlondon »

white_dragon88 wrote: post #210
lastangryman wrote: post #133

I feel like I may be the only developer that prefers Windows to MacOs. I really, really just do not get the "Mac Experience". It feels so clunky and counter intuitive. - Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the projec…

It’s preferred due to several reasons: - lack of degradation of performance due to bloated registry, fragmented disks (probably out of date but still hurts my soul to think out) - a control panel that doesn’t suck - several things due to its unix heritage which are far better then windows imo (case sensitive file system, bash/zsh terminal) - lack of concern regarding bloatware installed by vendors - don’t have to cra…

For what it is worth, I've not had a modern windows install crash on me in years. I think I had a blue screen of death perhaps once with windows 7 (I think?) and was gobsmacked to see it had a qr code and a sad smiley face! How unexpected!

On a Mac ai have had the beach all of death many times, even recently on M1 Macs.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#392

Post by sodapopcan »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #371
sodapopcan wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not one to defend the "mac experience" but some of the stuff you mention I actually really like, namely like the separate key-combo for switching between app windows and the two modes of full screen (although I never use full-full screen anymore). Finder is definitely not great. It's improved over the years which is kind of sad as it's not a whole lot better. You still can't cmd+x a file to move it to another loc…

You can cut and paste files in Finder, it’s just a decision that’s made on the “paste” side of the process instead of the “cut” side. Copy as usual with Command-C, then at your destination move the file with Command-Option-V. This allows you to change your mind about whether you want the file to be duplicated or moved without having to first navigate back to the source and perform an additional action.

Oh cool! I never knew that. How long has that been a thing?

In a way I actually like this better as in Windows I used to cut and every-so often I'd blow out my clipboard somehow (at least, I have memories of that... it was like 20 years ago).

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#393

Post by esarbe »

teddyh wrote: post #347
kitsunesoba wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see Linux (or other GNU-desktop-nixlike) becoming a full-time macOS replacement for me because no DE works the way I'd like it to. You've got KDE (Windowslike), GNOME (what if iPadOS were adapted into a desktop OS), XFCE (middle ground between Windows and Classic Mac OS), and Cinnamon (Classic Windowslike), and Pantheon (what if iPadOS looked like Mac OS X Mavericks). None that are an obvious choice for someo…

> no DE works the way I'd like it to How come macOS magically just happened to work the way you liked it to? Answer: It didn’t, you just adjusted yourself to use macOS, but now you’ve ossified and think everything not what you grew up with is unnatural.

"Intuitive" is just a code word for "familiar".

The only intuitive interface is the nipple. And even grasping that interface can be a difficult task for a baby.

(After reading that, I have to append; no pun intended.)

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#394

Post by zamalek »

lastangryman wrote: post #133

I feel like I may be the only developer that prefers Windows to MacOs. I really, really just do not get the "Mac Experience". It feels so clunky and counter intuitive. - Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the projec…

I'm with you here. I've been using a Mac at my new job since November. I fucking hate it. I have burned so much time on stuff not working, and it's not just me - others seem to just accept and forget it. One great example of this is the recent bout of zero days: forty five minutes for a minor release update? How on earth does anyone think that's acceptable?

I'm no longer a fan of Windows, having moved along to Linux on my personal machine, but both Windows and Linux are in a completely different universe to MacOS when it comes to bare minimum competency.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#395

Post by kemayo »

vikingerik wrote: post #352
lastangryman wrote: post #133

I feel like I may be the only developer that prefers Windows to MacOs. I really, really just do not get the "Mac Experience". It feels so clunky and counter intuitive. - Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first, and I need another shortcut to cycle through the windows of that application? When I have an IDE with 5x instances, hosting different projects, it's a pain switching back to the projec…

FYI for anyone who doesn't know: that other shortcut is Command+` to cycle between windows of one application. It's totally nondiscoverable (I read about it here), but once I learned that, it felt amazingly intuitive to separate the concerns of application-switching and window-switching. And Command+` works consistently on MacOS, unlike on Windows where every app reimplements its own multiple-document interface and s…

If you're looking for another not-very-discoverable shortcut that's quite useful... press Command-Tab until you get to the application you want, then without releasing it press up (or down). You'll get the exposé view for the selected application's windows. While that's open you can arrow between them to select the one you want or type to select by window name.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#396

Post by wishfish »

runjake wrote: post #327
derefr wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The personal solution is to not buy monitors from manufacturers that fail to put EDID chips in their HDMI signal path. The set of manufacturers that do this is well-documented.

I give up. I couldn’t find that list. Where do I look? It would be useful to know what brands to avoid.

There's probably a list somewhere on the internet but I've never seen one. When I went monitor shopping six months ago, I used the Macrumors forum heavily. There are long threads on the forum for monitors which didn't work well because of edid or other factors. That's how I ended up with an Asus ProArt 4k instead of the Dell I initially wanted. Everyone complained about how MacOS handled the Dell but no one had a bad word for the Asus.

Though it was a little frustrating to me that I had to monitor shop in the first place. I bought an MBA to start some iOS projects. I wanted to use my still great 1080 IPS Dell screen that I had used for years with Windows and Linux. But MacOS looked absolutely horrid on it. I know MacOS prefers higher resolution screens, but I was surprised it couldn't manage to handle a ridiculously common resolution.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#397

Post by kitsunesoba »

sodapopcan wrote: post #392
kitsunesoba wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can cut and paste files in Finder, it’s just a decision that’s made on the “paste” side of the process instead of the “cut” side. Copy as usual with Command-C, then at your destination move the file with Command-Option-V. This allows you to change your mind about whether you want the file to be duplicated or moved without having to first navigate back to the source and perform an additional action.

Oh cool! I never knew that. How long has that been a thing? In a way I actually like this better as in Windows I used to cut and every-so often I'd blow out my clipboard somehow (at least, I have memories of that... it was like 20 years ago).

Based on an archive.org snapshot[0] of an Apple support page[1], the move shortcut has been in place since at least 2015.

And yeah, the Mac way makes more sense to me too. It's a lot less likely for Command-Option-V to be fat-fingered than both Ctrl-X and Ctrl-V.

Shortcuts like this are all over the place in macOS, and have been for decades. They're usually discoverable by glancing through menus while holding down various modifier keys.

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20151128115451/https://support.a... [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#398

Post by metadat »

egypturnash wrote: post #318

There is really no reason to keep on adding stuff to OSX/MacOS. It's done. It does everything it needs to do. It has been done for something like a decade. It should be in maintenance mode, with bugs being fixed as they show up and nothing really changing. And yet every year there's a new version. Mostly it's a bunch of new features on the bundled programs that I don't ever touch. And a new skin on the GUI. Sometimes…

> I doubt I'm gonna be upgrading that M1 from whatever OS it comes with until the latest version of Illustrator stops working on it, or Apple stops doing bugfix releases

Unfortunately security updates are more important than ever and patching old OS versions is not a high priority for any OS vendor. Even Ubuntu LTS only gets critical updates for something like 5 years.

The tragic reality is too many thousands of people's jobs at Apple depend on delivering new features for it ever to go into maintenance mode.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#399

Post by mcculley »

derefr wrote: post #281
account-5 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OPs solution is the only valid solution they have open to them though.

The personal solution is to not buy monitors from manufacturers that fail to put EDID chips in their HDMI signal path. The set of manufacturers that do this is well-documented.

I walked into an Apple Store and asked, “What monitor/TV should I buy such that my AppleTV remote can control the volume and be the only remote I need?” The geniuses shrugged. I asked, “What brand are these displays in the store that are connected to the demonstration AppleTVs?” They shrugged. We turned them around so I could see the backs of the monitors and I wrote down the model numbers.

It is far from obvious to me.

Re: The erosion of the Mac experience

#400

Post by kruxigt »

piva00 wrote: post #257
kramerger wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly where have you been working? I haven't seen that many macs outside design departments in any big European company I have visited. Some big companies such as Sony actually have Linux as their first choice, windows second.

Large-ish tech companies in Sweden.

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