UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android • Hacker News Board

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#41

Post by falcolas » Fri, Mar 30, 2012, 6:43 PM UTC

emehrkay wrote: post #37

WayneDB wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find Expose or Mission Control nearly as useful as the Windows Taskbar. Unlike OS X where a really good Taskbar implementation cannot exist, I can add something just like Expose to Windows. It's called Switcher and it does pretty much everything Expose does. The Taskbar is still better though because it's always there and at a glance I can see what's running.

Windows' taskbar today === OS X's dock

Not really; you have the option of changing how it's presented: the new style where you can hover for windows, and the old style where each window is separate, but grouped by application. Also, an active application is more visible on the taskbar than it is on the dock; it's the difference between a visually highlighted icon versus a small light a not-insignificant distance below the icon.

And, perhaps most telling, the taskbar icons don't bounce around like a 2 year-old on sugar to announce that they need your attention.

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#42

Post by falcolas » Fri, Mar 30, 2012, 6:48 PM UTC

emehrkay wrote: post #30

falcolas wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have to say that my experience is exactly the opposite of yours; the window management experience in Mac Lion is significantly worse than Windows 7. I have to give one caveat, however, I use a non-Apple external keyboard and mouse. The change in responsiveness in the UI when you're no longer using the trackpad is astonishing. It takes me longer to perform tasks on my Mac than it does on my Windows 7 platform…

I find the window management better in OS X (kde, gnome with compiz) simply because it gives you a way to see an instant snapshot of all windows or all application windows with either a hot corner or key press. In Windows you have to mouse over the icon to get a preview that doesnt work all the time (I feel that it breaks if the window's content changes. it then shows the application's icon instead of the preview).

Mission control is somewhat nice, but it doesn't hold a candle to the very simple and time-tested method of using alt-tab. Alt-tab is ridiculously fast, works on windows instead of applications, and doesn't require you to switch to the mouse and visually search for the proper window.

Also, a new feature of Windows 7 (actually I think it first appeared in Vista) is Win-Tab. It is like alt-tab, but gives you a preview of the windows instead of their icons. If you really need to see what a window looks like while switching through your windows, that's the way to go. I don't care for it, as it's a bit laggy, but then so is Mission Control on my Macbook.

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#43

Post by emehrkay » Fri, Mar 30, 2012, 6:52 PM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #33

emehrkay wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I currently have a vm of windows 7 open on my mac with the host file open in notepad. Two lines are selected (as I needed to copy them from time to time). If that window loses focus, the selection stays, but if I click the titlebar to that window, giving it focus again, those two lines are unselected. There are many many quirks like this in Windows that you only notice once you use a different window manager.

Sigh... this is an issue with your VM and not Windows.

You're right. The deselection doesnt happen if I click the titlebar, but it does if I click the content area (that doesnt happen in OS X, I havent checked any Linux window managers).

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#44

Post by krevis » Fri, Mar 30, 2012, 6:58 PM UTC

ben_straub wrote: post #10

dristic wrote: post #5

I agree with needing more data but I will give my testimonial. I switched from Windows 7 to Mac Lion several months go and have not looked back. Simple things like responsiveness of the touch pad, gestures, and a better terminal are definitely what got me. Overall I would say the UX is just simply better.

OSX has definite advantages here. 1. The trackpad hardware is great. It's so good that when we were making the Bamboo Touch at Wacom, the Macbook Pro trackpad was the standard we measured ourselves against. 2. True pixel-level scrolling from HID devices. Windows has the concept of "wheel scrolling", but it's only vertical, and lots of apps won't scroll in less than a wheel increment (which is oddly 120 units), so you…

How soon people forget! OS X had a software-based compositor until 10.2 -- that's when "Quartz Extreme" was introduced. Pretty sure the OpenGL path was planned the whole time, but the GL drivers were not nearly stable enough to use for such a crucial piece of the system.

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#45

Post by badkangaroo » Fri, Mar 30, 2012, 7:24 PM UTC

Is this a troll thread? if so 10/10

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#46

Post by tjoff » Fri, Mar 30, 2012, 7:40 PM UTC

emehrkay wrote: post #43

tjoff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh... this is an issue with your VM and not Windows.

You're right. The deselection doesnt happen if I click the titlebar, but it does if I click the content area (that doesnt happen in OS X, I havent checked any Linux window managers).

Of course it does, when you click the content area you reposition the cursor and thus deselects the text. The alternative would be to not be able to reposition the cursor when you bring focus to the window which presents other "quirks" if you look at it from other angles (and it of course needs to be consistent, if you can't reposition the cursor why would you be able to press a button if the window isn't active? etc.).

OS X is quite unique in this and probably stems from the use of common menus for different windows, which also makes it uniquely inadequate for handling multiple monitors. I just can't take a WM that doesn't handle multiple monitors well seriously.

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#47

Post by runjake » Fri, Mar 30, 2012, 8:33 PM UTC

I have experienced the exact opposite of what this person experienced.

I use both Windows and OS X all through the day and while the response on both is adequate, the Core 2 Quad Windows 7 box is much more responsive than my MBP with the high end 15" i7. They both have 8GB RAM -- but then again, my Core 2 Duo Thinkpad X200 feels more responsive, and requires fewer resources.

I've never experienced or heard of the "infamous" cloned dialogs bug on Windows 7, but oddly, I have experienced it on OS X. Conversely, I've never experienced the reported cursor lag on OS X.

Like I said, I find both OSes perfectly good, but the post just seems suspect to me.

Now, if only Microsoft would integrate a well-supported, well-integrated, native bash/zsh. I can't bring myself to like Powershell.

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#48

Post by WayneDB » Fri, Mar 30, 2012, 9:53 PM UTC

emehrkay wrote: post #37

WayneDB wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find Expose or Mission Control nearly as useful as the Windows Taskbar. Unlike OS X where a really good Taskbar implementation cannot exist, I can add something just like Expose to Windows. It's called Switcher and it does pretty much everything Expose does. The Taskbar is still better though because it's always there and at a glance I can see what's running.

Windows' taskbar today === OS X's dock

If the OS X dock were as good as the taskbar, it'd have one item per window instead of one item per app. I'd be able to put the finder icon where I want it. I'd be able to have launcher icons (quick launch) separated from items that represent running apps or windows. I'd also be able to put it at the top of the screen if I want to.

OS X is basically rigid where Windows is flexible.

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#49

Post by emehrkay » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 1:50 AM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #46

emehrkay wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. The deselection doesnt happen if I click the titlebar, but it does if I click the content area (that doesnt happen in OS X, I havent checked any Linux window managers).

Of course it does, when you click the content area you reposition the cursor and thus deselects the text. The alternative would be to not be able to reposition the cursor when you bring focus to the window which presents other "quirks" if you look at it from other angles (and it of course needs to be consistent, if you can't reposition the cursor why would you be able to press a button if the window isn't active? etc…

I, and a host of others, work fine with multiple monitors..

I'm sure if people were presented with both options; regain focus and lose selection vs keepi g selection, they'd choose the keep selection. It's as if someone used the computer and said "you know what would be useful?..."

Re: UI responsiveness: OSX vs. Windows, iOS vs. Android

#50

Post by lobster_johnson » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 1:55 PM UTC

daed wrote: post #8

fudged wrote: post #2

I love OSX, but objectively speaking, "The lag of a Mac OS X cursor is at least twice bigger than Windows’ cursor and yes, a human eye can surely notice that." http://d43.me/blog/1205/the-cause-for-all-your-mac-os-x-mous...

To add to this I remember when OS X came out there was a lot of groaning about how slow window resizing was. Years of improvement later it still lags a hair. Noticeably slower than windows.

I think one of the reasons is that OS X provides automatic double-buffering of window content at the OS level (it also has a somewhat different drawing model than Windows), which adds a bit of latency but reduces flicker. Another factor is that Mac apps typically adapt themselves to the size of a window, and resizing will trigger a redraw of everything. Apps like Mail have always been really slow at redrawing themselves, whereas Chrome is very fast.

OS X was written from the ground up to be graphics-intensive. From very early on, Quartz, OS X's compositing manager, has been using the GPU to render windows to OpenGL textures, essentially using the graphics card's very fast 3D support to render a 2D screen.

Windows's classic GDI (which has been replaced by Aero, afaik, but I guess most apps are still GDI) is considerably simpler, and leaves the drawing entirely to the application. This is the reason you see a lot more redraw flickering in Windows apps. Some apps are so slow at redrawing that when you resize the window to make it bigger, you can see the new unpainted areas filled with various garbage (or with some default background colour at best) before the actual content comes in. To create smooth, non-flickering widget drawing in Windows you have always been forced to do the double-buffering yourself.

Even in Windows 7 there is a lot of redraw flickering. I'm particularly annoyed about how the mouse cursor tend to flicker randomly -- eg. when Internet Explorer is loading a page -- which is such a small, trivial detail, but one that ends up making the entire OS feel shoddily built.