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The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

noheger.at

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Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#454
post #43

Compare to Aqua and Platinum where every resizable window/pane had a big square drag target clearly labeled as such with some diagonal lines: https://guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/system/managers/filema... https://guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/system/managers/filema...

Great comment. I had forgotten how much better things were in terms of visual indicators. Slick looking design should never come at the expense of usability.

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#455
post #386

What's jarring is not even that macOS Tahoe has such weird shapes of windows. What really astonishes me is that nobody seems to have anticipated how users would try to resize windows, and did not reshape the corner drag area (which I would expect to be a quarter-circle, or a quarter-ring along the rounded edge). This can't be a mistake, this can only be deliberate cutting corners by management in order to ship ASAP.…

It’s not cutting corners. Apple does most of their testing using strictly internal resources, like secret “mini malls” in the Silicon Valley area. They fail because this testing biases their sampling; users must sign draconian NDAs to participate, among other things. These samples are effectively biased due to Apple’s corporate culture regarding secrecy and competition. So, Apple actually works very hard. It’s just they culturally prefer a lot of techniques that their competitors (e.g. Google and Facebook) have throughly proven as inferior.

But is Google better? Not really, they killed a lot of good products like Reader.

But is Facebook better? Not really, Cambridge Analytica and Metaverse and .. facebook products are disposable.

But I think these Apple UX bugs are misdiagnosed. Yes they are atrocious. But think about how atrocious and non-representative and non-competitive Apple’s testing population is.

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#456
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.

The most annoying part about it is they won't admit the obvious colossal mistake and fix it.

I've blocked Apple's update servers via /etc/hosts so this monstrous thing doesn't sneak onto my machine in the middle of the night, still happily on Sequoia.

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your frustration, but at the same time what is Apple supposed to do? If it's affecting only a tiny number of users, and you just happen to be an unlucky one, and they don't know how to reproduce it, and you can't help them reproduce it, then what? I think they just have to wait until somebody (such as yourself) is able to figure out with some kind of logging what is happening. E.g. the first question to…

They could throw some small portion of their billions of dollars into proper quality control and reproduce it themselves if they wanted to. It’s an industry-wide malaise, but it isn’t inevitable. It’s amazing that every year it becomes more and more economically nonviable for basic shit to meet the most modest standards of usability, yet we can use the power consumption of a small country to have Copilot in Notepad.

The way I see it, money can’t buy one of the most important ingredients: the motivation to do the best work of your life. No matter how much cash you throw at a problem, you’re likely just going to get people who want to "do their job" from 9 to 5. Those are exactly the kind of workers that companies like the Apple of 2026 are looking for. It’s a big ship, and it needs to stay steady and predictable. People who want to achieve something "insanely great" or "make a dent in the universe" are just a distraction.

In my experience, shipping a product as polished as Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard requires a painful level of dedication from everyone involved, not just Quality Assurance.

As long as neither the New York Times nor the Wall Street Journal writes about how bad Apple’s software has gotten, there’s even no reason for them to think about changing their approach.

The drama surrounding Apple’s software quality isn’t showing up in their earnings. And at the end of the day, those earnings are the "high order bit," no matter what marketing tries to tell us.

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#458

Maybe I'm too old and every modern computer is a marvel to me, but as someone switching between win/macos/linux all these complaints amuse me. While in windows I'm using powertoys and I can move/resize windows using any space inside a window. It's the same with linux/gnome - a couple of config settings. Then, when I started using macos I looked for a similar solution - found BetterSnapTool and just started using it.

Not sure if it replaces everything, but I have been using https://rectangleapp.com and would not be able to use MacOS without it.

yes, looks like BetterSnapTool and rectangleapp have some overlapping functionality https://folivora.ai/bettersnaptool

I guess I found BetterSnapTool first and it solved my issues with window management in macos.

Re: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

#459
i went to Sonoma from Tahoe. it felt like an upgrade rather than a downgrade. why Sonoma? it was the version appeared in Recovery mode.

but its size still makes me use scientific notation to write it in kilobyte unit.

i am calling everyone(apple google..) here to switch their mindset to: "how can we reduce code size?", "what can we get rid of?", "how small can my product be?"...

set rules to measure everything in kilobytes and make your employees realize how big the number you are typing.

if every company thinks like that and stop the madness for a year or two, we might be able to solve the main issue: obesity.

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