51–60 of 281 posts
There's many other problems with the start menu - specifically search 1) Anything not found opens in Edge™ and not your default browser (WTF?) 2) It loads lazily - so sometimes you hit enter and the highlighted item has already changed 3) Partial searches don't work very well. At this point, I'm wondering if there's a start menu replacement app
I've installed OpenShell as a start menu replacement since Windows 8.
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Yes, this is why I turn off search in Spotlight (also for privacy). For window management, please consider using the Rectangle app or some other keyboard window manager. Otherwise, I believe its possible to long press on the maximize button to put your windows on the left or right half.
Rectangle, Rectangle Pro, Magnet are all very nice and make the window management ok-ish on Mac imho. I've made the switch a couple of months ago and the window management without those apps seemed both different but also somehow worse. Now, I'm all used to it and it works good.
It seems to be a pattern with (not just) Microsoft products to hang the UI while waiting for some remote API, usually talking to the home base. Happens a lot to me with Office desktop apps - they freeze sometimes for a good second or so while starting and more surprisingly also when closing. One time it bothered me so much, that I recorded an ETW and unsurprisingly the time during the hang was spent waiting for some…
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…
I’ve been using it since v1, it’s extremely configurable, very very snappy and doesn’t suffer from the common AI-problems, that seems to be forced into searches everywhere these days.
(EDIT: it’s a Spotlight replacement)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this is why I turn off search in Spotlight (also for privacy). For window management, please consider using the Rectangle app or some other keyboard window manager. Otherwise, I believe its possible to long press on the maximize button to put your windows on the left or right half.
Rectangle, Rectangle Pro, Magnet are all very nice and make the window management ok-ish on Mac imho. I've made the switch a couple of months ago and the window management without those apps seemed both different but also somehow worse. Now, I'm all used to it and it works good.
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…
Take a look at Alfred: https://www.alfredapp.com/ I’ve been using it since v1, it’s extremely configurable, very very snappy and doesn’t suffer from the common AI-problems, that seems to be forced into searches everywhere these days. (EDIT: it’s a Spotlight replacement)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't that make things worse? Those applications usually expect to be able to make these calls. So now, instead of lagging once in a while when the home base is having troubles, it will lag all the time.
> Wouldn't that make things worse? Those applications usually expect to be able to make these calls. So now, instead of lagging once in a while when the home base is having troubles, it will lag all the time. Not necessarily. The lag may be waiting for the remote server to respond to a request, and the app may move on quickly if it can't open a connection at all. It's not totally uncommon to work totally offline (e.g…
Which would take longer. I haven't tried though
Great article. I love Windows deep dives—both because of the supposed inaccessibility of Windows (clearly not true), and because Windows is something I've daily-driven for 23 years, and I've come to really appreciate. If only MS could get its act straight, clean up its UI framework mess (WinUI, WPF, WinForms, Win32, WinRT, MAUI... sheesh) and stop applying stupid regressive updates and dark patterns.
> because of the supposed inaccessibility of Windows (clearly not true) It's a mixed bag and it's far from not true. You get great tools for performance debugging, you get some system symbols, got get system wide tracing... Unless you don't get the symbols. And even then, you often find the element which doesn't work properly and... that's all. Now you know what fails, but not why and you can't do anything about it a…
Binary patching is kind of a pain to do on system files these days, but it is possible. Usually not worth the trouble to dig in even more to do Microsoft's job for them, but sometimes it might be.
It seems to be a pattern with (not just) Microsoft products to hang the UI while waiting for some remote API, usually talking to the home base. Happens a lot to me with Office desktop apps - they freeze sometimes for a good second or so while starting and more surprisingly also when closing. One time it bothered me so much, that I recorded an ETW and unsurprisingly the time during the hang was spent waiting for some…
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 ...