This reminded me a bit of messing around with TinkerTool around 10.4-10.5 times, and to my surprise, it's still supported with a Big Sur compatible release!
Sensible macOS Defaults
91–100 of 182 posts
Re: Sensible macOS Defaults
#92A little unrelated but this hits one of my pet peeves.
Why do people give things generic names that have basically no meaning? If I encountered the script in machine I would wonder “WTF does .macos do?” There is also no comment in the header.
I see that at work too. People give lists of certain element types the name “list”. So a lot of their code is full of classes with generic names like “map”, “list” or “config” and every time you have to look at the code and see what the thing really does.
Do people not work on large codebases?
Re: Sensible macOS Defaults
#93This is part of the reason I switched to Linux. I've heard so many people say "Linux is free only if you don't value your time" and then turn around and write one of these. If I'm going to go through the trouble of customizing an operating system to fit my needs, I may as well do it with a free and open system rather than MacOS, which can change for the worse at any moment (the dealbreaker for me was dropping 32 bit…
Realistically, the person who compiled this script file to make the OS behave exactly how they desire is very different from the kind of person who says "Linux is free only if you don't value your time".
Personally, I like to keep to the defaults and prefer to change my own workflow to match the OS designers' vision of how I should use a computer, rather than to try to bend the OS to my priors. I understand why this don't work for everyone, but it has made my life much easier.
Re: Sensible macOS Defaults
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Instead of running it all, you can take a look what’s possible and apply it individually. That's true of any script. The fact that this one is well commented doesn't make it not a script. A cheat sheet is something you hang on a wall and glance at every so often. A script is something you run to make changes to a system. You can't run a cheat sheet.
How do you tell that it's not a really long string or a web page but a script? Maybe it's just a pattern of dots projected on LCD or 1s and 0s stored on a computer. I don't see any more concrete proof that it's not any of these but a script.
> How do you tell that it's not a really long string or a web page but a script?
`#!/usr/bin/env bash` is a bit of a dead giveaway.
Re: Sensible macOS Defaults
#95This is part of the reason I switched to Linux. I've heard so many people say "Linux is free only if you don't value your time" and then turn around and write one of these. If I'm going to go through the trouble of customizing an operating system to fit my needs, I may as well do it with a free and open system rather than MacOS, which can change for the worse at any moment (the dealbreaker for me was dropping 32 bit…
Realistically, the person who compiled this script file to make the OS behave exactly how they desire is very different from the kind of person who says "Linux is free only if you don't value your time". Personally, I like to keep to the defaults and prefer to change my own workflow to match the OS designers' vision of how I should use a computer, rather than to try to bend the OS to my priors. I understand why this…
This! I just get used to the defaults. When I change computers, no extra work for me. Contrast my business partner, who spends 2 days loading and configuring each new computer.
Re: Sensible macOS Defaults
#96This is part of the reason I switched to Linux. I've heard so many people say "Linux is free only if you don't value your time" and then turn around and write one of these. If I'm going to go through the trouble of customizing an operating system to fit my needs, I may as well do it with a free and open system rather than MacOS, which can change for the worse at any moment (the dealbreaker for me was dropping 32 bit…
Same. It's seriously hard to say how awesome it is that a few days invested into customization ~10 years ago have lasted with me all this time. According to my dotfiles, the last "upstream updated something so I had to fix my setup" change was 4 years ago.
Firefox is the only program I run that requires constant "config maintenance".
Meanwhile, I've used macOS at work for ~5 years. Every time a big release comes out, IT departments have to go around screaming "DONT UPDATE IT WILL BREAK EVERYTHING" for a month. Once that calms down later we finally can update (though I only _want_ to update because by that point the incessant "Update now or tonight?" prompts have driven me mad) -- and instead of everything breaking, it merely breaks half my customizations and I have to waste time fixing it.
Re: Sensible macOS Defaults
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Presumably everyone thinks their own defaults are 'sensible', otherwise they wouldn't be using them. Maybe, although I set my caps lock up to be escape when tapped and control when held, I don't think that would be sensible for many people at all unless the knew why they wanted it. > I think the most sensible defaults are those that come out of the box, rather than spending time tweaking things. This is probably tr…
> I set my caps lock up to be escape Which was the only sensible thing to do when Apple dropped the ESC key ;) I'm so used to caps == ESC now, it takes me a minute to realize what's wrong when I'm on a new system/keyboard.
Cap locks should be control the way god intended it! :)
You can use the hidutil if you want to script changes yourself:
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2450...
Or Karabiner Elements:
https://github.com/pqrs-org/Karabiner-Elements/blob/master/R...
I have an Filco Japanese keyboard and the default settings on macOS even when the keyboard is set to Japanese (QWERTY JIS) gets the 英数 (alphanumeric) key, and かな (kana) key wrong (and they are supported on the built in laptop keyboard).
Re: Sensible macOS Defaults
#98Disabling natural-direction scrolling isn't sensible. It's the first thing I fix on all other OSes. Why should the content go the opposite direction of the way I'm moving my finger? This is one of the best fixes Apple ever made, back in Lion. Kudos to them to seeing the everyday and noticing that it was wrong.
This opinion betrays a lack of imagination.
There are two equally valid subjective choices here:
- does moving your finger up "grab the content" under the glass and move it up, or
- does moving your finger up "grab the window", moving it up along a long virtual document?
Both are legit mental models, it's a preference.
Re: Sensible macOS Defaults
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, you could use it as a cheat sheet, but that's not what it is. IMO macOS has a lot of terrible defaults that are not at all sensible, of course this is quite subjective, but the fact that many mac users accept the defaults isn't really saying much, typically end-users don't even realize there are other options available.
You can have different opinions on what's sensible but to claim that something is not sensible as general you need to make a point about an issue due to the default settings. For example, if people were getting hacked through remote desktop connection all the time you could have said that macOS has insensible defaults on the security or even existence of that feature. However, with macOS that's not the case, in fact…
The defaults aren't powerful, thought they are sensible.
Windows (and most Linux DEs like KDE) come with out of the box snapping windows to the four corners of the screen and to the left and right which is perfect for how most people use their laptops. Most people need two separate windows open side by side because most jobs are about synthesizing two separate flows of information in some way (research in one window while writing a document in another for example).
In mac you need to install an app to do this (Rectangle/Spectacle). Now, that's fine because you can click and drag the windows where you need them to be. But it wastes your time whereas the default in Linux/Windows saves your time. Sensibility over power.
Re: Sensible macOS Defaults
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Realistically, the person who compiled this script file to make the OS behave exactly how they desire is very different from the kind of person who says "Linux is free only if you don't value your time". Personally, I like to keep to the defaults and prefer to change my own workflow to match the OS designers' vision of how I should use a computer, rather than to try to bend the OS to my priors. I understand why this…
This! I just get used to the defaults. When I change computers, no extra work for me. Contrast my business partner, who spends 2 days loading and configuring each new computer.
How is it not extra work for you? As someone who is getting used to MacOS now for work, it's taken me more than a week to feel productive with the defaults...