921–930 of 1001 posts
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User friendliness isnt that bad depending on distro, configuration is fine, but not great.
It's unusable even with the "user-friendly" distros like Mint and Ubuntu. Starting with the fact that Mint and Ubuntu don't even agree on what window system to use.
This behavior is similar to Windows 11. You have to position the mouse just outside the window. It is non-intuitive and awful. These are problems humanity solved over 35 years ago (see NeXTSTEP). Why are these designers breaking basic features that worked for over 35 years?
Engineers (hopefully) come to learn the value of Chesterton's Fence young, because engineering failures tend to make themselves known quickly and loudly. Designers probably have perverse incentives. Showy new designs get promotions. Even when they hurt usability, it's often only in insidious ways.
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.
At least on Windows 11 it’s possible to disable the rounded corners.
Something that baffles me about macOS: the pointer bug. I’ve been aware of this for ages—as far as I can recall, since Snow Leopard; maybe others have insight—and it still hasn't been fixed. Simply put: the pointer doesn't always switch context properly. So, you'll have it hovered over a resize control and it will refuse to change from the default pointer. Or you'll be working, and suddenly notice the pointer is a 'd…
This behavior is similar to Windows 11. You have to position the mouse just outside the window. It is non-intuitive and awful. These are problems humanity solved over 35 years ago (see NeXTSTEP). Why are these designers breaking basic features that worked for over 35 years?
Fun fact: NEXTSTEP went 10 years without shipping a basic design refresh, except in prereleases (4.0PR1 and traces in 4.0PR2.) This was because it was a good fucking GUI that did its fucking job, and had "usability before aesthetics" as a core design tenet in its developer documentation. Steve's brain fell out when he got back his throne at Apple. Aqua was a mistake.
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In the Hacker News bubble, maybe. In the real world, not even close. The reasons why many a person chooses to use macOS, outside of the "YoU bUy It FoR ThE lOgO" that many hard-core technologists seem to believe, don't exist in any desktop environment. Sometimes, people think "it can be made to look similar, therefore it's the same" (especially with regard to KDE), and no, just no.
What are those reasons?
It's the way drag and drop is a fundamental interaction in text boxes, the proxy icons in title bars, how dragging a file to an open/save panel changes that panel's current folder rather than actually move a file.
It's how applications are just special folders that are treated like files, how they can update themselves independently of each other or any system packages, how you conventionally put them in the /Applications folder so you can put that folder on the Dock to use directly as a launcher.
It's how all text fields consistently support emacs-style keyboard shortcuts, respond appropriately to the system-provided text editing features such as the built-in Edit menu, text substitutions, and writing features.
It's how you can automate most Mac-assed apps; how you can extend the operating system through app-provided and user-created services to every other application that handles text, files, images, PDFs, through the built-in APIs using AppleScript, Automator, and Shortcuts.
It's how the whole program rather than its last window is the fundamental unit of an application such that document-based applications can exist without a window without also polluting some system tray with an unnecessary icon, how that means workflows expect more than one window open.
It's how there's a universal menu that works for every app, not just conforming ones (i.e. KDE's global menu only shows KDE apps' menus; other apps need a plugin or just don't show at all), how the help menu has a search field to look for menu items, how keyboard shortcuts are bound to the menu items are bound arbitrarily within the program's settings window and can thus be assigned globally in System Settings, how this means all of an application's main features are therefore accessible via the menu bar, how that creates consistency in the menus.
Those are just some things off the top of my head but there are plenty of others, some a bit more user facing, some less. Just examples, a non-exhaustive list.
I'm sure those who don't care about these things will dismiss it but if you've been using a Mac since before macOS, before OS X, or even before Mac OS X, these are things you won't drop for Linux just because the design is a bit uglier.
Of course, if none of these things matter, then the swap is easier. It doesn't mean any DE is a drop-in replacement by any means. Many of the things that make some DEs "Mac-like" are skin deep.
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If you applied these standards of critique to Linux UIs, this post would be an entire encyclopedia, indexed by DE. I'd take even the worst modern Mac OS (Lion?) over that.
I feel like people who say this haven't seen KDE in a very long time. On a thinkpad it not only "just works", it works flawlessly, never demands attention without justification (i.e. no ads or superfluous items in notifications), every bit of hardware works, all the special keys, fingerprint reader and it's all recognized and usable and configurable from KDE.
This feels like a surprisingly good moment for Linux desktops to position themselves as real alternatives and actually gain ground. MacOS Tahoe has been heavily criticized for its UI decisions, especially Liquid Glass, which many people feel actively hurts usability rather than improving it. On the other side, Windows keeps piling on user-hostile features, dark patterns, and friction that increasingly frustrate power…
This won't happen until Microsoft Word is available on Linux. It's like the console wars — different camps say "our console is better, it has more teraflops." In reality, nobody cares about that — buyers will get the console that has the games.
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I don't understand why Apple change things needlessly. What other purpose does it serve? How does this positively affect the bottom line? How does it improve life for Apple's users? Breaking basic interaction with windows purely because someone feels we should waste more screen real-estate on ornamentation by having bigger radius rounded corners is, for lack of a better word, stupid. I'd like Apple to focus more on t…
Because if you don't make periodic cosmetic changes, people will think you're going out of business. It's why your favorite shoe company, that you buy from every 2-3 years when you wear out your favorite shoes, always has new styles and discontinues other styles. Converse is a great example.