6 ms·

Context: Linux user since 1994, also uses Windows often, software developer (anything from low-level embedded to Clojure and ClojureScript). It's all about Mac

by jwr 10y ago

Context: Linux user since 1994, also uses Windows often, software developer (anything from low-level embedded to Clojure and ClojureScript). It's all about Mac OS. It lets me get things done without dealing with silly things. Let's quickly list what I sorely miss when switching to my Linux machine: * Multiple monitor support: connect any number of monitors, any time, and have them Just Work. HiDPI or not, doesn't matter. The OS even remembers which of your windows where placed on which monitor at which size, and will do its best to move them when you connect a monitor. No other OS even comes close. * Consistent keybindings (Emacs-style) in all windows and dialogs. Control-a always gets me to the beginning of the line, whether in a text editor or in a file-open dialog box. * Reasonably consistent keybindings in apps. Can expect Cmd-q to quit every app. * Flawlessly working suspend/resume on laptops. * Full-screen any app and it works fine. * Apps like LaunchBar (I think quicksilver used to be a free alternative). * Spotlight, which finds everything. * Ability to remap any key to whatever I want and have it work everywhere. * Drag & drop everywhere. And if you laugh at this, consider that this is coming from a command-line guy with 25 years experience with computers. The way Mac does drag & drop is faster and more convenient than fiddling with command line. For example, did you know you can drop a file or a directory from anywhere into any file/open dialog box? * Apps like Simplenote, Bear, Ulysses: excellent tools for specific purposes. * TextExpander. * Predictable ubuquitous working clipboard. For me, switching over to my Ubuntu machine is an exercise in frustration. I can't redefine my keys, there is nothing like TextExpander, multiple monitors just don't work unless stars align just right and you have all the monitors in just the right order at boot time and you better not mix hidpi with normal. Drag and drop is nonexisting. Copy/paste is a free-for-all where each app does things differently and you have multiple clipboards (Ctrl-V vs middle mouse click). Basically, in order to get things done, I'd much rather work on a Mac. A side note: to really understand why the Mac is so good, you have to work on it for a while, with someone showing you things (like dragging files into file/open dialogs). People seem to think this is about superficial things like aesthetics, or Adobe software. It's not.

hd4 10y ago
Great response. Did you manage to post any/all of this to the feedback-request thread by the guy from Ubuntu about 3 weeks ago? If not, I think you should. I might even do so on your behalf as I've definitely felt some of these pain-points myself.
- jwr 10y ago
  I only posted about multiple monitor support, I wanted to focus on one specific pain point, and this is I think the worst.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    I agree. I've run Linux at home for ages, just not on the desktop. Recently I dabbled with switching over to it on the desktop again to see how far it's come along and was shocked to see the state of multi-monitor and HiDPI support in Ubuntu. I couldn't care less about whether it's using systemd or what format the logs are in. How can we still be struggling with multiple monitors and getting the size of text and mouse cursors wrong?
- nottorp 10y ago
  Ubuntu tried to make a decent desktop with Unity and failed. Unity was the trigger for me for switching to OS X. The problem was, they need to put a LOT of polish in to reach OS X levels of usability, and they didn't look like they were doing that, they had some nebulous dreams of making a unified mobile/desktop interface instead. There isn't anything in particular I'd suggest to them, because they need improvements just about everywhere. Say, is the network manager actually usable these days? When I switched it was easier to just disable it and move along. And the main elephant in the Linux room right now is systemd. Low level Linux is basically being taken over by an incompetent developer who doesn't understand the Unix philosophy of software design and can't deliver working software anyway. He's the author of the abomination called pulseaudio - back then it was required to uninstall/disable it to have sound again. Now, software written by him is becoming a dependency of almost everything - he is trying to replace all the Linux infrastructure layer with his ideas. Sorry, I see no reason to take a look at Linux on the desktop again.
  - hd4 10y ago
    Ubuntu took Linux from relative obscurity to being a relevant player on the computer desktop. Before Ubuntu, if you expected to get a build of a typical popular Windows program/game you would get laughed at. Now it's virtually expected. That's not failure. systemd is not as much a matter of controversy as people want it to be. If it was, you would see people like Linus rejecting it, but they haven't because it's not a major factor right now.
hudibras 10y ago
>like dragging files into file/open dialogs You mentioned this twice, and now I'm intrigued. What exactly do you mean by this?
- nicky0 10y ago
  Drag a file/folder into an Open dialog and the dialog will switch to that location. Similarly drag a folder into a Save dialog and it will switch to that folder. Drag a file onto the "Open..." button on a web page to skip the open dialog entirely. Drag a file into Terminal to paste that full path into the terminal...
  - jwr 10y ago
    Exactly. It's hard to believe how much time that saves. Also, you can drag the little file icon from an application title bar.
    - MarHoff 10y ago
      And for recent apps consistently rename the file in place from that same title bar. And the far decried HFS+ file system had a feature I hope they will maintain in APFS. When you moved or renamed a file around, most of the time even third party app managed to figure out the new location of the file when seeking for it instead of just displaying a broken path dialog. And this replacement only occurred if the resource was not present at the search path. Meaning that moving and replacing by a similarly named file result in similar file being used, while moving result in suggesting new location. Don't know what's the behavior is as of today, and maybe by now Linux also provide this reliably, but first time I've seen this was even pre OSX I believe. And maybe there is a simple trick, but it looked like black magic for the 20 years me.
      - tambourine_man 10y ago
        My guess is a Carbon API which uses inodes instead of absolute path. That was the case (and created a huge debate) back in the old Carbon vs Cocoa days Infamous tech note 2034: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2014/10/08/the-source-of-technote-2034/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2014/10/08/the-source-of-technote-20...
glenneroo 10y ago
Just be wary when drag & dropping a folder onto an existing folder, as the destination folder and all contents will be nuked before starting the copy! This is IMHO unexpected, especially if you're coming from Linux/Windows, where folders/files are appended (with subsequent pop-up dialogs asking whether to overwrite).
- optimuspaul 10y ago
  What? You must be doing something wrong. I would say that is unexpected and definitely doesn't match my experience.
  - glenneroo 10y ago
    Here it is explained in more detail with screenshots: https://www.howtogeek.com/198043/how-to-merge-folders-on-mac-os-x-without-losing-all-your-files-seriously/ https://www.howtogeek.com/198043/how-to-merge-folders-on-mac... A dialog pops up with 2 choices: Stop or Replace. Replace will delete everything in the destination folder before copying over the source. If you hold the Option key while drag&dropping, you can get one of multiple different pop-up dialogs, depending on the circumstances... and the results are not very predictable.
jpwgarrison 10y ago
> there is nothing like TextExpander We use ubuntu at work and I was VERY worried about this. But autokey is actually good enough. The UI is not quite as slick but the rest of it is a little better. The exception is the little pop up form fill things which are cool but I found I did not really miss. https://github.com/autokey-py3/autokey https://github.com/autokey-py3/autokey
- jwr 10y ago
  Well... This actually reinforces my point. I tried it. Installed, ran it, saw the weird warning from gtk. Then tried to use the ",gd" example shortcut in the terminal. This did not work, then froze my keyboard, and after some frantic desktop switching using the mouse, autokey finally crashed. I'm describing this experience because it's a common one: it's symptomatic of the "Linux desktop" experience and is the reason why I would much rather use Mac OS. It's not that I can't make things work -- I probably could, but I want to spend my time on other things.
kitsunesoba 10y ago
Don't forget that CMD-C, CMD-X, and CMD-V, the system clipboard shortcuts, work in both desktop apps and the terminal. Whenever I'm using Linux it drives me mad that terminals have different shortcuts. Yes, I know it's mostly for historical reasons, but that doesn't make any less annoying. Really, consistency is something that macOS holds over other desktop operating systems in a lot of ways, and that holds true even for third party apps for the platform. After having used macOS for many years, using other operating systems where most never gave much thought to or saw any value in getting on the same page and following a set of conventions is jarring.
nekopa 10y ago
I had an MBP for a little over a year, and after it was stolen I switched back to Linux - Xubuntu to be precise, I never liked unity, and I tend to go for a more minimal desktop on any system and XFCE has more than enough customization for my needs. The 2 major issues for me with osX were: 1: Selecting icons to copy. I don't know if this has been fixed, but if you have a file browser window open and you want to click then shift-click to select a range of files, it would always just make a rectangle (graphically) between the 2 click points, not run left to right through the window and select everything in-between, (I don't know if I am explaining this clearly) To select the range you wanted you would have to either switch to list view or cmd click any files which got left out. I really though it was a bug until I found this forum post https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/shift-doesnt-select-range-of-files.1542573/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/shift-doesnt-select-ran... where they defend the behavior. 2: And kind of a silly one, but when you plug in an hdmi monitor, you can only control the volume on the monitor itself. And as with the previous issue, I was surprised at the responses I found in the forums. Complete finger-in-ears-lalalalala "It's better this way, and impossible the way you say even though linux and windows can do it that way" Anyway, for my personal use case, linux trumps both Windows and Apple, and, in opposition to most comments I see on this thread, I run Win7 and osX in VMs if I need specific software (SketchUp on Win and nothing really on osX, I just have the VM set up in case I need something)

by jwr 10y ago

hd4 10y ago

Great response. Did you manage to post any/all of this to the feedback-request thread by the guy from Ubuntu about 3 weeks ago? If not, I think you should. I might even do so on your behalf as I've definitely felt some of these pain-points myself.

jwr 10y ago
I only posted about multiple monitor support, I wanted to focus on one specific pain point, and this is I think the worst.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  I agree. I've run Linux at home for ages, just not on the desktop. Recently I dabbled with switching over to it on the desktop again to see how far it's come along and was shocked to see the state of multi-monitor and HiDPI support in Ubuntu. I couldn't care less about whether it's using systemd or what format the logs are in. How can we still be struggling with multiple monitors and getting the size of text and mouse cursors wrong?
nottorp 10y ago
Ubuntu tried to make a decent desktop with Unity and failed. Unity was the trigger for me for switching to OS X. The problem was, they need to put a LOT of polish in to reach OS X levels of usability, and they didn't look like they were doing that, they had some nebulous dreams of making a unified mobile/desktop interface instead. There isn't anything in particular I'd suggest to them, because they need improvements just about everywhere. Say, is the network manager actually usable these days? When I switched it was easier to just disable it and move along. And the main elephant in the Linux room right now is systemd. Low level Linux is basically being taken over by an incompetent developer who doesn't understand the Unix philosophy of software design and can't deliver working software anyway. He's the author of the abomination called pulseaudio - back then it was required to uninstall/disable it to have sound again. Now, software written by him is becoming a dependency of almost everything - he is trying to replace all the Linux infrastructure layer with his ideas. Sorry, I see no reason to take a look at Linux on the desktop again.
- hd4 10y ago
  Ubuntu took Linux from relative obscurity to being a relevant player on the computer desktop. Before Ubuntu, if you expected to get a build of a typical popular Windows program/game you would get laughed at. Now it's virtually expected. That's not failure. systemd is not as much a matter of controversy as people want it to be. If it was, you would see people like Linus rejecting it, but they haven't because it's not a major factor right now.

hudibras 10y ago

>like dragging files into file/open dialogs You mentioned this twice, and now I'm intrigued. What exactly do you mean by this?

nicky0 10y ago
Drag a file/folder into an Open dialog and the dialog will switch to that location. Similarly drag a folder into a Save dialog and it will switch to that folder. Drag a file onto the "Open..." button on a web page to skip the open dialog entirely. Drag a file into Terminal to paste that full path into the terminal...
- jwr 10y ago
  Exactly. It's hard to believe how much time that saves. Also, you can drag the little file icon from an application title bar.
  - MarHoff 10y ago
    And for recent apps consistently rename the file in place from that same title bar. And the far decried HFS+ file system had a feature I hope they will maintain in APFS. When you moved or renamed a file around, most of the time even third party app managed to figure out the new location of the file when seeking for it instead of just displaying a broken path dialog. And this replacement only occurred if the resource was not present at the search path. Meaning that moving and replacing by a similarly named file result in similar file being used, while moving result in suggesting new location. Don't know what's the behavior is as of today, and maybe by now Linux also provide this reliably, but first time I've seen this was even pre OSX I believe. And maybe there is a simple trick, but it looked like black magic for the 20 years me.
    - tambourine_man 10y ago
      My guess is a Carbon API which uses inodes instead of absolute path. That was the case (and created a huge debate) back in the old Carbon vs Cocoa days Infamous tech note 2034: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2014/10/08/the-source-of-technote-2034/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2014/10/08/the-source-of-technote-20...

glenneroo 10y ago

Just be wary when drag & dropping a folder onto an existing folder, as the destination folder and all contents will be nuked before starting the copy! This is IMHO unexpected, especially if you're coming from Linux/Windows, where folders/files are appended (with subsequent pop-up dialogs asking whether to overwrite).

optimuspaul 10y ago
What? You must be doing something wrong. I would say that is unexpected and definitely doesn't match my experience.
- glenneroo 10y ago
  Here it is explained in more detail with screenshots: https://www.howtogeek.com/198043/how-to-merge-folders-on-mac-os-x-without-losing-all-your-files-seriously/ https://www.howtogeek.com/198043/how-to-merge-folders-on-mac... A dialog pops up with 2 choices: Stop or Replace. Replace will delete everything in the destination folder before copying over the source. If you hold the Option key while drag&dropping, you can get one of multiple different pop-up dialogs, depending on the circumstances... and the results are not very predictable.

jpwgarrison 10y ago

> there is nothing like TextExpander We use ubuntu at work and I was VERY worried about this. But autokey is actually good enough. The UI is not quite as slick but the rest of it is a little better. The exception is the little pop up form fill things which are cool but I found I did not really miss. https://github.com/autokey-py3/autokey https://github.com/autokey-py3/autokey

jwr 10y ago
Well... This actually reinforces my point. I tried it. Installed, ran it, saw the weird warning from gtk. Then tried to use the ",gd" example shortcut in the terminal. This did not work, then froze my keyboard, and after some frantic desktop switching using the mouse, autokey finally crashed. I'm describing this experience because it's a common one: it's symptomatic of the "Linux desktop" experience and is the reason why I would much rather use Mac OS. It's not that I can't make things work -- I probably could, but I want to spend my time on other things.

kitsunesoba 10y ago

Don't forget that CMD-C, CMD-X, and CMD-V, the system clipboard shortcuts, work in both desktop apps and the terminal. Whenever I'm using Linux it drives me mad that terminals have different shortcuts. Yes, I know it's mostly for historical reasons, but that doesn't make any less annoying. Really, consistency is something that macOS holds over other desktop operating systems in a lot of ways, and that holds true even for third party apps for the platform. After having used macOS for many years, using other operating systems where most never gave much thought to or saw any value in getting on the same page and following a set of conventions is jarring.

nekopa 10y ago

I had an MBP for a little over a year, and after it was stolen I switched back to Linux - Xubuntu to be precise, I never liked unity, and I tend to go for a more minimal desktop on any system and XFCE has more than enough customization for my needs. The 2 major issues for me with osX were: 1: Selecting icons to copy. I don't know if this has been fixed, but if you have a file browser window open and you want to click then shift-click to select a range of files, it would always just make a rectangle (graphically) between the 2 click points, not run left to right through the window and select everything in-between, (I don't know if I am explaining this clearly) To select the range you wanted you would have to either switch to list view or cmd click any files which got left out. I really though it was a bug until I found this forum post https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/shift-doesnt-select-range-of-files.1542573/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/shift-doesnt-select-ran... where they defend the behavior. 2: And kind of a silly one, but when you plug in an hdmi monitor, you can only control the volume on the monitor itself. And as with the previous issue, I was surprised at the responses I found in the forums. Complete finger-in-ears-lalalalala "It's better this way, and impossible the way you say even though linux and windows can do it that way" Anyway, for my personal use case, linux trumps both Windows and Apple, and, in opposition to most comments I see on this thread, I run Win7 and osX in VMs if I need specific software (SketchUp on Win and nothing really on osX, I just have the VM set up in case I need something)