8 ms·

"Not just the icons, the entire user interface was excellent." Agreed. I strongly dislike the Windows operating system but I miss very much the Windows user i

• fiddlerwoaroof 8y ago
  What makes up for this, to some extent, is that you can assign a keyboard shortcut to any menu item in OSX: go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts, click +, select the application (or all applications), type the menu name and set a shortcut.
  • fiddlerwoaroof 8y ago
    The other thing about OS X is that command-shift-/ opens a little search box in the help menu and then you can pick any menu item by typing a few characters and selecting it with the keyboard.
    • navs 8y ago
      Very underrated feature. Last I used Ubuntu's Unity it had a similar feature. I wish Alfred had a plugin to do this on Mac OS. I remember Quicksilver had something.
      • douglaswlance 8y ago
        Alfred does have such a workflow: https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/10231-faster-menu-search/ https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/10231-faster-menu-search/
  • spdionis 8y ago
    What baffled me is that if you have a mouse with side buttons you just cannot use them in any type of shortcut. Mouse support is generally terrible in OSX.
    • paulie_a 8y ago
      Mouse support for Macs has been terrible for decades.
      • zozbot123 8y ago
        > Mouse support for Macs has been terrible for decades. I'm kinda out of the loop, do they still sell mice with only one button?
        • MereInterest 8y ago
          Sort of. Their desktop mice have two buttons, but only a single plastic shell. This seems to follow Apple's design guideline of wallpapering over complexity, rather than admitting that it exists. Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/aplus-media/vc/75a2caed-171a-4f76-a5e8-bef3cde6c806._SL300__.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/aplus-media/vc/75a2caed-...
          • saagarjha 8y ago
            > Their desktop mice have two buttons, but only a single plastic shell. I'm not sure where you're getting that from, since Magic Mouse only has one button: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Magic+Mouse+2+Teardown/51058/#s111365 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Magic+Mouse+2+Teardown/51058...
            • invalidusernam3 8y ago
              It may physically only have one button, but functionally it has two (left and right click) as well as gesture support. Magic mouse takes a bit of getting used to (it's very flat), but it is a fantastic mouse once you have.
• rkagerer 8y ago
  Dang right! It's like half the programmers of today have forgotten keyboards are a thing.
  • ddingus 8y ago
    For growing numbers of people they aren't. As an exercize, I very seriously embraced touch a few years back. I will not give up keyboard plus mouse, but I am also amazed at what really can be done with touch keyboard and pen. Lots of people want to expand on that because it expands on phones and tablets. I have a Note 8, and can content create on it to a level I did not think possible a few years ago. I use touch keyboard, voice and pen. At times I carry a small bluetooth keyboard with touch mouse pad. It is not as fast, but is more robust.
    • ori_b 8y ago
      I put up with touch keyboards because real ones are not very portable. It's good enough to get by, but it's not good. The same with touch interaction -- selecting a range of text is an exercise in frustration. I don't want that interface on my desktop. Just because a thing has a CPU and operating system does not mean it needs to have a unified user experience.
  • squarefoot 8y ago
    And many others don't even realize that investing a bit of research on better keyboards would bring us to much better use experience. I don't mean changing the typewriter style keys, those are ok, I mean all other keys; why there is no standard for a reduced keypad with the bare minimum for menu navigation and data entry? Unfortunately the arrow keys are a half solution by not implementing yes/no and other control keys. Why there's no contextual Info key to show information/help pertaining the current task? The computer keyboard as we know it has to be extended, not taken away as the WIMP culture before and touch screen after attempted to do, with disastrous results so far. I would welcome a kit made of say 120 key modules (one key per module, real clicky keys, please!) all with the same pinout, and normal+2x/3x/4x keycaps, special "key" modules such as trackballs, Thinkpad "nipples", analog knobs etc. then a breadboard-style carrier board where i can stick them as I want, plus a decoder board. Then, once the keyboard is ready, I can send a file describing its details to some high quality 3D printing assembly to purchase a pcb and case for my prototype keyboard and turn it into a real one.
• cesarb 8y ago
  When I bought my first computer (which came with Windows 3.1), it didn't come with a mouse. User interfaces back then were designed to be usable without a mouse, because many people didn't have a mouse - it was optional, and used up one of the serial ports.
  • londons_explore 8y ago
    I gave up trying the get my first mouse working after hours of tweaking win.ini...
  • collinmanderson 8y ago
    Yup, I started out with win 3.1 without a mouse. You could do pretty much anything except use paint.
• paulcole 8y ago
  Both your comment and the article use the phrase “real work”. What do you meany by that? And is there “fake work” that Windows fails at?
• zapzupnz 8y ago
  > One of the things I miss the most are the consistent, universal and wide-ranging keyboard shortcuts. I actually find that's what I miss when I use Windows. Windows' universal keyboard shortcuts seem to be limited to window management and some basics like new files, save, cut, copy, paste, etc. On the other hand, just about every macOS has the same shortcuts for actions within applications as opposed to without. For items without shortcuts, you can define your own quickly and easily in System Preferences, and those custom shortcuts can apply to just one app or every app. Not only that, every macOS app puts the shortcuts in the same place, the menu bar. They're all searchable via the Help menu. On Windows, there are more often than not keyboard shortcuts that aren't listed in any menus, so one would have no idea what they are without looking them up. Further, because Windows software tends to be developed in any ol' framework with any ol' user interface, lacking in any consistency, quite a lot of programs don't even implement the standard, universal shortcuts.
  • int_19h 8y ago
    All the things that you list about Windows apps are deficiencies of the modern era of UX design. UX apps of Win98 era were much more consistent, and especially the rule that all commands and shortcuts must be in the main menu was usually adhered to, at least by apps that respected the official platform design guidelines. The idea of a drop-down main menu with all commands comes from CUA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access#Description https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access#Descrip...
    • zapzupnz 8y ago
      > All the things that you list about Windows apps are deficiencies of the modern era of UX design I was going to say "not on macOS, they aren't" because this isn't true for any apps that use Cocoa or Carbon (which is to say, all of them). The only apps that exhibit any weirdness are ones that use cross-platform frameworks like Qt, GTK+, or wxWidgets. But nowadays, there are loads of Electron and React Native apps that don't even present anything in the global menu bar; if the developers don't think to add them in themselves, basic functions like copy and paste don't work without secondary clicking!
    • 8y ago
• weliketocode 8y ago
  Yes! yes! 1000x yes! Have spent the vast majority of my time on OSX for the past several years, but still reminisce about the wonderful keyboard shortcuts from Windows.
• city41 8y ago
  I'd argue MacOS classic was the real winner here, especially keyboard shortcuts. For example cmnd+q always quits an app, where as in Windows you had ctrl+q, alt+f4, ctrl+w, and sometimes you just had to do the menu navigation (alt f, then e I think? and sometimes it was alt f, x), and yet other times there was no keyboard shortcut at all.
  • rtpg 8y ago
    It’s funny to mention ctrl+q , because it is one consistency in MacOS that I find unbearable to the point of having set it to spotlight instead Right next to ctrl+q (something I end up hitting once per session of an app, by definition) is ctrl+a (select all, something I hit tens of times a session), ctrl+w (hit in the browser a good amount), ctrl+1, ctrl+2 (also good browser shortcuts) I actually don’t need to close the entire program that often! Please don’t make it so easy to accidentally hit at such a high frequency. Bonus points: I switch between QWERTY and AZERTY keyboards a lot. That’s just me but it makes me have a lot of extra pain Alt-F4 is very nice in that regard.
    • thedaemon 8y ago
      Select all in MacOS should be CMD+A, not CTRL+A. Try swapping your muscle memory :)
  • int_19h 8y ago
    Alt+F4 is a shortcut that closes the current top-level window. Ctrl+F4 is a shortcut that closes the current child window/tab. For apps with tabs, this was often duplicated as Ctrl+W. There's no standard shortcut for exit. I believe that this is deliberate, to avoid people hitting it accidentally. However, the accelerator keys to do it via the File menu are always Alt+F ("File") -> X ("eXit"). These are all platform UX guidelines, or at least they were back in the day. Of course, apps can and did ignore them, but that was also possible on macOS.
    • saagarjha 8y ago
      > Of course, apps can and did ignore them, but that was also possible on macOS. This is much less likely, given that they are set up by default for every new application.
• yhoiseth 8y ago
  I find SizeUp to be a lifesaver. Good example of a finished app. It does what it’s supposed to and is incredibly stable and reliable.
• gerash 8y ago
  One UX issue with the cascading menus in Start menu was when you had to navigate several levels deep to open a program. Since the menus expanded and collapsed on mouse hover every once in a while accidentally moving the mouse in the wrong direction meant all my menu navigation progress was lost and I had to start over.
• IggleSniggle 8y ago
  Shoutout to Shortcat for providing something like "knowledge-free keyboard shortcuts everywhere" on macOS. You hit a search key-chord (I use SHIFT-CMD-SPACE) and it pops up a search modal making all UI elements keyboard selectable. Usually the thing you want is 1 or 2 characters followed by Return. It honestly reminds me of the experience of navigating Windows menus with Alt- and progressive keyboard shortcut learning, but flexible enough to handle things like Electron applications that don't even have a Menu bar or settable shortcuts. Does anyone else use this or something similar? https://shortcatapp.com/ https://shortcatapp.com/
  • Piskvorrr 8y ago
    Jetbrains' IDEA has the "Search everywhere" feature that...well...searches everywhere - menus, commands, project files, etc. I'd love to have that for every app in the OS.
    • trm42 8y ago
      Actually, that would be really, really awesome once you get used to Jetbrains' way of working. It's so unusual to be able to search for all the configuration, functionality, code and files in the same place.
  • explainplease 8y ago
    Emacs is much like that, as everything the user can do is an interactive command, which is typically a named function. So tools like Helm, Ivy/Counsel, as well as the built-in completion for M-x, let the user find and execute commands by name. And, e.g. `helm-M-x` display any bound keys next to the command name.
  • daxelrod 8y ago
    Thank you for teaching me about Shortcat!