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> The UI is a mess and version 10 has put lipstick on a pig. This is exactly how I've always felt about the Mac OS UI. Small example of why I feel this way: Th

> The UI is a mess and version 10 has put lipstick on a pig. This is exactly how I've always felt about the Mac OS UI. Small example of why I feel this way: There are many windows on a Mac that you can open that you then cannot switch back to with the keyboard alone. Try it out - on an unmodified macOS open "About this Mac" then alt-tab to some other program. Now try to get back to "About this Mac" with your keyboard the same way you switched away from it. And it's the same for any window you open from a menu-bar. Macs fail so horribly on such a very, very, very basic interaction and the entire OS is filled with shit like this. I could literally fill an entire blog with examples of how badly the macOS fails users, but that would mean I'd have to use my Macs more often for things other than just compiling iOS apps. No fucking thanks! Windows is a mecca of consistency where it really matters compared to this garbage. Sure, you can complain about the rare times that you're exposed to 2 different control panels (yawn) but if you fuck up very basic things like window management like macOS does it's much, much worse IMO. I feel like really good marketing, sex appeal, status symbolism, herd immunity (at least in Silicon Valley) and of course the fact that macOS is a very stable, low-maintenance Unix keep a lot of people blind to the glaring inconsistencies in the macOS UI.

spacedcowboy 7y ago
Nope, none of that, at least imho. It’s a damn good Unix workstation, like I’ve been using for the last 30 years, and you get excellent commercial app support. That’s all that’s necessary for me.
- freehunter 7y ago
  That’s the thing. Mac and Windows both have their major UI failures and both suck in their own shitty ways but at the end of the day Mac is built on a good solid platform while Windows underneath the hood is... Windows. It’s not even comparable.
duskwuff 7y ago
> And it's the same for any window you open from a menu-bar. Most windows can be switched to by switching to the app with Cmd+Tab, then cycling windows with Cmd+`. The "About this Mac" window is an outlier because it isn't associated with an application.
nichch 7y ago
Small anecdote, but I definitely am exposed to multiple versions of control panel daily. I have not had a consistent user interface with Windows since 2012 with the release of Metro.
- insulanian 7y ago
  Exactly. The last coherent release of Windows was 7. From that point on it was only downhill.
Tagbert 7y ago
“About this Mac” is not an application. It is a non-modal dialog box that does not stay open when you move away. What kind of use case do you have where you need it to stay open?
- philsnow 7y ago
  It makes sense now that you describe it as a dialog box instead of a "magic app that doesn't show up in the cmd-tab switcher", which is how I thought of it before. If it were any other app and I wanted to find the dialog again, I would cmd-tab to the app. I guess the problem is that whatever app it belongs to (Dock.app?) has no place in the cmd-tab switcher. (on my Mojave machine, it does stay open when I move away from it, when I cmd-tab to something else and then a third something else, "About this Mac" is still visible.)

spacedcowboy 7y ago

Nope, none of that, at least imho. It’s a damn good Unix workstation, like I’ve been using for the last 30 years, and you get excellent commercial app support. That’s all that’s necessary for me.

freehunter 7y ago
That’s the thing. Mac and Windows both have their major UI failures and both suck in their own shitty ways but at the end of the day Mac is built on a good solid platform while Windows underneath the hood is... Windows. It’s not even comparable.

duskwuff 7y ago

> And it's the same for any window you open from a menu-bar. Most windows can be switched to by switching to the app with Cmd+Tab, then cycling windows with Cmd+`. The "About this Mac" window is an outlier because it isn't associated with an application.

nichch 7y ago

Small anecdote, but I definitely am exposed to multiple versions of control panel daily. I have not had a consistent user interface with Windows since 2012 with the release of Metro.

insulanian 7y ago
Exactly. The last coherent release of Windows was 7. From that point on it was only downhill.

Tagbert 7y ago

“About this Mac” is not an application. It is a non-modal dialog box that does not stay open when you move away. What kind of use case do you have where you need it to stay open?

philsnow 7y ago
It makes sense now that you describe it as a dialog box instead of a "magic app that doesn't show up in the cmd-tab switcher", which is how I thought of it before. If it were any other app and I wanted to find the dialog again, I would cmd-tab to the app. I guess the problem is that whatever app it belongs to (Dock.app?) has no place in the cmd-tab switcher. (on my Mojave machine, it does stay open when I move away from it, when I cmd-tab to something else and then a third something else, "About this Mac" is still visible.)