15 ms·

This feels like one of the "we have X at home" memes. The UI is all over the place.

xtracto 6y ago
The problem with all these Linux/BSD attempts at mimicking the Mac is that due to the nature of the open source components, they are mostly able to mimic the "look" but never the feel. The one thing that makes OSX different even from Windows is the way it "feels" when you are using it. And the simple things you can achieve in a very simple and intuitive matter. I just stumbled upon an example some days ago, when I needed to add a screenshot image to a PDF. It was surprisingly easy in the Mac: Double click the PDF to open it in preview, double click the image to open it in preview and then drag the file icon of the image into the pages view of the PDF. And the image is inserted as a page in the PDF without any issues. To do that on Windows or Linux (I use Mint in my PC) I think I'll have to print the Image as a PDF and then use some other software to "stitch" the two files together. And like that there are a lot of other UX small things that make for a more pleasant experience in the Mac, particularly for end users.
- aduitsis 6y ago
  My favourite small detail on the Mac, is how the clipboard interacts with the filesystem. You can select some text, drag it into the Desktop and it will become a .Clipping. Now, if you drag and drop that clipping into a text field (e.g. textedit), it will be as if it was pasted.
  - anthk 6y ago
    KDE used to work like that too.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      It still does.
  - hamburglar 6y ago
    This is certainly true for data types that the system knows how to serialize and deserialize, but (at least back when clippings were introduced) for others, the app that owns the clipboard data must provide the hook for the serialization and deserialization. Back in my first programming job, we were about to ship a shrink-wrapped software product that I will not name but you’ve almost certainly used, and we discovered that we “needed” to support clippings or else (I can’t remember if this was some Apple compatibility rule or some marketing person’s rule). We didn’t have much time, and we also didn’t have serialization code for this very complicated data structure that was on the clipboard, and my manager told me to just implement it by sticking THE POINTER in the clipping. I objected and was overruled. I did it, it shipped that way, and I will always be ashamed. You could only use a clipping in the same process that created it. I had to add code on the deserialize that checked to see if the pointer was valid. It still makes me sick to think about.
    - marmaduke 6y ago
      That’s the practical approach .. and you are lucky to have a manager who is technical enough to make suggestions like that
      - hamburglar 6y ago
        There is nothing practical about writing a pointer value to a file. This was a quick hack that made the feature appear to work rather than actually work. It's really bad engineering.
        marmaduke 6y ago
        I agree with you, before the external constraints enter the picture. But as you said, it had to be delivered with this feature on a shorter timeline than a better solution allowed for. The choice between delivering something and delivering nothing, how do you proceed there?
        hamburglar 6y ago
  - toomanyducks 6y ago
    Sort of reminds me of Plan 9, with the ability to treat text as executable, where execution can include opening a file in a designated application. I haven't used either OS for more than a cumulative 10 minutes, but this was definitely my favorite part of Plan 9.
    - ithkuil 6y ago
      You can play with a user space port called plan9port (https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/ https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/) where you can run the "plumber" executable, edit your rule file and then just invoke the plumb command with some text and context and have it do things. It also comes with the acme editor and other tools. This way you can have some of the fun of plan9 but keep your modern amenities such as wifi, a browser and whatnot.
    - MisterTea 6y ago
      Text isn't executable in plan 9 but it plays a major role in the design of how you interact with the system. The functionality you describe sounds like a mixture of Acme(1) text editor and the plumber(4) file server. Acme editor allows you to exec highlighted text so long as the highlighted portion is a valid command string. For example: if you wanted the date printed in the Acme window from date(1) all you do is type <date, highlight it, middle click it, and date's stdout is redirected into the editor and the highlighted text is replaced with the output of date. Without the '<', the output would redirect to a new window. You can also put commands into the tag bar and right click them to execute. So when I'm writing plan 9 programs, I put mk into the tag bar of the programs directory and just click mk. Of course Acme works hand in hand with the plumber and you can send plumb messages from Acme too. Right clicking text in Acme plumbs it. The plumber is a really neat program. All it does is listen for messages that are plain old text, tries to match the message to a rule, and that rule has an associated action. You load the rules by simply copying the rule file to the plumber rule file. So for example, you send a url to plumber, it's rule looks for http:// http://, matches it to a rule that says open mothra or netsurf and use the url as an argument and the website open in the browser. If you're inside acme and right click a header file in acme, plumber then just tells acme to open that file (assuming acme is in your rules file for text)
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    This is also why Mac apps built using frameworks other than Cocoa (or Carbon) never feel quite right! Sure, you may have recreated the copy and paste menu so it looks and feels identical. But did you remember to handle .clipping files? What about File > New From Clipboard? What about the system-wide custom keyboard shortcuts? Oh, and don't forget to make it all behave properly with Voiceover!
    - kridsdale1 6y ago
      This is why it sucks so much that many important "apps" are electron shells.
      - danellis 6y ago
        Advocates of Electron sometimes claim that it unifies the look of the application across platforms. This should not be a goal. Most people are far more like to use several applications on one platform than use one application on several platforms. It is the platform that the apps should be conforming to, not themselves.
        yagya 6y ago
        Exactly why I prefer Seaglass over Element for Matrix chat, even though Seaglass hasn't been updated in a while. Same with Telegram Desktop and Telegram for macOS.
        saagarjha 6y ago
        I have yet to find a Telegram client that is a good Mac citizen :/
        yepthatsreality 6y ago
        This isn’t true, the reason devs use Electron is for market share not some design-usage principle.
        6y ago
  - quietbritishjim 6y ago
    Windows had a very similar idea to that, called "shell scraps" [1]. The feature was removed because basically nobody ever used it (and it was a vector for viruses) [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Scrap_Object_File https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Scrap_Object_File [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-magazine/cc194424(v=msdn.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-m...
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    KDE's Plasma Desktop allows you to do this. You can drag text from any app to the desktop, and it will turn it into a Note. You can right-click and paste, or Ctrl+V, on the desktop or the file manager, too, and it will save your clipboard contents as a file for you. Same thing works for images, videos etc.
    - akdor1154 6y ago
      Now copy and paste that file into kedit or kword.. what happens?
      - heavyset_go 6y ago
        I just dragged a text file into Kate and Kate opened it.
  - amatecha 6y ago
    Ah yeah, text clippings are an amazing feature. The feature was added in 1994, for System 7.0 or newer[0]. Super useful. I used to be in the midst of a conversation with someone on Hotline and want to save a snippet of text. Select it, drag to desktop, done. Saved for later as a file I can refer to or even drag & drop to some other program. [0] http://asa.max1zzz.co.uk/English-North_American/Macintosh/System/Other_System/Mac_Drag_and_Drop_1.1.txt http://asa.max1zzz.co.uk/English-North_American/Macintosh/Sy...
- com2kid 6y ago
  > I just stumbled upon an example some days ago, when I needed to add a screenshot image to a PDF. It was surprisingly easy in the Mac: Double click the PDF to open it in preview, double click the image to open it in preview and then drag the file icon of the image into the pages view of the PDF. And the image is inserted as a page in the PDF without any issues. That is a great use case! And screenshots on mac are, IMHO, hard to use. The screenshot UI is frustrating, where to save to is under options, you cannot preview your screenshot, you cannot annotate the screenshot (something I do all the time on Windows), and having to choose between saving to file or clipboard is annoying. I wanted to record video, which the Screenshot app can do! I know that because I googled for it, saw it could do it, and then spent a good 4-5 minutes trying to figure out HOW to do it before I realized the tiny grey scale circle overlaid on a couple of the toolbar icons meant "record". (Red circles mean record, grey circles don't have much meaning, but hey, need to keep that UI minimal, can't let usability or actual meaning get in the way!) The Windows Snipping Tool (RIP) is IMHO the best paradigm for doing screenshots.
  - notafraudster 6y ago
    You are a few versions out of date here -- Mac screenshots now show a preview by default and clicking on the preview opens it for annotation. This is true as of 2018 (Mojave).
    - com2kid 6y ago
      > Mac screenshots now show a preview by default Ah, I have to select "preview". Thanks! That is nice to know. Now, pardon me, as the highlight tool isn't working, everything is a rectangular selection no matter what I do. Right click, "text and icons". Thank goodness for that[1], because apparently I have to first click what I thought was a stylized 'A' (or a wishbone), then a separate toolbar appears, that, ironically, doesn't have a way to highlight things. Go figure. It does appear to be far more powerful than the snipping tool. I'll still complain about the greyscale record button. [1] With just icons I probably would have, quite literally, never clicked the markup button and just assumed the preview tool couldn't do any annotations. Holy cow that is a bad icon. Edit: OIC, the markup button only does something when viewing PDFs, but the button pretends it does something (is clickable, changes state) when viewing image files. That is... distinctly not good UX.
- mortenjorck 6y ago
  My sense is that theming like this is generally not aimed at people who would use a Mac in the first place, but rather BSD users who want something that looks more pleasant than their default window manager. Creating a coherent visual language from scratch is a huge undertaking, and requires a certain skill set. Mimicking an existing design system is much more straightforward, even if the results are uneven.
  - cmroanirgo 6y ago
    From the page itself, it clearly aims at people migrating from a mac: > It is intended as a system for “mere mortals”, welcoming to switchers from the Mac.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Well Windows doesn't attempt to edit PDFs, so what do you expect? If for some reason I was using word it's 2 clicks, so I find that extremely pointless as a test.
  - zepto 6y ago
    > what do you expect? I think a lot of users expect to be able to do minor manipulations on PDFs.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  > And like that there are a lot of other UX small things that make for a more pleasant experience in the Mac, particularly for end users. Completely disagree. Yesterday I had to figure out how to display hidden files in finder. I had to google it // apparently there is some hidden key sequence of command option control alt hell that toggles it. It is not exposed in menus anywhere and there shortcut it not all obvious. So next week I’ll be googling it again. Contrast that with most linux UIs and even Windows. Context-menus display all possible options (generally)... nothing is hidden from the user. Most of my gripes about MacOS have to do with the finder and context menus. They suck. This is one example of many.
  - zepto 6y ago
    “I had to figure out how to display hidden files in finder.” Displaying hidden files is not generally an end user feature.
    - fnord123 6y ago
      As a user I would like to be able to attach my .vimrc, .bashrc, etc to emails to colleagues so they can see what I have in my settings.
      - Someone 6y ago
        In general, end users don’t even have a .vimrc, .bashrc, etc. If you even know these things exist, you’re an exception.
        ant6n 6y ago
        True. Most users will have a .emacs file.
        fnord123 6y ago
        Mac installs vim and bash by default but seeing their configuration files in Finder is spooky and not normal? It's not a terribly convincing argument that there should be no context menu in the Open File dialog window for showing/hiding hidden files.
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  You can mimic the macOS feel in Linux by injecting a 30 ms delay in every action and changing the cursor to a beach ball.
  - eevilspock 6y ago
    I'm not sure if you got downvoted because humor isn't appreciated on HN or because your joke was bad / not accurate.
    - Shared404 6y ago
      > or because your joke was bad / not accurate. I found it funny, and it does match my experience. That being said, the only Mac's I've used are several years old by the time I use them.
  - yagya 6y ago
    That's less of macOS itself and more how it fares on Intel hardware. My M1 Pro hasn't really had that.
    - Shared404 6y ago
      > That's less of macOS itself and more how it fares on Intel hardware. It seems fair to expect it to work well on the hardware it was sold on though. I've had the same experience as joked about above on Mac's running the OS that came bundled with the machine.
- toast0 6y ago
  > double click the image to open it in preview and then drag the file icon of the image into the pages view of the PDF What I never understood as someone with a mac only to blend in at work, is why in the world is it called Preview when it's actually an editor?
  - pavlov 6y ago
    Well, it wasn’t an editor originally... Back in 1989 when Preview.app was introduced in NeXTStep.
- ant6n 6y ago
  What I really miss on Windows an Linux is the three-finger drag to slide back and forth between work places, with the rubbery bounce effect (not just an instant switch). What I miss on Mac is a properly working tap-to-drag, without that delay when you release the dragged element.
  - layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
    >without that delay when you release the dragged element. Without the delay the system won’t be able to decide if you’ve really finished dragging or just run out of trackpad space but want to continue dragging.
    - ant6n 6y ago
      That´s the mac way, right. They decide I have to use my computer a certain way, even if all my other computers work differently, and there´s no way to get the same behavior as on every other Laptop I have (Windows, Linux, Chrome OS). I'd rather be "running out of trackpad space", which is not an issue on those giant Macbook track pads, instead of having to wait for the drag to settle after each drag - or worse, constantly mis-dragging because the behavior, the feel of dragging, is different on MacOS than elsewhere.
      - layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
        Maybe you should try using the 3-finger drag option (Accessibility → Pointer Control → Trackpad Options). I'm using that and it doesn't suffer from this delay issue, because when the number of fingers on the trackpad changes the system knows that the drag gesture was finished.
- saladgnu054 6y ago
  I completely disagree. I use a Mac for work and basically never leave the terminal and browser. The "finder", which is a terrible name btw, is a completely useless file explorer. For everything a shortcut is needed, and they never make sense. Opening a file? Some key + down. What does Enter do? Renames a file. Okay, deleting a file? I don't know I forgot again. Want to drag and drop? Be real careful that the too-smart-for-its-own-good touchpad doesn't think you are pressing too hard, and don't spend too much time scrolling on top of a folder or it will autommatically expand. But hey at least you have Favorites right? What a wonderful idea, favorites in a file explorer, let's see what they are: first off you have airdrop, which I never enabled and never will. Then you have Recents. What is this about? They are not recent files created via command line, but some random collection of files that Finder thought they knew better about what to call recent, a complete waste of your time. Next you have Applications: What a wonderful idea, to list programs in the file explorer, even though they cannot be interacted in the usual way not have any file navigation to be seen. I guess the only purpose is to be able to drag files into this folder so easily impressed children are amazed by not having seen an installer running. Next you have the desktop favourite, which is important since I don't know any other way of acessing the desktop and it is quite a fitting name for the place only used for screenshots to be created in basically. Finally you have documents and downloads, which are the only real favourites of the bunch. Next you have an ad for the Apple cloud service, and finally you have tags, which I suppose let you aggregate files by color for children that haven't been taught about folders yet. Done with your work? Closing it just hides all windows, to really close the app you have to select Quit from the navigation bar. So at the end of the day I have to select my favorite windows and manually close all others. If there is any consistency is that I can rely on having a bad experience and anything other than using the touchpad to switch between the same two apps will be better done on another OS.
  - ladberg 6y ago
    I was about to call you out on ⌘-Down opening a file but I just tried it and was amazed that it works (most of us do ⌘-o or just double click). Deleting a file is ⌘-Delete. Everything in the Finder sidebar is removable (I've removed Recents and Tags, though I find Airdrop and iCloud Drive useful) and you can add custom stuff if you want something else (I always put my home folder at the top of the sidebar, it used to be there by default on earlier OSes). ⌘-Q is useful for closing apps, but I usually just open up the switcher (⌘-Tab) then while keeping ⌘ pressed you can tab over to other apps and just press Q to quit them.
- deaddodo 6y ago
  Right, and this is because of consistent components and internal APIs in conjunction with enforced deprecation. This was the goal of gnuStep[1] and (more directly) etoile[2], but those projects appear dead these days. 1 - http://www.gnustep.org/ 2 - http://etoileos.com/
  - yagya 6y ago
    Étoilé showed some signs of life recently. They've moved to GitHub since Gna! is dead now.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  > The problem with all these Linux/BSD attempts at mimicking the Mac is that due to the nature of the open source components, they are mostly able to mimic the "look" but never the feel. That's not an open source problem, it's a bazaar vs. cathedral problem. If you built a proprietary system out of 3rd party components, it would have this problem, and an integrated FOSS environment wouldn't (ex. KDE).
- jle17 6y ago
  > To do that on Windows or Linux (I use Mint in my PC) I think I'll have to print the Image as a PDF and then use some other software to "stitch" the two files together. Actually the process on Linux is similar. On the PDF file, Right-click > Open with LibreOffice (which I believe is installed by default on Mint), then just drag the image onto it. You don't even have to open it, you can just drag the file. On KDE you can even drag it directly from the screenshot software window to the PDF.
  - bscphil 6y ago
    Is this really the same? If you open a PDF in LibreOffice, you'll get a version of the document that's effectively converted to an ODT. You're then adding a layer with an image in it, and then re-exporting the result as a PDF. I'd be shocked if this didn't break various parts of the layout or replace fonts, etc. Really the underlying issue here is that the PDF format is overly complex and not really designed to be edited, so it takes a pretty large number of development hours to build something where editing a PDF in-place works cleanly. Obviously Adobe has software for this, and so does Apple. But it's not an easy ask. Actually, the hard part of this is not the fact that you can drag and drop an image (every Linux app already has this), it's that you can seamlessly edit PDFs in the first place. I would be shocked if there aren't some bugs in Apple's implementation where this breaks unexpectedly.
- pqdbr 6y ago
  I used to love OSX for the same reason, but it's insane how much we've lost in this regard. Take Photos for instance; I simply can't drag a picture into a browser anymore; it forces me to drag a picture into the desktop, so then I can do something with the file. Take PDFs in the Notes app; you double click them, they don't open in Preview, but in a weird modal window. Can't drag them to attach in an e-mail for instance; must first drag it to the Downloads folder or somewhere else, to then use the file (and delete it afterwards, so I don't end up with a useless copy).
  - jki275 6y ago
    Photo dragging from Photos to a browser window? Sure you can. I do it all the time.
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    > Take Photos for instance; I simply can't drag a picture into a browser anymore They finally fixed this recently, I think it may have even been in Big Sur (or a later version of Catalina).
- NOGDP 6y ago
  > And like that there are a lot of other UX small things that make for a more pleasant experience in the Mac, particularly for end users. There are also a lot of bugs and inconsistencies in the Mac UX that make it very annoying to use. A few that I have to deal with on a regular basis: - App doc will randomly break - either it will not auto hide, or it will not show when pushing cursor down. - For some reason the OS needs to disable/reset all displays multiple times in order to redetect external monitors. Not only can the monitor detection take a few minutes, but it often messes up window/workspace positions. - You cannot drag fullscreen windows from one monitor to another. You cannot drag a non-fullscreen window to a monitor which has a fullscreen window. - Audio will inconsistently switch between native speakers and HDMI, completely ignoring user's manual override. - Windows will randomly disappear - app is still running and shown in doc bar but you cannot alt/command-tab to the window, or show the window from doc bar. -Top bar will randomly not auto-hide, and/or not show when hovering. Mac OS UX is far from any kind of golden standard fanboys try to make it out to be. I'm more or less forced to use windows or mac for work (mac happens to be the lesser evil), but my personal debian pc is so much more intuitive, consistent, and stable.
  - wpm 6y ago
    "You cannot drag fullscreen windows from one monitor to another." Sure you can. Use whatever shortcut you'd like to get into Mission Control, drag and drop that "Space" from one monitor to the top bar on the other.
    - flatiron 6y ago
      Ahh so you are the one who uses mission control.
  - amatecha 6y ago
    Cmd-Opt-D to show/hide Dock btw, if you didn't know that. Can be handy to know for those weird cases where it's not showing/hiding as it should. May or may not help with this particular case you're seeing though, but give it a try!
  - Razengan 6y ago
- eevilspock 6y ago
  One I love is that I can rename a file (or even move it!) while it is open in any macOS app. The latter will pick up the rename/move and even reflect it in the title bar. You could have unsaved changes to the file in that app, and when you saved it would write to the new name/location. That would mess up Windows (at least the last time I used Windows, admittedly a long tie ago). Do Linux/BSD-based OSes support this?
  - yagya 6y ago
    Yup, it's a Unix thing.
- uniqueid 6y ago
  Looking at the screenshot it took about two seconds for me to notice the white pixels where the alpa channel starts, the vertically uncentered text, and unpleasant choice of font. I'd rather use an OS that had the polish of an SJ era Mac than one that doesn't sweat the details but otherwise resembles the Mac.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  This would also be relatively easy in an office document. PDF is just a terrible format for editing. This specific example however need not detract from your larger point.
- grahamjperrin 6y ago
  Bear in mind, it's only 0.4 …
whalesalad 6y ago
The closest I’ve ever seen is Elementary OS but even that isn’t quite right.
baliex 6y ago
Couldn't agree more! It's trying so hard to look like macOS but it somehow hasn't escaped a Linux look and feel. One example is the padding between the `Alt+Space` text and its surrounding pseudo-Spotlight search box. Either the box is too small or the text is too big but it just doesn't look polished.
- grahamjperrin 6y ago
  Accessibility: the Search menu cursor and user input lack visibility/legibility · Issue #45 · helloSystem/Menu — https://github.com/helloSystem/Menu/issues/45 https://github.com/helloSystem/Menu/issues/45
agloeregrets 6y ago
It reminds me aggressively of OSX, no I don't mean macOS, I mean OSX 10.2.

The problem with all these Linux/BSD attempts at mimicking the Mac is that due to the nature of the open source components, they are mostly able to mimic the "look" but never the feel. The one thing that makes OSX different even from Windows is the way it "feels" when you are using it. And the simple things you can achieve in a very simple and intuitive matter. I just stumbled upon an example some days ago, when I needed to add a screenshot image to a PDF. It was surprisingly easy in the Mac: Double click the PDF to open it in preview, double click the image to open it in preview and then drag the file icon of the image into the pages view of the PDF. And the image is inserted as a page in the PDF without any issues. To do that on Windows or Linux (I use Mint in my PC) I think I'll have to print the Image as a PDF and then use some other software to "stitch" the two files together. And like that there are a lot of other UX small things that make for a more pleasant experience in the Mac, particularly for end users.

aduitsis 6y ago
My favourite small detail on the Mac, is how the clipboard interacts with the filesystem. You can select some text, drag it into the Desktop and it will become a .Clipping. Now, if you drag and drop that clipping into a text field (e.g. textedit), it will be as if it was pasted.
- anthk 6y ago
  KDE used to work like that too.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    It still does.
- hamburglar 6y ago
  This is certainly true for data types that the system knows how to serialize and deserialize, but (at least back when clippings were introduced) for others, the app that owns the clipboard data must provide the hook for the serialization and deserialization. Back in my first programming job, we were about to ship a shrink-wrapped software product that I will not name but you’ve almost certainly used, and we discovered that we “needed” to support clippings or else (I can’t remember if this was some Apple compatibility rule or some marketing person’s rule). We didn’t have much time, and we also didn’t have serialization code for this very complicated data structure that was on the clipboard, and my manager told me to just implement it by sticking THE POINTER in the clipping. I objected and was overruled. I did it, it shipped that way, and I will always be ashamed. You could only use a clipping in the same process that created it. I had to add code on the deserialize that checked to see if the pointer was valid. It still makes me sick to think about.
  - marmaduke 6y ago
    That’s the practical approach .. and you are lucky to have a manager who is technical enough to make suggestions like that
    - hamburglar 6y ago
      There is nothing practical about writing a pointer value to a file. This was a quick hack that made the feature appear to work rather than actually work. It's really bad engineering.
      - marmaduke 6y ago
        I agree with you, before the external constraints enter the picture. But as you said, it had to be delivered with this feature on a shorter timeline than a better solution allowed for. The choice between delivering something and delivering nothing, how do you proceed there?
        hamburglar 6y ago
- toomanyducks 6y ago
  Sort of reminds me of Plan 9, with the ability to treat text as executable, where execution can include opening a file in a designated application. I haven't used either OS for more than a cumulative 10 minutes, but this was definitely my favorite part of Plan 9.
  - ithkuil 6y ago
    You can play with a user space port called plan9port (https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/ https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/) where you can run the "plumber" executable, edit your rule file and then just invoke the plumb command with some text and context and have it do things. It also comes with the acme editor and other tools. This way you can have some of the fun of plan9 but keep your modern amenities such as wifi, a browser and whatnot.
  - MisterTea 6y ago
    Text isn't executable in plan 9 but it plays a major role in the design of how you interact with the system. The functionality you describe sounds like a mixture of Acme(1) text editor and the plumber(4) file server. Acme editor allows you to exec highlighted text so long as the highlighted portion is a valid command string. For example: if you wanted the date printed in the Acme window from date(1) all you do is type <date, highlight it, middle click it, and date's stdout is redirected into the editor and the highlighted text is replaced with the output of date. Without the '<', the output would redirect to a new window. You can also put commands into the tag bar and right click them to execute. So when I'm writing plan 9 programs, I put mk into the tag bar of the programs directory and just click mk. Of course Acme works hand in hand with the plumber and you can send plumb messages from Acme too. Right clicking text in Acme plumbs it. The plumber is a really neat program. All it does is listen for messages that are plain old text, tries to match the message to a rule, and that rule has an associated action. You load the rules by simply copying the rule file to the plumber rule file. So for example, you send a url to plumber, it's rule looks for http:// http://, matches it to a rule that says open mothra or netsurf and use the url as an argument and the website open in the browser. If you're inside acme and right click a header file in acme, plumber then just tells acme to open that file (assuming acme is in your rules file for text)
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  This is also why Mac apps built using frameworks other than Cocoa (or Carbon) never feel quite right! Sure, you may have recreated the copy and paste menu so it looks and feels identical. But did you remember to handle .clipping files? What about File > New From Clipboard? What about the system-wide custom keyboard shortcuts? Oh, and don't forget to make it all behave properly with Voiceover!
  - kridsdale1 6y ago
    This is why it sucks so much that many important "apps" are electron shells.
    - danellis 6y ago
      Advocates of Electron sometimes claim that it unifies the look of the application across platforms. This should not be a goal. Most people are far more like to use several applications on one platform than use one application on several platforms. It is the platform that the apps should be conforming to, not themselves.
      - yagya 6y ago
        Exactly why I prefer Seaglass over Element for Matrix chat, even though Seaglass hasn't been updated in a while. Same with Telegram Desktop and Telegram for macOS.
        saagarjha 6y ago
        I have yet to find a Telegram client that is a good Mac citizen :/
      - yepthatsreality 6y ago
        This isn’t true, the reason devs use Electron is for market share not some design-usage principle.
        6y ago
- quietbritishjim 6y ago
  Windows had a very similar idea to that, called "shell scraps" [1]. The feature was removed because basically nobody ever used it (and it was a vector for viruses) [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Scrap_Object_File https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Scrap_Object_File [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-magazine/cc194424(v=msdn.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-m...
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  KDE's Plasma Desktop allows you to do this. You can drag text from any app to the desktop, and it will turn it into a Note. You can right-click and paste, or Ctrl+V, on the desktop or the file manager, too, and it will save your clipboard contents as a file for you. Same thing works for images, videos etc.
  - akdor1154 6y ago
    Now copy and paste that file into kedit or kword.. what happens?
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      I just dragged a text file into Kate and Kate opened it.
- amatecha 6y ago
  Ah yeah, text clippings are an amazing feature. The feature was added in 1994, for System 7.0 or newer[0]. Super useful. I used to be in the midst of a conversation with someone on Hotline and want to save a snippet of text. Select it, drag to desktop, done. Saved for later as a file I can refer to or even drag & drop to some other program. [0] http://asa.max1zzz.co.uk/English-North_American/Macintosh/System/Other_System/Mac_Drag_and_Drop_1.1.txt http://asa.max1zzz.co.uk/English-North_American/Macintosh/Sy...
com2kid 6y ago
> I just stumbled upon an example some days ago, when I needed to add a screenshot image to a PDF. It was surprisingly easy in the Mac: Double click the PDF to open it in preview, double click the image to open it in preview and then drag the file icon of the image into the pages view of the PDF. And the image is inserted as a page in the PDF without any issues. That is a great use case! And screenshots on mac are, IMHO, hard to use. The screenshot UI is frustrating, where to save to is under options, you cannot preview your screenshot, you cannot annotate the screenshot (something I do all the time on Windows), and having to choose between saving to file or clipboard is annoying. I wanted to record video, which the Screenshot app can do! I know that because I googled for it, saw it could do it, and then spent a good 4-5 minutes trying to figure out HOW to do it before I realized the tiny grey scale circle overlaid on a couple of the toolbar icons meant "record". (Red circles mean record, grey circles don't have much meaning, but hey, need to keep that UI minimal, can't let usability or actual meaning get in the way!) The Windows Snipping Tool (RIP) is IMHO the best paradigm for doing screenshots.
- notafraudster 6y ago
  You are a few versions out of date here -- Mac screenshots now show a preview by default and clicking on the preview opens it for annotation. This is true as of 2018 (Mojave).
  - com2kid 6y ago
    > Mac screenshots now show a preview by default Ah, I have to select "preview". Thanks! That is nice to know. Now, pardon me, as the highlight tool isn't working, everything is a rectangular selection no matter what I do. Right click, "text and icons". Thank goodness for that[1], because apparently I have to first click what I thought was a stylized 'A' (or a wishbone), then a separate toolbar appears, that, ironically, doesn't have a way to highlight things. Go figure. It does appear to be far more powerful than the snipping tool. I'll still complain about the greyscale record button. [1] With just icons I probably would have, quite literally, never clicked the markup button and just assumed the preview tool couldn't do any annotations. Holy cow that is a bad icon. Edit: OIC, the markup button only does something when viewing PDFs, but the button pretends it does something (is clickable, changes state) when viewing image files. That is... distinctly not good UX.
mortenjorck 6y ago
My sense is that theming like this is generally not aimed at people who would use a Mac in the first place, but rather BSD users who want something that looks more pleasant than their default window manager. Creating a coherent visual language from scratch is a huge undertaking, and requires a certain skill set. Mimicking an existing design system is much more straightforward, even if the results are uneven.
- cmroanirgo 6y ago
  From the page itself, it clearly aims at people migrating from a mac: > It is intended as a system for “mere mortals”, welcoming to switchers from the Mac.
mhh__ 6y ago
Well Windows doesn't attempt to edit PDFs, so what do you expect? If for some reason I was using word it's 2 clicks, so I find that extremely pointless as a test.
- zepto 6y ago
  > what do you expect? I think a lot of users expect to be able to do minor manipulations on PDFs.
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> And like that there are a lot of other UX small things that make for a more pleasant experience in the Mac, particularly for end users. Completely disagree. Yesterday I had to figure out how to display hidden files in finder. I had to google it // apparently there is some hidden key sequence of command option control alt hell that toggles it. It is not exposed in menus anywhere and there shortcut it not all obvious. So next week I’ll be googling it again. Contrast that with most linux UIs and even Windows. Context-menus display all possible options (generally)... nothing is hidden from the user. Most of my gripes about MacOS have to do with the finder and context menus. They suck. This is one example of many.
- zepto 6y ago
  “I had to figure out how to display hidden files in finder.” Displaying hidden files is not generally an end user feature.
  - fnord123 6y ago
    As a user I would like to be able to attach my .vimrc, .bashrc, etc to emails to colleagues so they can see what I have in my settings.
    - Someone 6y ago
      In general, end users don’t even have a .vimrc, .bashrc, etc. If you even know these things exist, you’re an exception.
      - ant6n 6y ago
        True. Most users will have a .emacs file.
      - fnord123 6y ago
        Mac installs vim and bash by default but seeing their configuration files in Finder is spooky and not normal? It's not a terribly convincing argument that there should be no context menu in the Open File dialog window for showing/hiding hidden files.
29athrowaway 6y ago
You can mimic the macOS feel in Linux by injecting a 30 ms delay in every action and changing the cursor to a beach ball.
- eevilspock 6y ago
  I'm not sure if you got downvoted because humor isn't appreciated on HN or because your joke was bad / not accurate.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    > or because your joke was bad / not accurate. I found it funny, and it does match my experience. That being said, the only Mac's I've used are several years old by the time I use them.
- yagya 6y ago
  That's less of macOS itself and more how it fares on Intel hardware. My M1 Pro hasn't really had that.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    > That's less of macOS itself and more how it fares on Intel hardware. It seems fair to expect it to work well on the hardware it was sold on though. I've had the same experience as joked about above on Mac's running the OS that came bundled with the machine.
toast0 6y ago
> double click the image to open it in preview and then drag the file icon of the image into the pages view of the PDF What I never understood as someone with a mac only to blend in at work, is why in the world is it called Preview when it's actually an editor?
- pavlov 6y ago
  Well, it wasn’t an editor originally... Back in 1989 when Preview.app was introduced in NeXTStep.
ant6n 6y ago
What I really miss on Windows an Linux is the three-finger drag to slide back and forth between work places, with the rubbery bounce effect (not just an instant switch). What I miss on Mac is a properly working tap-to-drag, without that delay when you release the dragged element.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
  >without that delay when you release the dragged element. Without the delay the system won’t be able to decide if you’ve really finished dragging or just run out of trackpad space but want to continue dragging.
  - ant6n 6y ago
    That´s the mac way, right. They decide I have to use my computer a certain way, even if all my other computers work differently, and there´s no way to get the same behavior as on every other Laptop I have (Windows, Linux, Chrome OS). I'd rather be "running out of trackpad space", which is not an issue on those giant Macbook track pads, instead of having to wait for the drag to settle after each drag - or worse, constantly mis-dragging because the behavior, the feel of dragging, is different on MacOS than elsewhere.
    - layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
      Maybe you should try using the 3-finger drag option (Accessibility → Pointer Control → Trackpad Options). I'm using that and it doesn't suffer from this delay issue, because when the number of fingers on the trackpad changes the system knows that the drag gesture was finished.
saladgnu054 6y ago
I completely disagree. I use a Mac for work and basically never leave the terminal and browser. The "finder", which is a terrible name btw, is a completely useless file explorer. For everything a shortcut is needed, and they never make sense. Opening a file? Some key + down. What does Enter do? Renames a file. Okay, deleting a file? I don't know I forgot again. Want to drag and drop? Be real careful that the too-smart-for-its-own-good touchpad doesn't think you are pressing too hard, and don't spend too much time scrolling on top of a folder or it will autommatically expand. But hey at least you have Favorites right? What a wonderful idea, favorites in a file explorer, let's see what they are: first off you have airdrop, which I never enabled and never will. Then you have Recents. What is this about? They are not recent files created via command line, but some random collection of files that Finder thought they knew better about what to call recent, a complete waste of your time. Next you have Applications: What a wonderful idea, to list programs in the file explorer, even though they cannot be interacted in the usual way not have any file navigation to be seen. I guess the only purpose is to be able to drag files into this folder so easily impressed children are amazed by not having seen an installer running. Next you have the desktop favourite, which is important since I don't know any other way of acessing the desktop and it is quite a fitting name for the place only used for screenshots to be created in basically. Finally you have documents and downloads, which are the only real favourites of the bunch. Next you have an ad for the Apple cloud service, and finally you have tags, which I suppose let you aggregate files by color for children that haven't been taught about folders yet. Done with your work? Closing it just hides all windows, to really close the app you have to select Quit from the navigation bar. So at the end of the day I have to select my favorite windows and manually close all others. If there is any consistency is that I can rely on having a bad experience and anything other than using the touchpad to switch between the same two apps will be better done on another OS.
- ladberg 6y ago
  I was about to call you out on ⌘-Down opening a file but I just tried it and was amazed that it works (most of us do ⌘-o or just double click). Deleting a file is ⌘-Delete. Everything in the Finder sidebar is removable (I've removed Recents and Tags, though I find Airdrop and iCloud Drive useful) and you can add custom stuff if you want something else (I always put my home folder at the top of the sidebar, it used to be there by default on earlier OSes). ⌘-Q is useful for closing apps, but I usually just open up the switcher (⌘-Tab) then while keeping ⌘ pressed you can tab over to other apps and just press Q to quit them.
deaddodo 6y ago
Right, and this is because of consistent components and internal APIs in conjunction with enforced deprecation. This was the goal of gnuStep[1] and (more directly) etoile[2], but those projects appear dead these days. 1 - http://www.gnustep.org/ 2 - http://etoileos.com/
- yagya 6y ago
  Étoilé showed some signs of life recently. They've moved to GitHub since Gna! is dead now.
yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
> The problem with all these Linux/BSD attempts at mimicking the Mac is that due to the nature of the open source components, they are mostly able to mimic the "look" but never the feel. That's not an open source problem, it's a bazaar vs. cathedral problem. If you built a proprietary system out of 3rd party components, it would have this problem, and an integrated FOSS environment wouldn't (ex. KDE).
jle17 6y ago
> To do that on Windows or Linux (I use Mint in my PC) I think I'll have to print the Image as a PDF and then use some other software to "stitch" the two files together. Actually the process on Linux is similar. On the PDF file, Right-click > Open with LibreOffice (which I believe is installed by default on Mint), then just drag the image onto it. You don't even have to open it, you can just drag the file. On KDE you can even drag it directly from the screenshot software window to the PDF.
- bscphil 6y ago
  Is this really the same? If you open a PDF in LibreOffice, you'll get a version of the document that's effectively converted to an ODT. You're then adding a layer with an image in it, and then re-exporting the result as a PDF. I'd be shocked if this didn't break various parts of the layout or replace fonts, etc. Really the underlying issue here is that the PDF format is overly complex and not really designed to be edited, so it takes a pretty large number of development hours to build something where editing a PDF in-place works cleanly. Obviously Adobe has software for this, and so does Apple. But it's not an easy ask. Actually, the hard part of this is not the fact that you can drag and drop an image (every Linux app already has this), it's that you can seamlessly edit PDFs in the first place. I would be shocked if there aren't some bugs in Apple's implementation where this breaks unexpectedly.
pqdbr 6y ago
I used to love OSX for the same reason, but it's insane how much we've lost in this regard. Take Photos for instance; I simply can't drag a picture into a browser anymore; it forces me to drag a picture into the desktop, so then I can do something with the file. Take PDFs in the Notes app; you double click them, they don't open in Preview, but in a weird modal window. Can't drag them to attach in an e-mail for instance; must first drag it to the Downloads folder or somewhere else, to then use the file (and delete it afterwards, so I don't end up with a useless copy).
- jki275 6y ago
  Photo dragging from Photos to a browser window? Sure you can. I do it all the time.
- kalleboo 6y ago
  > Take Photos for instance; I simply can't drag a picture into a browser anymore They finally fixed this recently, I think it may have even been in Big Sur (or a later version of Catalina).
NOGDP 6y ago
> And like that there are a lot of other UX small things that make for a more pleasant experience in the Mac, particularly for end users. There are also a lot of bugs and inconsistencies in the Mac UX that make it very annoying to use. A few that I have to deal with on a regular basis: - App doc will randomly break - either it will not auto hide, or it will not show when pushing cursor down. - For some reason the OS needs to disable/reset all displays multiple times in order to redetect external monitors. Not only can the monitor detection take a few minutes, but it often messes up window/workspace positions. - You cannot drag fullscreen windows from one monitor to another. You cannot drag a non-fullscreen window to a monitor which has a fullscreen window. - Audio will inconsistently switch between native speakers and HDMI, completely ignoring user's manual override. - Windows will randomly disappear - app is still running and shown in doc bar but you cannot alt/command-tab to the window, or show the window from doc bar. -Top bar will randomly not auto-hide, and/or not show when hovering. Mac OS UX is far from any kind of golden standard fanboys try to make it out to be. I'm more or less forced to use windows or mac for work (mac happens to be the lesser evil), but my personal debian pc is so much more intuitive, consistent, and stable.
- wpm 6y ago
  "You cannot drag fullscreen windows from one monitor to another." Sure you can. Use whatever shortcut you'd like to get into Mission Control, drag and drop that "Space" from one monitor to the top bar on the other.
  - flatiron 6y ago
    Ahh so you are the one who uses mission control.
- amatecha 6y ago
  Cmd-Opt-D to show/hide Dock btw, if you didn't know that. Can be handy to know for those weird cases where it's not showing/hiding as it should. May or may not help with this particular case you're seeing though, but give it a try!
- Razengan 6y ago
eevilspock 6y ago
One I love is that I can rename a file (or even move it!) while it is open in any macOS app. The latter will pick up the rename/move and even reflect it in the title bar. You could have unsaved changes to the file in that app, and when you saved it would write to the new name/location. That would mess up Windows (at least the last time I used Windows, admittedly a long tie ago). Do Linux/BSD-based OSes support this?
- yagya 6y ago
  Yup, it's a Unix thing.
uniqueid 6y ago
Looking at the screenshot it took about two seconds for me to notice the white pixels where the alpa channel starts, the vertically uncentered text, and unpleasant choice of font. I'd rather use an OS that had the polish of an SJ era Mac than one that doesn't sweat the details but otherwise resembles the Mac.
michaelmrose 6y ago
This would also be relatively easy in an office document. PDF is just a terrible format for editing. This specific example however need not detract from your larger point.
grahamjperrin 6y ago
Bear in mind, it's only 0.4 …

whalesalad 6y ago

The closest I’ve ever seen is Elementary OS but even that isn’t quite right.

baliex 6y ago

Couldn't agree more! It's trying so hard to look like macOS but it somehow hasn't escaped a Linux look and feel. One example is the padding between the `Alt+Space` text and its surrounding pseudo-Spotlight search box. Either the box is too small or the text is too big but it just doesn't look polished.

grahamjperrin 6y ago
Accessibility: the Search menu cursor and user input lack visibility/legibility · Issue #45 · helloSystem/Menu — https://github.com/helloSystem/Menu/issues/45 https://github.com/helloSystem/Menu/issues/45

agloeregrets 6y ago

It reminds me aggressively of OSX, no I don't mean macOS, I mean OSX 10.2.