8 ms·

Anecdotal I know, but I very recently got a macbook air after years of practically exclusively using Linux and the opinionated user interface drives me crazy.

by ginko 6y ago

Anecdotal I know, but I very recently got a macbook air after years of practically exclusively using Linux and the opinionated user interface drives me crazy. Here's a few pain points: - Scroll direction can only be set globally so either touchpad or mouse scrolling feels awkward for me - You need an extra click on another window before you can interact with it - No focus-follows-mouse (there used to be 3rd party plugins but those seem to be gone now) - While basic split screen tiling works and you can set up a global kb shortcut to move windows to left/right of the screen, Firefox seems to completely ignore those - If you're running multiple displays macos for some reason always picks the most awkward display to open new windows in - I really miss being able to grab and resize windows using a modifier key like in XFCE I'm sure I'd get used to many of those, but the lack of focus-follows-mouse and easy window manipulation are the big one for me and I don't think that'll change much. Actually I think those were already pain points when I last tried out Mac OS in the late PPC days. There's of course plenty of things that I like, especially the tight integration with my iphone and trackpad gestures (although I'm not sure how ergonomic using the trackpad all day is). I was hoping it could become my main driver at home, but now I ordered a Ryzen mini PC for that. edit: Oh, I completely forgot the biggest deal breaker for me at the moment. As of now the GUI version of Emacs (either downloaded through brew or from https://emacsformacosx.com/ https://emacsformacosx.com/) doesn't work. MacOS simply refuses to start the binary.

astrange 6y ago
macOS does have mouse-following interaction in some situations. If you move the mouse over a background window, you can scroll it with the trackpad/wheel. You can't click on things or type in it because that's dangerous and would make people afraid to accidentally touch the mouse in case they move it.
jmkni 6y ago
> - You need an extra click on another window before you can interact with it I don't have this issue, I can interact with a window just by hovering over it with the mouse pointer > - If you're running multiple displays macos for some reason always picks the most awkward display to open new windows in You can set the default display in the settings (under arrangement, drag the white bar to the display you want to make the default) Agree about the other issues though.
- ginko 6y ago
  > I don't have this issue, I can interact with a window just by hovering over it with the mouse pointer Hm, maybe it's just Firefox that's a bad citizen here, like with the global shortcuts.
  - bragh 6y ago
    Do not blame Firefox, this is actually how MacOS UI works by default: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/269622/macos-windows-requiring-an-explicit-click-to-make-active-before-ui-elements-ins/269662 https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/269622/macos-windo... I think the other poster has some addon installed and forgot about it.
    - jmkni 6y ago
      I don't think I do, I'm a fairly recent convert to macOS. I'm running Big Sur and I can interact with any window the mouse cursor is over. I can scroll any window I'm hovering over, and with a single click can perform an action.
      - matwood 6y ago
        Same. You have to click the window before typing something, but scroll does follow the mouse.
        ginko 6y ago
        How about button clicks?
        matwood 6y ago
        No, but I understand the rationale. A button click is an input much like typing. Plus, when I want to give a window focus, I'd rather not look for a non-button to click. But, having clicks work on hover instead of after focus is fine, and simply has a different set of trade offs.
RantyDave 6y ago
There's a certain Zen to using Apple interfaces (IMHO): You have to relax and just accept that this is how it is, and it's best to get used to it. I fully understand if you find this to be not really good enough, but this is the only way to make them work for you.
- ylyn 6y ago
  Ah yes, but if you suggest that someone do this when using Linux, you get shit on.
  - magnusmundus 6y ago
    To be fair, customizability and freedom aren't Apple's selling points.
    - sjwright 6y ago
      And to be even fairer, user experience consistency isn't one of Linux's selling points. While there is some limited consistency within individual graphical shells, the Linux ecosystem naturally favours a diversity of opinions instead. Because Apple interfaces are highly opinionated and generally fairly consistent, learning to do things the Apple way is a valid life choice for many people.
  - DCKing 6y ago
    Gnome is still by some distance the most popular user interface on Linux, and is also very strongly opinionated and appears to lack customization options [1]. The project's "our way or the highway" approach is frequently vocally criticized and compared to Apple's approach, but as a whole seems to be appreciated well enough. I wouldn't say the Linux community as a whole are assholes about this. The fact that many online Linux users take offense to lack of customization is not really something to worry about in my opinion. I used to customize Linux installs endlessly, but only truly found zen when I stopped worrying committed to stick to Fedora's default install. [1]: Besides the point but Gnome is arguably far and away the most customizable desktop shell on Linux, as its extension "mechanism" consists of literally overwriting the JS code that powers its shell interface. For better and worse.
smallpipe 6y ago
For the scroll direction check this out https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/ https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/
megous 6y ago
Of all the things, accusing GNU/Linux of opinionated GUI just doesn't make sense at all to me. There's like 30+ different desktop environments you can use. So many so that there's a need for articles like 10 best Linux DE's of 2021, and those don't even scratch the surface anyway.
- ginko 6y ago
  I think you've misread my comment. It's the macos GUI that's opinionated.
  - megous 6y ago
    Allright. :)
sk7_ 6y ago
- for scroll direction: https://mos.caldis.me/ https://mos.caldis.me/ - resize and move windows with shortcuts: https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/ both free and open source
- jason0597 6y ago
  If a Linux user suggested people to download external 3rd party software to make their desktop experience nicer they'd get absolutely blasted and be told that users shouldn't be expected to tweak stuff and download 3rd party tools. Why is this acceptable for macOS users?
  - matwood 6y ago
    This make no sense. The entire linux ecosystem is nearly all 3rd party software. And people routinely recommend not only installing a tool, but installing entirely different window managers.
  - sjwright 6y ago
    That's a red herring. These 3rd party tweaks don't make the Mac desktop experience objectively "nicer", they are tweaks to make it more familiar to people used to other, non-Mac desktop environments. Personally I consider the stock macOS desktop experience to be perfectly fine.
microtherion 6y ago
The Emacs startup failure may be due to bad preferences left behind by Emacs in ~/.emacs.d; try moving those aside or deleting them.
- ginko 6y ago
  Don't think so. It's telling me there's an issue with the binary's signature. (I'm using a macbook air M1, so maybe it works fine with x86) In any case I guess it'll get fixed eventually.
  - euroclear 6y ago
    For whatever it's worth, you can launch Emacs from the command line. cd /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS ./Emacs-arm64-11_2
apetrovic 6y ago
- Grab and resize windows: you can try https://github.com/dmarcotte/easy-move-resize https://github.com/dmarcotte/easy-move-resize.
slifin 6y ago
- You need an extra click on another window before you can interact with it - No focus-follows-mouse (there used to be 3rd party plugins but those seem to be gone now) - While basic split screen tiling works and you can set up a global kb shortcut to move windows to left/right of the screen, Firefox seems to completely ignore those - If you're running multiple displays macos for some reason always picks the most awkward display to open new windows in - I really miss being able to grab and resize windows using a modifier key like in XFCE All of these things can be done with yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai
hesk 6y ago
Since you're already using brew, I am running emacs-plus@27 on Big Sur on an MacBook Air M1 and it works perfectly. brew tap d12frosted/emacs-plus brew install emacs-plus@27 Edit: code

by ginko 6y ago

astrange 6y ago

macOS does have mouse-following interaction in some situations. If you move the mouse over a background window, you can scroll it with the trackpad/wheel. You can't click on things or type in it because that's dangerous and would make people afraid to accidentally touch the mouse in case they move it.

jmkni 6y ago

> - You need an extra click on another window before you can interact with it I don't have this issue, I can interact with a window just by hovering over it with the mouse pointer > - If you're running multiple displays macos for some reason always picks the most awkward display to open new windows in You can set the default display in the settings (under arrangement, drag the white bar to the display you want to make the default) Agree about the other issues though.

ginko 6y ago
> I don't have this issue, I can interact with a window just by hovering over it with the mouse pointer Hm, maybe it's just Firefox that's a bad citizen here, like with the global shortcuts.
- bragh 6y ago
  Do not blame Firefox, this is actually how MacOS UI works by default: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/269622/macos-windows-requiring-an-explicit-click-to-make-active-before-ui-elements-ins/269662 https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/269622/macos-windo... I think the other poster has some addon installed and forgot about it.
  - jmkni 6y ago
    I don't think I do, I'm a fairly recent convert to macOS. I'm running Big Sur and I can interact with any window the mouse cursor is over. I can scroll any window I'm hovering over, and with a single click can perform an action.
    - matwood 6y ago
      Same. You have to click the window before typing something, but scroll does follow the mouse.
      - ginko 6y ago
        How about button clicks?
        matwood 6y ago
        No, but I understand the rationale. A button click is an input much like typing. Plus, when I want to give a window focus, I'd rather not look for a non-button to click. But, having clicks work on hover instead of after focus is fine, and simply has a different set of trade offs.

RantyDave 6y ago

There's a certain Zen to using Apple interfaces (IMHO): You have to relax and just accept that this is how it is, and it's best to get used to it. I fully understand if you find this to be not really good enough, but this is the only way to make them work for you.

ylyn 6y ago
Ah yes, but if you suggest that someone do this when using Linux, you get shit on.
- magnusmundus 6y ago
  To be fair, customizability and freedom aren't Apple's selling points.
  - sjwright 6y ago
    And to be even fairer, user experience consistency isn't one of Linux's selling points. While there is some limited consistency within individual graphical shells, the Linux ecosystem naturally favours a diversity of opinions instead. Because Apple interfaces are highly opinionated and generally fairly consistent, learning to do things the Apple way is a valid life choice for many people.
- DCKing 6y ago
  Gnome is still by some distance the most popular user interface on Linux, and is also very strongly opinionated and appears to lack customization options [1]. The project's "our way or the highway" approach is frequently vocally criticized and compared to Apple's approach, but as a whole seems to be appreciated well enough. I wouldn't say the Linux community as a whole are assholes about this. The fact that many online Linux users take offense to lack of customization is not really something to worry about in my opinion. I used to customize Linux installs endlessly, but only truly found zen when I stopped worrying committed to stick to Fedora's default install. [1]: Besides the point but Gnome is arguably far and away the most customizable desktop shell on Linux, as its extension "mechanism" consists of literally overwriting the JS code that powers its shell interface. For better and worse.

smallpipe 6y ago

For the scroll direction check this out https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/ https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/

megous 6y ago

Of all the things, accusing GNU/Linux of opinionated GUI just doesn't make sense at all to me. There's like 30+ different desktop environments you can use. So many so that there's a need for articles like 10 best Linux DE's of 2021, and those don't even scratch the surface anyway.

ginko 6y ago
I think you've misread my comment. It's the macos GUI that's opinionated.
- megous 6y ago
  Allright. :)

sk7_ 6y ago

- for scroll direction: https://mos.caldis.me/ https://mos.caldis.me/ - resize and move windows with shortcuts: https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/ both free and open source

jason0597 6y ago
If a Linux user suggested people to download external 3rd party software to make their desktop experience nicer they'd get absolutely blasted and be told that users shouldn't be expected to tweak stuff and download 3rd party tools. Why is this acceptable for macOS users?
- matwood 6y ago
  This make no sense. The entire linux ecosystem is nearly all 3rd party software. And people routinely recommend not only installing a tool, but installing entirely different window managers.
- sjwright 6y ago
  That's a red herring. These 3rd party tweaks don't make the Mac desktop experience objectively "nicer", they are tweaks to make it more familiar to people used to other, non-Mac desktop environments. Personally I consider the stock macOS desktop experience to be perfectly fine.

microtherion 6y ago

The Emacs startup failure may be due to bad preferences left behind by Emacs in ~/.emacs.d; try moving those aside or deleting them.

ginko 6y ago
Don't think so. It's telling me there's an issue with the binary's signature. (I'm using a macbook air M1, so maybe it works fine with x86) In any case I guess it'll get fixed eventually.
- euroclear 6y ago
  For whatever it's worth, you can launch Emacs from the command line. cd /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS ./Emacs-arm64-11_2

apetrovic 6y ago

- Grab and resize windows: you can try https://github.com/dmarcotte/easy-move-resize https://github.com/dmarcotte/easy-move-resize.

slifin 6y ago

- You need an extra click on another window before you can interact with it - No focus-follows-mouse (there used to be 3rd party plugins but those seem to be gone now) - While basic split screen tiling works and you can set up a global kb shortcut to move windows to left/right of the screen, Firefox seems to completely ignore those - If you're running multiple displays macos for some reason always picks the most awkward display to open new windows in - I really miss being able to grab and resize windows using a modifier key like in XFCE All of these things can be done with yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

hesk 6y ago

Since you're already using brew, I am running emacs-plus@27 on Big Sur on an MacBook Air M1 and it works perfectly. brew tap d12frosted/emacs-plus brew install emacs-plus@27 Edit: code