10 ms·

> Why is it that when I click Finder, nothing actually opens? This would be an example of the 10% of the UI which isn't identical. One of the fundamental diff

> Why is it that when I click Finder, nothing actually opens? This would be an example of the 10% of the UI which isn't identical. One of the fundamental differences between macOS and Windows is the menu bar. There's only one at a time, and it belongs to the program which has the focus. A corollary of this is that you don't need a window to have a program. It's not just Finder, most macOS programs are perfectly happy having no window open. I've been on OS X since 2003, and it took me a second to figure out what you were talking about here, because if I don't see the window I expect to see, my eyes immediately flick to the upper-left corner. If I see what I expect to see, I've probably already typed Cmd-N or Cmd-O, depending. There's a lot to complain about with Finder; my personal peeve is that I want two-finger-swipe-right to go back one directory, like the back button in browsers. But this particular behavior is just macOS working the way that it does. If you close all open windows in Preview and quit, then start it again, it will do the same thing.

shawnz 5y ago
Right, so it's not a problem with Finder but actually the window manager. Why would you ever want to have a "menubar-only" app? It would be better if the design didn't create the possibility of that happening at all.
- samatman 5y ago
  See I firmly disagree with this. If I have some document editor open, and I close all the documents, what should happen? Should it quit? Well if I wanted to quit, I would have done so. Should it display some blank pane? Why? To let me know it's still running? The menu bar does that! I say it should close that last window, and then I can open up another one and keep working. In other words, I want to have a "menubar-only" app every time I'm done with all the windows I had open, and intend to open more. This happens frequently enough that I'm glad macOS works the way it does.
  - shawnz 5y ago
    When you are done with all the windows in your editor, do you open a new window by choosing File > New? You don't open a new window by clicking the dock icon? If you close all the tabs in a browser window, should it close the window or display a new tab page? Or just do nothing but show an empty tab bar and a blank window pane? That seems like the worst possible solution, because it always requires more clicks to do whatever you were intending to do. At least closing the window or opening a new tab will save you some clicks 50% of the time.
    - samatman 5y ago
      I hit Cmd-O or Cmd-N, depending on what I'm doing. Personally I barely use the dock for anything, Cmd-Space for Spotlight is faster, and I use Cmd-Tab to navigate between open programs. If I close all the tabs in a browser window, the window should disappear, yes. If I close all the windows, the browser should stay open, so I can start another window if I want to. That's the whole point of this user affordance, there's a difference between closing the last window and closing the browser! If I want to close a whole window at once, that's Shift-Cmd-W, Cmd-W closes just one tab, and this works for any tabbed window on any native Mac app. No amount of Cmd-W will quit the application, and Cmd-Q will always quit the application, maybe prompting and maybe not. They're unrelated commands, especially since most applications will save your windows and that's most often what I want to have happen.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - hagg3n 5y ago
    Honest question: Should whether an application is running or not be a concern to you? Why would you ever want to actually quit an application? Granted, I understand that in reality the app might be misbehaving, hogging resources and whatnot and that the underlying OS isn't perfect and we should absolutely have control over how our hardware is utilized, but from a UX PoV I think the notion of a running process isn't of interest to me unless I am developing software. If I close a window, I just want to get it out of my way. I only leave things running as a workaround to the possible slow cold start the program may present.
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      I want it out of the task switcher.
      - rdsnsca 5y ago
        Quitting it won't do that, MacOS keeps the icon on the last 3 programs run in the dock (task switcher).
        pseudalopex 5y ago
        The task switcher is what pops up when you press Cmd+Tab. And showing recent apps in the dock is optional.
    - jcelerier 5y ago
      > Should whether an application is running or not be a concern to you? Why would you ever want to actually quit an application? same reason why I want the parts of my house that I rarely go to to be tidy ?
      - Hammershaft 5y ago
        I mean, you'd achieve the same thing if an application closed after you completed the tasks that used it?
tomtheelder 5y ago
There's nothing at all wrong with the behavior, and it's perfectly logical once you understand what is going on, but it's certainly not intuitive. It's a bit of an odd mental model that's (as far as I can tell) specific to OSX. I find OSX to be generally pretty logical and easy to understand, but certainly no more _intuitive_ than something like Windows. Another way of saying this: if I took someone who didn't know how to use a desktop OS, I wouldn't be any more confident sitting them down in front of a Mac.
- samatman 5y ago
  I don't think desktop GUIs can or should be 'intuitive'. They should be consistent, discoverable, and customizable. I give macOS full marks for consistency, and a passing grade for customizable, but it's hardly discoverable! I read these kinds of HN posts because of all the little tips and tricks I find. Operating systems used to come with a thick manual, and you could buy an even thicker "missing manual" book at the local bookstore. macOS could use one of those.
  - Koshkin 5y ago
    > consistent, discoverable I think that's what 'intuitive' means, practically, in this context.
    - defaultname 5y ago
      I think he quoted intuitive because that's an effectively meaningless claim. To someone who spent two decades in Windows, everything Windows-like will be "intuitive". That doesn't make it a universal truth.
      - linuxftw 5y ago
        The concepts in Windows used to translate to the physical world. "Buttons" and "Menus." Sure, to an alien species, these things are unintuitive, but no more so than a door knob. Of course, physical things are losing buttons. I guess kids will refer to things as 'tap the tappy spot' or some such.
lloeki 5y ago
> One of the fundamental differences between macOS and Windows is the menu bar. There's only one at a time, and it belongs to the program which has the focus. A corollary of this is that you don't need a window to have a program. The core difference is that macOS is (originally) document-oriented. You could care less if an app is opened or not, window == document, whereas on Windows, window == program. Each progressively grew into the direction of the other (e.g Finder progressively losing spatial features and Explorer gaining them, MDI interfaces on macOS vs the win7 taskbar being actually more of a Dock...)
- smsm42 5y ago
  I've been using macOS for more than a decade, and I can't remember a single case of doing anything where macOS being supposedly "document-oriented" helped me in any way that wouldn't work exactly in the same way in a different OS. So I'm not sure of what use is it for me, really?
robomartin 5y ago
The single menu bar design breaks down very quickly once you start using a large display. Evolve to multiple large displays and it is an absolute mess. The only option you have is to enable the toolbar on every screen, which starts to be laughable. I have used Windows setups with as many as 50 screens (command and control center). Having each application exist within its own window with all relevant menus in that window is, by far, a superior approach in these settings. Even with three large monitors, using a mouse to fly across that screen space to reach a menu is just a pain. Imagine a system consisting of 25 x 4 screens. It would be a nightmare. Shortcuts? Someone else said MacOS lacks discoverability. It’s true. Tooltips are almost nowhere to be found and lots of applications have no shortcuts. I have watched non-expert users in fear of clicking a button because they have no clue what it does. The single menu and single mouse button idea worked well on an old Mac with a single 9 in screen. It works fine on laptops. The minute the display grows in size and multiple displays are used the approach breaks down very quickly. If you own a multi-monitor Mac setup (we have several) and have enabled the menu bar on all screens, you already understand how broken that concept has become. If it was not you would only have one menu bar with your three large screens.
- qubitcoder 5y ago
  I'm not sure I fully understand the workflow here. I use three large 4k monitors with macOS, and it's straightforward for the most part. Then again, I basically never use the menu bar, since keyboard shortcuts are so consistent across apps. I just keep the dock on the primary display. The only occasional pain point I encounter is when apps like Zoom automatically switch to "full screen mode". There's also the option in Mission Control for "When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application". If that feature is turned off, then you could, for example, have Chrome on _every_ desktop. Then it's just a matter of Cmd+tab to Chrome, and Cmd+n to open a new window on whichever display/desktop has the current focus. For window management, I've found BetterSnapTool to be essential. It provides the typical window snapping from Windows. Better yet, you can setup keyboard shortcuts to quickly snap a window to the left side, right side, maximize, or move it to the next monitor. The shortcuts I use mimic Vim bindings, so it's easy to remember [1]. With caps locks remapped to Control in the Keyboard preferences, moving and re-sizing "windows" across multiple displays is fast & easy. But I'm probably missing something with your particular use-case. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580?mt=... [1] https://imgur.com/a/YUufemN https://imgur.com/a/YUufemN
akra 5y ago
"I've probably already typed Cmd-N or Cmd-O, depending." This is, particularly for a novice or intermediate user IMO quite intimidating. It means there is some learnt behavior + keyboard command required to "see anything" and work with the program. If I'm using my trackpad/mouse trying to work out after I start a program why I can't see anything like I've seen new Mac users do for some time it isn't great. Because there is no window its easy to click anywhere else in my search for my "missing program" and immediately lose the "menu bar" that allows you to (Cmd-N) or discover the ability to do that. It's almost like the app never booted up. Sure you can learn behavior and work around it as I and you have had to do, but if the menu bar behavior changes per window focus anyway I don't see the difference than Windows with menu bar on the window other than "its the Mac way".
- ziml77 5y ago
  It's not necessary to hit either of those though. I don't think I have any weird configuration for window management, but if I close all the windows of an application, clicking the dock icon for it opens a new window. So from the perspective of the user it's no different than if the application had truly exited. I think that's why the default settings for the dock don't even indicate what's running. (I don't think it's a good thing to keep applications running when the last window is closed, but that's a different argument)

shawnz 5y ago

Right, so it's not a problem with Finder but actually the window manager. Why would you ever want to have a "menubar-only" app? It would be better if the design didn't create the possibility of that happening at all.

samatman 5y ago
See I firmly disagree with this. If I have some document editor open, and I close all the documents, what should happen? Should it quit? Well if I wanted to quit, I would have done so. Should it display some blank pane? Why? To let me know it's still running? The menu bar does that! I say it should close that last window, and then I can open up another one and keep working. In other words, I want to have a "menubar-only" app every time I'm done with all the windows I had open, and intend to open more. This happens frequently enough that I'm glad macOS works the way it does.
- shawnz 5y ago
  When you are done with all the windows in your editor, do you open a new window by choosing File > New? You don't open a new window by clicking the dock icon? If you close all the tabs in a browser window, should it close the window or display a new tab page? Or just do nothing but show an empty tab bar and a blank window pane? That seems like the worst possible solution, because it always requires more clicks to do whatever you were intending to do. At least closing the window or opening a new tab will save you some clicks 50% of the time.
  - samatman 5y ago
    I hit Cmd-O or Cmd-N, depending on what I'm doing. Personally I barely use the dock for anything, Cmd-Space for Spotlight is faster, and I use Cmd-Tab to navigate between open programs. If I close all the tabs in a browser window, the window should disappear, yes. If I close all the windows, the browser should stay open, so I can start another window if I want to. That's the whole point of this user affordance, there's a difference between closing the last window and closing the browser! If I want to close a whole window at once, that's Shift-Cmd-W, Cmd-W closes just one tab, and this works for any tabbed window on any native Mac app. No amount of Cmd-W will quit the application, and Cmd-Q will always quit the application, maybe prompting and maybe not. They're unrelated commands, especially since most applications will save your windows and that's most often what I want to have happen.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- hagg3n 5y ago
  Honest question: Should whether an application is running or not be a concern to you? Why would you ever want to actually quit an application? Granted, I understand that in reality the app might be misbehaving, hogging resources and whatnot and that the underlying OS isn't perfect and we should absolutely have control over how our hardware is utilized, but from a UX PoV I think the notion of a running process isn't of interest to me unless I am developing software. If I close a window, I just want to get it out of my way. I only leave things running as a workaround to the possible slow cold start the program may present.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    I want it out of the task switcher.
    - rdsnsca 5y ago
      Quitting it won't do that, MacOS keeps the icon on the last 3 programs run in the dock (task switcher).
      - pseudalopex 5y ago
        The task switcher is what pops up when you press Cmd+Tab. And showing recent apps in the dock is optional.
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    > Should whether an application is running or not be a concern to you? Why would you ever want to actually quit an application? same reason why I want the parts of my house that I rarely go to to be tidy ?
    - Hammershaft 5y ago
      I mean, you'd achieve the same thing if an application closed after you completed the tasks that used it?

tomtheelder 5y ago

There's nothing at all wrong with the behavior, and it's perfectly logical once you understand what is going on, but it's certainly not intuitive. It's a bit of an odd mental model that's (as far as I can tell) specific to OSX. I find OSX to be generally pretty logical and easy to understand, but certainly no more _intuitive_ than something like Windows. Another way of saying this: if I took someone who didn't know how to use a desktop OS, I wouldn't be any more confident sitting them down in front of a Mac.

samatman 5y ago
I don't think desktop GUIs can or should be 'intuitive'. They should be consistent, discoverable, and customizable. I give macOS full marks for consistency, and a passing grade for customizable, but it's hardly discoverable! I read these kinds of HN posts because of all the little tips and tricks I find. Operating systems used to come with a thick manual, and you could buy an even thicker "missing manual" book at the local bookstore. macOS could use one of those.
- Koshkin 5y ago
  > consistent, discoverable I think that's what 'intuitive' means, practically, in this context.
  - defaultname 5y ago
    I think he quoted intuitive because that's an effectively meaningless claim. To someone who spent two decades in Windows, everything Windows-like will be "intuitive". That doesn't make it a universal truth.
    - linuxftw 5y ago
      The concepts in Windows used to translate to the physical world. "Buttons" and "Menus." Sure, to an alien species, these things are unintuitive, but no more so than a door knob. Of course, physical things are losing buttons. I guess kids will refer to things as 'tap the tappy spot' or some such.

lloeki 5y ago

> One of the fundamental differences between macOS and Windows is the menu bar. There's only one at a time, and it belongs to the program which has the focus. A corollary of this is that you don't need a window to have a program. The core difference is that macOS is (originally) document-oriented. You could care less if an app is opened or not, window == document, whereas on Windows, window == program. Each progressively grew into the direction of the other (e.g Finder progressively losing spatial features and Explorer gaining them, MDI interfaces on macOS vs the win7 taskbar being actually more of a Dock...)

smsm42 5y ago
I've been using macOS for more than a decade, and I can't remember a single case of doing anything where macOS being supposedly "document-oriented" helped me in any way that wouldn't work exactly in the same way in a different OS. So I'm not sure of what use is it for me, really?

robomartin 5y ago

The single menu bar design breaks down very quickly once you start using a large display. Evolve to multiple large displays and it is an absolute mess. The only option you have is to enable the toolbar on every screen, which starts to be laughable. I have used Windows setups with as many as 50 screens (command and control center). Having each application exist within its own window with all relevant menus in that window is, by far, a superior approach in these settings. Even with three large monitors, using a mouse to fly across that screen space to reach a menu is just a pain. Imagine a system consisting of 25 x 4 screens. It would be a nightmare. Shortcuts? Someone else said MacOS lacks discoverability. It’s true. Tooltips are almost nowhere to be found and lots of applications have no shortcuts. I have watched non-expert users in fear of clicking a button because they have no clue what it does. The single menu and single mouse button idea worked well on an old Mac with a single 9 in screen. It works fine on laptops. The minute the display grows in size and multiple displays are used the approach breaks down very quickly. If you own a multi-monitor Mac setup (we have several) and have enabled the menu bar on all screens, you already understand how broken that concept has become. If it was not you would only have one menu bar with your three large screens.

qubitcoder 5y ago
I'm not sure I fully understand the workflow here. I use three large 4k monitors with macOS, and it's straightforward for the most part. Then again, I basically never use the menu bar, since keyboard shortcuts are so consistent across apps. I just keep the dock on the primary display. The only occasional pain point I encounter is when apps like Zoom automatically switch to "full screen mode". There's also the option in Mission Control for "When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application". If that feature is turned off, then you could, for example, have Chrome on _every_ desktop. Then it's just a matter of Cmd+tab to Chrome, and Cmd+n to open a new window on whichever display/desktop has the current focus. For window management, I've found BetterSnapTool to be essential. It provides the typical window snapping from Windows. Better yet, you can setup keyboard shortcuts to quickly snap a window to the left side, right side, maximize, or move it to the next monitor. The shortcuts I use mimic Vim bindings, so it's easy to remember [1]. With caps locks remapped to Control in the Keyboard preferences, moving and re-sizing "windows" across multiple displays is fast & easy. But I'm probably missing something with your particular use-case. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580?mt=... [1] https://imgur.com/a/YUufemN https://imgur.com/a/YUufemN

akra 5y ago

"I've probably already typed Cmd-N or Cmd-O, depending." This is, particularly for a novice or intermediate user IMO quite intimidating. It means there is some learnt behavior + keyboard command required to "see anything" and work with the program. If I'm using my trackpad/mouse trying to work out after I start a program why I can't see anything like I've seen new Mac users do for some time it isn't great. Because there is no window its easy to click anywhere else in my search for my "missing program" and immediately lose the "menu bar" that allows you to (Cmd-N) or discover the ability to do that. It's almost like the app never booted up. Sure you can learn behavior and work around it as I and you have had to do, but if the menu bar behavior changes per window focus anyway I don't see the difference than Windows with menu bar on the window other than "its the Mac way".

ziml77 5y ago
It's not necessary to hit either of those though. I don't think I have any weird configuration for window management, but if I close all the windows of an application, clicking the dock icon for it opens a new window. So from the perspective of the user it's no different than if the application had truly exited. I think that's why the default settings for the dock don't even indicate what's running. (I don't think it's a good thing to keep applications running when the last window is closed, but that's a different argument)