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Long time Mac user (1992); I think the Mac UI peaked at Mavericks (some would argue Snow Leopard due to the dumb Save workflow in Lion). As soon as Yosemite sta

Long time Mac user (1992); I think the Mac UI peaked at Mavericks (some would argue Snow Leopard due to the dumb Save workflow in Lion). As soon as Yosemite started trying too hard to be minimal it started a descent into prioritizing style over UX. I haven't touched Big Sur yet and probably won't until I'm forced to with a new Mac. Looking at screenshots of Elementary, it's so much more obvious how things work and what widgets do than on modern Mac OS. I've been running it in various VMs for a few years but didn't seriously consider switching to it full time until Big Sur was announced. I have too many paid-for Mac apps like Alfred, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Photo Mechanic, and others that prevent me from moving to Linux full time.

Normille 5y ago
Another long-time Mac user, who is also increasingly frustrated with how dumbed down & bloated OSX is becoming [I'm sticking on Mavericks for the foreseeable future and only 'upgraded' from El Capitán because more and more of my apps were breaking after applying updates]. With all OSX Finder's faults and all the annoyances of the OS, I still think it's miles ahead of any Linux distro I've tried to get on with. Two words "Quicklook" --OK. that's one word made of two. I find it incredible that no Linux desktop environment has something like this. Pressing spacebar to preview the content of a file without needing to open it first is something I do literally every single day and often multiple times. Why, in 2021, does every single Linux desktop require me to open a file first to see what's inside it? That's my biggest bugbear with Linux desktops. Other annoyances are more vague. Mostly to do with the inconsistencies in the interface. Coming from something like OSX which, for all its faults, presents a completely consistent user interface, every Linux desktop I've tried [even the polished ones like Ubuntu & Mint] always have those annoying glitches & inconsistencies which just scream 'Designed by Committee' [which I suppose they are, to an extent]. As regards apps; a big part of what I do is graphic design and that pretty much rules Linux out for anything work-related. Whatever you think of Adobe, Photoshop and Illustrator just blow The Gimp [dire!] and Inkscape [tolerable but clunky] out of the water. I did have high hopes that new kids on the block Affinity might bring their Photo and Designer [which actually do give Photoshop and Illustrator a run for their money] to Linux. But it seems they've decided to follow Adobe's lead and make thei offerings OSX & Windows only. About the only quality graphic design app I've seen available for Linux is Krita. But it's more of a digital painting app than an image manipulation one. And, of course, no vector graphics.
- Schlaefer 5y ago
  Maybe QuickLook outlived itself. It was a technology tailored to the HDD era of hardware, when complex apps required dozens of seconds to start. In a world were even LibreOffice cold-starts in under three seconds on middle of the road hardware QuickLook is just a familiar workflow instead of a necessity? Initially I missed QuickLook a lot after switching away from macOS, but now I haven't thought about it in years.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    I can't imagine not having access to QuickLook. It's not really about how quickly apps open so much as the UI—in a large folder of images or documents, I can use QuickLook to see what's inside each one, whereas without it I'd have to open a window for every document.
    - kitsunesoba 5y ago
      Yes, for me the killer aspect of Quicklook is being able to flip through dozens of documents in barely more time than it takes for my arrow keys to actuate. It’s wonderful for skimming through dozens of files quickly. Icons that accurately represent content on more than just images are great too. Aside from that, QuickLook remains one of the few examples of a generic extensible document reader in modern operating systems. The way it gains the ability to read new types of files just by virtue of the owning app’s bundle being present on the system (no installation necessary, and it goes away when you delete the app) makes so much sense, and it’s a shame that there’s no equivalent on Windows and Linux.
      - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
        > QuickLook remains one of the few examples of a generic extensible document reader in modern operating systems. ...were there other ones in classic operating systems? QuickTime <= 10.2 did let you install third-party components (I wrote one recently), but what else was there?
fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
Interestingly enough, iTerm is the biggest sticking point for me in switching back to Linux: none of the Linux terminal applications have the quality of life features I depend on in iTerm
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  I would pay for iTerm to be ported to Linux, but I know it's very MacOS coupled.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
    The big issue is that a lot of what makes iTerm great is that it isn't trying to be cross-platform: many of my favorite apps are intentionally single-platform and take advantage of what that platform provides.
- harel 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, what in iTerm is missing in any of the Linux terminals? (I usually use Tilix).
  - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
    A bunch of little things: iTerm’s jump/mark feature is really useful, especially combined with shell integration and triggers. iTerm can detect soft splits (e.g. tmux or vim splits) and confine the selection to one side of them. Also it’s split-pane navigation functionality is pretty smooth.
    - harel 5y ago
      Try this for mark/jump : https://gist.github.com/harel/25569bda00f7260923fdbc38e256f56b https://gist.github.com/harel/25569bda00f7260923fdbc38e256f5... It's not "mine" but I adopted it years ago and cannot live without it. I don't know about detecting soft-splits, but tilix has a really nice split pane setup.
- 5y ago
bitwize 5y ago
The beauty and elegance of Mac OS died with Mac OS X, when they foolishly decided to keep the NeXT-isms instead of sticking with tried and true Mac principles like the spatial Finder.
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  Is that you, John Siracusa?
smoldesu 5y ago
> I have too many paid-for Mac apps like Alfred, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Photo Mechanic See uLauncher, AutoHotKey and Darkroom, respectively. They're not 1:1 in terms of feature parity, but you can get pretty close for free.
kall 5y ago
For me macOS design peaked when they moved from the super readable Lucida Grande to Helvetica Neue because it looked hot on retina displays. I'm not sure which version that was exactly. Purely from a visual standpoint I like the Big Sur redesign way more than I expected. It looks like it was made for dark mode, unlike previous versions where dark mode was kind of an add on. The whole material/translucency thing is really coming together. Not so happy about the non-visual aspects though, like all the unlabeled, barely distinct line icons.
- Normille 5y ago
  The trouble with Lucida Grande was that it didn't have an Italic variant. Which was a bit of a glaring oversight for a default font
  - kall 5y ago
    Ha, I had no idea. That's kind of a problem, yeah. They REALLY fixed that with San Francisco which has, by my count, a crazy 18 cuts across 8 variants, counting only generic sans serifs.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    Eh, in a UI font though? I appreciate the lack of italics in the UI of my system (which is running Mavericks, so has Lucida Grande), it keeps the menus clean and there are better ways to add emphasis where truly needed.
    - Normille 5y ago
      Not necessarily in the UI. But, as the default font, it was the one that a lot of apps would er... 'default' to. So, if you were writing a text document in such an app and then went to make some text italic you'd realise it wasn't available so would have to change fronts.... which could then affect the layout, no. of pages required etc.
      - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Rd6n6 5y ago
I’ll be that one person who will say that the peak of desktop environment design is currently gnome (with guake for a drop down terminal and top panel workspace scroll). It’s extremely keyboard driven and working with 4 different workspaces is just extremely pleasant. Using super for both overview and search is a really nice touch too. Just my opinion - avoiding using the mouse really is nice
- zonabey 5y ago
  Gnome is actually quite good I find myself at odds with some of their defaults for workspaces but they're in the right ball park when it comes to aesthetics and organising the UI. I would very much like to have a guake like terminal for mac os. That and a workspace persistent file explorer. But I think that kind of desktop enhancement that is bug free and feature full is hard to come by. Also since you're on Linux I'm looking for a linux alternative for this tool. https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/choose https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/choose It's a gui chooser I don't know if such a thing exists for linux. I suspect it might be quite easy to implement one with electron. By the way what I'm not looking for is something like alfred for linux. That would be an overkill.
- eitland 5y ago
  Gnome 3 absolutely wasn't horrible last I used it, I only had to fix the wildly inefficient alt-tab implementation and thta took a few minutes searching and clicking one checkbox I think. (I think there was a nunber of issues with extensions but I guess that is fixed now.)

Normille 5y ago

Another long-time Mac user, who is also increasingly frustrated with how dumbed down & bloated OSX is becoming [I'm sticking on Mavericks for the foreseeable future and only 'upgraded' from El Capitán because more and more of my apps were breaking after applying updates]. With all OSX Finder's faults and all the annoyances of the OS, I still think it's miles ahead of any Linux distro I've tried to get on with. Two words "Quicklook" --OK. that's one word made of two. I find it incredible that no Linux desktop environment has something like this. Pressing spacebar to preview the content of a file without needing to open it first is something I do literally every single day and often multiple times. Why, in 2021, does every single Linux desktop require me to open a file first to see what's inside it? That's my biggest bugbear with Linux desktops. Other annoyances are more vague. Mostly to do with the inconsistencies in the interface. Coming from something like OSX which, for all its faults, presents a completely consistent user interface, every Linux desktop I've tried [even the polished ones like Ubuntu & Mint] always have those annoying glitches & inconsistencies which just scream 'Designed by Committee' [which I suppose they are, to an extent]. As regards apps; a big part of what I do is graphic design and that pretty much rules Linux out for anything work-related. Whatever you think of Adobe, Photoshop and Illustrator just blow The Gimp [dire!] and Inkscape [tolerable but clunky] out of the water. I did have high hopes that new kids on the block Affinity might bring their Photo and Designer [which actually do give Photoshop and Illustrator a run for their money] to Linux. But it seems they've decided to follow Adobe's lead and make thei offerings OSX & Windows only. About the only quality graphic design app I've seen available for Linux is Krita. But it's more of a digital painting app than an image manipulation one. And, of course, no vector graphics.

Schlaefer 5y ago
Maybe QuickLook outlived itself. It was a technology tailored to the HDD era of hardware, when complex apps required dozens of seconds to start. In a world were even LibreOffice cold-starts in under three seconds on middle of the road hardware QuickLook is just a familiar workflow instead of a necessity? Initially I missed QuickLook a lot after switching away from macOS, but now I haven't thought about it in years.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  I can't imagine not having access to QuickLook. It's not really about how quickly apps open so much as the UI—in a large folder of images or documents, I can use QuickLook to see what's inside each one, whereas without it I'd have to open a window for every document.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Yes, for me the killer aspect of Quicklook is being able to flip through dozens of documents in barely more time than it takes for my arrow keys to actuate. It’s wonderful for skimming through dozens of files quickly. Icons that accurately represent content on more than just images are great too. Aside from that, QuickLook remains one of the few examples of a generic extensible document reader in modern operating systems. The way it gains the ability to read new types of files just by virtue of the owning app’s bundle being present on the system (no installation necessary, and it goes away when you delete the app) makes so much sense, and it’s a shame that there’s no equivalent on Windows and Linux.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      > QuickLook remains one of the few examples of a generic extensible document reader in modern operating systems. ...were there other ones in classic operating systems? QuickTime <= 10.2 did let you install third-party components (I wrote one recently), but what else was there?

fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago

Interestingly enough, iTerm is the biggest sticking point for me in switching back to Linux: none of the Linux terminal applications have the quality of life features I depend on in iTerm

vorpalhex 5y ago
I would pay for iTerm to be ported to Linux, but I know it's very MacOS coupled.
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
  The big issue is that a lot of what makes iTerm great is that it isn't trying to be cross-platform: many of my favorite apps are intentionally single-platform and take advantage of what that platform provides.
harel 5y ago
Out of curiosity, what in iTerm is missing in any of the Linux terminals? (I usually use Tilix).
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
  A bunch of little things: iTerm’s jump/mark feature is really useful, especially combined with shell integration and triggers. iTerm can detect soft splits (e.g. tmux or vim splits) and confine the selection to one side of them. Also it’s split-pane navigation functionality is pretty smooth.
  - harel 5y ago
    Try this for mark/jump : https://gist.github.com/harel/25569bda00f7260923fdbc38e256f56b https://gist.github.com/harel/25569bda00f7260923fdbc38e256f5... It's not "mine" but I adopted it years ago and cannot live without it. I don't know about detecting soft-splits, but tilix has a really nice split pane setup.
5y ago

bitwize 5y ago

The beauty and elegance of Mac OS died with Mac OS X, when they foolishly decided to keep the NeXT-isms instead of sticking with tried and true Mac principles like the spatial Finder.

chipotle_coyote 5y ago
Is that you, John Siracusa?

smoldesu 5y ago

> I have too many paid-for Mac apps like Alfred, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Photo Mechanic See uLauncher, AutoHotKey and Darkroom, respectively. They're not 1:1 in terms of feature parity, but you can get pretty close for free.

kall 5y ago

For me macOS design peaked when they moved from the super readable Lucida Grande to Helvetica Neue because it looked hot on retina displays. I'm not sure which version that was exactly. Purely from a visual standpoint I like the Big Sur redesign way more than I expected. It looks like it was made for dark mode, unlike previous versions where dark mode was kind of an add on. The whole material/translucency thing is really coming together. Not so happy about the non-visual aspects though, like all the unlabeled, barely distinct line icons.

Normille 5y ago
The trouble with Lucida Grande was that it didn't have an Italic variant. Which was a bit of a glaring oversight for a default font
- kall 5y ago
  Ha, I had no idea. That's kind of a problem, yeah. They REALLY fixed that with San Francisco which has, by my count, a crazy 18 cuts across 8 variants, counting only generic sans serifs.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Eh, in a UI font though? I appreciate the lack of italics in the UI of my system (which is running Mavericks, so has Lucida Grande), it keeps the menus clean and there are better ways to add emphasis where truly needed.
  - Normille 5y ago
    Not necessarily in the UI. But, as the default font, it was the one that a lot of apps would er... 'default' to. So, if you were writing a text document in such an app and then went to make some text italic you'd realise it wasn't available so would have to change fronts.... which could then affect the layout, no. of pages required etc.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago

Rd6n6 5y ago

I’ll be that one person who will say that the peak of desktop environment design is currently gnome (with guake for a drop down terminal and top panel workspace scroll). It’s extremely keyboard driven and working with 4 different workspaces is just extremely pleasant. Using super for both overview and search is a really nice touch too. Just my opinion - avoiding using the mouse really is nice

zonabey 5y ago
Gnome is actually quite good I find myself at odds with some of their defaults for workspaces but they're in the right ball park when it comes to aesthetics and organising the UI. I would very much like to have a guake like terminal for mac os. That and a workspace persistent file explorer. But I think that kind of desktop enhancement that is bug free and feature full is hard to come by. Also since you're on Linux I'm looking for a linux alternative for this tool. https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/choose https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/choose It's a gui chooser I don't know if such a thing exists for linux. I suspect it might be quite easy to implement one with electron. By the way what I'm not looking for is something like alfred for linux. That would be an overkill.
eitland 5y ago
Gnome 3 absolutely wasn't horrible last I used it, I only had to fix the wildly inefficient alt-tab implementation and thta took a few minutes searching and clicking one checkbox I think. (I think there was a nunber of issues with extensions but I guess that is fixed now.)