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Despite the warning, I didn't find it nearly as "ranty" as the author cautioned, and instead seemed like a fairly comprehensive and fair take on his experience.

Despite the warning, I didn't find it nearly as "ranty" as the author cautioned, and instead seemed like a fairly comprehensive and fair take on his experience. Having gone through the same thing myself several years ago, the UI aspect of it is something that I'd be curious to see how it develops for the author. I think it is not uncommon for Windows folk to find the windowing experience on macs rather painful, at least at first. However, after a while, it sort of "made sense" to me, if that makes any sense at all. There are some clear UX philosophies that are very different, and the initial transition can only be pretty jarring, but I'm curious what the author would say about it after a month or two. Also, fwiw, I think most power Mac users also marshal the use of some other programs to help along with some of that (or at least to tailor it more closely to what they want the experience to be). Rectangle is one of the first installs on any Mac I put my hands on... makes window management so much more pleasant!

rwc 5y ago
Not that it's right or wrong, but the behavior dates back to the very first implementations of Mac OS and Windows. Mac OS has always been an application switching interface, and Windows has been a window switching interface. Takes getting used to the paradigm shift.
- loganmarchione 5y ago
  OP here. I like this perspective, I never thought about it this way!
  - verelo 5y ago
    As someone that came from a windows world for the first 10ish years of my career, i found this pretty frustrating too. I honestly still do. Sometimes it feels like I just cannot get to the window I want.
    - darkteflon 5y ago
      You don’t have to live with it if you don’t like it; open source to the rescue: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/
    - lwkl 5y ago
      There is a separate shortcut to switch between windows of the currently selected application cmd + ` or ctrl + down arrow to show the windows. So you alt + tab to select the application and switch to the right window. I personally think it's more reliable than Windows especially if I have a lot of Windows open (I used Windows for the last 10 years). On Windows I regularly switched to the wrong windows because of my fat fingers...
      - verelo 5y ago
        So i actually use these shortcuts all the time! I think im more struggling with some edge case of my multi screen setup, im not sure. I just find myself having to do the full expand of all windows and then find the one i want to get things working again.
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    FYI, I always load Rectangle on my Macs for window snapping using keyboard keys. It's fantastic!
- wmf 5y ago
  I wonder how much of the difference between Windows and Mac comes from the 1980s look-and-feel lawsuits. Microsoft couldn't clone the Mac directly so they had to make it gratuitously different and worse.
- olyjohn 5y ago
  I can't get used to the fact that I can't alt-tab to a minimized window. Nor can I figure out how to switch to any particular minimized window. You have literally no way of knowing that a minimized window exists other than right-clicking the dock icon, or going to the "Window" menu after you switched to the application. The dock was fine 20 years ago when they released OSX, but they've literally done nothing to make it better since then.
  - hx833001 5y ago
    One way of addressing this is to use the intended method, which is to Hide the application instead of minimizing it. Cmd H hides the application away, and it pops back to the front with a Cmd Tab.
    - jeltz 5y ago
      Why havent they removed the mostly useless minimize feature?
  - uuyi 5y ago
    I don't actually minimise windows on the mac at all. I just sling them on a contextual virtual desktop and then triple-swipe up when I need a different one. Not once have I had to sit there mashing alt-tab and guessing then.
  - nerdjon 5y ago
    Has Mac changed its default settings? The Dock shows you any minimized windows on the right. If for some reason this is no longer default (I don't remember the last time I setup a new Mac and didn't carry over settings) Right Click the dock >> dock preferences >> Uncheck "Minimize windows into application icon"
    - olyjohn 5y ago
      Well, that did work. But now I just have a massive pile of minimized window icons... and still no keyboard shortcut to switch to them.
- drewzero1 5y ago
  This reminded me of a post on Macintosh Folklore[0] about the early development of application switching on Mac OS. It certainly gave me some insight into why things work the way they do in the Mac world. [0] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Switcher.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Switcher.txt
- pmontra 5y ago
  Having used the very first Mac, it made sense on that tiny screen. One application per time was almost more than it could accommodate. The monitor got bigger after a few years and the menu on top and the full screen interface started not to make sense compared to the Windows PC next desk.
  - SllX 5y ago
    Nah, I’ll defend the top menubar to the death. Infinite height and top-speed cursor speed makes working with it from the top versus from the window much more efficient for me, and it wastes less pixels (the purpose of high res monitors for me is to use all of the pixels) and gives me a working area on its right side for various utility apps I don’t want taking up space in the Dock (which has enough problems even with a relatively small working app set). What also helps though is that an under-appreciated aspect of a typical set of Macintosh apps is how good the context menu has gotten. Typically I’m using the context menu and hotkeys much more than the menu bar because it is rare there is an option I want that is unavailable in the context menu.
    - kitsunesoba 5y ago
      Additionally, when the menubar is a global system widget, UI designers in pursuit of minimalism can’t take it away. They’ll be there whether the designer likes it or not, acting as a searchable index of the app’s functionality.
    - kevincox 5y ago
      While I do appreciate those benifits the confusion caused as soon as there are multiple windows on the screen doesn't seem worth it. I have enough trouble managing keyboard focus I don't need to add another layer (which somehow seems even harder for me to comprehend)
      - SllX 5y ago
        It’s just one of those things that if you want to, you can get used to it, but if you resist it you won’t. Like learning Vi or Emacs or BBEdit. There are tools you already learned to use, the Macintosh user interface is just another. The alternative is what? Apple changes something millions of people are already used to, their existing customer base, to satisfy switchers specifically when most can easily adapt? Or you just don’t use a Macintosh. Now what Apple does need to do is bring proper contrast back and stop wasting everyone’s time with this minimalist nonsense; even the option in the Accessibility options is utter garbage.
- Serow225 5y ago
  the Mac OS model just doesn’t work for my ADHD brain. I much prefer the Windows model, it feels much more natural fit for how my brain works :)
  - noizejoy 5y ago
    > natural fit for how my brain works and that is a perfectly sensible way of looking at this (and many other) fanboi discussions over the decades. But then again, if such sensibility ever took hold in the majority of humans, it would be the end of social media as we know it :-)
- Aardwolf 5y ago
  I'm not a mac user (but a linux user who chooses desktops with the windowing paradigms of like windows 2000 or so plus multiple desktops) so have no idea how it's like in practice, but: These days it's very common for more than half your work to take place in a browser, with many browser windows, each having many tabs Every window of the browser almost is like its own application for the user, yet they're all from the same application with the same name for the OS How does an application switching interface, rather than window switching interface, work out for that, if a lot of what you want to switch between is different windows of the same browser? (and what if in addition there would be also many terminal emulator windows, each also with many tabs, and maybe some code editors, spread across multiple virtual desktops)
  - rictic 5y ago
    Desktop PWAs and "open as own window" shortcuts help a lot with this, letting you (from a UI perspective at least) run a web app as though it was its own application rather than within the browser.
    - fomine3 5y ago
      "Create shortcut" is heavily underrated feature on Chromium. Firefox dropped similar feature. https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/3060053 https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/3060053
  - nneonneo 5y ago
    Cmd+` switches between windows of the same app, and it's actually more convenient (IMHO) than using Alt+Tab to switch between every one of your windows from every app. There are also a handful of trackpad gestures for showing all the windows in the current app or all of your windows.
    - deleted 5y ago
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      - 5y ago
- MattRix 5y ago
  It’s worth noting that Microsoft has moved more towards an “application switching interface” with Windows 11. Multiple windows for a single application are always forced to be grouped in the taskbar. I hate it.
  - TheFlyingFish 5y ago
    Hasn't this been the case since Windows 7? I know 7/10 had the option to disable it, and it sounds like Windows 11 has removed that choice, but it's been clear what Microsoft has had in mind for a while now.
- bigpeopleareold 5y ago
  The switch-by-application is the only thing I have not let go when starting to exclusively use Linux on the desktop. Switch-by-window is too hard to get used to.
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  In addition, the classic user interaction method for Macs has always been drag and drop between multiple on-screen windows, while Windows users have traditionally kept every window maximized. Personally, I think it goes back to early Windows originally supporting very low resolution graphics cards where you simply couldn't display more than a single widow's worth of content at once. Remember that EGA was only 640×350. You had to have a user interaction method that worked at such a low resolution. Having things optimised for drag and drop between multiple windows is the reason for Classic Mac OS to only maximize a window enough so that the entire contents of the window is visible, instead of taking up the whole screen.
  - touristtam 5y ago
    Drag 'n drop has been in MS Windows and different flavour of Linux distros for the last 10-15 years at least regardless whether the application windows have been maximised or not. Or are you referring to something completely different?
    - GeekyBear 5y ago
      Are we pretending that Windows users don't use cut, copy, and paste instead of drag and drop for file management? File management in the classic Mac UI was always to open a window for the source directory and another window for the destination directory and use drag and drop to move or copy the files. File management in Windows was to navigate to the source directory, cut or copy the files, navigate to the destination directory and paste. Just as the classic Mac OS only maximizes a window enough to show all the contents of the window, but no larger than that to facilitate interacting between multiple windows instead of having every window take up the whole screen.
  - pmontra 5y ago
    The first Mac (actually Macintosh back then) had a 9" monochrome screen with 512x342 resolution, so less than EGA (16 colors). [1] The Macintosh and EGA were released at about the same time. [2] [1] https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/specs/mac_128k.html https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/specs/mac_128... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Graphics_Adapter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Graphics_Adapter
- Maursault 5y ago
  I believe you are making a generalization to apologize for the author of the article for not figuring out, or not immediately knowing already, how to use keyboard short cuts to cycle through selecting windows. [1] You're both being silly, but the author is being especially silly to evaluate an operating system mostly based on how he feels about the user interface. macOS is more than just a user interface, more on that in a bit. That being said, there is no Universe where any Linux user interface nor any user interface developed by Microsoft is superior to Apple's Aqua. Sure, Aqua sucks, but nothing, anywhere, approaches its ease of use (developed for everyone, not just the nitpicky self-proclaimed power users with weird tastes), and the feeling of solidity, like windows, menus and icons have some gravity and aren't just weightless and flat sprites ready to fly off the screen or fail to interact with other graphic elements properly. Frankly, every gui ever has been chasing Apple's guis since 1984. Truth hurts, I'm sure, but those are the facts. NT4 and 2K, very similar, were collectively the best guis Microsoft ever released, and gui-wise, everything since has been an absolute disaster, visually and with interaction, XP and 7 included, just absolute crappy junk of guis, and 10 and 11 are no better. In Linux, I always liked every gui I saw, Gnome and KDE, and really it can be tailored to whatever the user's desire is, can even run WindowMaker for the NeXT feel. But therein lies the problem, no consistency whatsoever and it's not for everyone; it is only for the tinkerers, coders, and Linux admins. Back to the operating system. macOS is rarely given the credit it deserves for being such a solid stable gui running on top of SUS UNIX. Come' on, the author merely mentions this and says nothing about it, but right there is nearly everything that matters: more software available than any other platform ever plus all the best professional apps (printing, photography, audio, video, etc.) run better on macOS, and massive security benefits right out of the box, default config, but of course it can also be hardened, trivially, and then pretty much forgotten. You can never forget to attend to the security of your Windows machines, update, upgrade, constant, ceaseless, never ending scans, but that is in addition to its catastrophe of a user interface, so there's that. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-switch-between-windows-on-mac https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-switch-between-window...
Sharlin 5y ago
Agreed. The distinction between applications and windows that macOS/Mac OS has always made was jarring at first, but definitely one of those things that after the initial adjustment simply feel different rather than objectively better or worse.
- sooheon 5y ago
  Better or worse depends on use case, but I will say that a tree is a much better semantic fit than a flat list.
  - Sharlin 5y ago
    Funnily enough there was a time when MDI was a popular and favored design philosophy on Windows, practically leading to the same application/window distinction that MacOS had/has.
divbzero 5y ago
What I miss most in macOS is Super + Left and Super + Right to tile windows left and right..
- uuyi 5y ago
  You can add keyboard shortcuts to do that in settings if you really want it. It still does that. If you run apps in full screen mode it gives you a rudimentary tiling workspace on each desktop with a tiled app on it. Just long press on the green button on the window for a tiling menu.
- cj 5y ago
  Check out the Mac app "Magnet" on the app store.
- brimble 5y ago
  I've used Spectacle with the defaults, for years. It's not actively developed but still works. There are actively-maintained alternatives, but since it has zero times done anything weird or glitchy for me, even with multiple monitors, I've not switched yet. "brew install spectacle", start it, give it accessibility permissions it needs in the Settings panel, set to start at login (check a checkbox in Spectacle's settings panel). Forget about it until you set up a new Mac. cmd+option+up/down/left/right for half-screen tile. Cmd+option+F for the equivalent of maximizing a window in Windows (not Mac-style fullscreen). Cmd+ctrl+left/right for upper-left and upper-right quarter tiles. Add shift to make it lower-quarter on that side. That's it. Was all available to me instantly via muscle memory inside a month, don't even think about it now. It's how I do nearly all my window placement/resizing.
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    I used Spectable as well. The newer version is called Rectangle.
  - thatswrong0 5y ago
    Spectacle is a must have IMO. I set mine up to be Shift+Ctrl+(QWE/ASD/ZXC).. where Q/E/Z/C are for the corners, A/D left and right halves, W/X for top and bottom halves, then S in the middle for full screen. The mnemonic of the "box" formed by those keys on the keyboard is easier for me to remember.
goosedragons 5y ago
I never got used to it after a year. I wasn't even a "new" Mac user as I'd previously used Jaguar/Panther/Tiger/Leopard as well as Classic and even NeXTStep. But while those were better than XP time has marched on and I don't feel like MacOS improved enough compared to the competition (with regards to window management). If anything should have been Sherlocked it should have been rectangle/magnet etc. I also feel like Apple cripples mice, it's a very trackpad centered workflow and if you're not using one it suffers. Also they really need to have a separate mouse scroll toggle built in.
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
  So, I always invert the mouse scroll wheel on Linux now, because the Mac scroll direction just feels right to me. Which is sort of the problem here: macOS’s UI works really well if the paradigm makes sense to you and long-time Mac users often have the same problems “backwards” when they use Linux or windows.
  - goosedragons 5y ago
    Did it feel natural to you in 2011? It's not that old of a change. You can get used to it no doubt and I almost feel like it makes sense on trackpads but not so much on scroll wheels. Why fight 10+ years of muscle memory for literally no gain and a bunch of pain everywhere else?
    - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
      I adapted to it in about two days, it made sense to me from the very beginning.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  what do you mean by "mouse scroll toggle"?
  - FabHK 5y ago
    Maybe "natural" scroll direction vs the old scroll-bar orientation.
nine_k 5y ago
I can't shake off the impression that Apple does not offer options for better window management to make your screen more cluttered and thus sell you more displays. When using macOS, I badly miss window management options available on Linux. (And don't get me started regarding font rendering.)
- loganmarchione 5y ago
  > I can't shake off the impression that Apple does not offer options for better window management to make your screen more cluttered and thus sell you more displays. OP here. This is a conspiracy theory I can get behind!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- aulin 5y ago
  Apparently font rendering is going to get bad on Linux too with gtk4. I believe at some point they decided to stop supporting subpixel rendering with the idea that everyone will have hidpi displays. Unfortunately the display industry is lagging and 1080p is still the norm...
- microtonal 5y ago
  That doesn’t make any sense at all. Apple didn’t sell an up-to-date display for years. It’s only recently that they introduced the Pro Display XDR and the Studio Display. Before the XDR, there was only the LoDPI Thunderbolt Display from 2011.
forbiddenvoid 5y ago
I'm now on 7 years since the first MBP provided to me by an employer. It's just as terrible as ever. I would not use an Apple product outside of work, despite some thousands of hours using one over the last several years. Everything about using a Mac feels patronizing and intended to make me work harder than I should to do the most simple tasks.
- saurik 5y ago
  I had a similar experience: I was semi-forced to use a Mac for over a decade due to how much of my iOS-focused development work started to rely on tooling people only made for macOS, but when the pandemic started (due to being stuck at a desk all the time)--and now mostly working on non-"mobile" software-- I switched back to Windows and it was relieving.
- Volundr 5y ago
  Same. I have a MBP for work, and run Arch Linux on a Dell laptop for personal use. Before that it was Linux on a ThinkPad. The hardware on the MBP may be better, but not in any way I care about, and I'd trade it all to be rid of the touch-bar and have my function keys back. The MBP is fiddly as heck to get it to drive my ultrawide monitor at full resolution, while both Linux laptops "just worked". Personally I just can't find any reason I should prefer the Mac.
plutonorm 5y ago
I've been using a Mac as a work machine for 2 years and I still think its painful to use.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kristiandupont 5y ago
I've been on Mac for 10 years now and I still consider the way Windows handles windows vastly superior. The fact that cmd-tabbing to a app will place all of its windows on top means that I might be forced to move a window with the mouse to see what's underneath it which I find infuriating. The fact that two windows belong to the same app is an arbitrary distinction to me. I group things by mental "projects", and I prefer to maintain my window z-order based on that. I never liked using virtual desktops and I just downloaded altTab which I've read about in threads here, but it seems to flicker weirdly and it has already crached on me once within a 1/2 hour timespan so I don't foresee myself keeping it.
- thiht 5y ago
  Same here. After 3 years of daily macOS usage I snapped and finally installed AltTab too. I though I’d get used to it’s way of doing but it’s really not good. I’ve also installed Rectangle a while ago to get easy screen splitting. macOS does a lot of things very well, just not that.
- ccouzens 5y ago
  My first Mac was the first Intel iMac. OSX Tiger was better than Windows XP. Expose felt better than the alt tab of xp- and more fun. And Tiger pushed to have windows take up the space of their contents rather than the whole screen, so most windows were visible on screen all the time making switching between them easier. In the time since, I brought another iMac and had 2 work MBPs. In that time, MacOS got worse. It now wants to make windows full screen. Mission control is awkward if you use an ordinary mouse. My workflow has changed. I'm more likely to have 2 windows of every app- 2 vscode windows, 2 terminal windows and 2 browser windows. As stated many times over, MacOS handles switching between those configuration of windows badly (and I gave it plenty of time to become intuitive). I now use the Gnome desktop. I have windows that snap. I have alt tab that cycles through windows (it needs configuring). And it has an Expose like effect (gnome overview). I feel like I have the best of all worlds. Great window management. Great hardware support (none of the MBPs supported daisy chaining my displays). The Linux command line. The same apps I'd be using on any other OS.
EnKopVand 5y ago
I think the bit on window management reads a little too much like someone who sort or made up their mind upfront. I use windows in my professional life, because that’s how we roll in Denmark, but back in 2015 I bought my first personal MacBook and it’s been a great relationship ever since. On windows I need to install tools for things like snapping pictures because the default snipping tool isn’t quite good enough. I also hate window management, especially on multiple screen setups where you can’t move the mouse from one screen to another if the resolutions are different (4k screens and an open laptop as an example). Mean while a lot of the things the author complain about are things I find decent on a Mac. The fact that you can easily auto-size windows so that you have 1 full screen, 2 half screen apps, and x csized windows on 3 different window spaces is just awesome. The biggest issue is that even after 7 years I still have no idea how many little tricks I still don’t know about Mac OS because it never tells you how to use it and pressing shift command (or maybe it’s option) 4 to snap a screenshot isn’t exactly intuitive.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  > especially on multiple screen setups where you can’t move the mouse from one screen to another if the resolutions are different (4k screens and an open laptop as an example) What do you mean by this? That is absolutely possible.
hiepph 5y ago
If you're a tinkerer and miss i3, try Hammerspoon [1]. [1] http://hammerspoon.org/ http://hammerspoon.org/
swiftcoder 5y ago
> I think it is not uncommon for Windows folk to find the windowing experience on macs rather painful, at least at first. However, after a while, it sort of "made sense" to me, if that makes any sense at all. I always feel like Apple optimises UX very heavily for laptops (small screens, fullscreen-first makes a lot of sense), where Microsoft optimises more for desktops (large screens, multiple apps sharing the screen makes more sense). I find windows really clumsy on small laptop screens, even though it works great on my desktop :/
prajwalshetty 5y ago
I concur on "it sort of made sense to me" in regard to the windows management and I don't think this is due to the fact that I am getting used to the ways of macOS, at least this part. When I use Windows occasionally, I miss the command+` to switch between windows of the apps, especially when they are far separated out in the Alt+Tab preview.
- afiori 5y ago
  Another increase for the number of times I discover that a feature I dislike in gnome has been copied from macOS
emilecantin 5y ago
Most recent newcomers to Mac and ex-Windows users get tripped up by the fullscreen windows, which are honestly pretty bad. The way to use MacOS is to use the Spaces to group windows by theme / task. For example, I have one space where I have Slack, Skype, Teams, Discord, Mail and Outlook currently open. Another one has my main "browsing" Chrome window. Another one has my iTerm (the only fullscreen app). And the last "permanent" one has my "debugging" Chrome window. They're always in the same order (none of that "reorder automatically" nonsense), so I can switch tasks using the mouse (2-finger swipe left/right on the Magic Mouse), trackpad (3-finger swipe) or keyboard (ctrl-left/right). Inside a Space, I switch between windows using Exposé (swipe on trackpad, double-tap on mouse or F3 on keyboard). I've been using macOS both in my personal & professional life like this since Leopard and I think it works pretty well.
whatever_dude 5y ago
> rather painful, at least at first I get that some people prefer that, but I've been on macOS daily for 10+ years and still can't find the top level OS paradigms (window switching, over reliance on mouse/extremely poor keyboard support, lack of proper "maximized" windows) anything but painful. It might be that growing up with windows ingrained certain gestures on my mind that I can't let go, but I feel like I've decidedly given it a shot. And I still hate it. Yes, there are workarounds, but they're workarounds that require third party applications. I expected more from the OS.

rwc 5y ago

Not that it's right or wrong, but the behavior dates back to the very first implementations of Mac OS and Windows. Mac OS has always been an application switching interface, and Windows has been a window switching interface. Takes getting used to the paradigm shift.

loganmarchione 5y ago
OP here. I like this perspective, I never thought about it this way!
- verelo 5y ago
  As someone that came from a windows world for the first 10ish years of my career, i found this pretty frustrating too. I honestly still do. Sometimes it feels like I just cannot get to the window I want.
  - darkteflon 5y ago
    You don’t have to live with it if you don’t like it; open source to the rescue: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/
  - lwkl 5y ago
    There is a separate shortcut to switch between windows of the currently selected application cmd + ` or ctrl + down arrow to show the windows. So you alt + tab to select the application and switch to the right window. I personally think it's more reliable than Windows especially if I have a lot of Windows open (I used Windows for the last 10 years). On Windows I regularly switched to the wrong windows because of my fat fingers...
    - verelo 5y ago
      So i actually use these shortcuts all the time! I think im more struggling with some edge case of my multi screen setup, im not sure. I just find myself having to do the full expand of all windows and then find the one i want to get things working again.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  FYI, I always load Rectangle on my Macs for window snapping using keyboard keys. It's fantastic!
wmf 5y ago
I wonder how much of the difference between Windows and Mac comes from the 1980s look-and-feel lawsuits. Microsoft couldn't clone the Mac directly so they had to make it gratuitously different and worse.
olyjohn 5y ago
I can't get used to the fact that I can't alt-tab to a minimized window. Nor can I figure out how to switch to any particular minimized window. You have literally no way of knowing that a minimized window exists other than right-clicking the dock icon, or going to the "Window" menu after you switched to the application. The dock was fine 20 years ago when they released OSX, but they've literally done nothing to make it better since then.
- hx833001 5y ago
  One way of addressing this is to use the intended method, which is to Hide the application instead of minimizing it. Cmd H hides the application away, and it pops back to the front with a Cmd Tab.
  - jeltz 5y ago
    Why havent they removed the mostly useless minimize feature?
- uuyi 5y ago
  I don't actually minimise windows on the mac at all. I just sling them on a contextual virtual desktop and then triple-swipe up when I need a different one. Not once have I had to sit there mashing alt-tab and guessing then.
- nerdjon 5y ago
  Has Mac changed its default settings? The Dock shows you any minimized windows on the right. If for some reason this is no longer default (I don't remember the last time I setup a new Mac and didn't carry over settings) Right Click the dock >> dock preferences >> Uncheck "Minimize windows into application icon"
  - olyjohn 5y ago
    Well, that did work. But now I just have a massive pile of minimized window icons... and still no keyboard shortcut to switch to them.
drewzero1 5y ago
This reminded me of a post on Macintosh Folklore[0] about the early development of application switching on Mac OS. It certainly gave me some insight into why things work the way they do in the Mac world. [0] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Switcher.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Switcher.txt
pmontra 5y ago
Having used the very first Mac, it made sense on that tiny screen. One application per time was almost more than it could accommodate. The monitor got bigger after a few years and the menu on top and the full screen interface started not to make sense compared to the Windows PC next desk.
- SllX 5y ago
  Nah, I’ll defend the top menubar to the death. Infinite height and top-speed cursor speed makes working with it from the top versus from the window much more efficient for me, and it wastes less pixels (the purpose of high res monitors for me is to use all of the pixels) and gives me a working area on its right side for various utility apps I don’t want taking up space in the Dock (which has enough problems even with a relatively small working app set). What also helps though is that an under-appreciated aspect of a typical set of Macintosh apps is how good the context menu has gotten. Typically I’m using the context menu and hotkeys much more than the menu bar because it is rare there is an option I want that is unavailable in the context menu.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Additionally, when the menubar is a global system widget, UI designers in pursuit of minimalism can’t take it away. They’ll be there whether the designer likes it or not, acting as a searchable index of the app’s functionality.
  - kevincox 5y ago
    While I do appreciate those benifits the confusion caused as soon as there are multiple windows on the screen doesn't seem worth it. I have enough trouble managing keyboard focus I don't need to add another layer (which somehow seems even harder for me to comprehend)
    - SllX 5y ago
      It’s just one of those things that if you want to, you can get used to it, but if you resist it you won’t. Like learning Vi or Emacs or BBEdit. There are tools you already learned to use, the Macintosh user interface is just another. The alternative is what? Apple changes something millions of people are already used to, their existing customer base, to satisfy switchers specifically when most can easily adapt? Or you just don’t use a Macintosh. Now what Apple does need to do is bring proper contrast back and stop wasting everyone’s time with this minimalist nonsense; even the option in the Accessibility options is utter garbage.
Serow225 5y ago
the Mac OS model just doesn’t work for my ADHD brain. I much prefer the Windows model, it feels much more natural fit for how my brain works :)
- noizejoy 5y ago
  > natural fit for how my brain works and that is a perfectly sensible way of looking at this (and many other) fanboi discussions over the decades. But then again, if such sensibility ever took hold in the majority of humans, it would be the end of social media as we know it :-)
Aardwolf 5y ago
I'm not a mac user (but a linux user who chooses desktops with the windowing paradigms of like windows 2000 or so plus multiple desktops) so have no idea how it's like in practice, but: These days it's very common for more than half your work to take place in a browser, with many browser windows, each having many tabs Every window of the browser almost is like its own application for the user, yet they're all from the same application with the same name for the OS How does an application switching interface, rather than window switching interface, work out for that, if a lot of what you want to switch between is different windows of the same browser? (and what if in addition there would be also many terminal emulator windows, each also with many tabs, and maybe some code editors, spread across multiple virtual desktops)
- rictic 5y ago
  Desktop PWAs and "open as own window" shortcuts help a lot with this, letting you (from a UI perspective at least) run a web app as though it was its own application rather than within the browser.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    "Create shortcut" is heavily underrated feature on Chromium. Firefox dropped similar feature. https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/3060053 https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/3060053
- nneonneo 5y ago
  Cmd+` switches between windows of the same app, and it's actually more convenient (IMHO) than using Alt+Tab to switch between every one of your windows from every app. There are also a handful of trackpad gestures for showing all the windows in the current app or all of your windows.
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MattRix 5y ago
It’s worth noting that Microsoft has moved more towards an “application switching interface” with Windows 11. Multiple windows for a single application are always forced to be grouped in the taskbar. I hate it.
- TheFlyingFish 5y ago
  Hasn't this been the case since Windows 7? I know 7/10 had the option to disable it, and it sounds like Windows 11 has removed that choice, but it's been clear what Microsoft has had in mind for a while now.
bigpeopleareold 5y ago
The switch-by-application is the only thing I have not let go when starting to exclusively use Linux on the desktop. Switch-by-window is too hard to get used to.
GeekyBear 5y ago
In addition, the classic user interaction method for Macs has always been drag and drop between multiple on-screen windows, while Windows users have traditionally kept every window maximized. Personally, I think it goes back to early Windows originally supporting very low resolution graphics cards where you simply couldn't display more than a single widow's worth of content at once. Remember that EGA was only 640×350. You had to have a user interaction method that worked at such a low resolution. Having things optimised for drag and drop between multiple windows is the reason for Classic Mac OS to only maximize a window enough so that the entire contents of the window is visible, instead of taking up the whole screen.
- touristtam 5y ago
  Drag 'n drop has been in MS Windows and different flavour of Linux distros for the last 10-15 years at least regardless whether the application windows have been maximised or not. Or are you referring to something completely different?
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    Are we pretending that Windows users don't use cut, copy, and paste instead of drag and drop for file management? File management in the classic Mac UI was always to open a window for the source directory and another window for the destination directory and use drag and drop to move or copy the files. File management in Windows was to navigate to the source directory, cut or copy the files, navigate to the destination directory and paste. Just as the classic Mac OS only maximizes a window enough to show all the contents of the window, but no larger than that to facilitate interacting between multiple windows instead of having every window take up the whole screen.
- pmontra 5y ago
  The first Mac (actually Macintosh back then) had a 9" monochrome screen with 512x342 resolution, so less than EGA (16 colors). [1] The Macintosh and EGA were released at about the same time. [2] [1] https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/specs/mac_128k.html https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/specs/mac_128... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Graphics_Adapter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Graphics_Adapter
Maursault 5y ago
I believe you are making a generalization to apologize for the author of the article for not figuring out, or not immediately knowing already, how to use keyboard short cuts to cycle through selecting windows. [1] You're both being silly, but the author is being especially silly to evaluate an operating system mostly based on how he feels about the user interface. macOS is more than just a user interface, more on that in a bit. That being said, there is no Universe where any Linux user interface nor any user interface developed by Microsoft is superior to Apple's Aqua. Sure, Aqua sucks, but nothing, anywhere, approaches its ease of use (developed for everyone, not just the nitpicky self-proclaimed power users with weird tastes), and the feeling of solidity, like windows, menus and icons have some gravity and aren't just weightless and flat sprites ready to fly off the screen or fail to interact with other graphic elements properly. Frankly, every gui ever has been chasing Apple's guis since 1984. Truth hurts, I'm sure, but those are the facts. NT4 and 2K, very similar, were collectively the best guis Microsoft ever released, and gui-wise, everything since has been an absolute disaster, visually and with interaction, XP and 7 included, just absolute crappy junk of guis, and 10 and 11 are no better. In Linux, I always liked every gui I saw, Gnome and KDE, and really it can be tailored to whatever the user's desire is, can even run WindowMaker for the NeXT feel. But therein lies the problem, no consistency whatsoever and it's not for everyone; it is only for the tinkerers, coders, and Linux admins. Back to the operating system. macOS is rarely given the credit it deserves for being such a solid stable gui running on top of SUS UNIX. Come' on, the author merely mentions this and says nothing about it, but right there is nearly everything that matters: more software available than any other platform ever plus all the best professional apps (printing, photography, audio, video, etc.) run better on macOS, and massive security benefits right out of the box, default config, but of course it can also be hardened, trivially, and then pretty much forgotten. You can never forget to attend to the security of your Windows machines, update, upgrade, constant, ceaseless, never ending scans, but that is in addition to its catastrophe of a user interface, so there's that. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-switch-between-windows-on-mac https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-switch-between-window...

Sharlin 5y ago

Agreed. The distinction between applications and windows that macOS/Mac OS has always made was jarring at first, but definitely one of those things that after the initial adjustment simply feel different rather than objectively better or worse.

sooheon 5y ago
Better or worse depends on use case, but I will say that a tree is a much better semantic fit than a flat list.
- Sharlin 5y ago
  Funnily enough there was a time when MDI was a popular and favored design philosophy on Windows, practically leading to the same application/window distinction that MacOS had/has.

divbzero 5y ago

What I miss most in macOS is Super + Left and Super + Right to tile windows left and right..

uuyi 5y ago
You can add keyboard shortcuts to do that in settings if you really want it. It still does that. If you run apps in full screen mode it gives you a rudimentary tiling workspace on each desktop with a tiled app on it. Just long press on the green button on the window for a tiling menu.
cj 5y ago
Check out the Mac app "Magnet" on the app store.
brimble 5y ago
I've used Spectacle with the defaults, for years. It's not actively developed but still works. There are actively-maintained alternatives, but since it has zero times done anything weird or glitchy for me, even with multiple monitors, I've not switched yet. "brew install spectacle", start it, give it accessibility permissions it needs in the Settings panel, set to start at login (check a checkbox in Spectacle's settings panel). Forget about it until you set up a new Mac. cmd+option+up/down/left/right for half-screen tile. Cmd+option+F for the equivalent of maximizing a window in Windows (not Mac-style fullscreen). Cmd+ctrl+left/right for upper-left and upper-right quarter tiles. Add shift to make it lower-quarter on that side. That's it. Was all available to me instantly via muscle memory inside a month, don't even think about it now. It's how I do nearly all my window placement/resizing.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  I used Spectable as well. The newer version is called Rectangle.
- thatswrong0 5y ago
  Spectacle is a must have IMO. I set mine up to be Shift+Ctrl+(QWE/ASD/ZXC).. where Q/E/Z/C are for the corners, A/D left and right halves, W/X for top and bottom halves, then S in the middle for full screen. The mnemonic of the "box" formed by those keys on the keyboard is easier for me to remember.

goosedragons 5y ago

I never got used to it after a year. I wasn't even a "new" Mac user as I'd previously used Jaguar/Panther/Tiger/Leopard as well as Classic and even NeXTStep. But while those were better than XP time has marched on and I don't feel like MacOS improved enough compared to the competition (with regards to window management). If anything should have been Sherlocked it should have been rectangle/magnet etc. I also feel like Apple cripples mice, it's a very trackpad centered workflow and if you're not using one it suffers. Also they really need to have a separate mouse scroll toggle built in.

fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
So, I always invert the mouse scroll wheel on Linux now, because the Mac scroll direction just feels right to me. Which is sort of the problem here: macOS’s UI works really well if the paradigm makes sense to you and long-time Mac users often have the same problems “backwards” when they use Linux or windows.
- goosedragons 5y ago
  Did it feel natural to you in 2011? It's not that old of a change. You can get used to it no doubt and I almost feel like it makes sense on trackpads but not so much on scroll wheels. Why fight 10+ years of muscle memory for literally no gain and a bunch of pain everywhere else?
  - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
    I adapted to it in about two days, it made sense to me from the very beginning.
KerrAvon 5y ago
what do you mean by "mouse scroll toggle"?
- FabHK 5y ago
  Maybe "natural" scroll direction vs the old scroll-bar orientation.

nine_k 5y ago

I can't shake off the impression that Apple does not offer options for better window management to make your screen more cluttered and thus sell you more displays. When using macOS, I badly miss window management options available on Linux. (And don't get me started regarding font rendering.)

loganmarchione 5y ago
> I can't shake off the impression that Apple does not offer options for better window management to make your screen more cluttered and thus sell you more displays. OP here. This is a conspiracy theory I can get behind!
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aulin 5y ago
Apparently font rendering is going to get bad on Linux too with gtk4. I believe at some point they decided to stop supporting subpixel rendering with the idea that everyone will have hidpi displays. Unfortunately the display industry is lagging and 1080p is still the norm...
microtonal 5y ago
That doesn’t make any sense at all. Apple didn’t sell an up-to-date display for years. It’s only recently that they introduced the Pro Display XDR and the Studio Display. Before the XDR, there was only the LoDPI Thunderbolt Display from 2011.

forbiddenvoid 5y ago

I'm now on 7 years since the first MBP provided to me by an employer. It's just as terrible as ever. I would not use an Apple product outside of work, despite some thousands of hours using one over the last several years. Everything about using a Mac feels patronizing and intended to make me work harder than I should to do the most simple tasks.

saurik 5y ago
I had a similar experience: I was semi-forced to use a Mac for over a decade due to how much of my iOS-focused development work started to rely on tooling people only made for macOS, but when the pandemic started (due to being stuck at a desk all the time)--and now mostly working on non-"mobile" software-- I switched back to Windows and it was relieving.
Volundr 5y ago
Same. I have a MBP for work, and run Arch Linux on a Dell laptop for personal use. Before that it was Linux on a ThinkPad. The hardware on the MBP may be better, but not in any way I care about, and I'd trade it all to be rid of the touch-bar and have my function keys back. The MBP is fiddly as heck to get it to drive my ultrawide monitor at full resolution, while both Linux laptops "just worked". Personally I just can't find any reason I should prefer the Mac.

plutonorm 5y ago

I've been using a Mac as a work machine for 2 years and I still think its painful to use.

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kristiandupont 5y ago

I've been on Mac for 10 years now and I still consider the way Windows handles windows vastly superior. The fact that cmd-tabbing to a app will place all of its windows on top means that I might be forced to move a window with the mouse to see what's underneath it which I find infuriating. The fact that two windows belong to the same app is an arbitrary distinction to me. I group things by mental "projects", and I prefer to maintain my window z-order based on that. I never liked using virtual desktops and I just downloaded altTab which I've read about in threads here, but it seems to flicker weirdly and it has already crached on me once within a 1/2 hour timespan so I don't foresee myself keeping it.

thiht 5y ago
Same here. After 3 years of daily macOS usage I snapped and finally installed AltTab too. I though I’d get used to it’s way of doing but it’s really not good. I’ve also installed Rectangle a while ago to get easy screen splitting. macOS does a lot of things very well, just not that.
ccouzens 5y ago
My first Mac was the first Intel iMac. OSX Tiger was better than Windows XP. Expose felt better than the alt tab of xp- and more fun. And Tiger pushed to have windows take up the space of their contents rather than the whole screen, so most windows were visible on screen all the time making switching between them easier. In the time since, I brought another iMac and had 2 work MBPs. In that time, MacOS got worse. It now wants to make windows full screen. Mission control is awkward if you use an ordinary mouse. My workflow has changed. I'm more likely to have 2 windows of every app- 2 vscode windows, 2 terminal windows and 2 browser windows. As stated many times over, MacOS handles switching between those configuration of windows badly (and I gave it plenty of time to become intuitive). I now use the Gnome desktop. I have windows that snap. I have alt tab that cycles through windows (it needs configuring). And it has an Expose like effect (gnome overview). I feel like I have the best of all worlds. Great window management. Great hardware support (none of the MBPs supported daisy chaining my displays). The Linux command line. The same apps I'd be using on any other OS.

EnKopVand 5y ago

I think the bit on window management reads a little too much like someone who sort or made up their mind upfront. I use windows in my professional life, because that’s how we roll in Denmark, but back in 2015 I bought my first personal MacBook and it’s been a great relationship ever since. On windows I need to install tools for things like snapping pictures because the default snipping tool isn’t quite good enough. I also hate window management, especially on multiple screen setups where you can’t move the mouse from one screen to another if the resolutions are different (4k screens and an open laptop as an example). Mean while a lot of the things the author complain about are things I find decent on a Mac. The fact that you can easily auto-size windows so that you have 1 full screen, 2 half screen apps, and x csized windows on 3 different window spaces is just awesome. The biggest issue is that even after 7 years I still have no idea how many little tricks I still don’t know about Mac OS because it never tells you how to use it and pressing shift command (or maybe it’s option) 4 to snap a screenshot isn’t exactly intuitive.

frosted-flakes 5y ago
> especially on multiple screen setups where you can’t move the mouse from one screen to another if the resolutions are different (4k screens and an open laptop as an example) What do you mean by this? That is absolutely possible.

hiepph 5y ago

If you're a tinkerer and miss i3, try Hammerspoon [1]. [1] http://hammerspoon.org/ http://hammerspoon.org/

swiftcoder 5y ago

> I think it is not uncommon for Windows folk to find the windowing experience on macs rather painful, at least at first. However, after a while, it sort of "made sense" to me, if that makes any sense at all. I always feel like Apple optimises UX very heavily for laptops (small screens, fullscreen-first makes a lot of sense), where Microsoft optimises more for desktops (large screens, multiple apps sharing the screen makes more sense). I find windows really clumsy on small laptop screens, even though it works great on my desktop :/

prajwalshetty 5y ago

I concur on "it sort of made sense to me" in regard to the windows management and I don't think this is due to the fact that I am getting used to the ways of macOS, at least this part. When I use Windows occasionally, I miss the command+` to switch between windows of the apps, especially when they are far separated out in the Alt+Tab preview.

afiori 5y ago
Another increase for the number of times I discover that a feature I dislike in gnome has been copied from macOS

emilecantin 5y ago

Most recent newcomers to Mac and ex-Windows users get tripped up by the fullscreen windows, which are honestly pretty bad. The way to use MacOS is to use the Spaces to group windows by theme / task. For example, I have one space where I have Slack, Skype, Teams, Discord, Mail and Outlook currently open. Another one has my main "browsing" Chrome window. Another one has my iTerm (the only fullscreen app). And the last "permanent" one has my "debugging" Chrome window. They're always in the same order (none of that "reorder automatically" nonsense), so I can switch tasks using the mouse (2-finger swipe left/right on the Magic Mouse), trackpad (3-finger swipe) or keyboard (ctrl-left/right). Inside a Space, I switch between windows using Exposé (swipe on trackpad, double-tap on mouse or F3 on keyboard). I've been using macOS both in my personal & professional life like this since Leopard and I think it works pretty well.

whatever_dude 5y ago

> rather painful, at least at first I get that some people prefer that, but I've been on macOS daily for 10+ years and still can't find the top level OS paradigms (window switching, over reliance on mouse/extremely poor keyboard support, lack of proper "maximized" windows) anything but painful. It might be that growing up with windows ingrained certain gestures on my mind that I can't let go, but I feel like I've decidedly given it a shot. And I still hate it. Yes, there are workarounds, but they're workarounds that require third party applications. I expected more from the OS.