33 ms·

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 switchi

by rwc 4y 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 4y ago
OP here. I like this perspective, I never thought about it this way!
- verelo 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
  FYI, I always load Rectangle on my Macs for window snapping using keyboard keys. It's fantastic!
wmf 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
    Why havent they removed the mostly useless minimize feature?
- uuyi 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
    [deleted]
    - 4y ago
MattRix 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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...

by rwc 4y ago

loganmarchione 4y ago

OP here. I like this perspective, I never thought about it this way!

verelo 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
FYI, I always load Rectangle on my Macs for window snapping using keyboard keys. It's fantastic!

wmf 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
  Why havent they removed the mostly useless minimize feature?
uuyi 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
  [deleted]
  - 4y ago

MattRix 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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...