3 ms·

I’m using a windows machine for work and I hate it. Explorer and outlook change application icon depending on what you are doing. I can never find them when I a

I’m using a windows machine for work and I hate it. Explorer and outlook change application icon depending on what you are doing. I can never find them when I alt-tab. I can never find anything in word or excel or any other application that use windows style menus. On Mac you at least get a real menu. I never got used to macOS’ alt-tab when I switched more than a decade ago, but now that I’m back on windows I find that their behavior works even worse. So maybe that’s a “don’t ever try to learn another alt-tab behavior than what you already do now” > Why are 3rd party applications distributed as Disk Images? Then some as package installers? It's weird and nonsensical. As if the installation experience on windows is consistent. Some things come as a zipped exe, some as an msi, others as a zip file that extract to an exe which runs an install program. > Mac hardware feels great, but I just cannot understand why it's the preferred developer platform. Isn’t that because it comes with a Unix shell? I’m using wsl and only like 1 or 2 gui programs can talk with my Linux files in a reasonable fashion.

nordsieck 4y ago
> I never got used to macOS’ alt-tab when I switched more than a decade ago, but now that I’m back on windows I find that their behavior works even worse. So maybe that’s a “don’t ever try to learn another alt-tab behavior than what you already do now” I think the one big benefit I notice of OSX style program management vs Windows style is: with OSX, you have have a program open, but without any windows. Whereas with Windows, if you close all of a program's windows, that typically kills the program. Really, this mostly shows up when I want to create a new incognito browser window when I don't have any browser windows currently open. On OSX, I just tab to the browser and open up a new window. On Windows, I have to start a new regular window and then open a new incognito windows. It's pretty annoying.
- same_difference 4y ago
  You can right click the browser icon in taskbar or start menu > new incognito window.
  - nordsieck 4y ago
    That's good to know - thanks.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
> I can never find anything in word or excel or any other application that use windows style menus. On Mac you at least get a real menu. I’ll never understand why it’s so common for Windows and Linux GTK apps to go so far out of their way to avoid using a tried and true menubar. Hamburger menus are probably the most common substitute, and they’re strictly worse in every way, being basically junk drawers in software form. That’s one of the things I love about the global menubar on macOS: because it’s owned by the system, third party devs can’t try to delete it out of some misguided pursuit of minimalism. Several cross platform apps that lack menubars on Windows and Linux have proper menus on macOS as a result.
- im_down_w_otp 4y ago
  And... it's always in the same place. And... all the standard common things are always in the exact same place with the exact same shortcuts. I've been using Linux (KDE Plasma) now as my primary system for 5 years now, and it's practically impossible to build up a system-wide muscle memory. On Linux and Windows menus are all over the place. Things in the menus are all over the place. Shortcuts to them are all over the place. It's crazy making. However, I've resisted going back to a Mac because it's getting perpetually worse year after year too. The "golden era" to me that I wish had been refined and iterated incrementally on is probably somewhere around Mac OS 10.6
  - woojoo666 4y ago
    I personally prefer Windows style menu bars where the menu is at the top of each window, instead of at the top of the screen. I don't want to constantly be dragging my mouse all the way to the top and then back to my window.
    - im_down_w_otp 4y ago
      I could tolerate that. The spastic chaos of keyboard shortcuts across various OS and application functions I cannot forgive however.
osigurdson 4y ago
>> Isn’t that because it comes with a Unix shell? It is kind of funny that we either use macOS or Windows/WSL because our target deployment environment is Linux. We can't use Linux because something eventually goes wrong and people with deadlines don't have time to fiddle with their dev machine to get it working again.
comfypotato 4y ago
> Isn’t that because it comes with a Unix shell? I’m using wsl and only like 1 or 2 gui programs can talk with my Linux files in a reasonable fashion. Can you elaborate? I've been using WSL1 as a tool to operate on files on my Windows file system and haven't had any issues. (As an aside, I'm actually very pleased with this approach.) Are your issues specifically with GUI programs running through WSL? I'm just checking to make sure I don't get locked into a workflow that causes me problems down the road.

nordsieck 4y ago

> I never got used to macOS’ alt-tab when I switched more than a decade ago, but now that I’m back on windows I find that their behavior works even worse. So maybe that’s a “don’t ever try to learn another alt-tab behavior than what you already do now” I think the one big benefit I notice of OSX style program management vs Windows style is: with OSX, you have have a program open, but without any windows. Whereas with Windows, if you close all of a program's windows, that typically kills the program. Really, this mostly shows up when I want to create a new incognito browser window when I don't have any browser windows currently open. On OSX, I just tab to the browser and open up a new window. On Windows, I have to start a new regular window and then open a new incognito windows. It's pretty annoying.

same_difference 4y ago
You can right click the browser icon in taskbar or start menu > new incognito window.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  That's good to know - thanks.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

> I can never find anything in word or excel or any other application that use windows style menus. On Mac you at least get a real menu. I’ll never understand why it’s so common for Windows and Linux GTK apps to go so far out of their way to avoid using a tried and true menubar. Hamburger menus are probably the most common substitute, and they’re strictly worse in every way, being basically junk drawers in software form. That’s one of the things I love about the global menubar on macOS: because it’s owned by the system, third party devs can’t try to delete it out of some misguided pursuit of minimalism. Several cross platform apps that lack menubars on Windows and Linux have proper menus on macOS as a result.

im_down_w_otp 4y ago
And... it's always in the same place. And... all the standard common things are always in the exact same place with the exact same shortcuts. I've been using Linux (KDE Plasma) now as my primary system for 5 years now, and it's practically impossible to build up a system-wide muscle memory. On Linux and Windows menus are all over the place. Things in the menus are all over the place. Shortcuts to them are all over the place. It's crazy making. However, I've resisted going back to a Mac because it's getting perpetually worse year after year too. The "golden era" to me that I wish had been refined and iterated incrementally on is probably somewhere around Mac OS 10.6
- woojoo666 4y ago
  I personally prefer Windows style menu bars where the menu is at the top of each window, instead of at the top of the screen. I don't want to constantly be dragging my mouse all the way to the top and then back to my window.
  - im_down_w_otp 4y ago
    I could tolerate that. The spastic chaos of keyboard shortcuts across various OS and application functions I cannot forgive however.

osigurdson 4y ago

>> Isn’t that because it comes with a Unix shell? It is kind of funny that we either use macOS or Windows/WSL because our target deployment environment is Linux. We can't use Linux because something eventually goes wrong and people with deadlines don't have time to fiddle with their dev machine to get it working again.

comfypotato 4y ago

> Isn’t that because it comes with a Unix shell? I’m using wsl and only like 1 or 2 gui programs can talk with my Linux files in a reasonable fashion. Can you elaborate? I've been using WSL1 as a tool to operate on files on my Windows file system and haven't had any issues. (As an aside, I'm actually very pleased with this approach.) Are your issues specifically with GUI programs running through WSL? I'm just checking to make sure I don't get locked into a workflow that causes me problems down the road.