6 ms·

Let me add a few: - Handover (shared clipboard between devices, continuing tasks on another device) - AirPlay (both casting and playback control) - Apps are

Let me add a few: - Handover (shared clipboard between devices, continuing tasks on another device) - AirPlay (both casting and playback control) - Apps are just self-contained, launchable directories you can copy around, no separate installation step - Application-centric (as opposed to window-centric) task management - Tiny things like <Cmd-tab>, keep holding Cmd, click the app to switch to - Even tinier things, like hold space to move the selection rectangle in the screenshot tool - Extremely consistent support for all basic keyboard shortcuts like <Cmd-q>, <Cmd-w>, <Cmd-,>, etc, going back all the way to the classic Mac OS - AppleScript, Shortcuts, (Automator) - Color management It's these things I miss on Linux and (Open)BSD the most, not the GUI theme. I actually think the current design (starting with Big Sur) is a huge step backward for accessibility and usability, fortunately this project doesn't blindly copy it.

seiferteric 4y ago
Also iMessage, video & voice calls, find my friends are great to have.
dTal 4y ago
The functionality you describe in "Handover" is achieved (and more besides, such as playback control) on Linux with KDE Connect.
- least 4y ago
  Handoff is only a small part of the continuity stuff Apple has for working between your Apple devices and it's called Continuity [1]. KDE Connect is great but it comes nowhere close to mimicking the functionality of it. [1] https://www.apple.com/macos/continuity/ https://www.apple.com/macos/continuity/
  - msla 4y ago
    Sounds like a privacy nightmare, not to mention a huge security hole.
    - exitb 4y ago
      None of these services use any resources outside of your local network to work.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  The functionality you describe in "Handover" is achieved (and more besides, such as playback control) on Linux with KDE Connect. I can start writing an e-mail on my phone, put down my phone and then continue working on it on my tablet, and then putdown my tablet and immediately finish it up on my desktop in Linux? Handover is more than a global clipboard.
  - nehal3m 4y ago
    Sure, save it as a draft. You don't need no fancy stinkin' email syncin' Handoff for that.
    - least 4y ago
      Why stop there? We don't need no stinkin' emails at all because back in my day, we used to send letters through the post! Even if you save it as a draft, you'd still need a way to sync it between your devices. Handoff makes it simple and convenient.
      - lliamander 4y ago
        Gmail automatically saves emails drafts. Thunderbird might as well, though I'm not sure. I also have this same experience with Slack. I often switch between mobile and Linux desktop for these applications, no special software required.
      - nehal3m 4y ago
        IMAP does just that; save it as a draft (most clients automatically do that anyway) and pick it up wherever.
    - reaperducer 4y ago
      IMAP is a kludge compared with Handoff. Now when Linux can do the same thing with a word processing document, with an IM client, with a spreadsheet, with a presentation program, with my web browser; let me use my phone as a webcam, a signature pad, or a document scanner, get back to me.
ccouzens 4y ago
> - Application-centric (as opposed to window-centric) task management Thanks, but MacOS can keep that. It was one of the more frustrating parts of using a Mac in my opinion. It would be cool if MacOS offered an option to chose. Probably from your point of view it would be cool if other platforms offered an option to chose.
- zitterbewegung 4y ago
  I agree with you that it is annoying but it is also still in there because macOS was designed as Application centric. To have a new way to choose would involve to add a new feature and have all of the developers port the design pattern to do so which is non trivial/
- simula67 4y ago
  This is also my biggest frustration with macOS because you can use same application for multiple activities. A browser can be used for researching a problem in the code you are writing and at the same time to play music from Amazon Music. Wy not allow those activities to be grouped seperately in different windows and desktops? macOS seems averse to allowing this and Windows and Linux seems to be much better at allowing them.
  - alwillis 4y ago
    Wy not allow those activities to be grouped seperately in different windows and desktops? macOS macOS has had virtual desktops for like 8 years [1]. And there are lots of utilities to tweak the windows behavior to pretty much anything you want. [1]: https://www.macworld.com/article/226448/hands-on-with-spaces-mission-control-and-split-view-in-el-capitan.html https://www.macworld.com/article/226448/hands-on-with-spaces...
- rollcat 4y ago
  It's a part of Mac's design philosophy, probably goes all the way back to 1984. Since we're discussing making XFCE act more like a Mac, I would find the experience incomplete without this important detail. It might boil down to preference, but - trying to be objective - this paradigm makes more sense, especially as you watch apps on other systems struggle to achieve the same goals (e.g. via tray icons), which usually don't work consistently, or require setting additional preferences. If I close a music player window, I want the music to keep playing. If I close the activity monitor window, I want the app to continue accumulating stats to make a graph - unless I quit the app entirely. Closing the window/tab (Cmd-w) and quitting the app (Cmd-q) are distinct actions. Now why would a note-taking app work differently? This is a more coherent design, that puts less cognitive load on the user. It works because each app tries to stick to one task - you're switching between tasks, not windows. The counterexample that illustrates how bad can this problem get, is the terminal apps: every window with mutt, vim, ncmpc, top, or irssi looks the same, has the same icon, BUT has different keyboard shortcuts! Madness. > It would be cool if MacOS offered an option to chose. I will argue that having a more thought-thru and consistent paradigm is more important than having more options - especially if all the options still can't get you a decent experience. It's definitely achievable through third-party applications; you can probably DIY something using Hammerspoon.
rewgs 4y ago
I’ll add onemore: “Always in an app” design, rendering the concept of a “Super” key moot (I’ve always both loved and hated this).
harha 4y ago
Agree to all points, haven’t been using one yet, even though it sounds quite powerful: Automator. Do you have any good examples?
- rollcat 4y ago
  It's been replaced by Shortcuts; both are basically a drag&drop graphical language for automating simple system tasks. You can also escape to raw shell or AppleScript (which in turn allows you to script any GUI) if necessary. Results of one block are piped to another, and operations range from very high level to very low level, so you can easily make stuff like "take input file, run OCR, and submit the text to this URL". There's integrations with HomeKit (smart home), many system services, third-party apps can also add actions. You can add actions as dock icons, context menus, share sheets, etc. It's also synced between all your devices, you can tell your HomePod: "Hey Siri, shutdown the homelab", and your lackrack goes quiet. It's extremely cumbersome if you'd try to use it as a general-purpose programming language (I've tried implementing UUID4 just as a benchmark and gave up pretty fast), but very intuitive for simple tasks like that.
  - harha 4y ago
    Thanks for the explanation. Just discovered: Shortcuts actually has a gallery with a lot of examples. Also I can let it run shell scripts (at least on the Mac), so it looks like I'll be able to get inputs from other programs to another script easily (using pbpaste)
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> Apps are just self-contained, launchable directories you can copy around, no separate installation step That isn't specific to macOS. It's also a feature of BSD, Linux, and Windows. But for reasons that escape me, software distributors keep adding an installation step anyway. This is something that's gotten worse since the days of DOS.
- lproven 4y ago
  > That isn't specific to macOS. It's also a feature of BSD, Linux, and Windows. It really is not. Have you ever used OS X?

seiferteric 4y ago

Also iMessage, video & voice calls, find my friends are great to have.

dTal 4y ago

The functionality you describe in "Handover" is achieved (and more besides, such as playback control) on Linux with KDE Connect.

least 4y ago
Handoff is only a small part of the continuity stuff Apple has for working between your Apple devices and it's called Continuity [1]. KDE Connect is great but it comes nowhere close to mimicking the functionality of it. [1] https://www.apple.com/macos/continuity/ https://www.apple.com/macos/continuity/
- msla 4y ago
  Sounds like a privacy nightmare, not to mention a huge security hole.
  - exitb 4y ago
    None of these services use any resources outside of your local network to work.
reaperducer 4y ago
The functionality you describe in "Handover" is achieved (and more besides, such as playback control) on Linux with KDE Connect. I can start writing an e-mail on my phone, put down my phone and then continue working on it on my tablet, and then putdown my tablet and immediately finish it up on my desktop in Linux? Handover is more than a global clipboard.
- nehal3m 4y ago
  Sure, save it as a draft. You don't need no fancy stinkin' email syncin' Handoff for that.
  - least 4y ago
    Why stop there? We don't need no stinkin' emails at all because back in my day, we used to send letters through the post! Even if you save it as a draft, you'd still need a way to sync it between your devices. Handoff makes it simple and convenient.
    - lliamander 4y ago
      Gmail automatically saves emails drafts. Thunderbird might as well, though I'm not sure. I also have this same experience with Slack. I often switch between mobile and Linux desktop for these applications, no special software required.
    - nehal3m 4y ago
      IMAP does just that; save it as a draft (most clients automatically do that anyway) and pick it up wherever.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    IMAP is a kludge compared with Handoff. Now when Linux can do the same thing with a word processing document, with an IM client, with a spreadsheet, with a presentation program, with my web browser; let me use my phone as a webcam, a signature pad, or a document scanner, get back to me.

ccouzens 4y ago

> - Application-centric (as opposed to window-centric) task management Thanks, but MacOS can keep that. It was one of the more frustrating parts of using a Mac in my opinion. It would be cool if MacOS offered an option to chose. Probably from your point of view it would be cool if other platforms offered an option to chose.

zitterbewegung 4y ago
I agree with you that it is annoying but it is also still in there because macOS was designed as Application centric. To have a new way to choose would involve to add a new feature and have all of the developers port the design pattern to do so which is non trivial/
simula67 4y ago
This is also my biggest frustration with macOS because you can use same application for multiple activities. A browser can be used for researching a problem in the code you are writing and at the same time to play music from Amazon Music. Wy not allow those activities to be grouped seperately in different windows and desktops? macOS seems averse to allowing this and Windows and Linux seems to be much better at allowing them.
- alwillis 4y ago
  Wy not allow those activities to be grouped seperately in different windows and desktops? macOS macOS has had virtual desktops for like 8 years [1]. And there are lots of utilities to tweak the windows behavior to pretty much anything you want. [1]: https://www.macworld.com/article/226448/hands-on-with-spaces-mission-control-and-split-view-in-el-capitan.html https://www.macworld.com/article/226448/hands-on-with-spaces...
rollcat 4y ago
It's a part of Mac's design philosophy, probably goes all the way back to 1984. Since we're discussing making XFCE act more like a Mac, I would find the experience incomplete without this important detail. It might boil down to preference, but - trying to be objective - this paradigm makes more sense, especially as you watch apps on other systems struggle to achieve the same goals (e.g. via tray icons), which usually don't work consistently, or require setting additional preferences. If I close a music player window, I want the music to keep playing. If I close the activity monitor window, I want the app to continue accumulating stats to make a graph - unless I quit the app entirely. Closing the window/tab (Cmd-w) and quitting the app (Cmd-q) are distinct actions. Now why would a note-taking app work differently? This is a more coherent design, that puts less cognitive load on the user. It works because each app tries to stick to one task - you're switching between tasks, not windows. The counterexample that illustrates how bad can this problem get, is the terminal apps: every window with mutt, vim, ncmpc, top, or irssi looks the same, has the same icon, BUT has different keyboard shortcuts! Madness. > It would be cool if MacOS offered an option to chose. I will argue that having a more thought-thru and consistent paradigm is more important than having more options - especially if all the options still can't get you a decent experience. It's definitely achievable through third-party applications; you can probably DIY something using Hammerspoon.

rewgs 4y ago

I’ll add onemore: “Always in an app” design, rendering the concept of a “Super” key moot (I’ve always both loved and hated this).

harha 4y ago

Agree to all points, haven’t been using one yet, even though it sounds quite powerful: Automator. Do you have any good examples?

rollcat 4y ago
It's been replaced by Shortcuts; both are basically a drag&drop graphical language for automating simple system tasks. You can also escape to raw shell or AppleScript (which in turn allows you to script any GUI) if necessary. Results of one block are piped to another, and operations range from very high level to very low level, so you can easily make stuff like "take input file, run OCR, and submit the text to this URL". There's integrations with HomeKit (smart home), many system services, third-party apps can also add actions. You can add actions as dock icons, context menus, share sheets, etc. It's also synced between all your devices, you can tell your HomePod: "Hey Siri, shutdown the homelab", and your lackrack goes quiet. It's extremely cumbersome if you'd try to use it as a general-purpose programming language (I've tried implementing UUID4 just as a benchmark and gave up pretty fast), but very intuitive for simple tasks like that.
- harha 4y ago
  Thanks for the explanation. Just discovered: Shortcuts actually has a gallery with a lot of examples. Also I can let it run shell scripts (at least on the Mac), so it looks like I'll be able to get inputs from other programs to another script easily (using pbpaste)

thaumasiotes 4y ago

> Apps are just self-contained, launchable directories you can copy around, no separate installation step That isn't specific to macOS. It's also a feature of BSD, Linux, and Windows. But for reasons that escape me, software distributors keep adding an installation step anyway. This is something that's gotten worse since the days of DOS.

lproven 4y ago
> That isn't specific to macOS. It's also a feature of BSD, Linux, and Windows. It really is not. Have you ever used OS X?