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To switch to another window, we already had Command-Tab, Mission Control, Expose (now part of Mission Control if I understand correctly), and also clicking on t

To switch to another window, we already had Command-Tab, Mission Control, Expose (now part of Mission Control if I understand correctly), and also clicking on the icons in the Dock. And now we have Stage Manager. I had to use Windows 10 as my main workstation for a few weeks at work, and I'm starting to think windows management is – perhaps – one of the rare things Windows does better than macOS. But of course I should probably try Stage Manager before ranting about it here :)

samuelstros 4y ago
I concluded that Windows has a better window management too. It is no coincidence that Mac users have hundreds of windows open while Windows users stay relatively organized. I tried out uBar for Mac OS https://ubarapp.com/ https://ubarapp.com/. Too buggy though.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  Windows has such great window management its users have much less windows open and thus manage much less windows than the MacOS, which has such bad window management its users manage hundreds of windows. It does not make a whole lot of sense.
  - samuelstros 4y ago
    I see where you are coming from. Windows has great window management = less chaos, less orphan open windows Mac OS has inferior window management = chaos, hundreds of open windows The main reasons stems from the fact that Windows open window discoverability is higher. Open windows are always displayed in the menu bar. MacOS only displays the app icon but provides no information about the open windows except for pressing F3. I hope that answer makes sense.
    - tinus_hn 4y ago
      Mac OS displays exactly the same information, Windows groups windows under one icon as well. Windows shows miniatures of the windows on hover, Mac OS pops them all up to the foreground if you click the icon and lists them on right click/control click. This theory makes little sense.
      - samuelstros 4y ago
        This theory is a subtle UX difference with larger outcomes. MacOS requires additional steps to see open windows while Windows does not. The right click Mac OS solution is the best example. By default, right click on MacOS is deactivated. Even if someone right clicks on an app icon, that person has to click AND process the titles windows instead of seeing a visual preview as on Windows of the window.
        tinus_hn 4y ago
        So when you start asking questions, that terrible UI becomes a subtle UX difference. That’s why this is all armchair designery about pet issues. You may like the way Windows works, that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean MacOS works ‘terribly’. It’s mostly just different from what you’re used to.
        samuelstros 4y ago
        What is your intention? Nobody said that macOS has "terrible UI". Some people expressed that the window management in MacOS is inferior to Windows. I laid out UX reasons why macOS window management is inferior to Windows. I will not participate in further discussion.
        tinus_hn 4y ago
        Upon review that is correct, apparently I confused this thread with another one.
        samuelstros 4y ago
- rubyist5eva 4y ago
  > It is no coincidence that Mac users have hundreds of windows open while Windows users stay relatively organized. Personally, I leave tons of windows open because I feel no need to keep things "organized". I rarely feel the need to constantly micro manage things that are running because cmd+tab and cmd+` along with mission control/expose/spaces makes it pretty simple to find what I'm looking for. My individual windows go into pretty specific positions and they rarely move, and I also rarely fully close applications.
CubsFan1060 4y ago
I still feel like this will be their unified desktop across all products, including AR/VR glasses. If you take away the background, the way that it's arranged feels very AR-y to me.
- rcarr 4y ago
  Great shout. Just sounds like typical marketing nonsense naming on iPad/Mac and also doesn’t seem to immediately bring much to the table but makes total sense if this is the case. Fits in with Shakespeare’s famous observation that “all the world’s a stage”.
behnamoh 4y ago
This. It's unacceptable that macOS still doesn't support basic window management and users have to install Tiles/Spectacles/Magnet/etc.
- e12e 4y ago
  I feel I've regained some sanity with https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai - even without messing with System Integrity Protection. It's a shame there's no real Api to enable proper screen/desktop/wm on macos though.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  Those sound like advanced or niche window management tools - not ‘basic’?
- dabernathy89 4y ago
  Completely agree. I use Rectangle, largely for the most basic thing that MacOS gets wrong: maximizing windows. It shouldn't be the same as "full screen". I know that you can double tap a window's top bar to maximize, but this should be swapped with the full-screen toggle. And cmd+shift+f should maximize the window instead of going to full-screen.
- sbuk 4y ago
  Is it? I mean really "unacceptable"? Inconvenient, perhaps, but "unacceptable"? Sounds pretty first-worldy to me...
  - JoachimS 4y ago
    And very much a personal preference too.
pedrogpimenta 4y ago
Well, the new Mission Control is the same as the old Exposé, just a rebrand with a few changes. But you forgot Command-` (backtick) which cycles windows from the same (current) app.
trenchgun 4y ago
Windows and KDE in linux do the window management best. They use essentially the same model for it.
kawsper 4y ago
Don't forget CMD+` that switches to another window of the same application.
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  Honestly, where Mac Window management has always shined is through the use of gestures on a touchpad.
  - ngrilly 4y ago
    Agreed. And also on iOS. Apple really got gestures right.
- wortelefant 4y ago
  option + < on german systems/keyboards. keyboard shortcuts are not very accessible to the beginner user though. When my older relatives open youtube videos in fullscreen mode, they do not find their other browser window anymore
wyuenho 4y ago
I think you've forgotten about Spaces. I've been maximizing the windows for every app on the built-in screen since forever. More recently I've been using Rectangle when my MBP is connected to my new 27" screen. It works quite well but the layouts require a bit of nannying, I guess it's just a matter of me familiarizing myself with the keyboard shortcuts. [1]: https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/
heavenlyblue 4y ago
And Linux does even better
GeekyBear 4y ago
A fairly good description of what's (optionally) new and what hasn't changed at all. >Apple wisely takes an ain't-broke-don't-fix-it approach to macOS's standard multitasking model in Ventura by turning Stage Manager off by default and making people go hunting for it if they want to use it. You can't change your Mac's UI in a major way by accident. If you haven't used it, Stage Manager differs from standard macOS multitasking by offering a column of recently used apps on the side of your screen (it's the left-hand side by default, but it will switch if you've got your Dock set to use the left-hand side of your screen instead). But unlike minimizing or maximizing an app from the Dock, each "stage" can contain multiple app windows from multiple apps; switch from one stage to another, and every window on that stage will pop back up on your screen in exactly the arrangement you were using before. Within a given stage, app windows work exactly as they do anywhere else on your Mac. You can move, resize, and rearrange them any way you want, including shoving them all the way to the edges of the screen. The recent apps column will persist on the side of the screen by default, but it will get out of the way if you move an app window over it; you can bring the apps back up by moving your cursor to the right edge of the screen. Stage Manager integrates seamlessly with macOS's other window management systems. Do you still want to use some apps in Full Screen mode? Great—they don't appear in your recent apps tray, and you can access them with a trackpad swipe, the same as you could before. Do you like Mission Control? Also cool. Apps in your tray slide gracefully up into Mission Control mode, along with any open apps that aren't in your tray. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/macos-13-ventura-the-ars-technica-review/4/#h1 https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/macos-13-ventura-the...
hhjinks 4y ago
I disagree. Nothing beats macOS's multiple desktops that you can swap between by swiping with three fingers. I know exactly where my windows are, exactly how to get to them from anywhere, and their order is never changed. Leagues better than alt+tab.
- AA-BA-94-2A-56 4y ago
  Just to add, I don't use a trackpad and I still use multiple desktops using the key shortcut ^ + Arrow Keys.
- Scharkenberg 4y ago
  One can swipe between virtual desktops on Windows 10 and 11 too, provided one has a Touchpad model from the last 10 years.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kitsunesoba 4y ago
That's definitely subjective. For my usage/preferences, the Windows taskbar and alt-tab switcher scale extremely poorly. They drive me to keep no more than 3-4 windows open, because any additional windows beyond that make my desktop progressively more difficult to manage which feels utterly absurd on a tower with a 5950X and 32GB of RAM which I should feel empowered to heavily multitask with.
- ngrilly 4y ago
  Good point. Never thought about it. Probably did not use Windows long enough. What is not scaling well with that model? The miniatures are taking too much vertical space when hovering an app icon in the task bar?
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    For the taskbar, what doesn’t scale nicely is its window buttons. Keeping the taskbar in its icon only default mode makes it basically like the Mac dock, which isn’t too bad, except that having more than one window open in a program which causes the button to “stack” for each window, then requiring an additional click or an awkward hover-dance to surface one of that program’s windows. If I disable stacking and enable window names, making it like the Win9x taskbar, I get back single click window summoning but the taskbar fills up very quickly and becomes noisy. Either way comes with drawbacks. Alt-tab scales badly simply because of the sheer number of tab-taps it takes to switch to any given window when you have more than a handful of windows open. Without any logical grouping (like with macOS Command-Tab app grouping), it gets too full too quickly. Windows also lacks a universal shortcut to cycle through only windows of a single application (Command-` on macOS) which I often miss.
russellbeattie 4y ago
My ability to accidentally hit Command-Q instead of Command-Tab, even after years of doing it astounds me. You'd think muscle memory, or at least the size of the keys would give my fingers and brain a clue, but nope. Some apps will give you quit prompts but many just disappear instantly, leaving me befuddled about what the hell I just did. I assume some Chrome product manager is as clumsy as I am (bless their heart), so it will insist you hold down the Q key. If only that was the default.

samuelstros 4y ago

I concluded that Windows has a better window management too. It is no coincidence that Mac users have hundreds of windows open while Windows users stay relatively organized. I tried out uBar for Mac OS https://ubarapp.com/ https://ubarapp.com/. Too buggy though.

tinus_hn 4y ago
Windows has such great window management its users have much less windows open and thus manage much less windows than the MacOS, which has such bad window management its users manage hundreds of windows. It does not make a whole lot of sense.
- samuelstros 4y ago
  I see where you are coming from. Windows has great window management = less chaos, less orphan open windows Mac OS has inferior window management = chaos, hundreds of open windows The main reasons stems from the fact that Windows open window discoverability is higher. Open windows are always displayed in the menu bar. MacOS only displays the app icon but provides no information about the open windows except for pressing F3. I hope that answer makes sense.
  - tinus_hn 4y ago
    Mac OS displays exactly the same information, Windows groups windows under one icon as well. Windows shows miniatures of the windows on hover, Mac OS pops them all up to the foreground if you click the icon and lists them on right click/control click. This theory makes little sense.
    - samuelstros 4y ago
      This theory is a subtle UX difference with larger outcomes. MacOS requires additional steps to see open windows while Windows does not. The right click Mac OS solution is the best example. By default, right click on MacOS is deactivated. Even if someone right clicks on an app icon, that person has to click AND process the titles windows instead of seeing a visual preview as on Windows of the window.
      - tinus_hn 4y ago
        So when you start asking questions, that terrible UI becomes a subtle UX difference. That’s why this is all armchair designery about pet issues. You may like the way Windows works, that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean MacOS works ‘terribly’. It’s mostly just different from what you’re used to.
        samuelstros 4y ago
        What is your intention? Nobody said that macOS has "terrible UI". Some people expressed that the window management in MacOS is inferior to Windows. I laid out UX reasons why macOS window management is inferior to Windows. I will not participate in further discussion.
        tinus_hn 4y ago
        Upon review that is correct, apparently I confused this thread with another one.
        samuelstros 4y ago
rubyist5eva 4y ago
> It is no coincidence that Mac users have hundreds of windows open while Windows users stay relatively organized. Personally, I leave tons of windows open because I feel no need to keep things "organized". I rarely feel the need to constantly micro manage things that are running because cmd+tab and cmd+` along with mission control/expose/spaces makes it pretty simple to find what I'm looking for. My individual windows go into pretty specific positions and they rarely move, and I also rarely fully close applications.

CubsFan1060 4y ago

I still feel like this will be their unified desktop across all products, including AR/VR glasses. If you take away the background, the way that it's arranged feels very AR-y to me.

rcarr 4y ago
Great shout. Just sounds like typical marketing nonsense naming on iPad/Mac and also doesn’t seem to immediately bring much to the table but makes total sense if this is the case. Fits in with Shakespeare’s famous observation that “all the world’s a stage”.

behnamoh 4y ago

This. It's unacceptable that macOS still doesn't support basic window management and users have to install Tiles/Spectacles/Magnet/etc.

e12e 4y ago
I feel I've regained some sanity with https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai - even without messing with System Integrity Protection. It's a shame there's no real Api to enable proper screen/desktop/wm on macos though.
chrisseaton 4y ago
Those sound like advanced or niche window management tools - not ‘basic’?
dabernathy89 4y ago
Completely agree. I use Rectangle, largely for the most basic thing that MacOS gets wrong: maximizing windows. It shouldn't be the same as "full screen". I know that you can double tap a window's top bar to maximize, but this should be swapped with the full-screen toggle. And cmd+shift+f should maximize the window instead of going to full-screen.
sbuk 4y ago
Is it? I mean really "unacceptable"? Inconvenient, perhaps, but "unacceptable"? Sounds pretty first-worldy to me...
- JoachimS 4y ago
  And very much a personal preference too.

pedrogpimenta 4y ago

Well, the new Mission Control is the same as the old Exposé, just a rebrand with a few changes. But you forgot Command-` (backtick) which cycles windows from the same (current) app.

trenchgun 4y ago

Windows and KDE in linux do the window management best. They use essentially the same model for it.

kawsper 4y ago

Don't forget CMD+` that switches to another window of the same application.

GeekyBear 4y ago
Honestly, where Mac Window management has always shined is through the use of gestures on a touchpad.
- ngrilly 4y ago
  Agreed. And also on iOS. Apple really got gestures right.
wortelefant 4y ago
option + < on german systems/keyboards. keyboard shortcuts are not very accessible to the beginner user though. When my older relatives open youtube videos in fullscreen mode, they do not find their other browser window anymore

wyuenho 4y ago

I think you've forgotten about Spaces. I've been maximizing the windows for every app on the built-in screen since forever. More recently I've been using Rectangle when my MBP is connected to my new 27" screen. It works quite well but the layouts require a bit of nannying, I guess it's just a matter of me familiarizing myself with the keyboard shortcuts. [1]: https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/

heavenlyblue 4y ago

And Linux does even better

GeekyBear 4y ago

A fairly good description of what's (optionally) new and what hasn't changed at all. >Apple wisely takes an ain't-broke-don't-fix-it approach to macOS's standard multitasking model in Ventura by turning Stage Manager off by default and making people go hunting for it if they want to use it. You can't change your Mac's UI in a major way by accident. If you haven't used it, Stage Manager differs from standard macOS multitasking by offering a column of recently used apps on the side of your screen (it's the left-hand side by default, but it will switch if you've got your Dock set to use the left-hand side of your screen instead). But unlike minimizing or maximizing an app from the Dock, each "stage" can contain multiple app windows from multiple apps; switch from one stage to another, and every window on that stage will pop back up on your screen in exactly the arrangement you were using before. Within a given stage, app windows work exactly as they do anywhere else on your Mac. You can move, resize, and rearrange them any way you want, including shoving them all the way to the edges of the screen. The recent apps column will persist on the side of the screen by default, but it will get out of the way if you move an app window over it; you can bring the apps back up by moving your cursor to the right edge of the screen. Stage Manager integrates seamlessly with macOS's other window management systems. Do you still want to use some apps in Full Screen mode? Great—they don't appear in your recent apps tray, and you can access them with a trackpad swipe, the same as you could before. Do you like Mission Control? Also cool. Apps in your tray slide gracefully up into Mission Control mode, along with any open apps that aren't in your tray. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/macos-13-ventura-the-ars-technica-review/4/#h1 https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/macos-13-ventura-the...

hhjinks 4y ago

I disagree. Nothing beats macOS's multiple desktops that you can swap between by swiping with three fingers. I know exactly where my windows are, exactly how to get to them from anywhere, and their order is never changed. Leagues better than alt+tab.

AA-BA-94-2A-56 4y ago
Just to add, I don't use a trackpad and I still use multiple desktops using the key shortcut ^ + Arrow Keys.
Scharkenberg 4y ago
One can swipe between virtual desktops on Windows 10 and 11 too, provided one has a Touchpad model from the last 10 years.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kitsunesoba 4y ago

That's definitely subjective. For my usage/preferences, the Windows taskbar and alt-tab switcher scale extremely poorly. They drive me to keep no more than 3-4 windows open, because any additional windows beyond that make my desktop progressively more difficult to manage which feels utterly absurd on a tower with a 5950X and 32GB of RAM which I should feel empowered to heavily multitask with.

ngrilly 4y ago
Good point. Never thought about it. Probably did not use Windows long enough. What is not scaling well with that model? The miniatures are taking too much vertical space when hovering an app icon in the task bar?
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  For the taskbar, what doesn’t scale nicely is its window buttons. Keeping the taskbar in its icon only default mode makes it basically like the Mac dock, which isn’t too bad, except that having more than one window open in a program which causes the button to “stack” for each window, then requiring an additional click or an awkward hover-dance to surface one of that program’s windows. If I disable stacking and enable window names, making it like the Win9x taskbar, I get back single click window summoning but the taskbar fills up very quickly and becomes noisy. Either way comes with drawbacks. Alt-tab scales badly simply because of the sheer number of tab-taps it takes to switch to any given window when you have more than a handful of windows open. Without any logical grouping (like with macOS Command-Tab app grouping), it gets too full too quickly. Windows also lacks a universal shortcut to cycle through only windows of a single application (Command-` on macOS) which I often miss.

russellbeattie 4y ago

My ability to accidentally hit Command-Q instead of Command-Tab, even after years of doing it astounds me. You'd think muscle memory, or at least the size of the keys would give my fingers and brain a clue, but nope. Some apps will give you quit prompts but many just disappear instantly, leaving me befuddled about what the hell I just did. I assume some Chrome product manager is as clumsy as I am (bless their heart), so it will insist you hold down the Q key. If only that was the default.