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Another hard disagree here. My daily driver personal laptop is a macbook, it's the best machine I've ever owned & my next laptop will most likely be a macbook.

Another hard disagree here. My daily driver personal laptop is a macbook, it's the best machine I've ever owned & my next laptop will most likely be a macbook. My work machine is also a macbook. But they are not intuitive nor highly "usable". After many years going through various osx/macOS transitions, it's an OS with objectively bad ux in many ways. That's not to say it's bad software. Apart from the hardware of my personal laptop being great, I also like the OS for a few reasons. UX has multiple components outside of intuitiveness & ease of use: 1. reliability. Things work. It has its bugs but generally speaking the utility functions within the OS work well much much more frequently than windows or linux. Peripherals work. Suspend/sleep/hibernate work. Wifi works. Bluetooth works. Everything works. Without fiddling. 2. Builtin apps are sensibly functional & comprehensive. Disk tools have been built-in & better than Windows forever (even Linux usually has none unless you install gparted). Preview supports pdf editing & annotation (& saved signatures!) - these are things that literally every person needs at some point & I'm not even aware of any windows/linux apps that do these other than paid Adobe Acrobat. That's absurd. Screenshot/image preview support better image annotation than Windows (& still trying multiple linux utilities for this that don't have any annotation at all). Very basic day-to-day shit like this has actually been priorities and covered. 3. Unix-y stuff is good enough. I'm a linux guy so this is still a bit of a step down but it's actually fine. Anything that takes place in a terminal is very comparable to linux (& the builtin emulator is a lot better than what comes bundled with many linux DEs). But. Everything about the macOS desktop experience is terribly unintuitive and bad. Maximising doesn't work (not configurable, ctrl-click remains hassle forever). Multiple windows within one app is badly supported. Finder window closing behaves different to everything - alt-tabbing to it rarely brings anything to the fore. It took them years to add a way to manually lock your screen without a hot corner. All of these things are bad for both experienced users & new. There's no trade-off: you don't get some hidden benefit by learning to work around these difficulties. They remain bad. TL;DR: People use macOS for good logical reasons, despite its objectively bad usability.

ubercow13 4y ago
>Multiple windows within one app is badly supported. Finder window closing behaves different to everything - alt-tabbing to it rarely brings anything to the fore. How so? Finder seems to behave the same way as other multi-window apps, if you cmd-tab to it and a window is open, it will appear, and if there isn't the app will focus and you can press cmd-t to open a new window. This is consistent and in line with how macos deals with apps vs windows/documents in every app.
- lucideer 4y ago
  > How so? Finder behaviour is technically consistent, all things being equal, but it's inconsistent in practice as a knock-on effect of other limitations: the root of this is the (inability) to quit Finder*. If you never quit any apps you ever use, you could probably get consistent behaviour across them, but broadly speaking if you do quit apps you're not using, opening those apps will tend to bring up a new window. Since Finder can't be quit, "opening" it afresh constitutes switching to it in its windowless state. Technically consistent (same as switching to any windowless app) but inconsistent in practice (switching to any other app you have quit will bring a window to the fore). I suspect this is one of those engineers-vs-ux things where engineers will close this as "works as intented" without considering that the "way it's supposed to be used" isn't necessarily a good model for actual user behaviour. The other potential excuse is "but Desktop icons", which is just rooted in the leaky abstraction of devs tending to DRY-ify desktop rendering by hard-linking it to the app that provides file mgmt. windows. *: You can work around this with the `com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem` setting at the cost of Desktop icons, but we're talking default settings here.
  - ubercow13 4y ago
    Are you sure the inconsistency isn't because you have QuitMenuItem set? With it unset like default, Finder will launch a new window in the foreground when it's run from eg. Spotlight, even if it has no windows open, which is consistent with other apps. The only difference is that you can't actually close it. When QuitMenuItem is set to true and you actually quit Finder, that's when starting it won't open a window.
    - lucideer 4y ago
      > Are you sure the inconsistency isn't because you have QuitMenuItem set? I don't have it set - it's got drawbacks (aforementioned Desktop icons) but mostly I prefer to run with defaults so I'm less annoyed at fresh installs :)
weoijeiwj 4y ago
"Everything works" :D Yeah, try to use an external non-Apple mouse with your macbook - your mouse will scroll in the opposite direction - changing it in setting will reverse the direction of your touchpad. Additional buttons will also not work. or try to connect an android phone to your macbook via USB-C. You will not be able to access the file system to copy files or do anything else. Printing doesn't work, unless you use Airprint... which will require you do disconnect from internet... Half of Apple devices use USB-C and half of them - obsolete Lightning cable... Many people have issues with Airpods connecting to the closed macbook. and I don't even talk about Docker working 20x times slower than on windows and 100x slower than on Linux.
- lucideer 4y ago
  > try to use an external non-Apple mouse with your macbook - your mouse will scroll in the opposite direction I use a Logitech mouse with my macbooks. Natural scrolling is available in Windows & Linux these days (as it's a user preference many have grown to prefer of late, on all platforms). I also use a Magic Touchpad 2 with a Linux machine & changing natural scrolling settings there will also affect both mouse & touchpad equally, so not sure which of this is specifically a mac problem? This is an odd complaint - scrolling on macbook touchpads presumably works in reverse to your own non-mac machine but you don't seem to have noticed? > Additional buttons will also not work. wfm ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ have had more issues on Linux here: all the many ways to get them to work do work fine I think, they're just a lot of fiddling. Piper's a cool project but doesn't seem to support many models in practice, GHub installation is patchy, which leaves fiddling with XOrg/xmodmap... if you're not on Wayland... > connect an android phone to your macbook via USB-C I've done this a lot to use adb, but haven't had a lot of need to copy files directly, so haven't noticed this issue. Does it just not show in Finder as a device or is it some deeper issue? Is it related to the USB connection mode in Android's settings? > Printing doesn't work wfm ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Never used AirPrint. Dunno what that is. > obsolete Lightning cable... True. This is awful. As are all of Apple's (many) hw lock-in practices. > don't even talk about Docker working 20x times slower Entirely a docker problem. --- I'm contradicting a lot of your points but generally Apple are terrible in many ways. No disagreement there (and as I said one of them is usability). It's a trade-off though & in my experience (& I hear most people's) one of the things they do get right more often than others are things "just working". Windows actually used to be better at this I feel (did I imagine this?), but maybe regressed.
kennend3 4y ago
Just wait until your very expensive laptop no longer receives OS updates. Not because it cant run them, but because apple doesn't want you using that machine anymore. Legacy opencore patcher is proof that these machines can run the OS but the installer blocks it. For frame of reference, I moved from using linux exclusively to MacOS around 2 years ago. I'd avoid buying real mac hardware over this because it is expensive planned obsolescence. I have a laptop running Ubuntu which is like 8 years old and still runs the most recent version just fine. How long will your mac continue to receive updates? PS - Question for you. Why are there so many threads on the net on how to install linux on a macbook?
- lucideer 4y ago
  I'm not sure if you're making some assumptions about me being an Apple fan or something, but my comment was critical of macOS (specifically usability is bad): I didn't make any points about software lifecycle support (neither in favour nor against). > PS - Question for you. Why are there so many threads on the net on how to install linux on a macbook? There really aren't relatively speaking. Asahi is a fantastic achievement but most mac users use macOS. For better or for worse. Fwiw I've run Linux on an ancient macbook pro in the past (which was past supporting osx/macos): it worked great.
sofixa 4y ago
> Peripherals work. Suspend/sleep/hibernate work Counterpoint: no it doesn't. My work MBP cannot sleep (even if i click on Apple -> Sleep), and my Sony headset always connects to it even if it's in my backpack supposedly sleeping. > Builtin apps are sensibly functional & comprehensive Yes, with builtin features such as saving in a different, proprietary format. Open a .doc(x) in Pages, Save it and you get a .pages document instead of the original being updated.
dsego 4y ago
Small quality of life things like builtin pdf & image preview with annotations and signatures, a readily available pop-up dictionary, smooth gestures, built-in screen recording, quick preview for all types of files when you click the spacebar, sharing files quickly via airdrop, a good email reader, not to mention the whole creative suite and so on. Folks using windows and linux just don't know what they don't know, they don't miss it because they've never experienced it. They miss clipboard managers and windows snapping ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

ubercow13 4y ago

>Multiple windows within one app is badly supported. Finder window closing behaves different to everything - alt-tabbing to it rarely brings anything to the fore. How so? Finder seems to behave the same way as other multi-window apps, if you cmd-tab to it and a window is open, it will appear, and if there isn't the app will focus and you can press cmd-t to open a new window. This is consistent and in line with how macos deals with apps vs windows/documents in every app.

lucideer 4y ago
> How so? Finder behaviour is technically consistent, all things being equal, but it's inconsistent in practice as a knock-on effect of other limitations: the root of this is the (inability) to quit Finder*. If you never quit any apps you ever use, you could probably get consistent behaviour across them, but broadly speaking if you do quit apps you're not using, opening those apps will tend to bring up a new window. Since Finder can't be quit, "opening" it afresh constitutes switching to it in its windowless state. Technically consistent (same as switching to any windowless app) but inconsistent in practice (switching to any other app you have quit will bring a window to the fore). I suspect this is one of those engineers-vs-ux things where engineers will close this as "works as intented" without considering that the "way it's supposed to be used" isn't necessarily a good model for actual user behaviour. The other potential excuse is "but Desktop icons", which is just rooted in the leaky abstraction of devs tending to DRY-ify desktop rendering by hard-linking it to the app that provides file mgmt. windows. *: You can work around this with the `com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem` setting at the cost of Desktop icons, but we're talking default settings here.
- ubercow13 4y ago
  Are you sure the inconsistency isn't because you have QuitMenuItem set? With it unset like default, Finder will launch a new window in the foreground when it's run from eg. Spotlight, even if it has no windows open, which is consistent with other apps. The only difference is that you can't actually close it. When QuitMenuItem is set to true and you actually quit Finder, that's when starting it won't open a window.
  - lucideer 4y ago
    > Are you sure the inconsistency isn't because you have QuitMenuItem set? I don't have it set - it's got drawbacks (aforementioned Desktop icons) but mostly I prefer to run with defaults so I'm less annoyed at fresh installs :)

weoijeiwj 4y ago

"Everything works" :D Yeah, try to use an external non-Apple mouse with your macbook - your mouse will scroll in the opposite direction - changing it in setting will reverse the direction of your touchpad. Additional buttons will also not work. or try to connect an android phone to your macbook via USB-C. You will not be able to access the file system to copy files or do anything else. Printing doesn't work, unless you use Airprint... which will require you do disconnect from internet... Half of Apple devices use USB-C and half of them - obsolete Lightning cable... Many people have issues with Airpods connecting to the closed macbook. and I don't even talk about Docker working 20x times slower than on windows and 100x slower than on Linux.

lucideer 4y ago
> try to use an external non-Apple mouse with your macbook - your mouse will scroll in the opposite direction I use a Logitech mouse with my macbooks. Natural scrolling is available in Windows & Linux these days (as it's a user preference many have grown to prefer of late, on all platforms). I also use a Magic Touchpad 2 with a Linux machine & changing natural scrolling settings there will also affect both mouse & touchpad equally, so not sure which of this is specifically a mac problem? This is an odd complaint - scrolling on macbook touchpads presumably works in reverse to your own non-mac machine but you don't seem to have noticed? > Additional buttons will also not work. wfm ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ have had more issues on Linux here: all the many ways to get them to work do work fine I think, they're just a lot of fiddling. Piper's a cool project but doesn't seem to support many models in practice, GHub installation is patchy, which leaves fiddling with XOrg/xmodmap... if you're not on Wayland... > connect an android phone to your macbook via USB-C I've done this a lot to use adb, but haven't had a lot of need to copy files directly, so haven't noticed this issue. Does it just not show in Finder as a device or is it some deeper issue? Is it related to the USB connection mode in Android's settings? > Printing doesn't work wfm ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Never used AirPrint. Dunno what that is. > obsolete Lightning cable... True. This is awful. As are all of Apple's (many) hw lock-in practices. > don't even talk about Docker working 20x times slower Entirely a docker problem. --- I'm contradicting a lot of your points but generally Apple are terrible in many ways. No disagreement there (and as I said one of them is usability). It's a trade-off though & in my experience (& I hear most people's) one of the things they do get right more often than others are things "just working". Windows actually used to be better at this I feel (did I imagine this?), but maybe regressed.

kennend3 4y ago

Just wait until your very expensive laptop no longer receives OS updates. Not because it cant run them, but because apple doesn't want you using that machine anymore. Legacy opencore patcher is proof that these machines can run the OS but the installer blocks it. For frame of reference, I moved from using linux exclusively to MacOS around 2 years ago. I'd avoid buying real mac hardware over this because it is expensive planned obsolescence. I have a laptop running Ubuntu which is like 8 years old and still runs the most recent version just fine. How long will your mac continue to receive updates? PS - Question for you. Why are there so many threads on the net on how to install linux on a macbook?

lucideer 4y ago
I'm not sure if you're making some assumptions about me being an Apple fan or something, but my comment was critical of macOS (specifically usability is bad): I didn't make any points about software lifecycle support (neither in favour nor against). > PS - Question for you. Why are there so many threads on the net on how to install linux on a macbook? There really aren't relatively speaking. Asahi is a fantastic achievement but most mac users use macOS. For better or for worse. Fwiw I've run Linux on an ancient macbook pro in the past (which was past supporting osx/macos): it worked great.

sofixa 4y ago

> Peripherals work. Suspend/sleep/hibernate work Counterpoint: no it doesn't. My work MBP cannot sleep (even if i click on Apple -> Sleep), and my Sony headset always connects to it even if it's in my backpack supposedly sleeping. > Builtin apps are sensibly functional & comprehensive Yes, with builtin features such as saving in a different, proprietary format. Open a .doc(x) in Pages, Save it and you get a .pages document instead of the original being updated.

dsego 4y ago

Small quality of life things like builtin pdf & image preview with annotations and signatures, a readily available pop-up dictionary, smooth gestures, built-in screen recording, quick preview for all types of files when you click the spacebar, sharing files quickly via airdrop, a good email reader, not to mention the whole creative suite and so on. Folks using windows and linux just don't know what they don't know, they don't miss it because they've never experienced it. They miss clipboard managers and windows snapping ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.