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I always feel like Apple must have some grand 1000IQ concept for window management and I just don't get it. Stage Manager, Spaces, Mission Control, Expose, Wind

• taejavu 3y ago
  The alternative explanation seems to be that they know it’s far from perfect, but lack the appetite to rethink from first principles. So they come up with some feature that will help some specific scenario, and just pile that onto the stack of shit.
  • DimmieMan 3y ago
    I think they’re too afraid of ‘removing the spacebar heater’(https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/). You go look at early Mac OS X and it’s strikingly similar, it’s well and truly reached a point where they need a shakeup but are scared of the short term pain in breaking user workflows.
• capr 3y ago
  why do Apple users give so much benefit of the doubt to these people despite all evidence?
  • SebastianKra 3y ago
    because they have a track record of mostly decent design decisions
    • paulryanrogers 3y ago
      IME it's the opposite
      • eastbound 3y ago
        Last time I’ve tried Windows, there were ads in the start menu. And when I tried Ubuntu, they switched from Gnome to Unity, so I ragequit. Also Ubuntu had ads for Amazon in its start menu.
        • spookie 3y ago
          I would recommend openSUSE or Fedora then. No reason to use Ubuntu
        • happymellon 3y ago
          When did you try Ubuntu? They had Unity from 2010 to 2017, so it must have been a while. > Also Ubuntu had ads for Amazon in its start menu. Ubuntu isn't Linux. I've been a happy Fedora user for many years now. Much more sane desktop settings than Windows or Mac.
        • bombolo 3y ago
          It sounds like you haven't tried ubuntu for 5-7 years.
  • detourdog 3y ago
    because when Multi-finder came out it satisfied our needs and don’t see a reason to change. I bet Apple has put a lot more effort into why they do things, then many give them credit.
• kitsunesoba 3y ago
  The idea behind macOS window management is to not manage windows at all, instead letting them exist at sizes that fit their content in whichever position they land on your desktop, stacking and overlapping like papers on a desk, letting relevant bits peek through without requiring the entirety of their host windows being visible. Exposé/Mission Control are there when a window gets lost, and virtual desktops are meant to partition window groups by task further reducing the need to manually manage windows. It's basically the polar opposite of something like a Linux tiling WM and it's quite different from Windows, where it's the norm to maximize everything.
  • SebastianKra 3y ago
    I might actually try that for a while, but I doubt I can get used to it. My use cases almost always want the maximum available vertical space. Every window that scrolls, I want as large as possible in that direction. But, on the other hand, I can see how smaller overlapping windows would leverage spatial memory for faster switching.
  • ninepoints 3y ago
    > it's quite different from Windows, where it's the norm to maximize everything. Where did you get this idea? It's definitely not the norm and MSFT supports an excellent tiling window system: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzones https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon... Even without that utility though, it's easy to snap windows to one side or another of a monitor - particularly useful for ultra widescreen monitors
    • kitsunesoba 3y ago
      Based on seeing how most longtime Windows users use Windows. I rarely see tiling used, it’s almost always maximizing. Even on gigantic monitors and web pages with an 800px central column, they maximize. The Windows users I encounter IRL tend to not be particularly technical though so that may bias things. I personally get some usage out of tiling but as mentioned in another comment the tiling proposal triggers in W11 are over sensitive and kind of annoying.
• rhinoceraptor 3y ago
  If you look at old screenshots of how people used desktop computers [1], it was rare to see fullscreen windows, even on the tiny monitors of the day, and when most people used only a single monitor. Today, we all have gigantic monitors, many have more than one, but for whatever reason people want to maximize or tile windows. Maybe it's the influence of the fullscreen only, unitasking paradigm from phones and tablet computers, but it just doesn't make much sense to me on a desktop computer. 1: https://anders.unix.se/images/desktop_b_moolenaar.png https://anders.unix.se/images/desktop_b_moolenaar.png https://anders.unix.se/2015/10/28/screenshots-from-developers--unix-people-2002/ https://anders.unix.se/2015/10/28/screenshots-from-developer...
  • eastbound 3y ago
    It’s also the influence of “padding:200px” on all websites. Apple taught that whitespace meant design, so a screen barely fits 10 words today. https://appfire.com/ https://appfire.com/ as an example, but I’m always flummoxed how ALL wordpress themes cap at 10 words per line of text in the body of the blogs, and 25cm of white blank on either side (10 inches). I need a bigger screen.
  • mort96 3y ago
    I keep my browser fullscreen because websites usually break (read: horizontal scrollbars, or ridiculously narrow columns for content) or go into a mobile view if I don't. I keep my terminal (read: text editor) fullscreen because then I have enough horizontal space to have two panes open next to each other (sometimes with an additional directory viewer to the left). 99% of the time, I'm in the terminal or the web browser. I don't understand what I would gain from not maximizing them, but I do understand what I would lose.
    • aeyes 3y ago
      Can you name a website which does this? I use everything except games and my IDE in windowed on different machines and I have never experienced this problem in 10+ years of doing so. It can only happen if you make the browser window extremely narrow.
    • 3y ago
• sleepybrett 3y ago
  They know that 90% of users use apps in fullscreen mode most of the time, or just higgly piggly stacked windows. Most people do not, most of the time, end up in situations where they are using two apps at once. Why do you think it took so long to get any window management at all into the ipad os? They also know that power users have options in the 3rd party app market if they want more fiddly or opinionated window management and have decided to stay out of that fight.
  • oblio 3y ago
    Aren't non mobile devices catering to power users at this point, though? We're not in 2005 anymore, the vast majority of people using laptops or desktops are either professional computer users or gamers, which are generally power users. Casual users have moved to phones and tablets, like, 80% of them.
    • justsomehnguy 3y ago
      > or gamers, which are generally power users Lol? knowing how to install Steam doesn't ascend to a 'power user' status. And btw, 99% of games are running fullscreen.
• crazygringo 3y ago
  I agree with you on this 1,000%. The only parallel I can think of in recent history is Google's seemingly 15 different messaging apps. And learning all of the weird rules you've described reminds me of programming CSS to take account of IE6 quirks. There's no rhyme or reason. It makes no sense, and every time they add a new paradigm it just makes it worse. I had high hopes that Stage Manager would finally solve it, but I turned it off after a week. It was just more of the same nonsense.
• ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  Apple has, for 20+ years now, wrestled with workarounds to the Mac's central UI blunder: making all applications share a single menu that's glued to the top of the screen. Every other windowing OS recognized that menus belong on their applications' main window frames, which makes the desktop an unlimited workspace. Apple should have made the same transition with OS X, but, in true Apple fashion, petulantly refused to acknowledge that others got it right. So we're stuck with this idiotic swapping of menu contents behind the user's back. If you're temporarily done with an application and minimize it, revealing the one you were working with before... guess what? You're still using the menu for the application you "dismissed." Asinine.
  • davisoneee 3y ago
    I actually disagree strongly with (part of) this. Having a singular target menu I think is a good design decision (I used OSX in the past, but currently use windows+wsl at home, and linux for work). Having a singular menu position is consistent. It gives you an 'infinite' Y target...you just slam your pointer into the top of the bar and get menu options, and only have to care about X accuracy. The persistent menu on minimise, I do agree, is daft. But having a consistent location I think is a good decision. Need menus? Look at the top. Need menus? Mash your mouse into the top of the screen.
    • ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
      I respect your assertion, but I've heard this argument before. "It gives you an 'infinite' Y target...you just slam your pointer into the top of the bar and get menu options" Except that essentially nobody does this. Remember that you and I and other HN readers are not the general public, and the general public is not going to assume they can do this. Watch actual users. Not to mention that this only helps in the Y direction; you still have to position carefully to get to the horizontal item. Most people do not separate those two. I've been programming on Windows and Mac for decades, and I never ever "slam" the cursor to the top of the screen. Also, "slamming" the cursor in Y will not work if you're using multiple monitors and one is above the other. For example, if you have a laptop on your desk with a big monitor above and behind it. And any loss of "slamming" convenience is offset by the proximity advantage of a window-mounted menu. If the menu is on the window you're working in, you have to move the cursor less to get to it. On today's large, high-resolution monitors this can be quite a savings. And finally, with the menu on an app's main window there's never any confusion as to which application's menu you're using. Again, with today's large screens, you are more likely to have multiple applications' windows up. It's hard enough to tell which application owns the menu without peering at the corner and reading a name, which is never a fast or intuitive solution and even worse if applications are presenting similar UIs (for example two graphics-editing apps). And if you minimize an app and are left with a couple more on the screen... who owns the menu? Who remembers the last place he clicked? Why should you have to click around on apps' windows to swap the menu out to the one you want, and then roll all the way to the top of your 27-inch screen to use it?
• tnecniv 3y ago
  Yup, me and everyone I know just has a pile of windows, maybe scattered across a few workspaces. I like macOS but have never really vibed with the window management. The only way it makes sense to me is if they don’t actually want you to full screen windows most of the time. Swiping up on a laptop helps but when on my Mac Mini, it’s just not that intuitive. I’m aware there’s a keyboard shortcut that is also bound to the swipe up function, but I never incorporated it into my routine
• hackernewds 3y ago
  What third party window managers are good?
  • globblob 3y ago
    i use https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/ and so far no complaints