4 ms·

MacOS 9 and the spatial desktop metaphor is neat. I went that route for a while. What this misses, however, is that the biggest problem with the desktop interfa

MacOS 9 and the spatial desktop metaphor is neat. I went that route for a while. What this misses, however, is that the biggest problem with the desktop interface is that we've substantially increased application complexity and laptops (and even smaller devices) won. As a result, we're trying to answer the question "how we fit our skeuomorphic paradigm in a diminutive form factor". The inspiration involved much larger actual desks and tables where you can freely arrange several documents that are each visible and can be reached at a glance. If you're maximizing the window for a document for reasons beyond helping you focus, then your workspace ahem your screen is too small. The screenshot is 1920x1080. Screens are sold using buzzwords like 'HD', 'UHD', and 'retina' that evoke a sense of image clarity. I spent years telling my dad that I liked higher resolutions because it meant more /space/ and he couldn't grasp what I meant. He was stuck on associating higher resolution with clarity until I bought him a 43" 4k monitor, and he used it for a while. Even at 1.5x scaling, suddenly, he was able to view multiple pages of a document clearly at the same time without even scrolling. This isn't at all a normal desktop setup or the kind of setup that desktop environments are optimizing for or advocating. But it works better and better matches the inspiration.

alwayslikethis 3y ago
For many people, the limiting factor of this is visual acuity though. I personally can't see it useful to have more than 2560x1440 equivalent pixels of space on a 27 inch monitor. For a larger monitor, you have to sit further back, so it is effectively the same. If you want to see more clearly, you'd need to get closer, but that causes issues since you are still limited by your available field of view.
- shric 3y ago
  I'd probably agree with the "useful" but I find higher resolution more aesthetically pleasing, especially text.
  - netdoll 3y ago
    Conversely, I find anything above 1920x1080 very displeasing precisely because it removes my ability to practically use bitmapped fonts. Subpixel antialiasing is very distracting and Retina (IMHO) is a solution in search of a problem when it comes to making user interfaces that are actually aesthetic and easy on the eyes. I'm autistic and have diagnosed vision problems tho, so that probably feeds into it for better or worse.
    - shric 3y ago
      Fair enough and to each their own. I've been using computers since bitmapped fonts on 320x200 screens were the norm, and I've always been excited to upgrade resolution.
  - alwayslikethis 3y ago
    I too think text looks nicer at higher dpi but I had bad experiences with fractional scaling on Linux in the past, and 4K monitors are more expensive, so I didn't bother getting one.
    - jwells89 3y ago
      It's too bad that displays designed for 2x UI scaling are so rare outside of Apple stuff. Even on Windows which is probably the OS with the best fractional UI scaling, 2x looks visibly better.
    - adrian_b 3y ago
      I always see with surprise these claims about the so-called "fractional scaling", which is something I have never encountered on Linux. This "fractional scaling" might be a problem of Wayland and/or Gnome, but it certainly it is not a problem of Linux or of X Window System. In any non-stupid graphics environment you need just to set an appropriate value for the dots-per-inch parameter, which will inform all applications about the physical size of the pixels on your monitor (allowing the rendering algorithms to scale arbitrarily any graphic elements). Any non-stupid application must specify the size of the fonts in typographic points, not in pixels. When this is done, the fonts will be rendered at the same size on any monitor, but beautifully on a 4k monitor and uglier on a Full HD monitor. The resolution of a Full HD monitor is extremely low in comparison with printed paper, so the fonts rendered on it are greatly distorted in comparison with their true outlines. A 4k monitor is much better, but at normal desktop sizes it is still inferior to printed paper, so for big monitors even better resolutions are needed to recreate the same experience that has been available for hundreds of years when reading printed books. A 4k monitor can match the retina resolution only for very small screens or for desktop monitors seen from a great distance, much greater than a normal work distance. Similarly, any non-stupid drawing applications must not specify any dimensions in pixels, but in proper length units or in units relative to the dimensions of the screen or of the windows, and then the sizes will be the same everywhere, but all graphical elements will be more beautiful on a 4k monitor. This was already elementary knowledge more than 30 years ago, and recommended since the most ancient versions of X Window System and MS Windows. I do not even know when this modern "fractional scaling" junk problem has appeared and who is guilty of it. I have switched to using only 4k monitors with my desktops and laptops, on all of which I use Linux (with XFCE), about a decade ago, and during all this time I never had any kind of scaling problems, except with several professional (!!) applications written in Java by incompetent programmers, which not only ignore the system settings, so they show pixel-sized windows and fonts, but they also do not have any option for choosing another font or at least another font size (so much for the "run anywhere" claim of Java).
- 0x445442 3y ago
  It’s interesting you mention this. The way I use my desktop I always have my applications maximized and I just alt-tab to switch contexts. I also am in the terminal a lot and use Yaquake but not in maximized mode because I don’t want to focus in the bottom left corner of my screen. I also put the task bar left vertical because I don’t care about the horizontal space. Doing all of this still felt cumbersome and then it dawned on me about a year ago, because I don’t game or watch full screen video, I think I’d much prefer the old 4x3 screens for my workflow.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    4:3 is pretty rare but finally... finally you can get screens from 16:10 to 3:2 now without too much trouble.
  - jbverschoor 3y ago
    Well that's kind of impossible, as alt-tab will show al windows or applications. The best productivity for me is a separate machine per context (with synergy or similar), because it won't clutter the alt-tab. Fast userswitching doesn't work, as I'll have to switch back and forth between users (roles actually). I simply want isolated users, with their own filesystem/directory, but still be able to control them at the same time (virtual KVM). Ideally, I'd create "contexts" or users on my mac, and split / arrange parts of my monitor as desktops. I thought about using parallels or X11 to mimic this behavior, but it simply is not the same. MacOS's stage manager kind of works, but it's very buggy, and it won't get you an isolated filesystem. I've "solved" having the browser for different purposes by creating separate instances (not just separate profiles, but actual executables) of chrome (dev, social media, general browsing), which helps a lot, but I can't do that with everything
    - 0x445442 3y ago
      When I said I used alt tab to switch contexts I meant applications as I said I run my applications full screen.
- BwackNinja 3y ago
  Requiring that you sit further back is built on the notion that you need to be able to see your entire workspace at once, which was never true with an actual desk and largely implies that you want a single document to take up the whole screen. If you remove that limitation, then you find yourself with a larger workspace with elements at a comfortable size to work with. I do prefer to turn my head side to side rather than up and down, so right now I'm happiest with a 5120x1440 49" monitor and may consider a 7680x2160 57" monitor sometime in the future.
im_down_w_otp 3y ago
The 9” B&W screen on my SE/30 with a 512x384 resolution is perfectly usable for Word, Excel, IRC, and code editing. Refreshingly so at times. Comparatively it’s very distraction free. Whenever I fire it up to journal or fiddle with some classic MacOS development I always think, “Where did we manage to go so wrong in the last 30 years?”
- netdoll 3y ago
  This is where the classic Mac OS really shines: one fullscreen application which is totally dedicated to the task at hand. It's why I still favor it for many "creative" endeavors and why Apple was able to survive so relatively long with it despite the OS being a flaming garbage pile of technical debt and hacks underneath the glossy exterior.
vidarh 3y ago
For me, I look back to the Amiga for this. Most actual work happened on individual screens, which match neatly to mostly tiled virtual desktops set up for individual tasks. It was mostly on the Workbench we used floating windows, and while we had "sort-of" spatial, in that the position of windows were remembered if you chose, the if you chose (by choosing "snapshot") part meant you were free to move folder around knowing they'd be back where they should be when you opened them again. To me it's always been annoying that the attempts at spatial on Linux all took it to the extreme of remembering every change, which to me was always the biggest wart of these systems. I absolutely like expanding screen size, and can't deal with peoples tendency to opt for tiny little laptops, but at the same time, I don't need all that much physical screen space for most things because everything happens on separate "screens"/virtual desktops the way it used to back on my Amiga.

alwayslikethis 3y ago

For many people, the limiting factor of this is visual acuity though. I personally can't see it useful to have more than 2560x1440 equivalent pixels of space on a 27 inch monitor. For a larger monitor, you have to sit further back, so it is effectively the same. If you want to see more clearly, you'd need to get closer, but that causes issues since you are still limited by your available field of view.

shric 3y ago
I'd probably agree with the "useful" but I find higher resolution more aesthetically pleasing, especially text.
- netdoll 3y ago
  Conversely, I find anything above 1920x1080 very displeasing precisely because it removes my ability to practically use bitmapped fonts. Subpixel antialiasing is very distracting and Retina (IMHO) is a solution in search of a problem when it comes to making user interfaces that are actually aesthetic and easy on the eyes. I'm autistic and have diagnosed vision problems tho, so that probably feeds into it for better or worse.
  - shric 3y ago
    Fair enough and to each their own. I've been using computers since bitmapped fonts on 320x200 screens were the norm, and I've always been excited to upgrade resolution.
- alwayslikethis 3y ago
  I too think text looks nicer at higher dpi but I had bad experiences with fractional scaling on Linux in the past, and 4K monitors are more expensive, so I didn't bother getting one.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    It's too bad that displays designed for 2x UI scaling are so rare outside of Apple stuff. Even on Windows which is probably the OS with the best fractional UI scaling, 2x looks visibly better.
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    I always see with surprise these claims about the so-called "fractional scaling", which is something I have never encountered on Linux. This "fractional scaling" might be a problem of Wayland and/or Gnome, but it certainly it is not a problem of Linux or of X Window System. In any non-stupid graphics environment you need just to set an appropriate value for the dots-per-inch parameter, which will inform all applications about the physical size of the pixels on your monitor (allowing the rendering algorithms to scale arbitrarily any graphic elements). Any non-stupid application must specify the size of the fonts in typographic points, not in pixels. When this is done, the fonts will be rendered at the same size on any monitor, but beautifully on a 4k monitor and uglier on a Full HD monitor. The resolution of a Full HD monitor is extremely low in comparison with printed paper, so the fonts rendered on it are greatly distorted in comparison with their true outlines. A 4k monitor is much better, but at normal desktop sizes it is still inferior to printed paper, so for big monitors even better resolutions are needed to recreate the same experience that has been available for hundreds of years when reading printed books. A 4k monitor can match the retina resolution only for very small screens or for desktop monitors seen from a great distance, much greater than a normal work distance. Similarly, any non-stupid drawing applications must not specify any dimensions in pixels, but in proper length units or in units relative to the dimensions of the screen or of the windows, and then the sizes will be the same everywhere, but all graphical elements will be more beautiful on a 4k monitor. This was already elementary knowledge more than 30 years ago, and recommended since the most ancient versions of X Window System and MS Windows. I do not even know when this modern "fractional scaling" junk problem has appeared and who is guilty of it. I have switched to using only 4k monitors with my desktops and laptops, on all of which I use Linux (with XFCE), about a decade ago, and during all this time I never had any kind of scaling problems, except with several professional (!!) applications written in Java by incompetent programmers, which not only ignore the system settings, so they show pixel-sized windows and fonts, but they also do not have any option for choosing another font or at least another font size (so much for the "run anywhere" claim of Java).
0x445442 3y ago
It’s interesting you mention this. The way I use my desktop I always have my applications maximized and I just alt-tab to switch contexts. I also am in the terminal a lot and use Yaquake but not in maximized mode because I don’t want to focus in the bottom left corner of my screen. I also put the task bar left vertical because I don’t care about the horizontal space. Doing all of this still felt cumbersome and then it dawned on me about a year ago, because I don’t game or watch full screen video, I think I’d much prefer the old 4x3 screens for my workflow.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  4:3 is pretty rare but finally... finally you can get screens from 16:10 to 3:2 now without too much trouble.
- jbverschoor 3y ago
  Well that's kind of impossible, as alt-tab will show al windows or applications. The best productivity for me is a separate machine per context (with synergy or similar), because it won't clutter the alt-tab. Fast userswitching doesn't work, as I'll have to switch back and forth between users (roles actually). I simply want isolated users, with their own filesystem/directory, but still be able to control them at the same time (virtual KVM). Ideally, I'd create "contexts" or users on my mac, and split / arrange parts of my monitor as desktops. I thought about using parallels or X11 to mimic this behavior, but it simply is not the same. MacOS's stage manager kind of works, but it's very buggy, and it won't get you an isolated filesystem. I've "solved" having the browser for different purposes by creating separate instances (not just separate profiles, but actual executables) of chrome (dev, social media, general browsing), which helps a lot, but I can't do that with everything
  - 0x445442 3y ago
    When I said I used alt tab to switch contexts I meant applications as I said I run my applications full screen.
BwackNinja 3y ago
Requiring that you sit further back is built on the notion that you need to be able to see your entire workspace at once, which was never true with an actual desk and largely implies that you want a single document to take up the whole screen. If you remove that limitation, then you find yourself with a larger workspace with elements at a comfortable size to work with. I do prefer to turn my head side to side rather than up and down, so right now I'm happiest with a 5120x1440 49" monitor and may consider a 7680x2160 57" monitor sometime in the future.

im_down_w_otp 3y ago

The 9” B&W screen on my SE/30 with a 512x384 resolution is perfectly usable for Word, Excel, IRC, and code editing. Refreshingly so at times. Comparatively it’s very distraction free. Whenever I fire it up to journal or fiddle with some classic MacOS development I always think, “Where did we manage to go so wrong in the last 30 years?”

netdoll 3y ago
This is where the classic Mac OS really shines: one fullscreen application which is totally dedicated to the task at hand. It's why I still favor it for many "creative" endeavors and why Apple was able to survive so relatively long with it despite the OS being a flaming garbage pile of technical debt and hacks underneath the glossy exterior.

vidarh 3y ago

For me, I look back to the Amiga for this. Most actual work happened on individual screens, which match neatly to mostly tiled virtual desktops set up for individual tasks. It was mostly on the Workbench we used floating windows, and while we had "sort-of" spatial, in that the position of windows were remembered if you chose, the if you chose (by choosing "snapshot") part meant you were free to move folder around knowing they'd be back where they should be when you opened them again. To me it's always been annoying that the attempts at spatial on Linux all took it to the extreme of remembering every change, which to me was always the biggest wart of these systems. I absolutely like expanding screen size, and can't deal with peoples tendency to opt for tiny little laptops, but at the same time, I don't need all that much physical screen space for most things because everything happens on separate "screens"/virtual desktops the way it used to back on my Amiga.