5 ms·

I mean, the support for even one monitor is by far worse than windows or linux IMO. - Monitor randomly resets/readjusts for no apparent reason. Like multiple t

by wubrr 3y ago

I mean, the support for even one monitor is by far worse than windows or linux IMO. - Monitor randomly resets/readjusts for no apparent reason. Like multiple times every hour. - Windows disappear, become inaccessible after moving between monitors, even though it still open and active according to doc/task list. - Why can't I move a window to a monitor/workspace that has a maximized window? Like, you can do it by un-maximizing the window in question, moving the other window over and then re-maximizing the window again. But why is this nonsense needed? What problem could this restriction possibly be solving? - Lots of other monitor/workspace related problems (quick google will show dozens related problems without any obvious solutions or explanations for the completely nonsensical behaviour). I really don't understand how people can say macos has good and consist overall UI? I mean, yeah - it's consistently buggy and un-intuitive: - Doc constantly breaks/becomes inaccessible. This is a known problem for at least 5+ years - the solution is to manually kill and restart the process??? - Text cursor/caret randomly disappears when editing text, so you can't see where the cursor is, and you can't fix this unless you restart the app (happens to pretty much all apps). - Was working with unicode characters recently, now whenever I press command+s to save something, it gives me a visual unicode character selector popup, with no apparent way to stop/cancel this behaviour from the popup itself. - Bad defaults in terms of keypress repeat times and rate. No apparent way to change this from settings - need to run commands and re-login to test new behaviour. Just an overall crap OS and UI imo.

jwells89 3y ago
I’ve been using macOS in a multimonitor setup for years without much issue. A good bit of it boils down to macOS expecting monitors to be well-behaved, e.g. each having unique EDIDs (many don’t, instead sharing one across all units of a particular model) and initializing in a timely fashion. > Why can't I move a window to a monitor/workspace that has a maximized window? Because it’s fullscreened, not maximized. macOS doesn’t really have window maximization in the traditional sense out of the box, you need a utility like Magnet or Moom for that. That fullscreen mode was introduced in 10.7 Lion and a lot of long time mac users have found it silly from day one. Personally I never use it. > Text cursor/caret randomly disappears when editing text, so you can't see where the cursor is, and you can't fix this unless you restart the app (happens to pretty much all apps). I’ve seen this, but only in Chromium browsers and Electron apps. Seems like it might be a Blink bug. Regarding other OSes, multimonitor on Linux is mostly fine (so long as you’re using Wayland; X11 is another matter especially if you’re doing something slightly uncommon like using two GPUs, in which case xorg.conf mucking will likely be necessary). By far the most frustration I’ve had with multimonitor is in Windows, which is generally weak there. IIRC it only recently gained the ability to set per-display wallpaper; before you had to glue wallpapers together into a single image that spanned across them, which is silly.
- Terretta 3y ago
  > That fullscreen mode was introduced in 10.7 Lion and a lot of long time mac users have found it silly from day one. Personally I never use it. Agreed, however it's arguably for a different mental model. If people think of it as "focus mode" or "workspace mode" it makes more sense. Four finger swipe to slide between the workspaces or focuses. More importantly, you don't need MOOM. - - - To maximize a window to the dimension of the screen without entering full screen mode, either: 1) hold shift option ⌥ and click the green maximize button on the top left of the window - or - 2) hold the Option key and double click a corner of a window to maximize without full screen focus, and doing that again will size it back to where it was
  - jwells89 3y ago
    > To maximize a window to the dimension of the screen without entering full screen mode, either: This is a handy trick to know, but has caveats. Option-green-functionality is actually defined by apps, not the OS, and so in some cases it will for example act as a “fit window to content” button. Option-double-clicking a corner appears to be consistent across windows however.
    - mhio 3y ago
      Double click anywhere on the title bar works for me.
- claytongulick 3y ago
  Interesting - it's one of the killer features of macos for me. I use it to compartmentalize stuff I'm working on, and 4 finger swipe between them. I have a couple instances of VSCode, some app/debugging browser windows, some chrome profile windows etc... all running full screen and I spend my day brush swiping between them. It may be different for me because I work on a 14" macbook pro, mostly at coffee shops or unusual work locations, so I don't have a large monitor setup. I don't think I'd use it much if I had more of a traditional desk/multimonitor config.
  - 3y ago
arcatech 3y ago
Do you honestly believe all of those things happen to everyone? You think everyone who likes macOS is just ignoring those kinds of severe issues? Obviously you have some kind of problem with your system.
- hashhar 3y ago
  Well, most of what he is saying are actually easily reproducible macOS quirks. - Windows disappear, become inaccessible after moving between monitors, even though it still open and active according to doc/task list. This indeed happens relatively often if you have multiple monitors and switch between them for any reason. e.g. in my case I have two machines and two monitors, sometimes I switch the primary monitor to a specific machine and this almost always fucks up macOS. Solution is to disconnect and reconnect the monitor. - Why can't I move a window to a monitor/workspace that has a maximized window? Like, you can do it by un-maximizing the window in question, moving the other window over and then re-maximizing the window again. But why is this nonsense needed? What problem could this restriction possibly be solving? A lot of people who use macOS agree that the fullscreen window thing is needless and makes for quirky behaviour. - Dock constantly breaks/becomes inaccessible. This is a known problem for at least 5+ years - the solution is to manually kill and restart the process??? - Text cursor/caret randomly disappears when editing text, so you can't see where the cursor is, and you can't fix this unless you restart the app (happens to pretty much all apps). Yep, happens quite frequently to multiple people I know and in multiple apps. - Bad defaults in terms of keypress repeat times and rate. No apparent way to change this from settings - need to run commands and re-login to test new behaviour. Indeed this is very painful for people who are non-developers and are used to be able to have higher repeat rates.
Exoristos 3y ago
I've both used Macs for decades and at one time worked in enterprise Mac technical support, and I've never seen this stuff happen.
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  I've used multi-monitor dev setups and large screen setups in mac laptops for, christ, 15 years. I've seen all of those things listed. It would be one thing if OSX/Linux/Windows UIs would just stay at their basic usability from around 2010. They haven't. They just get steadily worse. OSX has been the most stable of them, quirks and all, even with a goddamn architecture change, but its closed hardware, a forced upgrade cycle, and bad backwards compatibility. Linux once would just rewrite window managers every 5 years as soon as they got stable, now Linux is rewriting with Wayland and Vulkan, and ... about 5 years in they'll probably start rewriting those once they get a little stable. Windows? Committed UI suicide with the tiles and two desktops thing in Windows 8. Now there's ARM in the future and a break with the only thing it has going for it: backwards compatibility. But yes, everything the author complains about happens in OSX with laptop + monitor / dual monitors, and even without with disappearing mouse cursors.
- d3w4s9 3y ago
  I haven't used Mac for a while, but I definitely remember the part about window freezing (and requires killing the process) when connecting/disconnecting a external monitor. It's very frustrating. (And I for one hasn't bought a Macbook since 2020 because I am not going to spend at least $1,999 just to get dual monitor support. A $500 asus laptop can do dual monitor without any problem, and it turns out that machine is good enough for my productivity needs. That money is better spent elsewhere)

by wubrr 3y ago

jwells89 3y ago

I’ve been using macOS in a multimonitor setup for years without much issue. A good bit of it boils down to macOS expecting monitors to be well-behaved, e.g. each having unique EDIDs (many don’t, instead sharing one across all units of a particular model) and initializing in a timely fashion. > Why can't I move a window to a monitor/workspace that has a maximized window? Because it’s fullscreened, not maximized. macOS doesn’t really have window maximization in the traditional sense out of the box, you need a utility like Magnet or Moom for that. That fullscreen mode was introduced in 10.7 Lion and a lot of long time mac users have found it silly from day one. Personally I never use it. > Text cursor/caret randomly disappears when editing text, so you can't see where the cursor is, and you can't fix this unless you restart the app (happens to pretty much all apps). I’ve seen this, but only in Chromium browsers and Electron apps. Seems like it might be a Blink bug. Regarding other OSes, multimonitor on Linux is mostly fine (so long as you’re using Wayland; X11 is another matter especially if you’re doing something slightly uncommon like using two GPUs, in which case xorg.conf mucking will likely be necessary). By far the most frustration I’ve had with multimonitor is in Windows, which is generally weak there. IIRC it only recently gained the ability to set per-display wallpaper; before you had to glue wallpapers together into a single image that spanned across them, which is silly.

Terretta 3y ago
> That fullscreen mode was introduced in 10.7 Lion and a lot of long time mac users have found it silly from day one. Personally I never use it. Agreed, however it's arguably for a different mental model. If people think of it as "focus mode" or "workspace mode" it makes more sense. Four finger swipe to slide between the workspaces or focuses. More importantly, you don't need MOOM. - - - To maximize a window to the dimension of the screen without entering full screen mode, either: 1) hold shift option ⌥ and click the green maximize button on the top left of the window - or - 2) hold the Option key and double click a corner of a window to maximize without full screen focus, and doing that again will size it back to where it was
- jwells89 3y ago
  > To maximize a window to the dimension of the screen without entering full screen mode, either: This is a handy trick to know, but has caveats. Option-green-functionality is actually defined by apps, not the OS, and so in some cases it will for example act as a “fit window to content” button. Option-double-clicking a corner appears to be consistent across windows however.
  - mhio 3y ago
    Double click anywhere on the title bar works for me.
claytongulick 3y ago
Interesting - it's one of the killer features of macos for me. I use it to compartmentalize stuff I'm working on, and 4 finger swipe between them. I have a couple instances of VSCode, some app/debugging browser windows, some chrome profile windows etc... all running full screen and I spend my day brush swiping between them. It may be different for me because I work on a 14" macbook pro, mostly at coffee shops or unusual work locations, so I don't have a large monitor setup. I don't think I'd use it much if I had more of a traditional desk/multimonitor config.
- 3y ago

arcatech 3y ago

Do you honestly believe all of those things happen to everyone? You think everyone who likes macOS is just ignoring those kinds of severe issues? Obviously you have some kind of problem with your system.

hashhar 3y ago
Well, most of what he is saying are actually easily reproducible macOS quirks. - Windows disappear, become inaccessible after moving between monitors, even though it still open and active according to doc/task list. This indeed happens relatively often if you have multiple monitors and switch between them for any reason. e.g. in my case I have two machines and two monitors, sometimes I switch the primary monitor to a specific machine and this almost always fucks up macOS. Solution is to disconnect and reconnect the monitor. - Why can't I move a window to a monitor/workspace that has a maximized window? Like, you can do it by un-maximizing the window in question, moving the other window over and then re-maximizing the window again. But why is this nonsense needed? What problem could this restriction possibly be solving? A lot of people who use macOS agree that the fullscreen window thing is needless and makes for quirky behaviour. - Dock constantly breaks/becomes inaccessible. This is a known problem for at least 5+ years - the solution is to manually kill and restart the process??? - Text cursor/caret randomly disappears when editing text, so you can't see where the cursor is, and you can't fix this unless you restart the app (happens to pretty much all apps). Yep, happens quite frequently to multiple people I know and in multiple apps. - Bad defaults in terms of keypress repeat times and rate. No apparent way to change this from settings - need to run commands and re-login to test new behaviour. Indeed this is very painful for people who are non-developers and are used to be able to have higher repeat rates.

Exoristos 3y ago

I've both used Macs for decades and at one time worked in enterprise Mac technical support, and I've never seen this stuff happen.

AtlasBarfed 3y ago
I've used multi-monitor dev setups and large screen setups in mac laptops for, christ, 15 years. I've seen all of those things listed. It would be one thing if OSX/Linux/Windows UIs would just stay at their basic usability from around 2010. They haven't. They just get steadily worse. OSX has been the most stable of them, quirks and all, even with a goddamn architecture change, but its closed hardware, a forced upgrade cycle, and bad backwards compatibility. Linux once would just rewrite window managers every 5 years as soon as they got stable, now Linux is rewriting with Wayland and Vulkan, and ... about 5 years in they'll probably start rewriting those once they get a little stable. Windows? Committed UI suicide with the tiles and two desktops thing in Windows 8. Now there's ARM in the future and a break with the only thing it has going for it: backwards compatibility. But yes, everything the author complains about happens in OSX with laptop + monitor / dual monitors, and even without with disappearing mouse cursors.
d3w4s9 3y ago
I haven't used Mac for a while, but I definitely remember the part about window freezing (and requires killing the process) when connecting/disconnecting a external monitor. It's very frustrating. (And I for one hasn't bought a Macbook since 2020 because I am not going to spend at least $1,999 just to get dual monitor support. A $500 asus laptop can do dual monitor without any problem, and it turns out that machine is good enough for my productivity needs. That money is better spent elsewhere)