4 ms·

I can't stand multiple displays, mac or not, they just distract me. I want one big display, something like 27" or 32". To each their own.

lelanthran 3y ago
> I can't stand multiple displays, mac or not, they just distract me. I want one big display, something like 27" or 32". To each their own. Me too. The extra wide ones are nice. I've got one gigantic 32" curved monitor, and use it with multiple workspaces.
yreg 3y ago
Same. I've tried multiple monitor setups a few times, but I always ended up actually using just the main one with the other ones displaying Spotify or email inbox all day. I don't need that, it's more comfortable to bring Spotify to the front on the main screen than turn my head anyway. I however feel limited using anything less than a 5k screen.
Aaargh20318 3y ago
27” is still a bit too small for my taste and bigger screens usually don’t gove above 4k. The best I could find at the moment is a 34” 5k2k ultrawide. Unfortunately a lot of those are curved, which I hate. I would love something like a 36” 16:9 monitor with 8k resolution.
RowanH 3y ago
I was on a 32in 5k ultrawide.. trying out a 42 4k oled just now. My eyes are thanking me for the bigger screen realestate, but I did get used to the wideness of the UltraWide. Definitely better to go massive single in my view. That OLED video look though, just can't be beaten..
PebblesHD 3y ago
I’ve been running a Phillips 49” ultrawide for nearly 2 years now and it is simply the best thing I’ve ever used. The USB-C / display port KVM built in works a treat and makes swapping from my laptop to my desktop a single plug, and the monitor itself mostly behaves itself with every device I’ve tried it with including an iPad. I wish it was higher resolution but I suspect going beyond its 5120x1440 current resolution is pushing the limits of most display connections and standards at this point. Overall though, I love it. Do recommend.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Same here. I've gotten used to just having my laptop screen (14" mbp m1). It's fine. Having more screens is just confusing/distracting to me. The only time I use external screens is when presenting and I just put them in mirror mode. Mostly using windows side by side is not a thing for me either. I look at one application at the time and I just give it the full screen. The sole exception to this seems to be finder windows for me. There are lots of sub optimal things in the mac os UI. The key issue is feature interaction between features introduced over the years combined with obviously slipping standards on QA and UX. Steve Jobs would not have accepted a lot of the crap that slips through these days at Apple. A good example is the the full screen mode in combination with the notch. You can't actually use the space next to the notch for anything else than the menu bar. Which just means full screen is a glorified "hide the menu bar thing". You don't actually gain any vertical space back if you use it with a lot of apps. With the recent release, Mac OS defaults to having a transparent menu bar meaning that in dark mode and with the default background the menu bar is very bright. To fix this lovely bit of feature interaction, you just have to use a dark desktop image and turn off dynamic desktop backgrounds constantly changing the color. The sensible default of just making the menu bar background black isn't there because they want the dynamic desktop thing to always be visible unless you are full screen, which is not the same as having you window maximized. But obviously the maximize window button now makes your window full screen. And speaking of desktop backgrounds. I don't care about them because there usually is something on top of my desktop. The only visible bit would be below the menu bar. The only time you see the damn background is when you are deliberately hiding all your applications. Why would you do that? And of course full screen pretends that you have extra screens. So it's a hybrid that is like maximizing a window and plugging in a screen. So in terms of window management things get weird. Especially when you actually plugin an actual screen. This stuff started escalating when they introduced full screen mode (aka. let's pretend hiding the menu is special), which is when they broke their dominant UX of always having the menubar visible and taking up space. Which now that we have the notch is the only use for that screen real estate. Can we just loose the notch and get our screen real estate back? I just want to maximize windows and alt+tab between them. I mostly want the menubar unless I'm watching a video. Apple itself is hopelessly confused on this topic. I recently experienced Apple TV on mac os. What were they smoking that it got released in that shape? It always plays the video in full screen but it keeps the main application window open separately. When you alt+tab away, you end back on the wrong thing. And sometimes when you hit escape it closes the full screen video but it keeps on playing. It's bizarrely buggy and dysfunctional. Complete amateur hour.
swiftcoder 2y ago
> I want one big display, something like 27" or 32" 27" is big? I'm really curious what sort of setups people are running that they feel this way. I ran a 40" 4K monitor for years, and I'd really like the option to go to 5K 40" or even higher.
sixothree 2y ago
He actually touches on the ergonomics issue in the article. And I don't think this is a Mac or Windows issue. Windows 11 does actually help this quite a bit by putting the Start Button in the middle of the screen. Additionally using PowerToys FancyZones might actually make it usable.

lelanthran 3y ago

> I can't stand multiple displays, mac or not, they just distract me. I want one big display, something like 27" or 32". To each their own. Me too. The extra wide ones are nice. I've got one gigantic 32" curved monitor, and use it with multiple workspaces.

yreg 3y ago

Same. I've tried multiple monitor setups a few times, but I always ended up actually using just the main one with the other ones displaying Spotify or email inbox all day. I don't need that, it's more comfortable to bring Spotify to the front on the main screen than turn my head anyway. I however feel limited using anything less than a 5k screen.

Aaargh20318 3y ago

27” is still a bit too small for my taste and bigger screens usually don’t gove above 4k. The best I could find at the moment is a 34” 5k2k ultrawide. Unfortunately a lot of those are curved, which I hate. I would love something like a 36” 16:9 monitor with 8k resolution.

RowanH 3y ago

I was on a 32in 5k ultrawide.. trying out a 42 4k oled just now. My eyes are thanking me for the bigger screen realestate, but I did get used to the wideness of the UltraWide. Definitely better to go massive single in my view. That OLED video look though, just can't be beaten..

PebblesHD 3y ago

I’ve been running a Phillips 49” ultrawide for nearly 2 years now and it is simply the best thing I’ve ever used. The USB-C / display port KVM built in works a treat and makes swapping from my laptop to my desktop a single plug, and the monitor itself mostly behaves itself with every device I’ve tried it with including an iPad. I wish it was higher resolution but I suspect going beyond its 5120x1440 current resolution is pushing the limits of most display connections and standards at this point. Overall though, I love it. Do recommend.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Same here. I've gotten used to just having my laptop screen (14" mbp m1). It's fine. Having more screens is just confusing/distracting to me. The only time I use external screens is when presenting and I just put them in mirror mode. Mostly using windows side by side is not a thing for me either. I look at one application at the time and I just give it the full screen. The sole exception to this seems to be finder windows for me. There are lots of sub optimal things in the mac os UI. The key issue is feature interaction between features introduced over the years combined with obviously slipping standards on QA and UX. Steve Jobs would not have accepted a lot of the crap that slips through these days at Apple. A good example is the the full screen mode in combination with the notch. You can't actually use the space next to the notch for anything else than the menu bar. Which just means full screen is a glorified "hide the menu bar thing". You don't actually gain any vertical space back if you use it with a lot of apps. With the recent release, Mac OS defaults to having a transparent menu bar meaning that in dark mode and with the default background the menu bar is very bright. To fix this lovely bit of feature interaction, you just have to use a dark desktop image and turn off dynamic desktop backgrounds constantly changing the color. The sensible default of just making the menu bar background black isn't there because they want the dynamic desktop thing to always be visible unless you are full screen, which is not the same as having you window maximized. But obviously the maximize window button now makes your window full screen. And speaking of desktop backgrounds. I don't care about them because there usually is something on top of my desktop. The only visible bit would be below the menu bar. The only time you see the damn background is when you are deliberately hiding all your applications. Why would you do that? And of course full screen pretends that you have extra screens. So it's a hybrid that is like maximizing a window and plugging in a screen. So in terms of window management things get weird. Especially when you actually plugin an actual screen. This stuff started escalating when they introduced full screen mode (aka. let's pretend hiding the menu is special), which is when they broke their dominant UX of always having the menubar visible and taking up space. Which now that we have the notch is the only use for that screen real estate. Can we just loose the notch and get our screen real estate back? I just want to maximize windows and alt+tab between them. I mostly want the menubar unless I'm watching a video. Apple itself is hopelessly confused on this topic. I recently experienced Apple TV on mac os. What were they smoking that it got released in that shape? It always plays the video in full screen but it keeps the main application window open separately. When you alt+tab away, you end back on the wrong thing. And sometimes when you hit escape it closes the full screen video but it keeps on playing. It's bizarrely buggy and dysfunctional. Complete amateur hour.

swiftcoder 2y ago

> I want one big display, something like 27" or 32" 27" is big? I'm really curious what sort of setups people are running that they feel this way. I ran a 40" 4K monitor for years, and I'd really like the option to go to 5K 40" or even higher.

sixothree 2y ago

He actually touches on the ergonomics issue in the article. And I don't think this is a Mac or Windows issue. Windows 11 does actually help this quite a bit by putting the Start Button in the middle of the screen. Additionally using PowerToys FancyZones might actually make it usable.