7 ms·

macOS needs its grid back

399 points by ranebo 4mo ago

veidr 4mo ago
This fixes a dozens-of-times-per-day annoyance for me. The grid is good, but even better is the instant virtual display switching. Nowhere is the death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts annoyance of modern macOS worse than having to hit Ctrl→→→→→→→ and suffer those repeated animations, over and over.
- coolmitch 4mo ago
  yes! it's the worst! I've been using Instant Space Switcher (which got a small callout in tfa) as a targeted fix for this, and it's lifechanging
  - eproxus 4mo ago
    I've also switched to Instant Space Switcher, it is soo good! Previously I used BetterMouse for only this feature but they made the space switching worse in later versions (slower, on-par with the default macOS speed). Here's the link if anyone is curious: https://github.com/jurplel/InstantSpaceSwitcher https://github.com/jurplel/InstantSpaceSwitcher
    - cpt_sobel 4mo ago
      I also used to use BetterTouch tool just for this feature, no idea what they have been thinking over at Apple with this delay.
- xp84 4mo ago
  It's every action on Mac and iOS that does this, and it has been increasing in intrusiveness for a decade. I can't be sure why they do it, but it comes off as though their visual designers are immature, thinking we want to see their impressive animations not just in a demo, not just in a tutorial that we go through once, where we are meant to grasp the relationships between the things, but over and over again, all day long, for decades. I freaking don't. One time was plenty. I don't want any animation. And the "reduce animation" feature's implementation is a slap in the face: all the delay -- that part is non-negotiable apparently -- but with blurry crossfades instead.
  - skydhash 4mo ago
    I'm using cwm (x11) without a compositor (never noticed tearing). And it's so nice when everything is not trying to be cute with shadows, animations and round corners. Animation only makes sense when there's a direct action that controls it (like when swapping spaces or hovering) or the system wanting to inform us (notifications). And it's better be fast. Otherwise it's just visual effects that quickly become tiring after a few days.
- chamomeal 4mo ago
  It is absolutely, positively mind boggling that you have to sit through those animations. And key presses don’t even take effect if your new desktop until the animation is done. It’s just lunacy. How does a company with infinite resources and talented designers come up with shit like that??
- sgustard 4mo ago
  Tried this? defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.05; killall Dock
  - OrangeMusic 4mo ago
    Yup. Doesn't work.
- saila 4mo ago
  You can also do Ctrl-UpArrow then click the space you want. This isn't instant, but it might be a little better than repeatedly cycling through each desktop, especially if you have a lot of them. Turning off "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use" is also a must IMO. Personally, I only open one app per desktop and just use Command-Tab. If you hold Command after Command-Tab, you can select an app with having to cycle through all of them.
  - oneeyedpigeon 4mo ago
    > I only open one app per desktop So what benefit do you get from multiple desktops?
Analemma_ 4mo ago
Oh man, thank you! I was just complaining the other day about the missing Spaces grid… when they first took it away in Lion I looked frantically for the setting to bring it back, with no such luck. Ironically, I think the reason they took it away was to help with fullscreen macOS apps, which are a garbage anti-feature it doesn’t seem like anybody uses. Long live the grid!
- ranebo 4mo ago
  Part of the reason I wanted to to make the app is because _I actually do like fullscreen apps_. Or at least maybe I learned to after they took away the grid. In any case I certainly wanted this app to work with them.
  - OberstKrueger 4mo ago
    As a fellow fullscreen liker (there are dozens of us! dozens!), this looks quite intriguing to me. A grid layout always fit better with my mental model of how these types of spaces should work, since I could use rows as categories of work and columns as specific applications within that category. Or one of a few other mental models I've used over the years.
- drfloyd51 4mo ago
  I want to use full screen apps. But they are not in the command-tab order. So… no good.
  - oneeyedpigeon 4mo ago
    They are, but it's nuanced. If you have one app with a single window, it will always be selectable via Cmd+Tab, even if it's full-screened. If you have an app with multiple windows, one of which is full-screened, and you select a non-full-screened window from that same app, you won't be able to return to the full-screened window using Cmd+Tab. Which kinda makes sense, since Cmd+Tab cycles apps, not windows.
    - 4mo ago
behnamoh 4mo ago
I am not so hopeful about the future of macOS given that the next CEO of Apple is a hardware guy, not a software person.
- ibash 4mo ago
  That’s one framing, here’s another: The next CEO of Apple is someone that cares about quality. (As evidenced by how good the hardware is)
  - behnamoh 4mo ago
    > The next CEO of Apple is someone that cares about quality. (As evidenced by how good the hardware is) I think it's important "what quality" they care about. Tim Cook cared about supply chain quality, and honestly he did an amazing job, but he didn't care much about software, vision of Apple, etc.
    - LostMyLogin 4mo ago
      Their chips are quality and the hardware itself is still some of the best. Which is what I believe they were designed insinuating.
- xp84 4mo ago
  The current guy didn't ever once show a sign he cared about anything but 'Number Go Up'[1] so I don't see how anyone could be worse for those of us who care about the actual product than he was. [1] to be clear, I stipulate Cook is indeed the world champion of Number Go Up. Nobody Number Goed Up more than Cook did. For Ternus to do Number Go Up to the same multiplier Cook did, I think he'd have to acquire all the other companies in the world.
dyauspitr 4mo ago
I do not like the grid. I can’t see what’s in it.
xp84 4mo ago
> If they approve, the settings open, then the user has to find the specific little toggle and enable it. Another security prompt then done. Why isn’t this at most 2 prompts? Answer: Because modern-day Apple has subscribed to a particular brand of mitigation for the "noobs will always click 'Allow' especially if you ask them to first" problem. The mitigation is that Apple just dumps you on step 2 of a little 4-5 step mini sysadmin adventure where you prove, every time, that you're sophisticated enough to deserve an exception to the padded-cell walled garden mode they've sealed off 'for your safety.' As a complete nerd, you'd think maybe I'd like that I can prove my skills like this, but it comes off as deeply disrespectful to me as the user that I can't disable this. What's my solution to prevent grandma or a 10-year-old from clicking "Allow full filesystem access and keylogging" to an executable she downloaded from facebook-security-center-and-password-verification-cgi-bin-ab383 dot xyz? IDK, that's their problem, but they should offer a way for those of us who aren't clueless to turn whatever it is off.
- FireBeyond 4mo ago
  And then one that grinds my gears, perhaps more than it should: there's no way to change the default browser without explicit user action or consent. But do that and the very next thing that happens when you try to open a browser or a link in an email? "Your browser has been changed from Safari to Chrome. Would you like to use Safari or keep using Chrome?" and for a little salt, the default is "Use Safari".
- klodolph 4mo ago
  This particular permission is pernicious, ponder for a picosecond the possibilities: It’s used for writing keyloggers. That’s it. It’s the permission that lets you write a keylogger. It SHOULD NOT be just a click away. It should require some extra song and dance, because this is an especially dangerous permission, and the extra friction is justified.
  - xp84 4mo ago
    All the permissions are treated the same way though. Microphone access. Screen sharing access. etc. Yes, all could be used to spy on you in evil ways, but the replacement of a straightforward "Want to grant this app the following permissions?" with these stupid little spelunks through the garbage app that is Settings irritates me every time. Apple should throw this whole thing out and replace it with first-launch lists of permissions, with toggles for each. This app 'Zoom' wants "Record the screen, microphone, camera." Then you're done and you don't have to keep searching for it in little lists and relaunching it.
krackers 4mo ago
You could call it hyperspace in an homage to that old 10.6-era application which customized spaces. (Also I just realized why Apple called it called mission control, it allows you to organize spaces). Also this is basically a replacement for the zombie TotalSpaces 3
- msephton 4mo ago
  There's already an app called Hyperspace, it reclaims disk space through use of APFS features
jimrandomh 4mo ago
Prior to MacOS 10.11, Mission Control was good: you would swipe up with four fingers and it would show you a preview of all of your spaces. Then in 10.11, for no discernable reason, they changed it to suck: rather than showing you a preview, the bar just says "Desktop 1", "Desktop 2", etc until you mouse over it; the practical effect is that using spaces is disorienting and requires memorization. Some third-party software pretends to restore this functionality, but they do it by repositioning the mouse to simulate a hover, which introduces a delay and doesn't integrate correctly with the animation. Someone wrote a patch that works by disabling SIP and injecting code (https://github.com/briankendall/forceFullDesktopBar https://github.com/briankendall/forceFullDesktopBar), but eventually stopped maintaining it. A decade later, I doubt anyone at Apple remembers that this bit of user interface used to be good.
- ebbi 4mo ago
  Agree! That "Desktop 1", "Desktop 2" view is so annoying, and given we have higher res monitors now, it serves no purpose if the intention was to save space.
  - josho 4mo ago
    I loathe that I can't even rename the desktops. Wouldn't it be great to have them named "Design", "Dev", "Productivity", "Games". Or whatever makes sense given your needs, instead of simply desktop #.
    - jeroenhd 4mo ago
      Windows has had the rename feature for ages and I don't know why Apple can't just copy that. They've copied plenty of other stuff, why stick with the weirdly restrictive desktop naming scheme?
- willtemperley 4mo ago
  > rather than showing you a preview, the bar just says "Desktop 1", "Desktop 2" I never noticed that behaviour because I only use mission control in full-screen mode. If you swipe up with three (or four) fingers from a full-screen window the previews are visible immediately. I have no idea why we need a different preview for desktop vs full screen however. The part of this UX that annoys me is the spaces get re-ordered for no apparent reason. I usually have a few IDE windows open and it's tiring to have to double-check the window hasn't moved.
toomim 4mo ago
I just installed it, but I can't get it to switch spaces, or show the grid overlay. It just beeps at me with the "you can't do that" beep. When I click "Add Desktop", it says "Could Not Add Desktop" and "GridLion could not read the current Spaces for this display." This is a M1 macbook air. I really want to try this.
arkits 4mo ago
DockDoor does this and a lot more. Its also open source https://dockdoor.net/ https://dockdoor.net/
- WaltPurvis 4mo ago
  Maybe I just missed it, but I don't see where DockDoor has anything at all to do with spaces.
- egypturnash 4mo ago
  I just checked out DockDoor and I could not find anything related to multiple desktops in it at all.
- johnwheeler 4mo ago
  But we're not talking about Dock Door. Respect the Maker by giving him his time.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
Pxtl 4mo ago
I don't get the use of the spatial layout here. A line may be cruder but if you're going full swordfish hackerman mode why are you caring about grid geography at all? Bind each to a hotkey. The only time you're swiping is when you're lost. Like what competitive player uses scroll wheel weapon switching in Quakelike games? Nobody
- urbandw311er 4mo ago
  Visual memory is really powerful and maps far more easily onto human brain’s experience of navigating the world. So it’s easier for many people to imagine and organise around a grid.
benatkin 4mo ago
> LLMs don’t care about UX Many parts of the LLM care about UX, and you unlock it with your feedback loop, which is a good way to unlock it but one of many ways. One way to show that LLMs care about UX is to have one tutor you about UX. If they weren't trained to care about it, they couldn't do a decent job. But I've asked dozens of questions about UX to LLMs and they have a great deal of insight.
felixding 4mo ago
Slightly off-topic: the old Aqua UI looks so much better. Not only it was much easier to see what's a control and what's text, but it also looked visually nicer (subjective, I know).
- ido 4mo ago
  Funnily enough when Aqua was new i remember thinking Platinum looked so much better.
  - wpm 4mo ago
    That is correct. Platinum still looks fantastic, carefully hewn out of the HIG. Early Aqua is a bit ostentatious and at the very least indulgent. Still better than the fucking flat-slop plus glarse vomit we have to put up with now.
    - black_knight 4mo ago
      We dont have to put up with it. At some point the collective “we” could consider using some other machines with other, more free, operating systems.
- andrewl-hn 4mo ago
  To be fair, so are many other UIs. Windows 95-style boxy buttons and bevels make the content look organized. Every possible action gets its button that looks like a button. You often see the total set of available actions by looking at a toolbar. You don't need to second-guess whether some piece of content itself is clickable / editable or not. Also, everything has excessive padding now. Modern Windows control panel UIs often feel like a multicolumn wall of text with lots of empty space and a few switches dropped in, and to fit the same amount if options as the older UI they had to either hide some toggles because "known needs them anymore" or introduce extra intermediary navigation steps. As a result the new Control Panel feels bloated and less useful.
pwg 4mo ago
> Two decades ago I had a better Mac desktop experience than I have today. Two decades ago was 2006. I have the same desktop experience today as I had two decades ago (Fvwm2) and have had the grid virtual desktop layout this author misses so much for the entire time via the Fvwm2 (and Fvwm before that) virtual desktops feature. One of the reasons I switched to Fvwm (I no longer remember when, but sometime in the mid to late 1990's) was the grid virtual desktops feature. So I've had gridded virtual desktops for longer than twenty years. Fvwm2's configuration has been tweaked and adjusted slightly along the way, but at no time did a corporate designer decide that I no longer should have a feature I had previously been using. Proprietary software does not have your interests at heart, it has its stock price or next quarters sales numbers at heart, nothing more.
- regexorcist 4mo ago
  Reading the article as a Linux user was almost infuriating. I can't imagine having my workflow, something I've refined for my needs over the years, taken away from me at the wish of a company. Before I switched to Plasma and Wayland I ran XFCE with the exact same config for maybe 15 years, unbothered by updates.
  - Mashimo 4mo ago
    > I can't imagine having my workflow taken away from me You never ever had a single software change its workflow?
    - davkan 4mo ago
      People have been using emacs for how many decades? Or vim and terminal? Linux DEs rarely change entirely without the ability to run old versions, with the notable exception being gnome 3 which is still divisive to this day in large part because of it. And even then it was still possible to keep your workflows with MATE, the continuation of gnome 2. Libre office just recently implemented the ribbon and you can still disable it. Radical workflow changes with no recourse is the standard in proprietary software, not so much in FOSS.
cosmic_cheese 4mo ago
Nice to see I'm not alone in missing old Spaces. It's too bad we can't mix and match parts of releases as desired. If I could have OS X 10.9 Mavericks (last Aqua release) with 10.6 Spaces and modern macOS integration features (Continuity, etc) I'd be in heaven.
- vintagedave 4mo ago
  100% agreed. The issue for me is how buggy the modern features are. Continuity with the clipboard: sometimes I copy text on my phone, and it just never pastes on my Mac. Why? No idea. It's not even like text is a complex format. It just... never pastes. Or this morning I spent ages trying to connect to my phone's personal hotspot. It was a foot away on the table. It kept saying it could not connect. Turn things off, turn them on again, turn off, on again... I eventually moved to where I have wifi. It's a nice day today and I wanted to be outside. Annoying. And repeated grinding failures like this form a slow, slow, growth of real frustration and annoyance with Apple. I know I don't hold the same attitude to them these days that I used to, and I think it's the whole set of changes since they dropped Aqua. It's not a good OS any more.
ramathornn 4mo ago
Magnet is easily one of the best mac apps i've ever purchased - makes window management so easy and it works great every time. Just Command + Shift and then you can pick any portion of the screen you want the window to go to. That paired with multiple desktops does the trick for me! Highly reccommend (not sure if it's okay to share URLs? sorry in case it's not): https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/ https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/
- AbuAssar 4mo ago
  We can do this natively in macos, isn’t it?
  - multjoy 4mo ago
    No. Mac window management is inexplicably awful.
  - msephton 4mo ago
    Yes, mostly, since macOS 15
  - ramathornn 4mo ago
    Yeah I guess, just a bit clunky I think. For $5 Magnet is awesome!
- rpastuszak 4mo ago
  Is it different from Rectangle? (I've been using it for ages)
  - ramathornn 4mo ago
    looks pretty much identical!
    - js2 4mo ago
      Both apps look like a slightly less flexible version of Divvy (which I've been using since 2010): https://mizage.com/divvy/ https://mizage.com/divvy/ However, they're also cheaper ($0 or $4.99 vs $13.99).
k__o 4mo ago
how do u write the "llms dont care about ux" paragraph then link to your app site that exemplifies llm ux
hajile 4mo ago
Humans have good spatial memory and having a handful of statically-positioned desktops in a 2D plane makes navigation intuitive and consistent. The real issue is how the ORDER of the desktops changes all the time which messes with that spatial memory and kills a lot of the productivity improvements. A consistent straight line would still be worse than a grid, but still MUCH better than the current situation.
- rafaeltorres 4mo ago
  I think this behavior can be changed in System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Automatically Rearrange Spaces based on most recent use (turn it off)
gnarlouse 4mo ago
We need a new social media platform purely for Apple product experiences. Stay with me. People post their experiences with various parts of all their products, from hardware button position to software design and behavior. Upvotes are "It's Genius", downvotes are "It's Shit" -- because Apple has completely shirked its much needed Jobsian specter. The joke, of course, is that I imagine a good 75% of the reviews would be "it's shit."
- antran22 4mo ago
  They already have that, it's the Apple Support Community. Apple still manages to neglect most complaints on the site. Honestly, people have been complaining about Apple's decision on every semi-Apple-related forum forever. Still didn't prevent them from rolling out Liquid Glass. Not sure another one would do the job
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
kritr 4mo ago
I’ve been using a friend’s app switcher because cmd+tab was a bit too slow and not window oriented. But this has been pretty nice for me. https://mwitch.viraat.dev/ https://mwitch.viraat.dev/ It’s also open source if you want to customize it for your own preferences (pinned apps, custom keybinds, etc)
- oneeyedpigeon 4mo ago
  > cmd+tab was a bit too slow Using that app, if I cmd+tab from one space to another, will I see 0 (and I mean zero) animation whatsoever? The exact same behaviour as if I were switching between two apps on the same space? Because that's what I need to go anywhere near Spaces, and that's what seems impossible.
mortenjorck 4mo ago
I can never prove it, but I like to think I'm the one to credit/blame for inspiring Apple to "inexplicably restrict [spaces] to a horizontal line only" in Leopard. I produced a concept video in 2009 that prominently featured a linear window manager with gestural navigation, and while it's mostly forgotten today, it was covered by all the tech press at the time and inspired a few attempts at adapting some of its idioms into proofs-of-concept in the early 2010s. While linear window management is clearly not to everyone's taste, I still think it's a valid idea! It was heartening to see this launch and its reception, as I'm actually working on something in the same area right now...
- wodenokoto 4mo ago
  Is the video still around? Share a link!
  - quadhome 4mo ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf03YBxCyGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf03YBxCyGI
  - jadeopteryx 4mo ago
    Ah, I remember that video, seeing it as the future of window control. Very nice.
- Shorel 4mo ago
  Thank you for confessing! I hate that design and what it has done to Gnome. A grid was so much better.
- nsagent 4mo ago
  PaperWM is the closest to this approach. There's also a macOS port: https://github.com/mogenson/PaperWM.spoon https://github.com/mogenson/PaperWM.spoon
- airstrike 4mo ago
  FWIW your video is amazing. make it 2D and add hotkeys to go to spaces and I'll use it right away
a-ve 4mo ago
A bit of self-promotion here, but coming from Windows/Linux land I got used to having the taskbar at the bottom and never really liked the Dock. I love my Mac, and I know folks who have been using macOS for decades swear by it, but this is one UI feature from other OSes that I would have liked to see in macOS. One major issue is that the Dock cannot filter apps between Spaces, so I built boringBar[0] for this. It frees up real estate taken up by the Dock and makes it much easier to figure out what goes where. I do understand the need for an app switcher on the Mac, though. It has the same problem I faced: it is very app-centric rather than window-centric. Switching between windows is nigh impossible on a Mac without third-party apps, unless you like using the three-finger swipe up gesture. I have never been able to switch quickly between windows using Mission Control. [0] https://boringbar.app https://boringbar.app
digitaltrees 4mo ago
I loved spaces. It was so awesome. I tried stage manager the other day and died inside. Immediately turned it off.
auszeph 4mo ago
I use Charmstone for spatial app switching - https://charmstone.app/ https://charmstone.app/ Not the same as full spaces, but it gives the same vibe of always having a particular app on a particular hotkey. I try to limit my multi-tasking though, so I can imagine where full spaces would be useful.
Galanwe 4mo ago
> Textmate (and its revolutionary text-snippets) were the catalyst to my migration Hooo damn TextMate snippets, that brings back memories. Hard to convey how hyped I was to use these. That is also what drove me to Mac at that time. I remember writing hundreds of those snippets for every possible C++ construct, and <tab> to fill in variable name, type, loop counters and so on.
iamkrazy 4mo ago
As long as useful idiots keep circling the block in queues to buy the next version of their apple product, nothing will change. This will only get shittier.
pkhodiyar 4mo ago
there is a project that makes macOS alt+tab look like windows grids (if anyone coming from there), its all something alt_tabs or something
- benoit-prentout 4mo ago
  yup, that's alt-tab : https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos I've been using it daily for last 3 years, it's awesome !
gullevek 4mo ago
You can also assign hot keys to each desktop and then this grid layout is irrelevant anyway
- layer8 4mo ago
  The article mentions that feature and how it doesn’t work for the author.
photios 4mo ago
The last good MacOS was System 6. Change my mind :D
- projektfu 4mo ago
  It might be nice to have more than 8 MB of memory available.
Mikhail_Edoshin 4mo ago
I remember some very old Windows shell app, Dashboard, by Starfish software, I think. It run under Windows 3.1, possibly replacing Program Manager, and it had a neat virtual desktop feature with tiny pictograms of several desktops for you to switch and drag mini-windows between them. Combined with other capabilities it was a true gem. (But somehow in Windows 95 the updated version started to feel less useful and I eventually abandoned it. Maybe it was the effect of moving between systems and a typical reinstall-to-clean-up routine that was common those days.)
_wire_ 4mo ago
This is all normalization to iOS horseshit. A list ordering is the most primitive and least memorable layout because lists sort arbitrarily and alphabetical listing of capabilities are not intuitive. But the weirdness only grows from here: For example, Photos shows library recents bottom to top, but pick-photo from library shows recents top to bottom Portrait orientation puts "Done" on one end, landscape puts it on the other. "Done" can be implied by a return tap or involve a "done" tap. Some controls tap, some slide and some do both. Release to release, the formats move around. Format varies between apps & modes. Mystery meat abounds Holding the device a certain way causes spastic mode changes, which vary release to release. Almost any way you touch the device instigates an action or mode change and some controls have 3+ levels of function: WTF does the "power" button do? - stand-by - camera shutter - emergency SOS vs shutdown - arbitrary mode change depending on accessibility setting Bugs and features overlap. The UI is never baked, ever more modal... exhausting
pjerem 4mo ago
Honestly, anyone who used and loved macOS in the past should really try a modern KDE Plasma desktop. It’s not the same, per se, but it’s just … mature. It’s mature because it’s a nice mix of « it’s old and boring » + they took inspiration from everything that worked on macOS and Windows and stole it. They never removed features for any bullshit marketing reasons. It’s not perfect : there are things that I like better on macOS (but they tend to be very rare tbh) or even Gnome or whatever I’m trying nowadays (it’s Niri!)… but I do think KDE is the best overall when it comes to respecting its user, giving him nice and clean defaults while giving them enough options to work however they like to. And yes, that includes virtual desktops arranged in a custom grid. It’s not the default but the option is right there waiting for you to enable it if you want it.
- seaal 4mo ago
  Seriously, it's honestly pathetic at how little Microsoft and Apple have pushed UX in the past two decades. Something like quickshell-overview feels so smooth and delicious compared to the painful use of virtual desktops on Windows/MacOS. [0]: https://github.com/Shanu-Kumawat/quickshell-overview https://github.com/Shanu-Kumawat/quickshell-overview
- MiddleEndian 4mo ago
  I use KDE at home after leaving OS X when it became clear Apple became more interested in mobile OSes than desktop OSes, and using various combos of Linux and Windows for a bit. Gotta agree. Powerful, customizatable, and predictable at the same time.
- ibejoeb 4mo ago
  I would. I love linux desktop, but the apple hardware just smokes anything else. I've had a little success with asahi, but not enough to let me switch.
akdor1154 4mo ago
Questions for those who like the grid layout of virtual desktops - how does it (or should it?) interact with multi monitor setups? Feels like this would break or at least compromise the spatial metaphor. - Each monitor has own grid? - The VD 'spans' the pair of monitors? - VDs only on one monitor? - The monitors form a fixed 'window' into the grid? - Something else?
- ranebo 4mo ago
  I have a separate grid on each screen. Each with different grid sizes. I have a 3x3 grid on my main display a 2x2 grid on my display to the left and leave my laptop display with no grid constantly locked to my works video conference application. It works well for me, but as you can see from the comments everyone is different :)
- OsrsNeedsf2P 4mo ago
  I have a Kwin plugin so my laptop is always the same, but my external monitor is a grid. Iirc by default, KDE makes them all share the same grid
throwaway78321 4mo ago
p9wl: A 9P wayland compositor: https://12e.iwp9.org/papers/p9wl.pdf https://12e.iwp9.org/papers/p9wl.pdf Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRx75piIlxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRx75piIlxo
gjvc 4mo ago
Snow Leopard was peak OS X
datawars 4mo ago
I wish there were a way to sandbox apps with more granularity.
zx8080 4mo ago
Vote with your money and time! If you can, switch to Linux, choose the distro you like, and help make it better, in UI and whatnot.
- ainiriand 4mo ago
  I was a linux user for some time in my youth, then corporate appeared and with that the locked windows Thinkpads, the MacOS's and such. I am finally back in Linux at home and I find it so amazing, and all my video games work too!
zahirbmirza 4mo ago
I've been using macs since the Classic. I have used macs because the OS was rarely a limiting factor in my productivity. In fact, everything has always been made unobtrusive. Presently, there is misdirected focus at Apple. Most consumers will not have known better. But, that complacency has never been the way apple managed to innovate to be so ahead.
fnord77 4mo ago
isn't this just what 3-finger upswipe does???
momocowcow 4mo ago
Anything great starts with Japanese toilets
irusensei 4mo ago
Seems MacOS Snow Leopard is for the Apple people what Windows 7 is for Windows people.
leojfc 4mo ago
Yes, and I'd go a step further: OSes in general need a concept of a 'project' or 'task' or whatever, which a) cuts across apps and b) integrates deeply with windowing and spaces. Multitasking and context switching has been increasing for years, instant messaging boosted them again, and agent-based workflows are only going to push further in that direction. The OS needs to support that, and it's not an app-level concern: I use the same apps in each of my tasks. IDEs can help with this of course: they tend to have workspace/project primitives and can restore code and terminal contexts from those. But there's always a bunch of other connected stuff that can't be linked: web pages (some IDEs are starting to manage those too), agents which don't reside in the IDE, relevant chats with colleagues, project management apps and so on. This is clearly an OS-level concern, not an app-level concern. Some of the iPad experiments with alternative window organisation looked kind of promising, but they’re just not powerful or intuitive enough IMO.
- ubercore 4mo ago
  I make a version of this happen with Aerospace on macOS.
  - leojfc 4mo ago
    Oh nice, looks awesome, I will give it a go!
  - joenot443 4mo ago
    Thrilled to see it's FOSS. https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace
  - boronine 4mo ago
    For anyone wondering, you can use Aerospace purely as a workspace switching solution without the tiling: https://www.boronine.com/2025/02/09/Instant-Workspace-Switching/ https://www.boronine.com/2025/02/09/Instant-Workspace-Switch...
    - WickyNilliams 4mo ago
rpastuszak 4mo ago
WM psychosis time: My current "WM workflow"/window management keyboard shortcuts is: neovim → tmux → Ghostty → Rectangle → OS so moving to the left window/pane is (depending on the "nesting level"): ctrl+h, ctrl+a + {number}, cmd + [, option-ctrl-left, ?? This is what happens when you spend years overthinking / fighting the walled garden UX. The sad part is that I'm kinda OK with this at this stage (besides 1-2 days a year, when my mental faculties are lowered and I decide to _fix it_). A global fzf / rectangle / alfred shortcut for all "windows and panes" would be great. Unfortunately, at this stage, my overthinking/poor ux induced psychosis reached the point where I control Claude using voice and a Playdate console with a crank and I'm day dreaming about just looking at the pane I need and making a click sound with my mouth to select it (like Neddy in Adventure time).
- fragmede 4mo ago
  > A global fzf alttab.app recently went paid, but it'll do that
  - rpastuszak 4mo ago
    Thanks! Just checked their site, but I don't see "jump to a tmux pane / browser tab" in the features there...
- menno-sh 4mo ago
  > besides 1-2 days a year, when my mental faculties are lowered and I decide to _fix it_ God this is so recognizable, it's truly at my lowest moments that I decide I need a new terminal emulator and spend 6 hours in a brew install rabbit hole. The worst thing is that I'm still using Warp of all things
pistoriusp 4mo ago
Gonna reply guy here because this is a paid thing. Agree with the author. Exposé was amazing. Here's an open alternative that I built, completely keyboard driven: https://github.com/peterp/cmdcmd/ https://github.com/peterp/cmdcmd/
lanycrost 4mo ago
Interesting, but I will prefer more unified and i3 style way for that I use aerospace and many other tools which give me such experience https://github.com/lanycrost/home_is_everywhere https://github.com/lanycrost/home_is_everywhere
yubblegum 4mo ago
> [In my day job working with LLMs] The bulk of my time is spent reviewing This is depressing. I've been out of the field since Covid (after decade_s of work) and basically have to get back to work since kitty is gone, but this is definitely what I signed up for when I started on this career in software engineering. If I'm gonna be reviewing all day, I'd rather manage humans rather than LLMs. How is it affecting managing engineering teams?
- rgoulter 4mo ago
  > If I'm gonna be reviewing all day... I think the point is: Pre-LLM: 1. think, 2. write code & check, 3. review. LLM: 1. think, 2. write prompt, <LLM writes code quickly>, 3. review. If the thing that you enjoy about programming is writing code, you can have the LLM write code in the style you like. If you enjoyed getting to explore and understand a system, an LLM can help you do that quicker, too. "Use LLM without thinking" won't get you substantially useful results.
Shorel 4mo ago
The same applies to Linux. I remember the 2x2 grid in Ubuntu 12 being the best desktop UI I had ever used. The current Gnome workspaces with a single row are a huge step backwards in terms of productivity. It must be easier for beginners, but it frustrates me every single day.
- kuschku 4mo ago
  If you're attached to Gnome, this won't be a solution, but if you're willing to consider other options, KDE allows configuring the number of virtual desktops and their arrangement.
- gbhdrew 4mo ago
  [dead]
ahmetozer 4mo ago
Thank you, Great description. I have a similar feeling while on my work computer for switching between windows. For some reason when the number of windows are too much, full screen task switching is slowdowns (its not a case my personal work) So i made taskbar.ahmetozer.org my be it helps.
salahadawi 4mo ago
> Apparently what I wanted was a Merchant of Record. Someone to handle purchases, taxes and refunds. There seems to be three main companies providing this service: Paddle, GumRoad and Lemon Squeezy. I've used Lemon Squeezy a couple years back, but after the acquisition I feel they've gone downhill. It's been a month since I submitted my product for review and I'm still waiting. Stripe also has a MoR service now, I was able to set it up and ready to sell in a few hours
flenserboy 4mo ago
Apple has a strange habit of making the first version excellent, then finding ways to degrade the experience. The grid pattern of spaces is definitely one; Spotlight, as it appeared in Tiger, is another.
atombender 4mo ago
[dead]
joshstrange 4mo ago
There is no way I could have been as productive as I was on a 13" MBP back in the early 2010's without Spaces. I still vividly remember losing it [0] and spent a few years using various apps to re-implement the old-style spaces. The 2D -> 1D change is what killed it for me. I had amazing muscle memory of where everything was. Center screen is my browser, going left took my to my code editors, going right took me to my terminal, going down to my database GUI tool, and up for reference (second browser or photoshop design). I never had to think about where things were, I didn't feel constrained on my tiny screen with no external monitoring, things were good. And now it's been over a decade and while I've "replaced" spaces with multiple external monitors I still think about it from time to time. I watch people use (fight) the current "spaces" and I just shake my head thinking of what we lost and how Fisher-Price the new version is. Spaces used to be a power tool, now it's a shadow of its former self IMHO. [0] Single row spaces is a joke, I won't use it
Jyaif 4mo ago
> I’ve had feedback this name is terrible GridLion is an excellent name
evanjrowley 4mo ago
Like GridLion, there are a handful of macOS space organizers that attempt to confine specific apps to specific spaces. What would be most helpful for my workflow is something slightly different. I need to be able to launch specific browser profiles/windows in these workspaces. One space with all of the tabs for project X, another space with all of the tabs for project Y, and then another with all of the tabs for project Z. These might be in different browser profiles. I don't see how I can achieve this under the common per-app paradigm of macOS space organizers unless macOS has some notion of Windows/Linux style shortcuts whereby command line arguments can specify the exact things that need to be in the browser window.
alsetmusic 4mo ago
I genuinely could not believe it when they took away vertical spaces. Having to jump over extra screens made the feature useless to me. I stopped using it. It's impractical.
giancarlostoro 4mo ago
The Window Manager is the one thing I would rip out of macOS and shove in KDE's Window Management features if I could, it drives me crazy.
drob518 4mo ago
I’m convinced that the biggest threat to good UIs are the majority of professional UI designers. Think of it this way… Half of all UI designers are below the median. These people chose UI design as a career. You don’t advance your career by simply defending the status quo year after year. To advance you need to design something new. So, you do. You do whether whatever was there before is working well or not. Because what are you going to do, sit on your hands year after year? And because half of all UI designers are below the median, a new UI design has even odds of being a step backwards. And then you’re on stage yammering about Liquid Glass at an Apple launch event. One thing that makes me sad is that a lot of designers seem to focus on visuals and don’t seem to understand anything about usability. How many designers entering the workforce know what Fitts’s Law is, for instance? How many designers were standing in the breach against all of Liquid Glass’s usability issues, most of which were quite obvious? Honestly, with rare exceptions, the designers are the issue.
- bitexploder 4mo ago
  This assumes that every designer is on the bell curve at the big tech firms in the roles that can influence this. I am not defending modern UI/UX, but that is quite an assumption.
  - drob518 4mo ago
    You're right, it is a big assumption, but it's not unfounded. I've worked at F50 companies and founded my own startup. It's a lot easier to get two really great designers from the far right side of the bell curve when you're a small startup. As an organization reaches even 1000 people, you're now starting to draw from the middle of the bell curve. In fact, you have to. If you try to hire only from the far right of the bell curve for all positions, you end up with a lot of egos that will clash. In the best case, you hire leaders from the far right of the bell curve and followers from the middle. But at some point those mediocre followers start asking for promotions and your hotshot leader leaves for greener pastures. Controlling for that in your hiring practices at a large organization is virtually impossible, particularly if you have standard (middle of the bell curve) HR people. BTW, this is exactly why startups out-execute large companies every day of the week. A small startup can carefully control its hiring, select from the right side of the bell curve, and avoid all the large company HR crap. But as soon as it starts to scale, the bell curve becomes a looming threat.
zimmund 4mo ago
The window (miss)management of MacOS is what's holding me from switching to Mac. I've already tried Aerospace and similar solutions, but I can't replicate the fast and unobstructed experience I have with i3wm. Sadly wm in MacOS is like notifications on iOS: with enough time you get used to the unproductive mess they are, but you'll be missing out on better solutions. And since probably all MacOS devs are using Mac, they won't see/understand other (better) approaches.
- ahofmann 4mo ago
  I switched to MacOS a few months ago from sway and I really try to be as open as possible to the mac way of life, because I don't want to fight my OS. But, boy, mission control is unusable crap. I was really shocked how dumb everything around this feature was made. Things that were possible a few years ago, are not possible anymore. Like switching to desktops/workspaces by keyboard. Or the grid. With the app "AltTab" I can at least switch between my apps without using the mouse and with raycast I can position windows, but it is painful how much slower switching and positioning things in MacOS is, than in any tiling window manager.
kgwxd 4mo ago
DE design was done in 1995. Any tiny advancements since have been entirely overshadowed by all the gigantic setbacks.
1xn 4mo ago
I still miss MacOS classic vibes, even System 7 was great to me. I'm not totally a fan of the whole new MacOS system, its amazing of course, not saying it's not. But I miss the simplicity of MacOS9 and how we customized our desktops with nice pixelart 32x32 icons!
brailsafe 4mo ago
I'm excited, thanks for spending your free time bringing back parts of mac that made it an OS that felt nice to use. I also hope Apple brings this back as a native feature, but until then, I hope you can make some $$ on the effort.
stasomatic 4mo ago
How much “tiling” and “mission controlling” do the civilians do or want to do anyway? I want to think close to zero. They are happy full-screening their Chrome on their Airs, bless their hearts, my wife included. I once attempted to demonstrate to her the brilliance of Alfred, Raycast, the new Spotlight, and she asked me if I forgot to take my meds. The ones who do want this flexibility is also close to zero (I’m in the demographic, so not zero). Kill “Mission Control” / “Spaces”, “Stage Manager”, free up system resources and unfreeze some APIs. Win-win, Mr Turnis.
firebot 4mo ago
I recall using litestep back in the 9x days. Loved this feature (virtual desktops.) Plus the wharfs were cool, imo.
gumboshoes 4mo ago
Forget all that. I want my stuff in text-based lists. Showing icons and file previews is way slower and less informative.
rustcleaner 4mo ago
Reading this article and comment section really makes me appreciate Qubes OS (XFCE4), lmao. 60 workspaces, in a 12x5 grid. You'll never catch me driving an Apple!
sandbags 4mo ago
I've never really used spaces, I remember them being introduced but they didn't really take for me. Anyway to see what all the fuss is about I've installed Gridlion but… how can I move an app to another space? I was expecting to be able use to a keystroke to "flick" an app up/down/left/right onto another space.

399 points by ranebo 4mo ago

veidr 4mo ago

This fixes a dozens-of-times-per-day annoyance for me. The grid is good, but even better is the instant virtual display switching. Nowhere is the death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts annoyance of modern macOS worse than having to hit Ctrl→→→→→→→ and suffer those repeated animations, over and over.

coolmitch 4mo ago
yes! it's the worst! I've been using Instant Space Switcher (which got a small callout in tfa) as a targeted fix for this, and it's lifechanging
- eproxus 4mo ago
  I've also switched to Instant Space Switcher, it is soo good! Previously I used BetterMouse for only this feature but they made the space switching worse in later versions (slower, on-par with the default macOS speed). Here's the link if anyone is curious: https://github.com/jurplel/InstantSpaceSwitcher https://github.com/jurplel/InstantSpaceSwitcher
  - cpt_sobel 4mo ago
    I also used to use BetterTouch tool just for this feature, no idea what they have been thinking over at Apple with this delay.
xp84 4mo ago
It's every action on Mac and iOS that does this, and it has been increasing in intrusiveness for a decade. I can't be sure why they do it, but it comes off as though their visual designers are immature, thinking we want to see their impressive animations not just in a demo, not just in a tutorial that we go through once, where we are meant to grasp the relationships between the things, but over and over again, all day long, for decades. I freaking don't. One time was plenty. I don't want any animation. And the "reduce animation" feature's implementation is a slap in the face: all the delay -- that part is non-negotiable apparently -- but with blurry crossfades instead.
- skydhash 4mo ago
  I'm using cwm (x11) without a compositor (never noticed tearing). And it's so nice when everything is not trying to be cute with shadows, animations and round corners. Animation only makes sense when there's a direct action that controls it (like when swapping spaces or hovering) or the system wanting to inform us (notifications). And it's better be fast. Otherwise it's just visual effects that quickly become tiring after a few days.
chamomeal 4mo ago
It is absolutely, positively mind boggling that you have to sit through those animations. And key presses don’t even take effect if your new desktop until the animation is done. It’s just lunacy. How does a company with infinite resources and talented designers come up with shit like that??
sgustard 4mo ago
Tried this? defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.05; killall Dock
- OrangeMusic 4mo ago
  Yup. Doesn't work.
saila 4mo ago
You can also do Ctrl-UpArrow then click the space you want. This isn't instant, but it might be a little better than repeatedly cycling through each desktop, especially if you have a lot of them. Turning off "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use" is also a must IMO. Personally, I only open one app per desktop and just use Command-Tab. If you hold Command after Command-Tab, you can select an app with having to cycle through all of them.
- oneeyedpigeon 4mo ago
  > I only open one app per desktop So what benefit do you get from multiple desktops?

Analemma_ 4mo ago

Oh man, thank you! I was just complaining the other day about the missing Spaces grid… when they first took it away in Lion I looked frantically for the setting to bring it back, with no such luck. Ironically, I think the reason they took it away was to help with fullscreen macOS apps, which are a garbage anti-feature it doesn’t seem like anybody uses. Long live the grid!

ranebo 4mo ago
Part of the reason I wanted to to make the app is because _I actually do like fullscreen apps_. Or at least maybe I learned to after they took away the grid. In any case I certainly wanted this app to work with them.
- OberstKrueger 4mo ago
  As a fellow fullscreen liker (there are dozens of us! dozens!), this looks quite intriguing to me. A grid layout always fit better with my mental model of how these types of spaces should work, since I could use rows as categories of work and columns as specific applications within that category. Or one of a few other mental models I've used over the years.
drfloyd51 4mo ago
I want to use full screen apps. But they are not in the command-tab order. So… no good.
- oneeyedpigeon 4mo ago
  They are, but it's nuanced. If you have one app with a single window, it will always be selectable via Cmd+Tab, even if it's full-screened. If you have an app with multiple windows, one of which is full-screened, and you select a non-full-screened window from that same app, you won't be able to return to the full-screened window using Cmd+Tab. Which kinda makes sense, since Cmd+Tab cycles apps, not windows.
  - 4mo ago

behnamoh 4mo ago

I am not so hopeful about the future of macOS given that the next CEO of Apple is a hardware guy, not a software person.

ibash 4mo ago
That’s one framing, here’s another: The next CEO of Apple is someone that cares about quality. (As evidenced by how good the hardware is)
- behnamoh 4mo ago
  > The next CEO of Apple is someone that cares about quality. (As evidenced by how good the hardware is) I think it's important "what quality" they care about. Tim Cook cared about supply chain quality, and honestly he did an amazing job, but he didn't care much about software, vision of Apple, etc.
  - LostMyLogin 4mo ago
    Their chips are quality and the hardware itself is still some of the best. Which is what I believe they were designed insinuating.
xp84 4mo ago
The current guy didn't ever once show a sign he cared about anything but 'Number Go Up'[1] so I don't see how anyone could be worse for those of us who care about the actual product than he was. [1] to be clear, I stipulate Cook is indeed the world champion of Number Go Up. Nobody Number Goed Up more than Cook did. For Ternus to do Number Go Up to the same multiplier Cook did, I think he'd have to acquire all the other companies in the world.

dyauspitr 4mo ago

I do not like the grid. I can’t see what’s in it.

xp84 4mo ago

> If they approve, the settings open, then the user has to find the specific little toggle and enable it. Another security prompt then done. Why isn’t this at most 2 prompts? Answer: Because modern-day Apple has subscribed to a particular brand of mitigation for the "noobs will always click 'Allow' especially if you ask them to first" problem. The mitigation is that Apple just dumps you on step 2 of a little 4-5 step mini sysadmin adventure where you prove, every time, that you're sophisticated enough to deserve an exception to the padded-cell walled garden mode they've sealed off 'for your safety.' As a complete nerd, you'd think maybe I'd like that I can prove my skills like this, but it comes off as deeply disrespectful to me as the user that I can't disable this. What's my solution to prevent grandma or a 10-year-old from clicking "Allow full filesystem access and keylogging" to an executable she downloaded from facebook-security-center-and-password-verification-cgi-bin-ab383 dot xyz? IDK, that's their problem, but they should offer a way for those of us who aren't clueless to turn whatever it is off.

FireBeyond 4mo ago
And then one that grinds my gears, perhaps more than it should: there's no way to change the default browser without explicit user action or consent. But do that and the very next thing that happens when you try to open a browser or a link in an email? "Your browser has been changed from Safari to Chrome. Would you like to use Safari or keep using Chrome?" and for a little salt, the default is "Use Safari".
klodolph 4mo ago
This particular permission is pernicious, ponder for a picosecond the possibilities: It’s used for writing keyloggers. That’s it. It’s the permission that lets you write a keylogger. It SHOULD NOT be just a click away. It should require some extra song and dance, because this is an especially dangerous permission, and the extra friction is justified.
- xp84 4mo ago
  All the permissions are treated the same way though. Microphone access. Screen sharing access. etc. Yes, all could be used to spy on you in evil ways, but the replacement of a straightforward "Want to grant this app the following permissions?" with these stupid little spelunks through the garbage app that is Settings irritates me every time. Apple should throw this whole thing out and replace it with first-launch lists of permissions, with toggles for each. This app 'Zoom' wants "Record the screen, microphone, camera." Then you're done and you don't have to keep searching for it in little lists and relaunching it.

krackers 4mo ago

You could call it hyperspace in an homage to that old 10.6-era application which customized spaces. (Also I just realized why Apple called it called mission control, it allows you to organize spaces). Also this is basically a replacement for the zombie TotalSpaces 3

msephton 4mo ago
There's already an app called Hyperspace, it reclaims disk space through use of APFS features

jimrandomh 4mo ago

Prior to MacOS 10.11, Mission Control was good: you would swipe up with four fingers and it would show you a preview of all of your spaces. Then in 10.11, for no discernable reason, they changed it to suck: rather than showing you a preview, the bar just says "Desktop 1", "Desktop 2", etc until you mouse over it; the practical effect is that using spaces is disorienting and requires memorization. Some third-party software pretends to restore this functionality, but they do it by repositioning the mouse to simulate a hover, which introduces a delay and doesn't integrate correctly with the animation. Someone wrote a patch that works by disabling SIP and injecting code (https://github.com/briankendall/forceFullDesktopBar https://github.com/briankendall/forceFullDesktopBar), but eventually stopped maintaining it. A decade later, I doubt anyone at Apple remembers that this bit of user interface used to be good.

ebbi 4mo ago
Agree! That "Desktop 1", "Desktop 2" view is so annoying, and given we have higher res monitors now, it serves no purpose if the intention was to save space.
- josho 4mo ago
  I loathe that I can't even rename the desktops. Wouldn't it be great to have them named "Design", "Dev", "Productivity", "Games". Or whatever makes sense given your needs, instead of simply desktop #.
  - jeroenhd 4mo ago
    Windows has had the rename feature for ages and I don't know why Apple can't just copy that. They've copied plenty of other stuff, why stick with the weirdly restrictive desktop naming scheme?
willtemperley 4mo ago
> rather than showing you a preview, the bar just says "Desktop 1", "Desktop 2" I never noticed that behaviour because I only use mission control in full-screen mode. If you swipe up with three (or four) fingers from a full-screen window the previews are visible immediately. I have no idea why we need a different preview for desktop vs full screen however. The part of this UX that annoys me is the spaces get re-ordered for no apparent reason. I usually have a few IDE windows open and it's tiring to have to double-check the window hasn't moved.

toomim 4mo ago

I just installed it, but I can't get it to switch spaces, or show the grid overlay. It just beeps at me with the "you can't do that" beep. When I click "Add Desktop", it says "Could Not Add Desktop" and "GridLion could not read the current Spaces for this display." This is a M1 macbook air. I really want to try this.

arkits 4mo ago

DockDoor does this and a lot more. Its also open source https://dockdoor.net/ https://dockdoor.net/

WaltPurvis 4mo ago
Maybe I just missed it, but I don't see where DockDoor has anything at all to do with spaces.
egypturnash 4mo ago
I just checked out DockDoor and I could not find anything related to multiple desktops in it at all.
johnwheeler 4mo ago
But we're not talking about Dock Door. Respect the Maker by giving him his time.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]

Pxtl 4mo ago

I don't get the use of the spatial layout here. A line may be cruder but if you're going full swordfish hackerman mode why are you caring about grid geography at all? Bind each to a hotkey. The only time you're swiping is when you're lost. Like what competitive player uses scroll wheel weapon switching in Quakelike games? Nobody

urbandw311er 4mo ago
Visual memory is really powerful and maps far more easily onto human brain’s experience of navigating the world. So it’s easier for many people to imagine and organise around a grid.

benatkin 4mo ago

> LLMs don’t care about UX Many parts of the LLM care about UX, and you unlock it with your feedback loop, which is a good way to unlock it but one of many ways. One way to show that LLMs care about UX is to have one tutor you about UX. If they weren't trained to care about it, they couldn't do a decent job. But I've asked dozens of questions about UX to LLMs and they have a great deal of insight.

felixding 4mo ago

Slightly off-topic: the old Aqua UI looks so much better. Not only it was much easier to see what's a control and what's text, but it also looked visually nicer (subjective, I know).

ido 4mo ago
Funnily enough when Aqua was new i remember thinking Platinum looked so much better.
- wpm 4mo ago
  That is correct. Platinum still looks fantastic, carefully hewn out of the HIG. Early Aqua is a bit ostentatious and at the very least indulgent. Still better than the fucking flat-slop plus glarse vomit we have to put up with now.
  - black_knight 4mo ago
    We dont have to put up with it. At some point the collective “we” could consider using some other machines with other, more free, operating systems.
andrewl-hn 4mo ago
To be fair, so are many other UIs. Windows 95-style boxy buttons and bevels make the content look organized. Every possible action gets its button that looks like a button. You often see the total set of available actions by looking at a toolbar. You don't need to second-guess whether some piece of content itself is clickable / editable or not. Also, everything has excessive padding now. Modern Windows control panel UIs often feel like a multicolumn wall of text with lots of empty space and a few switches dropped in, and to fit the same amount if options as the older UI they had to either hide some toggles because "known needs them anymore" or introduce extra intermediary navigation steps. As a result the new Control Panel feels bloated and less useful.

pwg 4mo ago

> Two decades ago I had a better Mac desktop experience than I have today. Two decades ago was 2006. I have the same desktop experience today as I had two decades ago (Fvwm2) and have had the grid virtual desktop layout this author misses so much for the entire time via the Fvwm2 (and Fvwm before that) virtual desktops feature. One of the reasons I switched to Fvwm (I no longer remember when, but sometime in the mid to late 1990's) was the grid virtual desktops feature. So I've had gridded virtual desktops for longer than twenty years. Fvwm2's configuration has been tweaked and adjusted slightly along the way, but at no time did a corporate designer decide that I no longer should have a feature I had previously been using. Proprietary software does not have your interests at heart, it has its stock price or next quarters sales numbers at heart, nothing more.

regexorcist 4mo ago
Reading the article as a Linux user was almost infuriating. I can't imagine having my workflow, something I've refined for my needs over the years, taken away from me at the wish of a company. Before I switched to Plasma and Wayland I ran XFCE with the exact same config for maybe 15 years, unbothered by updates.
- Mashimo 4mo ago
  > I can't imagine having my workflow taken away from me You never ever had a single software change its workflow?
  - davkan 4mo ago
    People have been using emacs for how many decades? Or vim and terminal? Linux DEs rarely change entirely without the ability to run old versions, with the notable exception being gnome 3 which is still divisive to this day in large part because of it. And even then it was still possible to keep your workflows with MATE, the continuation of gnome 2. Libre office just recently implemented the ribbon and you can still disable it. Radical workflow changes with no recourse is the standard in proprietary software, not so much in FOSS.

cosmic_cheese 4mo ago

Nice to see I'm not alone in missing old Spaces. It's too bad we can't mix and match parts of releases as desired. If I could have OS X 10.9 Mavericks (last Aqua release) with 10.6 Spaces and modern macOS integration features (Continuity, etc) I'd be in heaven.

vintagedave 4mo ago
100% agreed. The issue for me is how buggy the modern features are. Continuity with the clipboard: sometimes I copy text on my phone, and it just never pastes on my Mac. Why? No idea. It's not even like text is a complex format. It just... never pastes. Or this morning I spent ages trying to connect to my phone's personal hotspot. It was a foot away on the table. It kept saying it could not connect. Turn things off, turn them on again, turn off, on again... I eventually moved to where I have wifi. It's a nice day today and I wanted to be outside. Annoying. And repeated grinding failures like this form a slow, slow, growth of real frustration and annoyance with Apple. I know I don't hold the same attitude to them these days that I used to, and I think it's the whole set of changes since they dropped Aqua. It's not a good OS any more.

ramathornn 4mo ago

Magnet is easily one of the best mac apps i've ever purchased - makes window management so easy and it works great every time. Just Command + Shift and then you can pick any portion of the screen you want the window to go to. That paired with multiple desktops does the trick for me! Highly reccommend (not sure if it's okay to share URLs? sorry in case it's not): https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/ https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/

AbuAssar 4mo ago
We can do this natively in macos, isn’t it?
- multjoy 4mo ago
  No. Mac window management is inexplicably awful.
- msephton 4mo ago
  Yes, mostly, since macOS 15
- ramathornn 4mo ago
  Yeah I guess, just a bit clunky I think. For $5 Magnet is awesome!
rpastuszak 4mo ago
Is it different from Rectangle? (I've been using it for ages)
- ramathornn 4mo ago
  looks pretty much identical!
  - js2 4mo ago
    Both apps look like a slightly less flexible version of Divvy (which I've been using since 2010): https://mizage.com/divvy/ https://mizage.com/divvy/ However, they're also cheaper ($0 or $4.99 vs $13.99).

k__o 4mo ago

how do u write the "llms dont care about ux" paragraph then link to your app site that exemplifies llm ux

hajile 4mo ago

Humans have good spatial memory and having a handful of statically-positioned desktops in a 2D plane makes navigation intuitive and consistent. The real issue is how the ORDER of the desktops changes all the time which messes with that spatial memory and kills a lot of the productivity improvements. A consistent straight line would still be worse than a grid, but still MUCH better than the current situation.

rafaeltorres 4mo ago
I think this behavior can be changed in System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Automatically Rearrange Spaces based on most recent use (turn it off)

gnarlouse 4mo ago

We need a new social media platform purely for Apple product experiences. Stay with me. People post their experiences with various parts of all their products, from hardware button position to software design and behavior. Upvotes are "It's Genius", downvotes are "It's Shit" -- because Apple has completely shirked its much needed Jobsian specter. The joke, of course, is that I imagine a good 75% of the reviews would be "it's shit."

antran22 4mo ago
They already have that, it's the Apple Support Community. Apple still manages to neglect most complaints on the site. Honestly, people have been complaining about Apple's decision on every semi-Apple-related forum forever. Still didn't prevent them from rolling out Liquid Glass. Not sure another one would do the job

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

kritr 4mo ago

I’ve been using a friend’s app switcher because cmd+tab was a bit too slow and not window oriented. But this has been pretty nice for me. https://mwitch.viraat.dev/ https://mwitch.viraat.dev/ It’s also open source if you want to customize it for your own preferences (pinned apps, custom keybinds, etc)

oneeyedpigeon 4mo ago
> cmd+tab was a bit too slow Using that app, if I cmd+tab from one space to another, will I see 0 (and I mean zero) animation whatsoever? The exact same behaviour as if I were switching between two apps on the same space? Because that's what I need to go anywhere near Spaces, and that's what seems impossible.

mortenjorck 4mo ago

I can never prove it, but I like to think I'm the one to credit/blame for inspiring Apple to "inexplicably restrict [spaces] to a horizontal line only" in Leopard. I produced a concept video in 2009 that prominently featured a linear window manager with gestural navigation, and while it's mostly forgotten today, it was covered by all the tech press at the time and inspired a few attempts at adapting some of its idioms into proofs-of-concept in the early 2010s. While linear window management is clearly not to everyone's taste, I still think it's a valid idea! It was heartening to see this launch and its reception, as I'm actually working on something in the same area right now...

wodenokoto 4mo ago
Is the video still around? Share a link!
- quadhome 4mo ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf03YBxCyGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf03YBxCyGI
- jadeopteryx 4mo ago
  Ah, I remember that video, seeing it as the future of window control. Very nice.
Shorel 4mo ago
Thank you for confessing! I hate that design and what it has done to Gnome. A grid was so much better.
nsagent 4mo ago
PaperWM is the closest to this approach. There's also a macOS port: https://github.com/mogenson/PaperWM.spoon https://github.com/mogenson/PaperWM.spoon
airstrike 4mo ago
FWIW your video is amazing. make it 2D and add hotkeys to go to spaces and I'll use it right away

a-ve 4mo ago

A bit of self-promotion here, but coming from Windows/Linux land I got used to having the taskbar at the bottom and never really liked the Dock. I love my Mac, and I know folks who have been using macOS for decades swear by it, but this is one UI feature from other OSes that I would have liked to see in macOS. One major issue is that the Dock cannot filter apps between Spaces, so I built boringBar[0] for this. It frees up real estate taken up by the Dock and makes it much easier to figure out what goes where. I do understand the need for an app switcher on the Mac, though. It has the same problem I faced: it is very app-centric rather than window-centric. Switching between windows is nigh impossible on a Mac without third-party apps, unless you like using the three-finger swipe up gesture. I have never been able to switch quickly between windows using Mission Control. [0] https://boringbar.app https://boringbar.app

digitaltrees 4mo ago

I loved spaces. It was so awesome. I tried stage manager the other day and died inside. Immediately turned it off.

auszeph 4mo ago

I use Charmstone for spatial app switching - https://charmstone.app/ https://charmstone.app/ Not the same as full spaces, but it gives the same vibe of always having a particular app on a particular hotkey. I try to limit my multi-tasking though, so I can imagine where full spaces would be useful.

Galanwe 4mo ago

> Textmate (and its revolutionary text-snippets) were the catalyst to my migration Hooo damn TextMate snippets, that brings back memories. Hard to convey how hyped I was to use these. That is also what drove me to Mac at that time. I remember writing hundreds of those snippets for every possible C++ construct, and <tab> to fill in variable name, type, loop counters and so on.

iamkrazy 4mo ago

As long as useful idiots keep circling the block in queues to buy the next version of their apple product, nothing will change. This will only get shittier.

pkhodiyar 4mo ago

there is a project that makes macOS alt+tab look like windows grids (if anyone coming from there), its all something alt_tabs or something

benoit-prentout 4mo ago
yup, that's alt-tab : https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos I've been using it daily for last 3 years, it's awesome !

gullevek 4mo ago

You can also assign hot keys to each desktop and then this grid layout is irrelevant anyway

layer8 4mo ago
The article mentions that feature and how it doesn’t work for the author.

photios 4mo ago

The last good MacOS was System 6. Change my mind :D

projektfu 4mo ago
It might be nice to have more than 8 MB of memory available.

Mikhail_Edoshin 4mo ago

I remember some very old Windows shell app, Dashboard, by Starfish software, I think. It run under Windows 3.1, possibly replacing Program Manager, and it had a neat virtual desktop feature with tiny pictograms of several desktops for you to switch and drag mini-windows between them. Combined with other capabilities it was a true gem. (But somehow in Windows 95 the updated version started to feel less useful and I eventually abandoned it. Maybe it was the effect of moving between systems and a typical reinstall-to-clean-up routine that was common those days.)

_wire_ 4mo ago

This is all normalization to iOS horseshit. A list ordering is the most primitive and least memorable layout because lists sort arbitrarily and alphabetical listing of capabilities are not intuitive. But the weirdness only grows from here: For example, Photos shows library recents bottom to top, but pick-photo from library shows recents top to bottom Portrait orientation puts "Done" on one end, landscape puts it on the other. "Done" can be implied by a return tap or involve a "done" tap. Some controls tap, some slide and some do both. Release to release, the formats move around. Format varies between apps & modes. Mystery meat abounds Holding the device a certain way causes spastic mode changes, which vary release to release. Almost any way you touch the device instigates an action or mode change and some controls have 3+ levels of function: WTF does the "power" button do? - stand-by - camera shutter - emergency SOS vs shutdown - arbitrary mode change depending on accessibility setting Bugs and features overlap. The UI is never baked, ever more modal... exhausting

pjerem 4mo ago

Honestly, anyone who used and loved macOS in the past should really try a modern KDE Plasma desktop. It’s not the same, per se, but it’s just … mature. It’s mature because it’s a nice mix of « it’s old and boring » + they took inspiration from everything that worked on macOS and Windows and stole it. They never removed features for any bullshit marketing reasons. It’s not perfect : there are things that I like better on macOS (but they tend to be very rare tbh) or even Gnome or whatever I’m trying nowadays (it’s Niri!)… but I do think KDE is the best overall when it comes to respecting its user, giving him nice and clean defaults while giving them enough options to work however they like to. And yes, that includes virtual desktops arranged in a custom grid. It’s not the default but the option is right there waiting for you to enable it if you want it.

seaal 4mo ago
Seriously, it's honestly pathetic at how little Microsoft and Apple have pushed UX in the past two decades. Something like quickshell-overview feels so smooth and delicious compared to the painful use of virtual desktops on Windows/MacOS. [0]: https://github.com/Shanu-Kumawat/quickshell-overview https://github.com/Shanu-Kumawat/quickshell-overview
MiddleEndian 4mo ago
I use KDE at home after leaving OS X when it became clear Apple became more interested in mobile OSes than desktop OSes, and using various combos of Linux and Windows for a bit. Gotta agree. Powerful, customizatable, and predictable at the same time.
ibejoeb 4mo ago
I would. I love linux desktop, but the apple hardware just smokes anything else. I've had a little success with asahi, but not enough to let me switch.

akdor1154 4mo ago

Questions for those who like the grid layout of virtual desktops - how does it (or should it?) interact with multi monitor setups? Feels like this would break or at least compromise the spatial metaphor. - Each monitor has own grid? - The VD 'spans' the pair of monitors? - VDs only on one monitor? - The monitors form a fixed 'window' into the grid? - Something else?

ranebo 4mo ago
I have a separate grid on each screen. Each with different grid sizes. I have a 3x3 grid on my main display a 2x2 grid on my display to the left and leave my laptop display with no grid constantly locked to my works video conference application. It works well for me, but as you can see from the comments everyone is different :)
OsrsNeedsf2P 4mo ago
I have a Kwin plugin so my laptop is always the same, but my external monitor is a grid. Iirc by default, KDE makes them all share the same grid

throwaway78321 4mo ago

p9wl: A 9P wayland compositor: https://12e.iwp9.org/papers/p9wl.pdf https://12e.iwp9.org/papers/p9wl.pdf Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRx75piIlxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRx75piIlxo

gjvc 4mo ago

Snow Leopard was peak OS X

datawars 4mo ago

I wish there were a way to sandbox apps with more granularity.

zx8080 4mo ago

Vote with your money and time! If you can, switch to Linux, choose the distro you like, and help make it better, in UI and whatnot.

ainiriand 4mo ago
I was a linux user for some time in my youth, then corporate appeared and with that the locked windows Thinkpads, the MacOS's and such. I am finally back in Linux at home and I find it so amazing, and all my video games work too!

zahirbmirza 4mo ago

I've been using macs since the Classic. I have used macs because the OS was rarely a limiting factor in my productivity. In fact, everything has always been made unobtrusive. Presently, there is misdirected focus at Apple. Most consumers will not have known better. But, that complacency has never been the way apple managed to innovate to be so ahead.

fnord77 4mo ago

isn't this just what 3-finger upswipe does???

momocowcow 4mo ago

Anything great starts with Japanese toilets

irusensei 4mo ago

Seems MacOS Snow Leopard is for the Apple people what Windows 7 is for Windows people.

leojfc 4mo ago

Yes, and I'd go a step further: OSes in general need a concept of a 'project' or 'task' or whatever, which a) cuts across apps and b) integrates deeply with windowing and spaces. Multitasking and context switching has been increasing for years, instant messaging boosted them again, and agent-based workflows are only going to push further in that direction. The OS needs to support that, and it's not an app-level concern: I use the same apps in each of my tasks. IDEs can help with this of course: they tend to have workspace/project primitives and can restore code and terminal contexts from those. But there's always a bunch of other connected stuff that can't be linked: web pages (some IDEs are starting to manage those too), agents which don't reside in the IDE, relevant chats with colleagues, project management apps and so on. This is clearly an OS-level concern, not an app-level concern. Some of the iPad experiments with alternative window organisation looked kind of promising, but they’re just not powerful or intuitive enough IMO.

ubercore 4mo ago
I make a version of this happen with Aerospace on macOS.
- leojfc 4mo ago
  Oh nice, looks awesome, I will give it a go!
- joenot443 4mo ago
  Thrilled to see it's FOSS. https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace
- boronine 4mo ago
  For anyone wondering, you can use Aerospace purely as a workspace switching solution without the tiling: https://www.boronine.com/2025/02/09/Instant-Workspace-Switching/ https://www.boronine.com/2025/02/09/Instant-Workspace-Switch...
  - WickyNilliams 4mo ago

rpastuszak 4mo ago

WM psychosis time: My current "WM workflow"/window management keyboard shortcuts is: neovim → tmux → Ghostty → Rectangle → OS so moving to the left window/pane is (depending on the "nesting level"): ctrl+h, ctrl+a + {number}, cmd + [, option-ctrl-left, ?? This is what happens when you spend years overthinking / fighting the walled garden UX. The sad part is that I'm kinda OK with this at this stage (besides 1-2 days a year, when my mental faculties are lowered and I decide to _fix it_). A global fzf / rectangle / alfred shortcut for all "windows and panes" would be great. Unfortunately, at this stage, my overthinking/poor ux induced psychosis reached the point where I control Claude using voice and a Playdate console with a crank and I'm day dreaming about just looking at the pane I need and making a click sound with my mouth to select it (like Neddy in Adventure time).

fragmede 4mo ago
> A global fzf alttab.app recently went paid, but it'll do that
- rpastuszak 4mo ago
  Thanks! Just checked their site, but I don't see "jump to a tmux pane / browser tab" in the features there...
menno-sh 4mo ago
> besides 1-2 days a year, when my mental faculties are lowered and I decide to _fix it_ God this is so recognizable, it's truly at my lowest moments that I decide I need a new terminal emulator and spend 6 hours in a brew install rabbit hole. The worst thing is that I'm still using Warp of all things

pistoriusp 4mo ago

Gonna reply guy here because this is a paid thing. Agree with the author. Exposé was amazing. Here's an open alternative that I built, completely keyboard driven: https://github.com/peterp/cmdcmd/ https://github.com/peterp/cmdcmd/

lanycrost 4mo ago

Interesting, but I will prefer more unified and i3 style way for that I use aerospace and many other tools which give me such experience https://github.com/lanycrost/home_is_everywhere https://github.com/lanycrost/home_is_everywhere

yubblegum 4mo ago

> [In my day job working with LLMs] The bulk of my time is spent reviewing This is depressing. I've been out of the field since Covid (after decade_s of work) and basically have to get back to work since kitty is gone, but this is definitely what I signed up for when I started on this career in software engineering. If I'm gonna be reviewing all day, I'd rather manage humans rather than LLMs. How is it affecting managing engineering teams?

rgoulter 4mo ago
> If I'm gonna be reviewing all day... I think the point is: Pre-LLM: 1. think, 2. write code & check, 3. review. LLM: 1. think, 2. write prompt, <LLM writes code quickly>, 3. review. If the thing that you enjoy about programming is writing code, you can have the LLM write code in the style you like. If you enjoyed getting to explore and understand a system, an LLM can help you do that quicker, too. "Use LLM without thinking" won't get you substantially useful results.

Shorel 4mo ago

The same applies to Linux. I remember the 2x2 grid in Ubuntu 12 being the best desktop UI I had ever used. The current Gnome workspaces with a single row are a huge step backwards in terms of productivity. It must be easier for beginners, but it frustrates me every single day.

kuschku 4mo ago
If you're attached to Gnome, this won't be a solution, but if you're willing to consider other options, KDE allows configuring the number of virtual desktops and their arrangement.
gbhdrew 4mo ago
[dead]

ahmetozer 4mo ago

Thank you, Great description. I have a similar feeling while on my work computer for switching between windows. For some reason when the number of windows are too much, full screen task switching is slowdowns (its not a case my personal work) So i made taskbar.ahmetozer.org my be it helps.

salahadawi 4mo ago

> Apparently what I wanted was a Merchant of Record. Someone to handle purchases, taxes and refunds. There seems to be three main companies providing this service: Paddle, GumRoad and Lemon Squeezy. I've used Lemon Squeezy a couple years back, but after the acquisition I feel they've gone downhill. It's been a month since I submitted my product for review and I'm still waiting. Stripe also has a MoR service now, I was able to set it up and ready to sell in a few hours

flenserboy 4mo ago

Apple has a strange habit of making the first version excellent, then finding ways to degrade the experience. The grid pattern of spaces is definitely one; Spotlight, as it appeared in Tiger, is another.

atombender 4mo ago

[dead]

joshstrange 4mo ago

There is no way I could have been as productive as I was on a 13" MBP back in the early 2010's without Spaces. I still vividly remember losing it [0] and spent a few years using various apps to re-implement the old-style spaces. The 2D -> 1D change is what killed it for me. I had amazing muscle memory of where everything was. Center screen is my browser, going left took my to my code editors, going right took me to my terminal, going down to my database GUI tool, and up for reference (second browser or photoshop design). I never had to think about where things were, I didn't feel constrained on my tiny screen with no external monitoring, things were good. And now it's been over a decade and while I've "replaced" spaces with multiple external monitors I still think about it from time to time. I watch people use (fight) the current "spaces" and I just shake my head thinking of what we lost and how Fisher-Price the new version is. Spaces used to be a power tool, now it's a shadow of its former self IMHO. [0] Single row spaces is a joke, I won't use it

Jyaif 4mo ago

> I’ve had feedback this name is terrible GridLion is an excellent name

evanjrowley 4mo ago

Like GridLion, there are a handful of macOS space organizers that attempt to confine specific apps to specific spaces. What would be most helpful for my workflow is something slightly different. I need to be able to launch specific browser profiles/windows in these workspaces. One space with all of the tabs for project X, another space with all of the tabs for project Y, and then another with all of the tabs for project Z. These might be in different browser profiles. I don't see how I can achieve this under the common per-app paradigm of macOS space organizers unless macOS has some notion of Windows/Linux style shortcuts whereby command line arguments can specify the exact things that need to be in the browser window.

alsetmusic 4mo ago

I genuinely could not believe it when they took away vertical spaces. Having to jump over extra screens made the feature useless to me. I stopped using it. It's impractical.

giancarlostoro 4mo ago

The Window Manager is the one thing I would rip out of macOS and shove in KDE's Window Management features if I could, it drives me crazy.

drob518 4mo ago

I’m convinced that the biggest threat to good UIs are the majority of professional UI designers. Think of it this way… Half of all UI designers are below the median. These people chose UI design as a career. You don’t advance your career by simply defending the status quo year after year. To advance you need to design something new. So, you do. You do whether whatever was there before is working well or not. Because what are you going to do, sit on your hands year after year? And because half of all UI designers are below the median, a new UI design has even odds of being a step backwards. And then you’re on stage yammering about Liquid Glass at an Apple launch event. One thing that makes me sad is that a lot of designers seem to focus on visuals and don’t seem to understand anything about usability. How many designers entering the workforce know what Fitts’s Law is, for instance? How many designers were standing in the breach against all of Liquid Glass’s usability issues, most of which were quite obvious? Honestly, with rare exceptions, the designers are the issue.

bitexploder 4mo ago
This assumes that every designer is on the bell curve at the big tech firms in the roles that can influence this. I am not defending modern UI/UX, but that is quite an assumption.
- drob518 4mo ago
  You're right, it is a big assumption, but it's not unfounded. I've worked at F50 companies and founded my own startup. It's a lot easier to get two really great designers from the far right side of the bell curve when you're a small startup. As an organization reaches even 1000 people, you're now starting to draw from the middle of the bell curve. In fact, you have to. If you try to hire only from the far right of the bell curve for all positions, you end up with a lot of egos that will clash. In the best case, you hire leaders from the far right of the bell curve and followers from the middle. But at some point those mediocre followers start asking for promotions and your hotshot leader leaves for greener pastures. Controlling for that in your hiring practices at a large organization is virtually impossible, particularly if you have standard (middle of the bell curve) HR people. BTW, this is exactly why startups out-execute large companies every day of the week. A small startup can carefully control its hiring, select from the right side of the bell curve, and avoid all the large company HR crap. But as soon as it starts to scale, the bell curve becomes a looming threat.

zimmund 4mo ago

The window (miss)management of MacOS is what's holding me from switching to Mac. I've already tried Aerospace and similar solutions, but I can't replicate the fast and unobstructed experience I have with i3wm. Sadly wm in MacOS is like notifications on iOS: with enough time you get used to the unproductive mess they are, but you'll be missing out on better solutions. And since probably all MacOS devs are using Mac, they won't see/understand other (better) approaches.

ahofmann 4mo ago
I switched to MacOS a few months ago from sway and I really try to be as open as possible to the mac way of life, because I don't want to fight my OS. But, boy, mission control is unusable crap. I was really shocked how dumb everything around this feature was made. Things that were possible a few years ago, are not possible anymore. Like switching to desktops/workspaces by keyboard. Or the grid. With the app "AltTab" I can at least switch between my apps without using the mouse and with raycast I can position windows, but it is painful how much slower switching and positioning things in MacOS is, than in any tiling window manager.

kgwxd 4mo ago

DE design was done in 1995. Any tiny advancements since have been entirely overshadowed by all the gigantic setbacks.

1xn 4mo ago

I still miss MacOS classic vibes, even System 7 was great to me. I'm not totally a fan of the whole new MacOS system, its amazing of course, not saying it's not. But I miss the simplicity of MacOS9 and how we customized our desktops with nice pixelart 32x32 icons!

brailsafe 4mo ago

I'm excited, thanks for spending your free time bringing back parts of mac that made it an OS that felt nice to use. I also hope Apple brings this back as a native feature, but until then, I hope you can make some $$ on the effort.

stasomatic 4mo ago

How much “tiling” and “mission controlling” do the civilians do or want to do anyway? I want to think close to zero. They are happy full-screening their Chrome on their Airs, bless their hearts, my wife included. I once attempted to demonstrate to her the brilliance of Alfred, Raycast, the new Spotlight, and she asked me if I forgot to take my meds. The ones who do want this flexibility is also close to zero (I’m in the demographic, so not zero). Kill “Mission Control” / “Spaces”, “Stage Manager”, free up system resources and unfreeze some APIs. Win-win, Mr Turnis.

firebot 4mo ago

I recall using litestep back in the 9x days. Loved this feature (virtual desktops.) Plus the wharfs were cool, imo.

gumboshoes 4mo ago

Forget all that. I want my stuff in text-based lists. Showing icons and file previews is way slower and less informative.

rustcleaner 4mo ago

Reading this article and comment section really makes me appreciate Qubes OS (XFCE4), lmao. 60 workspaces, in a 12x5 grid. You'll never catch me driving an Apple!

sandbags 4mo ago

I've never really used spaces, I remember them being introduced but they didn't really take for me. Anyway to see what all the fuss is about I've installed Gridlion but… how can I move an app to another space? I was expecting to be able use to a keystroke to "flick" an app up/down/left/right onto another space.