3 ms·

I'm stuck trying to figure out what new stuff they could add. Sidecar was neat, but I never need it. I'm very happy on Cinnamon on Linux, which is probably less

by Telaneo 10d ago

I'm stuck trying to figure out what new stuff they could add. Sidecar was neat, but I never need it. I'm very happy on Cinnamon on Linux, which is probably less featured than KDE (haven't daily driven it to confirm), which just confirms I don't actually need or want user-facing new features. I need stability. I think Apple realise this. There are no genuine new OS features to be added, so they just shuffle things around so that things are changing and thus seem fresh and hip. For anyone who cares about stability and doesn't want to relearn everything they shuffle around, this is nothing but a negative, but Apple et al. have no other levers to pull (well, there's the AI lever, but that's also generally not a positive in and of itself). Maybe there are new OS features that could be useful, but creating and integrating them in a way that's actually helpful is just such an ordeal that nobody will do it.

ekun 10d ago
A functioning window system would drastically enhance OSX productivity.
- elAhmo 10d ago
  Someone who does need a window system can use many of the hundreds of tools available, or use something custom. Regular uses don't really care about window management systems.
- cosmic_cheese 10d ago
  Window management (and indeed, desktop environments in general) are rather subjective I think. As someone who's been using Macs in some capacity since 1996 I'd be upset if macOS suddenly resembled a traditional Windows desktop or tiling WM thing, and the absence of Mac-like desktops on Linux (no, GNOME and elementary/Pantheon are not that) is one of the primary factors keeping me from switching.
  - thefunnyman 10d ago
    Window management got better in Mac os but only recently with the addition of window snapping. You could do it before, but you had to drag from the green stoplight button which was an annoying mouse target vs the entire top bar. Personally I do like the windows approach where there's a bar at the top with a few preselected zones you can use that shows up when dragging a window but the state of things on Mac os now is fine enough that things like that can reasonably be left up to extensions. What exactly do you miss about the Mac desktops when using gnome's? For me the only thing I've noticed is lack of independent desktops per monitor though Windows also suffers that deficiency.
    - cosmic_cheese 10d ago
      > What exactly do you miss about the Mac desktops when using gnome's? For me the only thing I've noticed is lack of independent desktops per monitor though Windows also suffers that deficiency. No independent desktops is indeed a big one and irks me just as much under Windows (which somehow in 2026 still can't even set per-monitor desktop pictures without glueing images together in Paint). On a whole, GNOME is just too simplistic. Where the Mac Way™ (especially in the 2000s) is thoughtfully implemented progressive disclosure of advanced features, the GNOME Way™ is to check if they make the cut for the app's toolbar or "junk drawer" hamburger menu and if not, strip the feature entirely. It almost feels like they took a tablet OS and then adapted it somewhat to desktop use. That's the vibe I get from the DE itself as well as from the barebones (if pretty) apps that its community tends to produce. It's not as locked down as a tablet OS obviously — there's full fat Linux sitting underneath after all — but I'm always fighting it trying to turn it into a proper desktop experience with GNOME Tweaks and extensions (which constantly break). An easy way to see the difference in philosophies is to compare the number of settings surfaced in GNOME Settings to that of the settings app for any Mac OS made in the past 20 years. GNOME Settings offers relatively little to tweak where System (Preferences|Settings) has a list that's closer (though not as long) to that of the KDE Settings app. And of course, no global menubar. KDE lets users enable this but unfortunately many apps do not populate it.
      - bigyabai 10d ago
        > It almost feels like they took a tablet OS and then adapted it somewhat to desktop use. GNOME is designed to be touch-agnostic, which makes better use of padded UIs than macOS 11+ does. With a rumored touchscreen Macbook still coming down the line, I think GTK and the GNOME developers skated to where the puck was headed. macOS and iPadOS are both constrained for touchscreen users. GNOME is kinda the perfect UI for where Apple sees hardware converging. I don't think GNOME can adopt any more macOS idiosyncrasies without being a worse holistic experience. The Overview/search accelerator on the Super key is faster than Spotlight search. The desktop switcher is a better-supported use of the menubar than forcing an unsupported global cluster. GNOME could try to cram these round pegs into their square hole, but they know it wouldn't improve things.
  - armadyl 10d ago
    Same, I enjoy both the current macOS and iPadOS windowing systems. Everything else I tried on linux felt like an extreme downgrade.
  - Steltek 9d ago
    I find window management in macOS to be fundamentally broken. I heavily organize using workspaces and I don't understand why it does the things it does. Windows are opened on workspaces that aren't active and where those windows have never been present before. Changing workspaces on one monitor and activating a window will cause a different monitor's workspace to change (because that app had a window there). Sometimes newly opened windows appear with ~5 pixels visible on the screen (versus where that window was previously). It feels haunted or possessed by demons. Like it's a middle school bully trying be as frustrating as humanly possible.
    - cosmic_cheese 9d ago
      A lot of odd desktop/workspace behavior comes down to the OS confusing screens. It’s at its worst when one has 2+ of a monitor model that incorrectly reports the same EDID across all units of that model (surprisingly common). Some of it is also on app devs, who are responsible for implementing functions like saving/restoring window positions and sometimes misuse or overuse window/app activation. There are also a couple of bugs I’ve observed that I wish they’d fix but those are sporadic and not at all consistent.
dr_dshiv 10d ago
Something to improve my mess of ~22 active terminal windows comes to mind.
- Telaneo 10d ago
  Christ. On some level, this is probably something your terminal emulator should handle, just as your web browser should handle a mess of 22 tabs, but I don't think we've really come up with good solutions there either. It's hard to implement features nobody's though of.
  - dr_dshiv 10d ago
    Terminal should be responsibility of OS. God knows it’s deep enough. It could be so much better—and it matters! I know expecting UX innovation from Apple is laughable, but there was a time…
  - mijowi 10d ago
    Terminal emulators have tabs and windows already, even macOS’ built in terminal, so what do you mean?
    - Telaneo 9d ago
      That solutions like tabs should be the responsibility of the terminal emulator you're using, and not the greater OS.
      - fragmede 9d ago
        Should it? In terms of window management, what's ideal? Should every program have to implement tabs and then have its own tab manager, and bookmarks and favorites? If we take a step back and look at the bigger window management problem, what makes the most sense for most users? Monitors these days are relatively cheap, so the fight for screen real estate isn't the same problem as it once was. The onus is on the operating system to make it better for the user to arrange things how they want things to work.
- 10d ago
noir_lord 10d ago
Cinnamon was what I used before KDE, I like KDE a great deal but I also liked Cinnamon a great deal, if I had to go back it wouldn't cause me any issues, I only switched for Wayland support. So if you are happy on Cinnamon stay there (and it's Wayland support has caught up a lot). They both do an excellent job of not causing me pain, working the way I want and respecting me as a user, that's what a DE should be, if I have to consider the DE more than in passing it's failing at been a DE.
lambda_foo 10d ago
Early on with OSX I would update early because the new features in the OS were truely interesting (AFP, Dtrace, Spotlight, Early Siri, Messages sync with iPhone). Yes all very developer oriented, but I am a developer and that's primarily what I use my machines for. Releases like Snow Leopard and Tiger were full of novel features. Now I find most of the copy is dedicated to things I couldn't care less about like generative AI images or questionable redesigns of the UI. I would love a review of the new developer and OS level features for macOS releases. The WWDC content is close to unwatchable, it never goes into enough depth and the video only delivery is not the primary way I want to consume technical content. Give me the cool highlights of the virtualisation framework, what still works with Dtrace , explain the infernal code signing permissions system, etc. So far I've kept to Sequoia as the least annoying version, and avoided the Liquid Glass rounded corners mess.

by Telaneo 10d ago

ekun 10d ago

A functioning window system would drastically enhance OSX productivity.

elAhmo 10d ago
Someone who does need a window system can use many of the hundreds of tools available, or use something custom. Regular uses don't really care about window management systems.
cosmic_cheese 10d ago
Window management (and indeed, desktop environments in general) are rather subjective I think. As someone who's been using Macs in some capacity since 1996 I'd be upset if macOS suddenly resembled a traditional Windows desktop or tiling WM thing, and the absence of Mac-like desktops on Linux (no, GNOME and elementary/Pantheon are not that) is one of the primary factors keeping me from switching.
- thefunnyman 10d ago
  Window management got better in Mac os but only recently with the addition of window snapping. You could do it before, but you had to drag from the green stoplight button which was an annoying mouse target vs the entire top bar. Personally I do like the windows approach where there's a bar at the top with a few preselected zones you can use that shows up when dragging a window but the state of things on Mac os now is fine enough that things like that can reasonably be left up to extensions. What exactly do you miss about the Mac desktops when using gnome's? For me the only thing I've noticed is lack of independent desktops per monitor though Windows also suffers that deficiency.
  - cosmic_cheese 10d ago
    > What exactly do you miss about the Mac desktops when using gnome's? For me the only thing I've noticed is lack of independent desktops per monitor though Windows also suffers that deficiency. No independent desktops is indeed a big one and irks me just as much under Windows (which somehow in 2026 still can't even set per-monitor desktop pictures without glueing images together in Paint). On a whole, GNOME is just too simplistic. Where the Mac Way™ (especially in the 2000s) is thoughtfully implemented progressive disclosure of advanced features, the GNOME Way™ is to check if they make the cut for the app's toolbar or "junk drawer" hamburger menu and if not, strip the feature entirely. It almost feels like they took a tablet OS and then adapted it somewhat to desktop use. That's the vibe I get from the DE itself as well as from the barebones (if pretty) apps that its community tends to produce. It's not as locked down as a tablet OS obviously — there's full fat Linux sitting underneath after all — but I'm always fighting it trying to turn it into a proper desktop experience with GNOME Tweaks and extensions (which constantly break). An easy way to see the difference in philosophies is to compare the number of settings surfaced in GNOME Settings to that of the settings app for any Mac OS made in the past 20 years. GNOME Settings offers relatively little to tweak where System (Preferences|Settings) has a list that's closer (though not as long) to that of the KDE Settings app. And of course, no global menubar. KDE lets users enable this but unfortunately many apps do not populate it.
    - bigyabai 10d ago
      > It almost feels like they took a tablet OS and then adapted it somewhat to desktop use. GNOME is designed to be touch-agnostic, which makes better use of padded UIs than macOS 11+ does. With a rumored touchscreen Macbook still coming down the line, I think GTK and the GNOME developers skated to where the puck was headed. macOS and iPadOS are both constrained for touchscreen users. GNOME is kinda the perfect UI for where Apple sees hardware converging. I don't think GNOME can adopt any more macOS idiosyncrasies without being a worse holistic experience. The Overview/search accelerator on the Super key is faster than Spotlight search. The desktop switcher is a better-supported use of the menubar than forcing an unsupported global cluster. GNOME could try to cram these round pegs into their square hole, but they know it wouldn't improve things.
- armadyl 10d ago
  Same, I enjoy both the current macOS and iPadOS windowing systems. Everything else I tried on linux felt like an extreme downgrade.
- Steltek 9d ago
  I find window management in macOS to be fundamentally broken. I heavily organize using workspaces and I don't understand why it does the things it does. Windows are opened on workspaces that aren't active and where those windows have never been present before. Changing workspaces on one monitor and activating a window will cause a different monitor's workspace to change (because that app had a window there). Sometimes newly opened windows appear with ~5 pixels visible on the screen (versus where that window was previously). It feels haunted or possessed by demons. Like it's a middle school bully trying be as frustrating as humanly possible.
  - cosmic_cheese 9d ago
    A lot of odd desktop/workspace behavior comes down to the OS confusing screens. It’s at its worst when one has 2+ of a monitor model that incorrectly reports the same EDID across all units of that model (surprisingly common). Some of it is also on app devs, who are responsible for implementing functions like saving/restoring window positions and sometimes misuse or overuse window/app activation. There are also a couple of bugs I’ve observed that I wish they’d fix but those are sporadic and not at all consistent.

dr_dshiv 10d ago

Something to improve my mess of ~22 active terminal windows comes to mind.

Telaneo 10d ago
Christ. On some level, this is probably something your terminal emulator should handle, just as your web browser should handle a mess of 22 tabs, but I don't think we've really come up with good solutions there either. It's hard to implement features nobody's though of.
- dr_dshiv 10d ago
  Terminal should be responsibility of OS. God knows it’s deep enough. It could be so much better—and it matters! I know expecting UX innovation from Apple is laughable, but there was a time…
- mijowi 10d ago
  Terminal emulators have tabs and windows already, even macOS’ built in terminal, so what do you mean?
  - Telaneo 9d ago
    That solutions like tabs should be the responsibility of the terminal emulator you're using, and not the greater OS.
    - fragmede 9d ago
      Should it? In terms of window management, what's ideal? Should every program have to implement tabs and then have its own tab manager, and bookmarks and favorites? If we take a step back and look at the bigger window management problem, what makes the most sense for most users? Monitors these days are relatively cheap, so the fight for screen real estate isn't the same problem as it once was. The onus is on the operating system to make it better for the user to arrange things how they want things to work.
10d ago

noir_lord 10d ago

Cinnamon was what I used before KDE, I like KDE a great deal but I also liked Cinnamon a great deal, if I had to go back it wouldn't cause me any issues, I only switched for Wayland support. So if you are happy on Cinnamon stay there (and it's Wayland support has caught up a lot). They both do an excellent job of not causing me pain, working the way I want and respecting me as a user, that's what a DE should be, if I have to consider the DE more than in passing it's failing at been a DE.

lambda_foo 10d ago

Early on with OSX I would update early because the new features in the OS were truely interesting (AFP, Dtrace, Spotlight, Early Siri, Messages sync with iPhone). Yes all very developer oriented, but I am a developer and that's primarily what I use my machines for. Releases like Snow Leopard and Tiger were full of novel features. Now I find most of the copy is dedicated to things I couldn't care less about like generative AI images or questionable redesigns of the UI. I would love a review of the new developer and OS level features for macOS releases. The WWDC content is close to unwatchable, it never goes into enough depth and the video only delivery is not the primary way I want to consume technical content. Give me the cool highlights of the virtualisation framework, what still works with Dtrace , explain the infernal code signing permissions system, etc. So far I've kept to Sequoia as the least annoying version, and avoided the Liquid Glass rounded corners mess.