Comment by cosmic_cheese
1 day ago
As a long time Mac user, MDI has always felt like a stopgap to make up for the OS not having the ability to manage windows on a per-application basis (so for example, being able to hide all windows belonging to a particular application or move them all to another desktop/screen).
It also feels very foreign on macOS - Photoshop suddenly gained the MDI-type UI in like CS4 or something, after having let windows and palettes roam free on macs since Photoshop’s inception. I always turn it off, feels claustrophobic somehow.
I think that's still a little too restrictive. Sometimes you really do want multiple groups of windows that may belong to the same (think multiple browser windows each with multiple tabs) or different applications (e.g. grouped by task). It's not hard to see how the application marketplace leads to every app doing everything including managing all the things it does, but it's not good for the user.
Custom groupings is a nice feature too, but that feature can live happily alongside app groups. In fact I think the two would compliment each other nicely.
Well it subsumes app groups, I think? If anything app groups become just a default/prebuilt grouping policy.