Comment by staticassertion
5 days ago
I've been using a Mac basically full time for years now, due to work. It's easily the worst UX and it's sort of shocking, after decades of hearing "it just works" or whatever. Hidden windows, hidden desktops, obscure keyboard shortcuts, etc.
I actually don't even know how to use the mac for the most part, I've learned to live in the terminal. I contrast this with Linux where I can just... idk, browse files? Where windows don't suddenly "escape" into some other, hidden environment, where I can just use a computer in a very sane way, and if I want keyboard shortcuts they largely align with expectations.
I was extremely frustrated while on a call using a mac. I made the video call full screen, which then placed it onto essentially a "virtual monitor" (ie: completely hidden). I had no way to alt tab back to it, for whatever reason, and I had no way to actually recover the window in any of the usualy "window switching" means. I knew there was a totally undiscoverable gesture to see those things but I was docked so didn't have access to the trackpad.
I figured out if you go to the hidden dock at the bottom and select Chrome, as I recall, you can then get swapped back over to that virtual desktop, "un full screen" the window, and it returns to sanity.
Mac UX seems to go against literally every single guideline I can imagine. Invisible corners, heavily reliant on gestures, asymmetric user experiences (ie: I can press a button to trigger something, but there isn't a way to 'un trigger' it using the same sequence/ reverse sequence/ 'shift' sequence), ridiculous failure modes, etc.
I can't believe that people live like this. I think they don't know how bad they've got it, I routinely see mac users avoiding the use of 'full screen', something that I myself have had to learn to avoid on a mac, despite decades of having never given it a second thought.
MacOS definitely has its issues but this just makes it sound like you have different expectations of how an OS should work. Different isn’t always bad. Hiding applications is a pretty key concept in MacOS. Shortcuts are pretty straightforward? Cmd+H to hide, Cmd+Q to quit. Spaces aren’t hidden- there’s lots of ways to access them, but it seems you haven’t bothered to learn them. In your example pressing ctrl+right would have switched the first full screen space. You could also have right clicked the Chrome icon in the dock for a list of windows.
BTW the dock doesn’t have to be hidden, and idk if it was a typo but alt+tab isn’t a default shortcut. Command is the key used for system shortcuts, so maybe you should have tried that? Like yeah it’s different but that doesn’t make it bad. If you been using it for 10 years without figuring that out…
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I’m with you on the 1st party apps though, and the stupid corners on Tahoe.
I call it "alt tab" because that's how my brain maps the keyboard. The reality is simple - I struggled going from Windows to Ubuntu about 20 years ago but ultimately made it to the other side knowing how to use both well. With macs, I didn't. 10 years later and all of my adaptations are to avoid the operating system. In 10 years the main thing I've learned is how to get myself out of a jam and stick to the parts of the OS that don't feel like shit. I mean, it's not like I haven't learned these things, I know how to gesture, I know how to exit full screen, etc, it's not like I didn't ever learn, I'm explaining that the experience was dog shit.
Anyone is free to claim that I just didn't try, or didn't give it a fair shake, or perhaps I'm just some idiot who doesn't know computers or whatever.
Maybe I just think an OS should work differently, but okay? I've never said that I have some sort of access to a platonic ideal of objective operating systems and that macs don't meet it. I'm saying that I think it's bad and I gave examples of why. And I think I can easily appeal to my experiences seeing others use the OS - I don't think they find anything you're talking about appealing either.
> Hiding applications is a pretty key concept in MacOS. Shortcuts are pretty straightforward? Cmd+H to hide, Cmd+Q to quit. Spaces aren’t hidden- there’s lots of ways to access them, but it seems you haven’t bothered to learn them.
They're not talking about Cmd+H hiding or virtual desktops - those exist on Windows too. The issue is how macOS handles window placement with zero visual feedback.
For example, when you open a new window from a fullscreen app, it just silently appears on another space. No indicator, no notification. You're left guessing whether it even opened and where it went. The placement depends on arcane rules about space layout, fullscreen ordering, and external displays - and it's basically random half the time. You either memorize the exact behavior or manually search through all your spaces.
Years ago, they changed the behavior of the green button to be "fullscreen into a separate space." As someone who never uses spaces, this is never what I want.
You can escape it by moving your cursor to the top edge of the screen and clicking the green button on the titlebar that appears to exit fullscreen.
> Years ago, they changed the behavior of the green button to be "fullscreen into a separate space."
Not quite. It has the old behavior (grow to as large a window as supported) if the app does not support full-screen. For instance, the Settings app cannot grow wider, so it grows to full screen height.
The icon that appears when you hover over the green button reflects whether it is full screen or zoom behavior. If you hold option, you will always get zoom behavior IIRC. However, due to the green button being overridden to be a menu in Tahoe, the button icon may or may not reflect zoom/full screen behavior if you press/release option and may instead show the optional modifier on the options in the pop-up menu.
I do not believe there is a way to disable full screen behavior completely, nor spaces. However, I don't think I'd be able to survive working on a Mac without both so I haven't done a lot of investigation there.
If I recall, you just hold option whilst clicking the green button and you get the old behaviour
In this case, because I had docked my laptop, the entire window moved to a virtual desktop that didn't actually map to a real desktop. Meaning that the video call continued in a virtual desktop that I literally could not see, that I could not mouse over. I don't know if that's just a multiple-monitor bug or whatever but the behavior is stupid even without that failure mode.
Apple presumes you have a multitouch pointing device. You can three-finger-swipe between spaces. I know there's a keyboard equivalent, but you'd have to look it up.
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Here, return to sane behavior: https://blazingtools.com/right_zoom_mac.html
You're making multiple desktops sound very confusing when it's really not. Every desktop OS has them and macOS' implementation is quite good. You want bad virtual desktops, try Windows.
Maybe you're better suited for an iPad.
I've used multiple desktops before. I love virtual desktops. They really shouldn't be confusing. It's a testament to the bad UX of macs that they are.
The fact that a full screen window creates a whole new virtual desktop is hilarious and I dare you to justify it.
Appeals to "Windows is bad" or whatever mean nothing to me. Stupid comments like "get good" mean nothing to me.
It sounds like you don't actually want the app in fullscreen. Fullscreen is "I only want to be in this one app window with no distractions." I pretty much only use it for watching videos.
If you want the window taking up the entire screen while staying on the desktop, double click the window chrome and it'll expand to fill the screen. And if you want the dock not taking up space, there's a setting to auto hide the dock (which I always enable)
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> The fact that a full screen window creates a whole new virtual desktop is hilarious and I dare you to justify it.
I can kind of see the idea here. The alternative is that all the other windows in the working desktop get hidden behind the fullscreen window. That's pretty bad UX. I personally avoid it on Linux by always moving a window to its own desktop before fullscreening it.
That said, the implementation is awful, and exposes the rotten foundations of Mac's window management paradigm.
IMO floating windows always fall apart and should be reserved for modals and transient dialog boxes only. Everything gets a lot easier to understand when applications can't occlude one another or occupy the same space.
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Love Linux, been using Manjaro with Gnome for the last 10 years, but need to use Mac on my current job, so I tried to approach this constructively and work around the rough edges: * Rectangle Pro for window management * Better Display for better picture on non-4k display + a couple of more similar tools + retrainig muscle memory from Ctrl to Cmd and Emacs-y instead of Windows-y shortcuts
Feels okay now. Plus native ms365 apps, smooth sleep mode, great hardware and great battery time -- mac has its sweet spots as well.
> I figured out
Or you could maybe learn how to use the OS, in linux lingo RTFM. I don't want to be rude, but the critique was very flippant, the arguments vague, all about expectations based on years using a different OS, doesn't seem you want to give it a fair chance.
This is pretty funny.
> the arguments vague
I gave both generalized and highly specific cases where I felt the UX failed. I referenced principles of UX as well as literal "here is what my experience was in a concrete story".
> , all about expectations based on years using a different OS
No? I mean, again, funny. I explained how I've been using MacOS for years. Actually a decade, now that I count it out.
> doesn't seem you want to give it a fair chance.
a decade lol
Plenty of people use an OS for years without learning. And you admitted to spending time in the terminal, which indicates lack of will to try and learn macos shortcuts, gestures, windowing model, spaces, and so on. And the comment used sweeping generalizations, without referring to any specific principles broken which aren't just personal dislikes or unfamiliarity with a different way of doing things.
> I gave both generalized and highly specific cases where I felt the UX failed.
No guidelines named, no principles defined. No comparison standard is established.
The earlier fullscreen story is a specific case, maybe a discoverability argument, but not not that UX violates every principle. MacOS spaces and fullscreen apps follow a workspace concept, it's not a window resize mode.
> Asymmetric user experiences
What’s asymmetric is not the command — it’s the spatial context. The claim that it’s violated is arguable.
> Heavily reliant on gestures
Not sure which guidelines this breaks, but every gesture has a keyboard shortcut alternative, there is mission control key, menu bar, dock.
> Ridiculous failure modes
No failure mode is defined.
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And if you bring up these points to an Apple fanboy, they'll tell you that "you just don't get it" or "forget all the 'bad Windows habits' and just learn the Apple way of things. It's soooo intuitive!!".
> "forget all the 'bad Windows habits' and just learn the Apple way of things
I mean I'd be willing to say I don't get it, because I sure as fuck do not get it. But I think I'd absolutely reject the "forget all the other stuff, learn this". It's been literally years on a Mac. I remember the frustration of going from Windows to Linux, I look back at that adjustment and laugh, it's hilarious to me that that felt frustrating when I contrast to my Mac adjustment. At least the Linux adjustment was tractable, the Mac adjustment is a total joke.
I actually suspect that people don't "adjust" in the sense of learning how to do things with a mac but instead adjust to not doing things with a mac, like how many mac users I know of outright say they just don't use full screen mode because it's confusing.
And yes, the fullscreen mode is the perfect example. It is so shockingly poorly implemented that I almost never use it. Even if someone thought it was 'good enough', that doesn't change the fact that there is a forced transition animation when going to/from fullscreen that is unreasonably slow and awkward.
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Agreed. On MacOS, I use a variety of smaller apps and scripts to make it less awkward, e.g. Karabiner, BetterTouchTool, Hammerspoon, and, of course, "Alt-Tab" (https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/). I am even contemplating starting to use a dedicated window manager, such as Aerospace (https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace/). But all of this is a massive time investment.