[HN Gopher] The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe
___________________________________________________________________
The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe
Author : happosai
Score : 2708 points
Date : 2026-01-11 20:47 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (noheger.at)
(TXT) w3m dump (noheger.at)
| troupo wrote:
| From " _Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess_ "
| https://morrick.me/archives/9368 from 5 years ago:
|
| --- start quote ---
|
| The utter user-interface butchery happening to Safari on the Mac
| is once again the work of people who put iOS first. People who by
| now think in iOS terms. People who view the venerable Mac OS user
| interface as an older person whose traits must be experimented
| upon, plastic surgery after plastic surgery, until this person
| looks younger. Unfortunately the effect is more like this person
| ends up looking... weird.
|
| These people look at the Mac's UI and (that's the impression, at
| least) don't really understand it. Its foundations come from a
| past that almost seems inscrutable to them. Usability cues and
| features are all wrinkles to them. iOS and iPadOS don't have
| these strange wrinkles, they muse. We must hide them. We'll make
| this spectacular facelift and we'll hide them, one by one. Mac OS
| will look as young (and foolish, cough) as iOS!
|
| --- end quote ---
|
| At the time it was only Safari that they wanted to "modernize".
| Now it's the full OS.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| tribunals
|
| the cherry on top is the delay between the drag start and the
| window begining to resize
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| Of all the Linux features to copy, they chose this.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Shortly after Windows 10 came out I was joking that Microsoft
| finally made a Linux distribution (by replicating all the
| jankiness we usually associate with it).
|
| Now I guess it's Apple's turn.
| Rygian wrote:
| Wait, they implemented Alt-Drag/Right drag?
| chungy wrote:
| I believe the parent is referring to how GNOME 3.0 had some
| really bad resizing grabs. Single-pixel widths at the edges,
| and almost impossible to hit corners.
|
| Latter versions significantly improved it.
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| Has been a major issue for me with Xfce and Gnome over the
| years, mostly just switched window managers.
| jwrallie wrote:
| Xfce is just ridiculous, it has 1px thin area to grab,
| and last time I checked they just mentioned you should
| use alt right click instead.
| ginko wrote:
| I was about to suggest Xfce as an example where window
| resizing is effortless due to the <super>+<right click>
| behavior. You can just grab the rough sector of a window
| to resize it.
|
| Any reason why you're not using it?
| duskwuff wrote:
| Sort of! Cmd + Ctrl + drag moves windows now.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| I actually wish macOS would clone Alt-dragging from anywhere to
| drag and Alt-right clicking to resize from anywhere from Linux
| (at least GNOME and KDE Plasma have this built-in). That would
| certainly solve most of the complaints in the original post.
| duskwuff wrote:
| macOS has Cmd + Ctrl + drag to move windows. Alt + drag seems
| unlikely given that it's already often used for "copy"
| actions.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| I just tried that on Tahoe (26.2) and it didn't drag the
| window with Ctrl+Cmd+drag. Is it supposed to work on all
| windows?
| duskwuff wrote:
| Oddly, the one thing it _doesn 't_ work on for me is the
| main area of the System Preferences window. Everything
| else I've tried seems to work, though.
| trymas wrote:
| It's sort of hidden feature (I could bet that before
| "system preferences.app" redesign you could have found it
| there, but I don't see it anymore).
|
| This comment explains how to do it:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46585551
| flohofwoe wrote:
| KDE doesn't actually suffer from this problem.
| oxguy3 wrote:
| *GNOME features, not Linux features. No such issues over here
| on KDE.
|
| I have often felt like GNOME is the most Apple-y of desktop
| environments; they're very form over function. Not surprising
| to me at all that both would pick a design that seems beautiful
| until you try to use it.
| pwg wrote:
| Indeed, no such "invisible drag areas" here either using just
| FVWM2.
| MattDamonSpace wrote:
| Darkest before the dawn
| herpdyderp wrote:
| Dawn of the year of the Linux desktop!
| VerifiedReports wrote:
| Apple's window management has always sucked, with the absurdly
| crippled resizing being a longstanding embarrassment.
|
| Into the 2000s, the only way you could resize a window on the Mac
| was to drag its lower-right corner. That is it. NO other corner,
| and no edge. So if the lower-right corner happened to be off-
| screen because the window was bigger than the screen, you were
| kind of screwed. You had to fiddle with the maximize & restore
| gumdrops to trick the OS into resizing the window to make that
| ONE corner accessible. Then you had to move the corner, then roll
| all the way up to the title bar and move the window, then roll
| back down to the corner... until you had the window sized and
| positioned as you wanted.
|
| When Apple grudgingly added proper window-resizing, it made it as
| obscure as possible. Since Apple remains ignorant of the value of
| window FRAMES, there is no obvious zone within which the resizing
| cursor should take effect. There is no visual target for the
| user. This has always made an important and fundamental part of a
| windowed GUI a ridiculous pain in the ass on Macs.
|
| And as the author here notes, it has gotten even worse. Not only
| will the window often refuse to resize, but you'll wind up
| activating whatever app lies behind the window you're trying to
| resize... hiding the one you were dealing with.
| lifetimerubyist wrote:
| i haven't resized a window with a mouse in almost a decade
| chipheat wrote:
| Curious, how do you resize windows instead?
| lifetimerubyist wrote:
| ....with a keyboard? on macos I use Rectangle, on linux I
| just use the built-in resizing keyboard shortcuts
| dhosek wrote:
| I use rectangle on my mac for window resizing and generally
| keep most windows in the sizes that come by default with
| that.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| "I downloaded a separate application to make resizing
| windows easier" is not a point in favor of MacOS's window
| resizing decisions.
| spartanatreyu wrote:
| True, but macos x has never had good window resizing
| decisions.
| lifetimerubyist wrote:
| I never said macOS has good window management.
| Daneel_ wrote:
| On windows at least, I almost always use 'alt+space; x' to
| maximise windows, as well as winkey+left/right/up/down, which
| is really the only resizing I do. Having to use the mouse is
| a pain.
| signal11 wrote:
| Tahoe is a macOS mis-step on par with Windows 8 or Windows Vista.
| If you're from Apple and reading this, my feedback is pretty
| succinct: "I don't recommend others upgrade. I wish I didn't."
|
| Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is not exactly in a position to
| attract switchers.
|
| Let's see if Apple can turn things around. iOS 8+ did improve on
| iOS 7's worst bits.
| GrowingSideways wrote:
| Can you interpret this comment for those of us that haven't
| used windows? All i can recall from "vista" is that it looked
| good
| ianbutler wrote:
| MetroUI in Windows 8 was pretty universally panned. I thought
| it was pretty good on tablets and such, but it left a lot to
| be desired on desktops and hid a lot of functionality, it
| went too mobile for a lot of people's tastes.
|
| Disclaimer: I was one of the dozens who used a windows phone.
| The Nokia Lumia 920 was great, you can fight me.
| stevage wrote:
| I think a lot of people liked the Windows mobile
| experience. Shame it didn't quite get enough market share.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Resetting the app ecosystem 3 fucking times by breaking
| app compatibility didn't help. Windows Phone 7 - Windows
| Phone 8 -> Windows (Phone?) 10.
| ulbu wrote:
| i guess they needed to release all that pent up backwards
| incompatibility
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| You joke, but I honestly wonder if this period and
| projects didn't involve a bunch of Microsoft employees
| who got a little overexcited when they were told that
| they didn't need to maintain the insane, sometimes bug-
| for-bug, compatibility layers with 20-40 year old
| software that they had had to deal with their entire
| career there.
|
| Must have felt incredibly liberating, and maybe they got
| a little too into the whole idea of "fresh start"(s).
|
| See also Windows RT.
| hyperrail wrote:
| Wrong. There was full app compat of WP7 apps in WP8 and
| Win10 Mobile, and for WP8 apps in W10M. The only full
| backward app compat break was from WM6.5/WP6.5 to WP7.
|
| I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're
| thinking of the lack of device OS upgrades: from WP6.5 to
| WP7, from WP7 to WP8, and from older WP8 devices to W10M.
| So no forward compat, but absolutely yes to backward
| compat.
| sirwhinesalot wrote:
| That's not what they mean. As a developer, the API you
| used to develop your app was now deprecated with no
| migration path. That meant your app was deprecated, with
| no migration path.
|
| For an app platform already a distant third place and
| struggling to attract developers, pissing off the few
| devs you do have TWICE was not a smart move.
| hyperrail wrote:
| Even then, that happened at most twice as you say, not
| three times as the other poster said.
|
| And I disagree with your implicit claim that the WP7 &
| WP8 Silverlight -> Win10 UWP transition had no migration
| path. There was >= 90% source code similarity, bolstered
| if you had already adopted the Win8.1/WP8.1 "universal"
| project templates. And Microsoft provided tooling to ease
| the transition. Sometimes it was literally just
| s/Microsoft.Phone/Windows.UI/g.
|
| Games were a different matter, I'll admit. XNA as an app
| platform had no direct replacement that was binary
| compatible with Win10 desktop, but even then, not only
| was DirectX already available from WP8.0, but Microsoft
| invested in MonoGame as an XNA replacement precisely
| because they knew the end of XNA would hit hard. (In fact
| it was the Windows Phone division that had essentially
| kept XNA on life support in its final years so that WP7
| games would not break.)
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| "the API you used to develop your app was now deprecated
| with no migration path."
|
| Seems that's the standard now for .NET desktop dev. Every
| 2 or 3 years MS crank out a new XAML based framework
| that's not compatible with the previous and never gets
| completed before a new framework comes out.
| sirwhinesalot wrote:
| Nobody in their right mind should be touching any
| Microsoft provided API that isn't already well
| established (like Win32 and Direct3D).
|
| I'm happy they're at least maintaining (to a limited
| extent) Windows Forms and WPF and updating their styles
| to fit with their fancy Fluent design.
|
| But even that is a pretty sad state of affairs, since
| Windows Forms should be able to get that info from
| uxtheme (which Microsoft fumbled) and WPF should be able
| to get that info from the style distributed with the
| system-installed .NET framework (which Microsoft fumbled
| and now only exists for backcompat).
|
| For the company with the best track record for backwards
| compatibility (with Windows), they sure suck at
| developing and evolving the same API for long.
| its-summertime wrote:
| Windows 8 featured a notable paradigm shift from a menuing
| launcher (click start, programs, then the program you want,
| as an example), to a full screen launcher (Think Android and
| iOS). And also switched from floating windows (The default
| for most Linux distros and for Mac AFAIK) to rudimentary
| tiling windows (Think Android and iOS)
|
| https://youtu.be/RuuqEZnvEoU?t=30
| airstrike wrote:
| from my own personal experience, Vista was very slow and
| buggy at launch, but it did get better over time
| nntwozz wrote:
| Apple had one of the most successful and known ad campaigns
| "I'm a mac and I'm a PC" ridiculing Windows Vista, they
| pretty much summed it up in those.
|
| Getting to Windows 11 today, they have ads in the Start menu.
| Not exactly appealing to the Apple crowd...
| Gigachad wrote:
| They also ridiculed the permissions popups. But now when I
| plug my AirPods to charge on my MacBook it opens a
| permissions popup.
| locusofself wrote:
| yet there is no way to get my iPhone to stop auto-
| switching bluetooth audio between my devices. Any time I
| get in my car, my headphones connect to the car and I
| have to switch it back. So annoying
| nntwozz wrote:
| This was added in iOS 26.
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2025/12/08/ios-26-new-airpods-
| setting-ca...
|
| In iOS 26, you can keep audio playing with your
| headphones by enabling the new "Keep Audio with
| Headphones" setting, found in Settings > General >
| AirPlay & Continuity, which stops audio from
| automatically switching to nearby devices like car
| stereos or Bluetooth speakers when you're already
| connected to your headphones.
|
| This setting, which is off by default, ensures your
| music, calls, or podcasts stay with your AirPods or
| wireless headphones, preventing frustrating interruptions
| when you start your car or enter a room with another
| speaker.
| allarm wrote:
| Thanks! Though the funny thing - it's not possible to
| search for this option using the search bar in settings -
| it doesn't show any results for "keep audio" ) I'm on
| 26.1
| locusofself wrote:
| AWESOME, thanks for the tip
| dlivingston wrote:
| Microsoft's Copilot AI software has been integrated in every
| corner of the operating system, from the start menu to the
| notepad to settings. Beyond the intrusiveness of it, it also
| does not work very well. Other AI mishaps include Recall,
| which takes screenshots of your desktop every so often, and
| the original version of Recall stored these in an
| unencrypted, insecure database.
|
| On top of that, the OS feels more bloated and disorganized
| than ever, with something like six different UI frameworks
| all present in various spots on the OS; system settings are
| scattered across the Settings app (new) and various legacy
| panels like Control Panel and Network Connections.
|
| What else... Microsoft now requires an online connection and
| Microsoft account to sign in to your PC; no more local-only
| accounts allowed.
|
| I'm sure there's more I'm missing. It's not a pleasant
| operating system.
| Wistar wrote:
| I added a local-only account to a Win 11 Pro box just two
| days ago. Nothing seems different to me--the usual horsing
| around with the no online account stuff but it let me
| create the account.
| esseph wrote:
| Pro will allow it. Home which is what comes with most
| computers, does not now.
| timpera wrote:
| I find that it is quite a pleasant operating system!
|
| Recall is turned off by default and Copilot never nags you
| to use it (like Gemini on Chromebooks/Google Search/Google
| Docs does).
|
| I completely agree with the UI frameworks thing though.
| They really need to remove the Control Panel.
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| > They really need to remove the Control Panel.
|
| ... they really need to provide 100% coverage to all the
| same settings, THEN remove the control panel.
| GrowingSideways wrote:
| > I find that it is quite a pleasant operating system!
|
| Pleasant compared to what? Older versions of windows?
| linux, or macs? This is the first positive review I've
| ever heard.
| donny2018 wrote:
| Most people are fine with Windows, including myself. I
| find it a good business workhorse with excellent
| productivity features that I can rely upon, knowing that
| it will handle pretty much any task I throw at it.
|
| Another factor vs Mac (for me) is that if something to
| happen to my ThinkPad while I'm at a factory somewhere in
| rural Uzbekistan, there is always a store in the nearby
| city where I can grab a Windows laptop for like $400 and
| continue with the job, and/or have my machine serviced.
|
| Windows has enormous userbase, and obviously you'll hear
| a high absolute number of criticisms, especially
| considering that those who actively dislike the OS for
| whatever reason will take take their time to bring their
| frustrations online, and those who are fine with it
| rarely comment about it.
| GrowingSideways wrote:
| Can you explain what a thinkpad is?
| donny2018 wrote:
| Lenovo ThinkPad laptop.
| type0 wrote:
| It would all be good and all but Windows is now
| completely unreliable,it's not a workhorse when it breaks
| itself with updates and removes the drivers
| donny2018 wrote:
| I hear people say that, but I'm yet to see what's
| unreliable about Windows. I'm running Windows 11 with
| latest updates on my ThinkPad X1 Carbon, and it hasn't
| ever failed me, not even once. It has been solid as a
| rock for me.
|
| Windows laptops vary in hardware quality and software
| support significantly, maybe that's where issues arise
| for some people?
| timpera wrote:
| Compared to both Windows 10 and macOS 26 (my desktop
| computer is a Mac Mini M4 and I really regret updating it
| to Tahoe).
|
| Linux obviously has its strengths, so I have a dual boot
| with the latest Fedora, but I almost always end up using
| W11, even for personal use.
| p_ing wrote:
| I don't have Copilot in my start menu. It's in Notepad, but
| that is the only place I've found it. This is on 25H2.
|
| > original version of Recall stored these in an
| unencrypted, insecure database.
|
| Why do you bother mentioning it, given that's been long
| rectified and that particular version never made it to the
| production ring?
|
| > six different UI frameworks all present in various spots
| on the OS
|
| Windows has always been like this. It wasn't until Windows
| 11 that the Font dialog was upgraded from a Win 3.x look
| and feel.
|
| > no more local-only accounts allowed.
|
| Just false.
| Novosell wrote:
| Windows 8 was when Microsoft tried to cater more towards
| Windows-on-tablet use cases. Which lead to everyone,
| including desktop users, having a fullscreen phone-style app
| menu take the place of the old start menu. This, for desktop
| use, is obviously quite disruptive and was hated by everyone.
|
| They addressed most issues in the 8.1 update, like a year
| later I think.
| doubled112 wrote:
| You know what was worse than desktop users? Server users
| via RDP.
|
| There was no start button. There are no screen edges to
| swipe in from. Hot corners are really hard to hit. I still
| can't believe somebody said "yes, good idea" to using that
| UI for Server 2012.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I RDP'd into a Windows Server VM a year or so ago and got
| a full-screen popup for Edge or some shit like that.
|
| If that wasn't bad enough, the popup was a web view,
| meaning none of RDP's acceleration/client-side
| compositing was in play and I was greeted with a ~1fps
| slideshow.
| einr wrote:
| Off the top of my head: Windows Vista was slow and unstable
| on a lot of hardware of the time due to significantly higher
| system requirements than XP and a new display driver model
| that worked poorly at first, had a very polarizing look, and
| had quite overbearing UAC -- where XP would just let you do
| the thing, Vista would ask you three times if you're really
| really sure you wanted to authorize it.
|
| It had decent bones though -- arguably a lot of its bad
| reputation was due to hardware/third party driver issues and
| people trying to run it on old hardware that just couldn't
| hack it. Windows 7 was well received and is basically the
| same thing with small improvements and some of the UX issues
| smoothed over (i.e. less annoying UAC)
| overfeed wrote:
| Windows Vista was also notorious for going overboard with
| translucency effects in the default "Aero" style
| xmddmx wrote:
| My memory is that it was named "Aero Glass" which
| heightens the irony of "Liquid Glass" sucking.
|
| But I see many references to it being called just "Aero",
| but some call it "Aero Glass" [1]
|
| Does anyone know the truth?
|
| [1] https://www.pcmag.com/archive/rip-aero-glass-
| windows-8-stick...
| overfeed wrote:
| Microsoft marketing maybhave had a specific preference,
| but "Aero" and "Aero Glass" are interchangeable. From the
| same article you linked:
|
| > "Rest in peace, Aero. I liked you, a lot. Still do. And
| I'll miss you," Thurrott writes
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The Vista comparison is unfair. I think a lot of the bad rap
| Vista got was from trying to run it on underpowered hardware
| thanks to marketing XP-era machines as "Windows Vista
| Capable". I actually ran it on good HW (the kind that could
| run Crysis) and I didn't have anything bad to say.
|
| Yes, UAC could be considered as annoyance by some but it's no
| different than "sudo" on single-user Linux machines and we
| seemingly have no problems with that (I wish we'd move on
| past that because it is damn annoying and offers no security
| benefit).
|
| Comparing Vista to modern macOS is insulting. Vista didn't
| have that level of jank and the UIs were actually quite good,
| consistent and with reasonable information density, unlike
| "System Settings" or shitty Catalyst apps.
| ziml77 wrote:
| > Yes, UAC could be considered as annoyance by some but
| it's no different than "sudo" on single-user Linux machines
| and we seemingly have no problems with that (I wish we'd
| move on past that because it is damn annoying and offers no
| security benefit).
|
| It was wild to me when I was testing out if I wanted to
| move over to Linux as my full-time desktop OS how much it
| was asking for my password. And it didn't even have a
| mechanism to make it a little less painful such as
| requesting a short PIN (which I think is a fine option as
| long as a few incorrect PIN entries forces full password
| input).
| smrq wrote:
| Give your user NOPASSWD if it's really that bothersome.
| You can also potentially set it up to use a fingerprint
| reader if you have that hardware.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Yep on the terminal that would work... though I still
| think it should be the default.
|
| On the other hand I'm not sure NOPASSWD would affect
| desktop environments - any desktop stuff goes via
| PolicyKit or whatever the latest systemd iteration is and
| I doubt it's smart enough to read Sudo's config (and
| there's an argument it shouldn't - if anything it should
| be the other way around, a system-wide generic "this is
| single-user machine, the only user is effectively root
| anyway" flag that both Sudo and Polkit should obey).
|
| In both cases yes it's solvable, but I wish it became the
| default if there are no other interactive user accounts,
| or at least be easy to configure - if anything, by a
| simple "don't ask me again" on the permissions popup.
| realusername wrote:
| You had way more issues than that on launch, performance of
| 3d games sucked compared to XP with the same hardware (I
| remember at least a 30% decrease of FPS) and usb file
| transfers were so borked you probably had half of the speed
| of XP transfering on a usb key (which was the primary
| method of transfering files at the time).
|
| The UAC wasn't even the main problem, the overall
| performance of Vista was, everything was so much slower.
| dont__panic wrote:
| It's even sadder. Apple has some of the best-performing
| CPUs on the market. And even with that kind of power under
| the hood, iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 26 chug and choke and drop
| frames. What the hell hardware did they target?
| lunar_rover wrote:
| Vista had the right direction, Windows 7 merely continued on
| it and it became one of the best operating systems ever.
|
| Windows 8 design wasn't bad per se, but they shipped the
| start screen when it lacks even the most basic features, so
| you'll return to legacy desktop the moment you want to do
| anything.
|
| I don't think any of them are like Tahoe TBH.
| nntwozz wrote:
| Not to beat on my own drum but as a mac convert from the days
| of Tiger I saw the writing on the wall from miles away.
|
| Still on iOS 18 and macOS 15 (Sequoia). I was a day one
| upgrader up until now, never had any regrets but this time
| things seemed very different.
|
| It's worrisome but all is not lost, I'll start sweating for
| real if next year's releases don't improve things
| substantially.
| nextos wrote:
| The Tiger to Snow Leopard era was fantastic. Things were
| simple and worked.
|
| There was also a great boutique apps ecosystem.
|
| Right now, it seems that macOS is going through its
| enshittification phase, sadly.
| stevage wrote:
| I still remember Snow Leopard - I think that's when I
| started using Mac.
|
| Most of the upgrades since then I have resisted and not
| enjoyed, though I seem to recall liking Mavericks.
|
| A lot of the big features each time seem to be about tieing
| further into the Apple ecosystem, which doesn't interest me
| at all, since I have no other devices and don't use iCloud.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Tiger to Snow Leopard era was fantastic. Things were
| simple and worked_
|
| Was it also great for developers? (Genuine question.)
| billylo wrote:
| xcode has been getting better bit-by-bit. No major
| regression.
| zokier wrote:
| I'm not mac dev but wasn't apple all in on objc back then
| and these days it's more swift? that is pretty big shift,
| I'd assume for the better for most parts.
| debo_ wrote:
| I prefer Swift as a language, but Apple's developer
| documentation back then was clear, detailed, and overall
| excellent. Occasionally I felt like I was reading a
| classic CS text rather than a manual. I could always find
| the guide on the particular facet I was looking for
| within a few clicks.
| wk_end wrote:
| Yeah, OS X was definitely the nicest native development
| experience at the time. Apple's documentation was
| considerably better and more searchable back then than it
| is now (especially as it is now for desktop). And even
| though they've introduced lots of niceties (including
| Swift), as Apple's piled additional features and APIs
| into Cocoa/Xcode I find the overall experience quite a
| bit less coherent or intuitive or ergonomic than it used
| to be.
| sandbags wrote:
| Pretty much. Xcode was quirky but it still is. But the
| frameworks were well documented and 1 Cocoa book could
| get you a long way. I loved building Obj-C/Cocoa apps
| back then.
| zokier wrote:
| I think also that Snow Leopard era (unibody) MacBook Pro
| design was peak Mac. It was really full-featured while also
| having clean intentional design.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| Tiger on a G4 tibook was peak apple.
| port11 wrote:
| Snow Leopard was spectacular. Rock solid, I never had a
| single problem with the OS. Lots of third-party developers
| making good software helped, I think shortly after (Lion?)
| I bought Things, Little Snitch, Sketch, and Alfred.
| testfrequency wrote:
| Maybe you didn't catch this yet, but Apple pulled their
| latest iOS 18.7.3 update and they seem to only promote iOS 26
| now. They really want everyone off iOS 18 :/
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2026/01/07/hundreds-.
| ..
| cr1895 wrote:
| You can sign up for Apple beta and keep doing iOS 18
| updates.
| oreilles wrote:
| Nope, they don't sign iOS 18 updates anymore.
| Foivos wrote:
| There are many reports that since around Christmas day,
| you can not do this any more on phones that support iOS
| 26. Updating to iOS 26 is the only option now.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I may suggest the other option is to buy an iPhone not
| supporting iOS 26.
|
| - an happy iOS 15 user
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| Not anymore. Tried this but the pulled 18.7.3 for beta
| upgrades too.
| MarleTangible wrote:
| They don't allow you to upgrade to iOS 18.7.3 if your
| device supports iOS 26.
| rconti wrote:
| Same I'm on iOS 26 and it's reasonably bad but I figured I
| might as well pull of the band-aid and have app
| compatibility.
|
| I can't see a single reason to upgrade to Tahoe. We'll see
| what 2026 brings.
| shawnz wrote:
| One huge benefit of Tahoe for me is that you can now hide
| any menubar icon, even if they don't explicitly support
| hiding. It's a small thing but that alone makes the upgrade
| worth it for me
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _Still on iOS 18 and macOS 15 (Sequoia). I was a day one
| upgrader up until now, never had any regrets but this time
| things seemed very different._
|
| I've tried and returned the iPhone 17 Pro. Love the hardware
| (especially the camera), but iOS 26 is inefficient (for lack
| of a better term), and the new camera UI hides too many
| things.
| hahahahhaah wrote:
| I am also HODLing Sequoia. Started using a Mac 2024.
|
| (Hold On for Dear Life)
| godelski wrote:
| My phone updated on me and yesterday it took me 10 minutes to
| figure out how to listen to my voice mail. Like seriously,
| how do we go from clicking on the name calling to clicking on
| the name to see the voicemail left by that specific caller
| and no others
| lewisgodowski wrote:
| You can tap on the filter button (three stacked horizontal
| lines of decreasing length) and select the "Voicemails"
| filter to view them all.
| godelski wrote:
| I did find this later, but that's also very unintuitive.
| I'm looking at a call log, why would I filter my calls to
| look at voicemails? I mean even the options there are
| categorically inconsistent. It is "Calls", "Missed",
| "Voicemail". voicemail is a different category than
| received and missed. I'm expecting that because that's
| what used to be at the top of that page. _They taught me
| that that 's what I should expect from the filtering
| option._
|
| My solution was to change from "Unified" to "Classic"
| which changes the bottom bar from [("Calls" "Contacts"
| "Keypad") "Search] to ["Favorites" "Recents" "Contacts"
| "Keypad" "Voicemail"]. THE ICONS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME
| SIZE. The only difference is the spacing between them.
|
| But again, this is fucking crazy because going back to
| the classic mode, if I click on a recent name it starts
| dialing them. But in the unified mode it gives me
| information. The unified makes the whole name act as if
| I'm pressing the info button.
|
| The problem is that Apple created an anti-pattern, TO
| ITSELF. They taught users that an action did one thing
| and then used that action to do something completely
| different. _No one on iOS 26 should expect_ that clicking
| the call line will take you to the information page and
| _should instead expect_ that doing so will start dialing
| that person.
| billti wrote:
| This is the most disappointing aspect of the slide in
| quality for me.
|
| I working in software and "build features" for a living,
| and over the years I've come to prioritize reliability,
| performance, and an intuitive experience over all else. No
| matter how good the feature set is, if it crashes, is
| painfully slow, or I can't figure out how to use it, then I
| don't want it.
|
| Apple used to have that focus, but seems to have lost it of
| late.
| godelski wrote:
| Apple definitely had that focus under Jobs but people now
| are all too happy to tell you you're holding it wrong and
| I think Apple internalized this mentality.
|
| But I find iOS 26 absolutely disrespectful. It wants you
| to use it in ways that previous iOS versions pushed you
| away from. It's an anti pattern to previous versions. I'm
| sorry, if you teach users one pattern don't update to
| have them do the opposite. Nothing is could be less
| intuitive
| bborud wrote:
| Upgrading to iOS 26 was a mistake. All the slow, distracting
| UI features that only makes the iPhone feel like some slow
| Android phone is really not an "upgrade" in any reasonable
| sense of the word.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| My HN comment history shows I've been worried about macOS for
| quite a while now, too. I'm a bit less optimistic than you,
| but I hope you're right. I'd really prefer to be wrong.
|
| macOS has been an incredible productive OS for me since I was
| 15. I'm now 39. In the last few years is the first time in
| that period that I've seriously begun to wonder if it would
| be wise to get off the platform. I've already dropped iOS,
| watchOS (Garmins are actually amazing these days, for what
| it's worth), and iPadOS. I still use macOS daily along with
| tvOS when I happen to watch something, but the days seem
| numbered now. I'm pretty disappointed. I hope it turns
| around, but I'm slowly preparing myself to be on Linux
| primarily.
| foxandmouse wrote:
| > Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is not exactly in a position to
| attract switchers.
|
| Yes, but Linux is finally in that position, not to mention
| we're seeing silicon from intel and amd that can compete with
| the M series on mobile devices.
| bsimpson wrote:
| I fell down the Nix hole this weekend, getting my corp Mac
| and my SteamOS Legion Go sharing a config. My corp device is
| a 5k iMac Pro that is going to be kicked off of the network
| when ARM-only Tahoe becomes mandatory later this year.
|
| I work at Google, which issued a Gubuntu workstation by
| default when I joined. I exchanged it for a Mac, which I've
| spent a literal lifetime using, because I didn't wanna fall
| down a Linux tinkering hole trying to make Gubuntu feel like
| home. Every corp device I've had has been a Mac.
|
| I'm reading this from a coffee shop. On my walk here, I was
| idly wondering if I should give Glinux (as its now called) a
| try when I'm forced to replace the iMac. SteamOS is making
| Linux my default environment in the same way Mac was for
| decades prior.
| theodric wrote:
| > ARM-only Tahoe Tahoe supports x86. It's the last macOS
| release that will do so. Did you mean that Google is
| banning any non-ARM Tahoe box?
| bsimpson wrote:
| Well I guess the iMac Pro isn't on the lucky list then. I
| know it's losing updates (and therefore support) this
| year.
|
| Unfortunately, I looked into it, and my other options are
| an Asus CX54 Chromebook or a Lenovo X1. There simply
| aren't competitive alternatives to Mac hardware, at least
| not at modern Google.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > not to mention we're seeing silicon from intel and amd that
| can compete with the M series on mobile devices.
|
| [[citation needed]], benchmarks please, incl battery life,
| not promises. "We are seeing" implies reality
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't
| handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of
| blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used
| (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave
| differently).
|
| Let's not even talk about the case when you have monitors
| that have different DPI, something that is handled seamlessly
| by MacOS, unlike Linux where it feels like a d20 roll
| depending on your distro.
|
| I expect most desktop MacOS users to have a HiDPI screen in
| 2026 (it's just...better), so going to Linux may feel like a
| serious downgrade, or at least a waste of time if you want to
| get every config "right". I wish it was differently, honestly
| - the rest of the OS is great, and the diversity between
| distros is refreshing.
| jhasse wrote:
| GNOME still has some problems with fractional scaling, but
| KDE works perfectly. I'm using two displays, one with 150%
| and one with 100%. No blurry apps and absolutely no issues.
| Have you tried it recently?
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| KDE is in better shape than GNOME, but there are still
| some nits. Nearly all the available third party themes
| for example are blurry or otherwise render incorrectly
| with fractional scaling on.
| cwillu wrote:
| So don't use a third party theme.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Problem is, the stock themes aren't to my taste at all.
| nish__ wrote:
| Why not send a pull request to one of your theme
| maintainers?
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| To my understanding, doing that wouldn't be helpful due
| to hard technical limits that can't be reconciled. Most
| window chrome themes are Aurora themes, which don't play
| nice with HiDPI, and to change that they'd need to be
| rewritten as C++ themes (like the default Breeze theme
| is), which is beyond the capabilities of most people
| publishing themes.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Did you try Klassy?[1]
|
| [1] https://github.com/paulmcauley/klassy
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I have not, looks high quality though.
| Atlas26 wrote:
| That's not a KDE issue though, blame the themes
| sbrother wrote:
| Can you independently set desktop wallpapers on the two
| screens? I know this seems nitpicky but it's literally
| impossible with Ubuntu/Gnome as far as I know; I have one
| vertical and one horizontal and have to just go with a
| solid color background to make that work.
| Macha wrote:
| Yes. It was actually more tedious to do the inverse when
| I wanted three screens to do a rotating wallpapers from
| the same set of folders as I had to set the list of
| folders three times
| freedomben wrote:
| I've been using fractional scaling on Gnome for years
| (including on the laptop I'm typing this on) and haven't
| had any issues. I haven't tried it with two displays that
| are set differently though. Is that a common thing?
| blinkingled wrote:
| I am a full time KDE/Arch user and since Plasma 6 haven't
| had any HiDPI issues including monitors with different DPI
| or X11 apps - of which there are very few nowadays.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| I run plasma 6 on X11 and it also functions amazingly
| well on 200% scaling.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Fedora 43 with KDE - have been using 140% scaling with my
| Dell Ultrasharp 32" 4k monitor - no issues whatsoever.
| I've noticed that the Dells do a pretty good job with
| Linux - I have used monitors of various sizes ranging
| from 27" to 43" and never had any issues on Linux.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| It also doesn't offer a Mac-style desktop environment,
| which is one of the things keeping me away.
| KDE/Cinnamon/XFCE lean more Windows-style, GNOME/Pantheon
| (Elementary) is more like iPadOS/Android in desktop mode.
| My productivity takes a big hit in Windows-style
| environments and I just don't enjoy using them.
|
| I hope to put my money where my mouth is and contribute to
| one of the tiny handful of nascent Mac-like environment
| projects out there once some spare time opens up, but until
| then...
| bsimpson wrote:
| So apparently when Canonical was the gorilla in desktop
| Linux, they had a push to have apps make their menus
| accessible via API. KDE supports that protocol. There are
| KDE widgets that will draw a Mac-style menu bar from it.
|
| That means you can take the standard KDE "panel" and
| split it in two halves: a dock for the bottom edge, and a
| menus/wifi settings/clock bar for the top edge.
|
| There are some things I don't know how to work around -
| like Chrome defaulting to Windows-style close buttons and
| keybindings, but if the Start menu copy is the thing
| keeping you off Linux, you can mod it more than you think
| you can.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Yep, I've played with it. Things might've changed but I
| couldn't get KDE's global menubar to work at all under
| Wayland, and under X11 a lot of apps don't populate it.
| upboundspiral wrote:
| I have the widget for global menu right now in KDE
| Wayland. Its supported by all QT apps, and there's a
| wayland protocol pull request for it (unfortunaly
| stalled, as is tradition). Overall I like it a lot -
| enough of the apps I use support it (if you're a GTK fan
| then tough luck).
|
| merge request:
| https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-
| protocols/-/m...
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. Would you happen to know if Electron
| apps might surface the same menus they do under macOS via
| this protocol? Between Qt and Electron a lot of stuff
| would be covered.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| You would have to use xwayland I think.[1]
|
| [1] https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/34335
| necovek wrote:
| I believe menus were available "via API" since an a11y
| push in GNOME before 2.0 release (atk library and
| friends).
|
| What was impossible was to stop apps from showing the
| usual menu bar inside the window.
|
| Obviously, with something so core to the system, plenty
| of devils in the details.
| freedomben wrote:
| Gnome with a persistent app drawer is relatively Mac-
| like. With a couple settings tweaks and possibly
| extensions, it can get pretty close. Even out of the box
| it feels a lot more mac-like than windows-like to me, but
| of course everybody is a bit different.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Some of the broad strokes are there, but the details are
| what matters. Gnome extensions also come with the problem
| of breaking every other update which quickly becomes
| irritating.
| freedomben wrote:
| Yeah quite fair, and also gnome extensions breaking every
| other update does indeed quickly become irritating. It's
| hard to believe it's now 2026 and that is still an issue
| NamlchakKhandro wrote:
| what does this even mean?
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| There are major differences in the design between Windows
| and Mac desktops, and generally speaking, Linux desktop
| environments function more like Windows than they do
| macOS.
|
| The biggest difference is probably that under Windows-
| style environments, applications/processes and windows
| are mostly synonymous -- each window represents an
| independent process in the task manager. In a Mac-style
| environment, applications can host multiple windows each,
| so for example even if you've got 7 Firefox windows open,
| there's only one host Firefox process. This is reflected
| in the UI, with macOS grouping windows by application in
| several difference places (as opposed to Windows, where
| that only happens in the taskbar _if_ the user has it
| enabled).
|
| "Windows style" also comes a number of other patterns,
| such as a taskbar instead and menubars attached to
| windows (as opposed to a dock and a single global,
| system-owned menubar under macOS).
|
| "Mac style" comes with several subtleties that separate
| it from e.g. GNOME. Progressive disclosure is a big one.
| Where macOS will keep power user features slightly off to
| the side where they're accessible but unlikely to confuse
| non-technical users, GNOME just omits the functionality
| altogether. It also generally implies a greater level of
| system-level integration and cross-functionality from
| apps (including third party), lending to a more cohesive
| feel.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Windows is more window centered. And macOS is more
| application centered. But many Windows and Linux
| applications use 1 process or 1 host process for all
| windows. This includes Firefox.
| greenavocado wrote:
| You're supposed to use KDE with Xorg if you want things to
| just work. KDE with Wayland if you're adventurous.
|
| Therefore newcomers should use Kubuntu or the likes of it
| 6SixTy wrote:
| KWin/Xorg AFAIK has been on maintanence duty (i.e. fixes
| mostly come from XWayland) for >5 years now. KDE has
| expulsed the Xorg codebase of KWin into a seperate repo
| in preparation of a Wayland only future.
|
| Even if KDE/Xorg is a stable experience is true now, it
| will not be true in the medium to short term. And a
| distro like Kubuntu might be 2 years out from merging a
| "perfect" KDE Plasma experience if it arrived right now.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| Not a problem on my Fedora Silverblue 43 machine with dual
| 4K 27" screens at 125% scaling. Zero blurry apps, including
| XWayland ones.
| piskov wrote:
| Boy, does that fractional scaling should look like shit
| on any vector graphics.
|
| That's why Apple used 4k on 22", 5k on 27 and 6k on 32 to
| make it crispy always on 200%
| lovasoa wrote:
| I use linux at home (with a HiDPI screen) and MacOS for
| work. The screen works well with both computers. I mostly
| just use a text editor, a browser, and a terminal though.
|
| Linux has bugs, bug MacOS does too. I feel like for a dev
| like me, the linux setup is more comfortable.
| mcny wrote:
| Same here. I stick to 100% scaling and side step the
| whole hi dpi issue. I even have a single USB type c cable
| that connects my laptop to the laptop stand and that
| laptop stand is what connects to the monitor, keyboard,
| and mouse.
|
| I know people will say meh but coming from the world of
| hurt with drivers and windows based soft modems -- I was
| on dial up even as late as 2005! -- I think the idea that
| everything works plug and play is amazing.
|
| Compare with my experience on Windows -- maybe I did
| something wrong, I don't know but the external monitor
| didn't work over HDMI when I installed windows without s
| network connection and maybe it was a coincidence but it
| didn't work until I connected to the Internet.
| chocochunks wrote:
| MacOS doesn't handle HiDPI screens that well either. The
| most common and affordable high res monitors are 27" 4K
| monitors and those don't mesh well with the way macOS does
| HiDPI. You either have a perfect 2x but giant 1080p like
| display or a blurryish non-integer scale that's more
| usable.
|
| And god forbid you still have low DPI monitor still!
| bsimpson wrote:
| Blows my minded that a 4k 27" monitor that was $500 a
| dozen years ago is still near top tier now.
|
| 5k has been surprisingly stagnant.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| At some point additional resolution is a dimishing
| return. The human eye has limits.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| 5K 27" looks usefully better than 4K 27" to my middle
| aged eyes.
|
| I'd prefer that to not be so, because 5K panels are so
| much more expensive. But in a side by side comparison
| it's very obvious.
|
| But the market has spoken: a quality 4K display is very
| good, certainly good enough, and the value for money is
| great.
|
| I'm ok with spending more on a better display that I
| spend so much time with. The cost per use-hour is still
| very, very low.
| necovek wrote:
| Agreed. I tried 24k 4k screen as soon as they came out
| (required two DP cables to run at 60Hz at the time), and
| turning subpixel rendering off, I could see jagged edges
| on fonts from normal sitting position (I am shortsighted,
| but at -3.25 I always need correction anyway, which
| brings my eyesight to better than 20/20). At 27" or 32",
| DPI is even worse.
|
| And MacOS has removed support for subpixel rendering
| because "retina", though I only use it when forced
| (work).
| intrasight wrote:
| We're approaching that point but are not there yet
| necovek wrote:
| It's not just that: bandwidth needed to drive things
| above 4k or 5k is already over the limits of HDMI 2.0
| (and 2.1 without all the extensions). DisplayPort is a
| bit better with 1.4 already having enough bandwidth for
| 8k30Hz or 4k at 120Hz or 8k60Hz with DSC.
|
| When considering a single-cable solution like Thunderbolt
| or USB-C with DP altmode, if you are not going with TB5,
| you will either use all bandwidth for video with only
| USB2.0 HID interfaces, or halve the video bandwidth to
| keep 2 signal lanes for USB 3.x.
|
| (I am currently trying to figure out how can I run my X1
| Carbon gen 13 with my 8k TV from Linux without an eGPU,
| so deep in the trenches of color spaces, EDID tables and
| such as I only got it to put out 6k to the TV :/)
| shantara wrote:
| There were several promising 5K 27" MiniLED displays
| announced at CES a few days ago. People speculate that LG
| has produced the panel for the upcoming Apple Display
| refresh, but is also making it available for the other
| display manufacturers.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| You can adjust this in settings.
| chocochunks wrote:
| Adjust it to what? Making a 4K monitor look like 1440p
| (or a non-1080p or 4K desktop) ends up with a non-integer
| scale on macOS AFAIK. They also completely tore out
| subpixel font rendering for low DPI displays.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| I use a 4k/27" display and it's crisp as it gets at 125%.
| necovek wrote:
| Perhaps try a 5k/27" at 150%, or look for visual acuity
| correction :)
|
| FWIW, I could see jagged edges on 4k at 24" without
| subpixel rendering, 27" is worse. Yes, even 4k at 32" is
| passable with MacOS, but Linux looks better (to the point
| that 4k at 43" has comparable or slightly better text
| quality to 4k at 32" for a Mac).
|
| I am trying to get a 55" 8k TV to work well with my
| setup, which might be a bit too big (but same width as
| the newly announced 6k 52" monitor by Dell), but it's the
| first next option after prohibitively expensive 32"
| options.
| mrweasel wrote:
| In my experience it's a little hit and miss with macOS.
| You need a monitor that is specifically listed as being
| supported by macOS. If not you get rather strange
| results. I had a Dell monitor that, under macOS only,
| would sometimes freak out and flicker if you had to many
| electron apps open.
|
| In some sense it's reasonable that you need a supported
| monitor, it's just strange that Linux can support all
| these monitors, but macOS can't?
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Sure, you can find some obscure DEs that don't handle that
| well yet. Or you could just use Plasma and have it all work
| just fine, like it did for many years now.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't
| handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot
| of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used
| (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave
| differently).
|
| I have been using a 4K display for years on Linux without
| issues. The scaling issue with non-native apps is a problem
| that Windows also struggles with btw.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Windows struggles even with native apps, as soon as you
| have monitors using different scaling settings.
|
| I'm currently using a laptop (1920x1200, 125%) + external
| monitor (1920x1080, 100%) at work. The task manager has
| blurry text when putting in the external monitor. It is
| so bad.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Usually that is a monitor driver issue.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| It's not, here is a good article about it: https://gist.g
| ithub.com/valinet/d66733e5f1398856bb21bda466a2...
|
| (And a workaround).
|
| Unfortunately I cannot modify registry at work so I have
| to live with it.
| Gracana wrote:
| Yep, I've been running a Windows laptop plugged into a
| pair of monitors for the past ten years at work, and
| across multiple laptops and from Windows 10 to 11, this
| has always been a problem. If I undock to do some work
| elsewhere and come back, I either have to live with a
| bunch of stuff now being blurry, or I need to re-launch
| all the affected programs.
|
| I also have programs that bleed from one monitor onto
| another when maximized. AutoCAD is one offender that
| reliably does this -- if it's maximized, several pixels
| of its window will overlap the edge of the window on the
| adjacent screen. The bar I set for windows is pretty low,
| so I'm generally accepting of the jank I encounter in it
| vs Linux where I know any problem is likely something I
| can fix. Still, that one feels especially egregious.
| dahauns wrote:
| The new Windows 11 22H2 task manager?
|
| Works just fine here (1920x1200 125%, 4K 150%, 1080p
| 100%).
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| When I still used windows (until windows 10) I always had
| to download some DPI fixer program to fix blurriness in
| many native windows programs.
|
| Text rendering x DPI seems to be one of those difficult
| problems.
| storus wrote:
| I recently bought a MacStudio with 512GB of RAM and
| connected it to a LG 5k2k monitor. For some reason there
| was no way to change the font size (they removed the text
| size "Larger Text ... More Space" continuum from the
| Display section of settings) so I ended up with either
| super small or super large fonts without anything in-
| between. In the end I had to install some 3rd party
| software and mix my own scaled resolution with acceptable
| font size. This has never been a problem on Linux in the
| past 10 years, all I needed to do at worst when it wasn't
| done out of the box was to set scale somewhere and that was
| it.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Curious what software; I've used "SwitchResX" in the past
| and it met all my needs...
| storus wrote:
| It was BetterDisplay. Thanks for the hint, will take a
| look at SwitchResX as well. BetterDisplay looks too
| complicated for what I need it to do (just switch the
| screen to 2560x1080 scaled).
| QuercusMax wrote:
| BetterDisplay has solved a ton of problems like this for
| me; when MacOS gets confused about non apple monitors,
| BetterDisplay knows how to fix things.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| I bought a MacStudio 2 months ago, on Sequoia you go to
| "display" and should see the various resolutions. If not,
| "advanced">"show resolutions as a list">"show all
| resolutions".
| storus wrote:
| Unfortunately, resolutions offered were weird. Native is
| 5120x2160 but that wasn't offered and scaled resolutions
| were weird. I guess macOS didn't read monitor's
| information properly or something. I wasted a few hours
| frantically trying to figure out how to connect a $12k
| computer to a 4-year old monitor which should have been a
| breeze but for some reason wasn't. The same monitor
| worked fine on Linux or Windows.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I feel like this has something to do with Apple fucking
| with DP 1.4 for the ProDisplay XDR.
|
| My 2019 Mac Pro with Catalina could happily drive 2 4K
| monitors in HDR @ 144 Hz.
|
| People wondered how Apple got the math to work to drive
| the ProDisplay.
|
| Big Sur? Not any more. 95Hz for 4K SDR, 60Hz for 4K HDR.
| Not the cables, not the monitors. Indeed, "downgrading"
| the monitors advertised support to DP 1.2 gave _better_
| options, 120Hz SDR, 75Hz HDR.
|
| And it was never fixed, not in Big Sur, Monterey or
| Ventura, when I had switched monitors.
|
| Hundreds of reports, hundreds of video/monitor
| combinations.
| pests wrote:
| Frantically? For hours? If that is what you meant, did
| you try stepping back for a few minutes, and coming up
| with a plan / doing research?
| wtetzner wrote:
| Why should someone need to set aside time to do research
| and come up with a plan to make a brand new (very
| expensive) computer do what it should do out of the box?
| Isn't Apple's big selling point that it "just works"?
| pests wrote:
| I agree, but frantically?
|
| "a hurried, wild, or desperate manner, often due to
| extreme worry, fear, excitement, or panic"
|
| At some point this frantic nature of trying to do
| something will cause more issues all by itself.
|
| Instead of spending hours in desperation, I was only
| suggesting taking a step back and maybe when not in a
| frantic state, it would be easier to move forward.
| storus wrote:
| Yeah, I made the mistake of thinking I could use
| MacStudio for work right away. My bad. Next time I won't
| frantically try to work and take a vacation instead. /s
| mrkstu wrote:
| Pick up a copy of BetterDisplay. Absolutely useful for
| monitors with non-standard resolutions.
| bpye wrote:
| macOS is the only operating system where you need to use
| third party software to make this work.
| ArmadilloGang wrote:
| Truth. Third party software for trackpad. Third party
| software for mouse. Third party software for window
| management. Third party software for Spotlight
| replacement. Third party software to support a second
| external display.
|
| The third party software is _really good_ , but come on,
| Apple, take a hint.
| mrkstu wrote:
| This is partly because of the culture of hacking the GUI
| started back in the 80s with original Mac OS. Extending
| the OS beyond base capabilities is fun, but Apple also is
| usually selling an 'as is' experience like a high end
| chef. You can add ketchup to your stake, but they aren't
| going to do it for you.
|
| And, as I said, I really only needed the software once I
| got an (ultra)ultrawide monitor, and it could be the info
| it is sending is also non-standard in some way.
| stephenr wrote:
| AFAIK the smallest 5K2K is 34", with a PPI of 163. I
| don't believe that is treated as "HiDPI" by macOS, is it?
| storus wrote:
| It should be, its size is somewhat similar to a 31" 4k I
| have next to it just the ultra-wide adds those extra
| inches.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| it's not removed : you have to hold Option when choosing
| resolutions, and the panel changes to show myriad
| options.
|
| i think that's what you're describing, anyway.
| storus wrote:
| I tried Option of course, that dumped tons of options at
| me but none of them were about font scaling.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| i _think_ (no proof, just experimenting on my 5k2k LG)
| that the various resolutions imply differing scalings. my
| eyes are really fortunately good so i just run at 5k2k
| and it 's sharp (because i use larger fonts, app by app,
| so somewhat manually set scalings).
| Macha wrote:
| > Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't
| handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot
| of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used
| (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave
| differently).
|
| Meanwhile on MacOS my displays may work. Or they might not
| work. Or they might work but randomly locked to 30hz. It
| depends on what order they wake up in or get plugged in.
|
| I suspect the root of the problem is one of them is a very
| high refresh rate monitor (1440p360hz) and probably related
| to the display bandwidth limitations that provide a
| relatively low monitor limit for such a high cost machine.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I finally got fed up with my two external monitors (one
| of which I rotate to portrait) getting mixed up by MacOS
| every time my MacBook would go to sleep or I unplugged
| it, so I bought a thunderbolt docking station which has
| basically solved all my issues. Worth every penny to be
| able to swap my personal laptop and work laptop with a
| single cable.
|
| Macs don't support the USBC / displayport daisy chaining
| support that my monitors should be able to handle. Very
| frustrating that this stuff is still so nonstandard. If
| you have all Apple it all works perfectly, of course.
| Macha wrote:
| But don't forget to order the "right" (i.e. caldigit)
| dock. My dell dock is even more of a mess on the Mac than
| plugging the monitors in directly. Works great with a
| Dell (obviously) and framework laptop running Win10 and
| Linux respectively though
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I've got a Dell dock that worked OK after I borrowed a
| windows laptop to update the firmware; but it only works
| with my M3 and M4 macbooks, but not my M2 Mac Mini.
| deaux wrote:
| I have similar issues without the high refresh rate. It's
| a MacOS bug related to sleep/wake corrupting internal
| display settings.
|
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upv
| ote...
|
| After 344 "me too"s and 180+ replies they silently locked
| the thread to save themselves from more embarassment.
| nicman23 wrote:
| hello fellow AW2725DF enjoyer
| eek2121 wrote:
| My dude, It's been more than capable for years. I have an
| ultrawide OLED monitor (3440x1440@165hz) paired with a
| 4K@144hz monitor. Both HDR, different capabilities. Both
| have different DPIs set, 125% for one, 200% for the other.
| My setup required less configuration than Windows does.
| Right click -> Display Configuration -> Set Alignment
| (monitor position) -> Set refresh rate -> Set HDR -> Set
| DPI -> Apply. Done.
|
| Don't knock it unless you've tried it.
|
| This was CachyOS btw. Windows actually required MORE work
| because I had to install drivers, connect to the internet
| during setup, get nagged about using a Microsoft account,
| etc.
|
| CachyOS was basically boot -> verify partitions are correct
| -> decide on defaults -> create account/password -> wait
| for files to copy -> done. Drivers, including the latest
| NVIDIA drivers, auto installed/working.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Tried 3 months ago with Gnome (PopOS) and a 4k screen at
| 125% scaling, apps were blurry, especially Brave, which
| was a big disappointment.
|
| I give Linux a try each time I need to set up a new
| computer, and each time run into new issues. Last time (2
| years ago) the hdmi connection with the screen would drop
| randomly twice a day. Same for the keyboard, and the wifi
| card didn't have drivers available. It became quite
| annoying, reducing my productivity as I had to reboot and
| pray. I then installed Windows, which solved all of the
| issues (unfortunately?)
|
| Maybe I'm just unlucky.
| talentedcoin wrote:
| If you're unlucky in the same way I was, it could
| actually be a GNOME/GTK issue. Some questionable (?) font
| rendering decisions were made that for me caused all text
| in GNOME to be blurry. I hated it so much I switched to
| KDE but soon realized GTK apps had the same issue.
|
| Eventually I found a fix that worked and now I'm happy.
| So, next time you can try this. In the file:
|
| ~/.config/gtk-4.0/settings.ini
|
| You can add:
|
| [Settings]
|
| gtk-hint-font-metrics=1
|
| Here's the Arch wiki page that explains it:
|
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GTK#Text_in_GTK_4_applic
| ati...
|
| If your settings.ini is in a different spot see:
|
| https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/class.Settings.html
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Thanks a lot, I'll try.
| amlib wrote:
| PopOS was very behind other distros in adopting new
| versions of software until recently due to their epic
| diversion of building a brand new DE, letting the then
| existing release bitrot. This created all sorts of issues
| and incompatibilities that had already been solved for
| one or even two years in other distros.
|
| Things are changing and improving VERY fast in linux land
| lately, so being behind by that much is gonna pretty much
| set you up for disappointment, along all the usual
| reasons why you ideally want to be on the just dull
| enough part of the bleeding edge for linux desktop, where
| you are only getting a few small shallow cuts and
| hopefully no deep cuts...
|
| Anyway, popular acclaim for popos reached it's peak just
| when those problems started to show up. It used to be
| better in years prior, but the reputation tends to lag
| the actual reality, so sentiment at that point was to
| recommend it even though it wasn't actually a good
| choice.
|
| Honestly, give Linux another try four or so months from
| now. You will get to start fresh on a brand new Ubuntu
| LTS or the usual new Fedora release. Try Gnome or KDE,
| see which ones sticks the best with you. Just don't try
| anything else if you want maximum features, commodity and
| stability.
|
| Yes, you were unlucky :(
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up! I'll try Ubunutu with KDE then
| :-)
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| That would be Kubuntu then.
| kombine wrote:
| You can already try Fedora 43 KDE Plasma. 125% scaling
| works like a charm. Or as others say wait until Kubuntu
| 26.04 LTS.
| truncate wrote:
| I've not had any issues with 4k display. Mac does handle
| monitors with different DPIs well, but not really a issue
| for me. Most hardware I use also just works great. Gaming
| is great now as well.
|
| The only reason I can't completely switch to Linux is
| because there are no great options for anything non-
| programming related stuff I love to do ... such as
| photography, music (guitar amplifier sims).
| starkparker wrote:
| Every 4K external display I've connected to every M1- and
| M2-series Mac running macOS has a known flickering issue
| with Display Stream Compression that Apple knows about and
| has been unable or unwilling to fix.
|
| The only reliable fixes are to either disable that
| DisplayPort feature if your monitor supports it, or to
| disable GPU Dithering using a paid third-party tool
| (BetterDisplay). Either that or switch to Asahi, which
| doesn't have that issue.
|
| The issue is common enough that BENQ has a FAQ page about
| it, which includes steps like "disable dark mode" and "wait
| for 2 hours": https://www.benq.com/en-us/knowledge-
| center/knowledge/how-to...
| RHSeeger wrote:
| One of my external screens is 4k and I haven't noticed
| any flickering. It's an Apple monitor though, so maybe
| that's the difference.
| pier25 wrote:
| I've used ASUS 4K monitors on M2 and M4 machines without
| issues.
| bzzzt wrote:
| My Dell Ultrasharp 4K also doesn't flicker and has DSC
| enabled according to the on screen menu. At work there
| are a few old Iiyama 4K screens that flicker though, but
| I don't know if they even understand DSC.
| mcv wrote:
| I've got a 4K Samsung Odyssey that I have come to hate
| because of it's extreme slowness and weird behaviour (I
| do not recommend this line), but I haven't had any
| problems with flickering with either M1s or M3s.
| Terretta wrote:
| If you're looking for high quality text at 4K, your
| options are more limited than if you're looking for
| gaming. This is a good roundup, and the leading Dell is
| superb:
|
| https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/best/by-
| usage/busines...
|
| And as noted here on HN a couple days ago, avoid OLED.
| Coincidentally, the top office monitor per rtings is what
| that post compared OLED to:
|
| https://nuxx.net/blog/2026/01/09/oled-not-for-me/
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562583
|
| We use pairs of these Dells per MacBook at our offices
| and provide them for WR as well. There've been no issues
| on this Dell or prior models on M1 through M4 (M5 iPad is
| fine too).
|
| As for DSC, that's been a complaint for a minute...
| Example HN reader theory on DSC, from Aug 2023:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37025568
| ricardobeat wrote:
| The best option was the LG UltraFine 24" 4K, which sadly
| was discontinued years ago.
|
| In my opinion a QHD 23.8" panel is the next best option
| for developers (any M-series chip handles scaling without
| issues); I find the common 27" and 32" at 4K a weird spot
| - slightly too large, slightly too low resolution - and
| 5k+ options are still rare.
| Terretta wrote:
| COMPLETELY agree. I still own and use those LGs.
| Wilder7977 wrote:
| I have been experiencing this on my 2k monitors as well
| (Also BENQ). I tried every "fix" under the sun,
| eventually it stops after enough voodoo (reboots,
| unplugs) and cursing.
|
| One of the many random issues on the OS with the best UX
| in the world (lol). Like music sometimes stopping and
| sometimes switching to speakers when turning off
| Bluetooth headphones, mouse speed going bananas randomly
| requiring mouse off and on, terminal app (iterm2)
| reliably crashing when I dare to change any keybinding,
| and many other things that never happened in years of
| working on Linux.
| pbasista wrote:
| > or switch to Asahi
|
| I would like to point out that, from my experience on M1,
| external displays do not work at all over DisplayPort on
| Asahi Linux at the moment.
| cestith wrote:
| I use two 4k displays with an M1 Pro MBP. They work
| without any flickering. They're using HDMI rather than
| DisplayPort.
|
| I'm also, to get the two external displays without them
| being mirrored, using a docking station and a display
| driver from Silicon Motion called macOS InstantView.
|
| This is of course not ideal if you need DP and DSC.
| deaux wrote:
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upvot
| e...
|
| MacOS isn't in any kind of position regarding displays.
| 180+ replies and 300+ upvotes by the 0.1% of sufferers who
| bother to find these threads, log in, and comment of them.
| Exteemely widespread, going on for years, thread silently
| locked.
| pkulak wrote:
| Wait, has MacOS finally figured out fractional scaling?
| Last I looked, Linux actually had better support. And now
| Linux support is pretty good. It's really only older apps
| that don't work.
| throw383734q wrote:
| No, it has not. Scaling is better on Linux and Windows.
| NamlchakKhandro wrote:
| lmao not even osx handles this problem properly...
|
| lmfao
| spockz wrote:
| I recently installed CachyOS and the text was crisp and
| accurate out of the box on my hidpi screen. So whatever
| settings and software combinations are required, cachyos
| got it right, with KDE and wayland at least. All apps I use
| have been rendered perfectly clear.
| necovek wrote:
| Since MacOS removed subpixel rendering a few years ago,
| regular resolution displays have terrible looking text in
| comparison to Windows or Linux.
|
| Gnome in Linux works great for a decade+ with a single high
| resolution screen, but there are certainly apps that render
| too small (Steam was one of the problems).
|
| Different scaling factors on several monitors are not
| perfect though, but I generally dislike how Mac handles
| that too as I mostly use big screen when docked
| (32"-43"-55"), or laptop screen when not, and it rearranges
| my windows with every switch.
| ewoodrich wrote:
| I recently mentioned in another comment that Fedora 43 on
| my Ideapad is the first "just works" experience I've had
| with my multi monitor setup(s) on anything other than
| Windows 11 (including MacOS where I needed to pay for
| Better Display to reach the bar of "tolerable").
|
| Zero fiddling necessary other than picking my ideal
| scaling percentage on each display for perfect, crisp
| text with everything sanely sized across all my
| monitors/TVs.
|
| I gave up on Linux Mint for that exact reason. I wasted
| so much time trying to fine tune fonts and stuff to
| emulate real fractional scaling. Whenever I thought I
| finally found a usable compromise some random app would
| look terrible on one of the monitors and I'd be back at
| square one.
|
| Experimental Wayland on Linux Mint just wasn't usable
| unfortunately and tbh wasn't a big fan of Cinnamon in
| general (I just really hated dealing with snaps on
| Ubuntu). I did tweak Gnome to add minimize buttons/bottom
| dock again and with that it's probably my favorite
| desktop across any version of Linux/MacOS/Windows I've
| ever used!
|
| I kept reading endorsements of Fedora's level of
| polish/stability on HN but was kinda nervous having used
| Debian distros my entire life and I'm really happy I
| finally took the plunge. Wish I tried it years ago!
| jijijijij wrote:
| > I kept reading endorsements of Fedora's level of
| polish/stability on HN but was kinda nervous having used
| Debian distros my entire life and I'm really happy I
| finally took the plunge. Wish I tried it years ago!
|
| This. I don't know why, but people forget about Fedora
| when considering distros. They rather fight Arch than try
| Fedora. So, did I. Maybe its Redhat. Wish I switched
| earlier, too. (Although I heard this level of polish
| wasn't always the case.)
|
| I love Fedora so much. Everything just works, but that's
| not that special compared to Ubuntu. What is special is
| the fucking sanity throughout the whole system. Debian
| based distros always have some legacy shit going on. No
| bloat, no snap, nothing breaking convention and their
| upgrade model sits in the sweet spot between Ubuntu's 4
| year LTS cycle and Arch's rolling release. Pacman can rot
| in hell, apt is okay, but oh boy, do I love dnf.
|
| Tho, Fedora has some minor quirks, which still make it
| hard to recommend for total beginners without personal
| instructions/guidance IMO. Like the need for RPMFusion
| repos and the bad handling/documentation of that. Not a
| problem if you know at all what a package manager, PKI
| and terminal is, but too much otherwise.
| necovek wrote:
| Canonical releases an Ubuntu LTS release every two years:
| active is 24.04, next is coming in a few months as 26.04.
|
| LTS support runs for 5 years (there is extended support
| for 10 years available), so you can skip an LTS if you
| don't need the latest base software.
| jijijijij wrote:
| You are right, I got that mixed up. To be fair, I somehow
| also thought of yearly releases for Fedora, which isn't
| the case. It's every six months, so the relation remains
| identical, just off by a factor of 2 :D
| alimbada wrote:
| I dual booted Fedora back when it was still called Fedora
| Core from version 6 until 11-ish. I had it installed on a
| laptop and had a lot of driver issues with it and
| eventually didn't bother with dual booting when I moved
| to a new laptop.
|
| I'm now looking to get off Windows permanently before
| security updates stop for Win 10 as I have no intention
| of upgrading to Win 11 since Linux gaming is now a lot
| more viable and was the only remaining thing holding me
| back from switching earlier. I've been considering either
| Bazzite (a Fedora derivative with a focus on gaming) or
| Mint but after reading your comment I may give vanilla
| Fedora a try too.
|
| So far I've tried out the Bazzite Live ISO but it
| wouldn't detect my wireless Xbox controller though that
| may be a quirk of the Live ISO. I'm going to try a full
| install on a flash drive next and see if that fixes
| things.
| jijijijij wrote:
| Give it a try! Although, I do all my gaming on a
| Playstation. In Fedora, the Steam and NVIDIA Fusion repos
| come preinstalled and can be enabled during installation
| or in Gnome's 'Software' or the package manager later,
| but I can't speak to that. The opensource AMD drivers are
| in the main repo no action needed. ROCm too, but that can
| be messy and is work-in-progress on AMD's side. Can't
| vouch for the controller, but people claim they work.
| Guess, that's the live image. I heard, games with anti-
| cheat engines in the kernel categorically don't work with
| Linux, but this may change at some point. In that case,
| or if you want "console mode", a specific gaming distro
| may be worth considering, otherwise I would stick to
| vanilla. Good luck! Hope I didn't promise too much ;)
| baxuz wrote:
| Steam has DPI scaling issues on Windows as well,
| especially on multimonitor setups.
| bpye wrote:
| I'm not going to claim that every compositor/WM handles
| high DPI well on Linux, however both KDE and Gnome on
| Wayland are fine in my experience. I actually find that KDE
| on Wayland handles mixed DPI better than Windows, macOS
| doesn't really give you enough control to try.
| shuntress wrote:
| Inconsequential minutiae concerning display resolution is
| absolutely _NOT_ the thing keeping people away from Linux.
|
| Its the "getting every config" right thing that is the
| problem.
| Atlas26 wrote:
| > Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI.
|
| I'm glad everyone is dogpiling on this statement cause man
| people seriously have to stop parroting this years out of
| date claim at this point. Any big well supported distro
| using Wayland should be fine, at the very least KDE and
| GNOME are guaranteed work perfectly with HiDPI.
|
| Daily Fedora KDE user here on 4K HiDPI monitor plus another
| of a different lower resolution, flawless experience using
| both together in a setup. Fractional scaling also there
| working perfectly as well and you choose how you want KDE
| to scale the apps if you want (forcefully or let the app
| decide).
| port11 wrote:
| Funny you mention Fedora, since the installer itself is
| unusable in my 4K display, defaulting to the 4K
| resolution instead of a 2x. I never managed to install
| Fedora using the GUI.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Why don't you just set the resolution manually
| temporarily for the installer to say 1920x1080 at boot
| time?
| port11 wrote:
| "Why don't you just" is precisely the Linux thing that
| irks me the most.
|
| Why don't they just make it obvious? Why doesn't the
| installer just figure it out or ask me when it launches?
|
| I agree that that would help, but it was easier to _just_
| install another distro.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I mean it is probably a bug that may have been limited to
| your specific combination of hardware for all I know, not
| like they make sure it cannot work.
| larrik wrote:
| I went from Linux (10 years) to Mac (4 years) to Windows (8
| months) to back to Mac. (I have not upgraded to Tahoe, and
| didn't even realize it was so different until recently)
|
| IMO, there's basically no problem Linux has that isn't
| worse in Windows (at the OS level). Especially once you get
| into laptops.
|
| My final conclusion was that I hate computers.
| jdejean wrote:
| Tahoe is uniquely bad in so many ways, so I tried the Asahi
| Fedora Remix with Gnome on my M2 Mac Mini. Aesthetically I
| was more attracted to Gnome, it feels like what we lost with
| Tahoe. Tahoe to me feels like a really chopped Android skin
| or something. I made it a few weeks on the Fedora Remix but
| ended up having to switch back to Mac over missing webcam
| drivers and other random hardware issues. Plus there's little
| OS things that Mac does that make it really hard to go
| elsewhere.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| >ended up having to switch back to Mac over missing webcam
| drivers and other random hardware issues
|
| This has been my experience every time I try Linux. If I
| had to guess, tracing down all these little things is just
| that last mile that is so hard and isn't the fun stuff to
| do in making an OS, which is why it is always ignored. If
| Linux ever did it, it would keep me.
| tuckerman wrote:
| I think this is true with an arm mac (and would be tricky
| to fix that, props to the Asahi folks for doing so much)
| but for a lot of other hardware (recent dell/asus/lenovo,
| framework, byo desktops) I find Linux complete. I'm sure
| there is hardware out there that with struggles but I've
| not had to deal with any issues for a few years now
| myself.
| ryang2718 wrote:
| It can be very device specific unfortunately. Thinkpad
| _tend_ to work quote well. I had a Framework that my wife
| took from me and it 's truly fantastic, works out of the
| box.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| My understanding is that the asahi team have been doing
| incredible work exactly with doing the non-fun bits. They
| just chose to do it on the hardware of a company that's
| extremely hostile to this kind of effort.
| jdejean wrote:
| I have to say that almost everything worked out of the
| box. The webcam is known to not mesh great with Asahi
| quite yet. Otherwise:
|
| - Machine failed to wake from suspend almost 50% of the
| time (with both wired and BT peripherals) - WiFi speed
| was SIGNIFICANTLY slower. Easily a fraction of what it
| was on Mac - USB C display was no-op - Magic trackpad
| velocity is wild across apps - Window management
| shortcuts varied across apps (seems Gnome changes a lot,
| frequently) - Machine did not feel quicker, in fact
| generally felt slower than Tahoe but granted I did not
| benchmark anything
|
| I would happily try it again when the project is further
| along
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Shortcuts are (probably) never going to be consistent
| across Linux apps; that's something Mac, and to some
| degree Windows, developers just historically care about
| more. I've also never found a better hardware trackpad
| than Apple's, nor found better OS-level drivers for
| trackpads than Apple's. (I'm sure somebody out there is
| ready to tell me their experience is different, but I've
| used many Linux distributions, many PC laptops with
| trackpads and at least two different PC desktop
| trackpads, and many Macs over the past quarter century
| and at least _for me_ I 'm going to stand by that.)
| exidy wrote:
| Apple are not hostile, they are indifferent. If they were
| hostile, it would have been shot down both technically
| and legally long ago.
| TheDong wrote:
| The phrase was "apple is hostile to this kind of effort".
| "This kind of effort" is, I suppose, running non-official
| software on Apple hardware in general.
|
| iOS and the third-party app store court battles makes it
| clear to me that Apple is actively hostile here.
|
| It would have taken less work for apple to implement the
| EU "third-party app store" regulation as "anyone can
| install a 3rd party app store if they jump through enough
| hoops". They instead require that you live in the EU, as
| verified through many factors. They break it if you take
| too long of a vacation, they make using your new right to
| install a 3rd party app store as difficult as they can.
|
| Apple clearly does not value user freedom nor users
| abilities to install their own software on their own
| devices. Apple would rather old iPhones and iPods become
| useless e-waste bricks than release an EoL update to
| unlock the bootloader and let you install linux to turn
| that old iPod touch into a garage remote, or photo-frame,
| or whatever.
| exidy wrote:
| Sorry but no. The comment I replied to was specifically
| referring to running Asahi Linux. This is not "Apple
| hardware in general" but specifically "Apple Silicon
| Macs".[0]
|
| Your comments about iPads/iPhones may well be true but
| not relevant to my point. See also the comment from user
| Kina upthread.
|
| [0] https://asahilinux.org/
| TheDong wrote:
| > specifically referring to running Asahi Linux.
|
| Asahi linux would have been "a company that's extremely
| hostile to this effort."
|
| They instead said "a company that's extremely hostile to
| this _kind of_ effort", which turns it into a broader
| category, which I believe quite reasonably includes their
| hostility to general "using their devices outside of the
| apple walled garden".
|
| If you're going to be pedantic, please at least be
| correct, but "this kind of" clearly makes it more broad
| than just asahi linux itself.
| exidy wrote:
| I'm sorry, but you're wrong again. Person I responded to
| was replying to a comment around webcam drivers on a M2
| mac mini. They wrote:
|
| "the Asahi team have been doing incredible work .." ->
| the team working on porting Linux to Apple Silicon Macs.
|
| "They just chose to do it on the hardware of a company
| that's extremely hostile to this kind of effort."
|
| They -> Asahi Linux Team
|
| it -> (note the singular) porting Asahi Linux
|
| the hardware -> Apple Silicon Macs
|
| a company -> Apple
|
| My comment (the one you responded to): "it would have
| been shot down", (note the singular) it -> porting Asahi
| Linux.
|
| You cannot torture the sentence to encompass the broader
| Apple ecosystem when the the subject is very obviously
| and solely the Asahi Linux team and Apple Silicon Macs.
| You're welcome to your views, just drop them somewhere
| more relevant next time.
| Kina wrote:
| Apple is on the record as being neutral at worst on the
| matter and at best weakly supportive. I think there was
| an article when the M1 came out where it was reported
| that the Asahi Linux folks met with some Apple developers
| where they were encouraged to explore the system and
| report bugs, but that Apple was not going to offer any
| support.
|
| Apple has also done things such as adding a raw image
| mode to prevent macOS updates from breaking the boot
| process for third-party operating systems. Which is only
| useful for 3rd party operating system development.
| TheDong wrote:
| Individual developers at apple may be weakly supportive
| (at best), but apple as a corporation has tended in the
| opposite direction, of locking down macOS and iOS more
| and more.
|
| Sure, some developer may have added things like raw image
| mode, but if someone on high says "wait, people are
| buying macbooks and then not using the app store?" or as
| soon as someone's promo is tied to a security feature
| that breaks third-party OSes... well, don't be surprised
| when it vanishes. Running any OS but macOS is against
| ToS, and apple has already shown they are actively
| hostile to user freedom and choice (with the iOS app
| store debacle, the iMessage beeper mini mess, and so on).
| If you care about your freedom and ability to use Linux,
| you should not use anything Apple has any hand in ever.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Almost everyone buying MacBooks installs applications
| outside of the App Store, the process for which has never
| changed (e.g., download it and run the installer or unzip
| it, use the free open-source package manager of your
| choice, etc.). I also can't find anything anywhere that
| suggests there are "terms of service" for Apple's
| hardware that prohibit installing another operating
| system on it, and part of Apple being "weakly supportive"
| of Asahi Linux is making deliberate design decisions to
| supporting installing third-party OSes on Apple Silicon
| in the first place. To copy from the Asahi Linux blog,
|
| > Apple formally allows booting third-party operating
| systems on Apple Silicon Macs. Shortly after the Asahi
| project started, Apple even added a raw image mode to
| prevent macOS updates from breaking the boot process for
| third-party operating systems. This provided no benefit
| to macOS whatsoever; it merely served to help third-party
| operating system development.
|
| There are a lot of reasons to be annoyed with Apple, but
| we don't need to invent new ones, and there's an awful
| lot of misinformation out there about Macs that conflates
| how locked down iOS is with the Mac (combined with the
| insistence that Macs are going to be locked down just as
| much as iPhones within the next few years, which I have
| literally been hearing since the iPhone came out in
| 2007). There are some things that are more _difficult_ to
| do on macOS Tahoe than they were on MacOS Leopard twenty
| years ago (like, apparently, resize windows), but there
| is nothing that is "locked down" in a way that makes
| something I remember doing then literally _impossible_ to
| do now.
| wtetzner wrote:
| One solution to this problem is to buy from a vendor that
| installs Linux for you (e.g. System76). Much like with
| Apple, they can sell you a fully functional computer that
| way.
| pxc wrote:
| Bringing random hardware from vendors who never intended
| to support an OS is a weird criterion to judge an OS'
| "readiness" by-- and one no one seems to apply to macOS
| or Windows.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I have never had an issue making whatever Frankenstein
| monster PC I create eventually work in Windows.
| pxc wrote:
| Random hardware chosen without particular regard for
| compatibility [?] hardware whose vendors never intended
| to support Windows. It's not the same test.
| nine_k wrote:
| Could you list some of these little things that macOS does
| and that you miss?
|
| (I usually miss the little Linux-specific things that macOS
| does not.)
| jonquest wrote:
| iMessage, Apple Pay (w/Touch ID), native Apple Music
| client, iCloud (if you're invested in the iCloud
| ecosystem) along with its seamless integrations with
| photo apps like Photomator (among others), shared music
| and movie library across my Mac, iPhone, and Apple TV.
|
| There's probably a lot more I'm not thinking of right
| now. Point is, if you're an iOS, macOS, and iCloud user
| you give up a lot of quality of life bits going to
| another platform. There are times I want to go back to
| Linux, but when I think about the stuff I'm going to
| loose I talk myself out of it. macOS isn't the greatest,
| but it's not the worst either and Apple's products and
| services just tie in very well with each other. I get
| annoyed by things like the shitty support for non-apple
| peripherals, needing 3rd party apps to make them work
| decent, crappy scaling except on the most expensive
| monitors and no decent font smoothing when running at
| native resolutions. But... I stick with it because I
| either like or love the tight integration and added
| quality of life that comes with it.
| nine_k wrote:
| Ah, I get it. I don't like integration of this sort,
| because it quietly screams "lock in", but do I see how it
| can be very convenient. So I make do with my own, likely
| inferior, using Syncthing, and Google Photos for
| browsing. My music is mostly CD rips, Bandcamp, and some
| YouTube, and I don't do TV, so it's just easier for me
| than for normal folks. I can listen to my collection
| anywhere over a Wireguard connection on my laptop or my
| phone.
|
| It's a different set of trade-offs; less polish, more
| control.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Syncthing is great. I'm closer to the poster you're
| responding to -- I tried Asahi Linux and _liked_ it, at
| least when I ignored the "Mac users will probably like
| GNOME more" and switched to KDE Plasma (this Mac user, at
| least, thinks it's way better), but still ended up back
| on macOS Tahoe despite having a myriad of nits to pick
| with it. But when I was playing around with it, I set up
| Syncthing so I would be able to keep working on documents
| on the Linux laptop, other Macs, and the iPad, and
| Syncthing worked fast and basically flawlessly, better
| than either iCloud or Dropbox in my experience. I may
| eventually set it up as a local sync solution between the
| Macbook Pro I'm using for everything and a Mac Studio
| that's become my home server.
| jdejean wrote:
| Most of my gripes are probably Gnome specific in this
| case - When you screenshot something it pins the image
| temporarily on the screen. If I drag into any open app it
| avoids saving it to disk. - Pressing CMD W or Q
| consistently closes any app (works on some gnome apps) -
| Mac keychain passkeys (I don't own a usb stick) - Third
| party window management (through accessibility privileges
| only) - Apps respecting dark mode settings - The app menu
| (file, edit, window, etc) being in the same spot every
| time
|
| Definitely not exhaustive since I only spent a few weeks
| with it. There were also plenty of things I liked about
| Gnome more but not enough to tip the scale for me
| hunterloftis wrote:
| For me it's the keyboard and hotkeys.
|
| I use macs at work and Linux at home. There's no uniform
| way to make a Linux machine accept things like cmd right
| arrow to jump to the end of the line, etc.
|
| This is the closest attempt, but it has many gaps:
| https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto
| CSSer wrote:
| Yeah, and gaming aside from anti-cheat isn't a broken mess
| anymore either. Valve has made sure of that.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Linux doesn't have much in the way of quality apps for people
| who aren't programmers, server administrators, or gamers.
|
| Most people want to get productive work done with their
| computer, and OS X has top tier apps for every need possible.
|
| No good e-mail app, no good office apps, no good calendar
| app, no good invoicing app, no good photo editing app, no
| good designer app, etc
| TheDong wrote:
| > people who aren't programmers
|
| > No good e-mail app, no good office apps, no good calendar
| app, no good invoicing app ...
|
| People who aren't programmers use Gmail, Google Docs,
| Google Calendar, Stripe Invoicing, etc for those various
| use-cases.
|
| Firefox and Chrome work just fine on Linux, so Linux has
| all the apps people actually use these days on computers.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The only people I meet who voluntarily use web apps in
| their day to day are Linux users who have convinced
| themselves that it is good enough because there aren't
| any good native apps on Linux.
|
| And then you of course have corporate, who will not
| switch from Windows.
|
| Nobody will voluntarily spend all day working within
| Gmail or Google docs.
|
| You also conveniently cut out photo editing and design in
| your quote.
|
| Edit: Also I wonder if all you server-admins, programmers
| and gamers would have switched to Linux if your only
| option was to do your work or gaming within a laggy and
| inadequate web-app? But you want other people to suffer
| that.
| jamespo wrote:
| I don't know if you've noticed, but Microsoft are moving
| apps to web versions as well.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| And OS X has top tier native apps for any use case
| imaginable. With a very healthy ecosystem of boutique
| developers and indie developers.
|
| If the idea is moving from Windows to something better,
| then Mac is usually the answer. Unless you're a server
| admin, programmer, or gamer. Then Linux is probably
| great. Everybody wants to have tools that work well for
| the task.
| sofixa wrote:
| > The only people I meet who voluntarily use web apps in
| their day to day are Linux users who have convinced
| themselves that it is good enough because there aren't
| any good native apps on Linux.
|
| Funny, there are whole companies, pretty big ones at
| that, that run entirely on the G Suite. Regardless of OS.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Yes, exactly. Note my word "voluntarily". When people
| have the option to decide for themselves which tools to
| use, very few actually want to work with corporate
| software like the G Suite, OneDrive, MS Office and such.
| I'll give an exception for Excel. I'm not a spread
| sheeter, but I've heard it's best in class.
| akagusu wrote:
| No, it is not. Apple went down to the same level of Linux,
| not Linux that became as good as Apple.
|
| Unfortunately today it is a race to the bottom.
| nine_k wrote:
| As a long-term Linux user, and a regular macOS user, I must
| say that the motion is mutual. Linux has become way better,
| and macOS, somehow worse. But resizing and moving windows
| nearly , and switching between windows (not whole apps) has
| always been problematic in plain macOS, for reasons
| mysterious to me.
| GeorgeOldfield wrote:
| i agree on the software level, but then we have hardware.
| M cpus, touchpads, battery life. it's hard to justify
| using PC hardware.
| zapzupnz wrote:
| In the Hacker News bubble, maybe. In the real world, not even
| close. The reasons why many a person chooses to use macOS,
| outside of the "YoU bUy It FoR ThE lOgO" that many hard-core
| technologists seem to believe, don't exist in any desktop
| environment.
|
| Sometimes, people think "it can be made to look similar,
| therefore it's the same" (especially with regard to KDE), and
| no, just no.
| immibis wrote:
| What are those reasons?
| zapzupnz wrote:
| It's a mountain of little things that add up rather than
| a few killer features.
|
| It's the way drag and drop is a fundamental interaction
| in text boxes, the proxy icons in title bars, how
| dragging a file to an open/save panel changes that
| panel's current folder rather than actually move a file.
|
| It's how applications are just special folders that are
| treated like files, how they can update themselves
| independently of each other or any system packages, how
| you conventionally put them in the /Applications folder
| so you can put that folder on the Dock to use directly as
| a launcher.
|
| It's how all text fields consistently support emacs-style
| keyboard shortcuts, respond appropriately to the system-
| provided text editing features such as the built-in Edit
| menu, text substitutions, and writing features.
|
| It's how you can automate most Mac-assed apps; how you
| can extend the operating system through app-provided and
| user-created services to _every_ other application that
| handles text, files, images, PDFs, through the built-in
| APIs using AppleScript, Automator, and Shortcuts.
|
| It's how the whole program rather than its last window is
| the fundamental unit of an application such that
| document-based applications can exist without a window
| _without also_ polluting some system tray with an
| unnecessary icon, how that means workflows expect more
| than one window open.
|
| It's how there's a universal menu that works for _every_
| app, not just conforming ones (i.e. KDE 's global menu
| only shows KDE apps' menus; other apps need a plugin or
| just don't show at all), how the help menu has a search
| field to look for menu items, how keyboard shortcuts are
| bound to the menu items are bound arbitrarily within the
| program's settings window and can thus be assigned
| globally in System Settings, how this means all of an
| application's main features are therefore accessible via
| the menu bar, how that creates consistency in the menus.
|
| Those are just some things off the top of my head but
| there are plenty of others, some a bit more user facing,
| some less. Just examples, a non-exhaustive list.
|
| I'm sure those who don't care about these things will
| dismiss it but if you've been using a Mac since before
| macOS, before OS X, or even before Mac OS X, these are
| things you won't drop for Linux just because the design
| is a bit uglier.
|
| Of course, if none of these things matter, then the swap
| is easier. It doesn't mean any DE is a drop-in
| replacement by any means. Many of the things that make
| some DEs "Mac-like" are skin deep.
| J_cst wrote:
| This year's too early, but next year for sure.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Windows has a much better chance, alongside WSL, even with
| all its warts than Linux.
|
| GNU/Linux isn't sold in shops like macOS and Windows for
| regular consumers, until it goes out from DYI and online
| ordering, it will remain a niche desktop system.
| elAhmo wrote:
| "Linux is finally in this position" is a meme at this point.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| This year will be the year of the linux desktop for real, I
| swear!
| m-schuetz wrote:
| > Yes, but Linux is finally in that position
|
| I've heard that for almost 20 years now, but it never was.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| > "I wish I didn't."
|
| Can't you do a factory reset/recovery on Mac that lands on the
| version of macos shipped with the device? Then you could re-
| upgrade to the os you wanted, without trying it it seems
| Sequoia is still available in the app store
| trollbridge wrote:
| Yes, you can install any version of macOS that was ever
| supported for your Mac. (It's been a long time since they
| used System Enablers.) I'm so frustrated with Tahoe that I'm
| about to do this.
| valleyer wrote:
| But you cannot, in general, migrate your data backwards.
| Apple's system apps will upgrade their data stores forward
| only. This isn't a problem if you are willing to e.g. re-
| download all of your (Mail.app) mail.
| trollbridge wrote:
| I generally just "reload" everything.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _But you cannot, in general, migrate your data
| backwards. Apple 's system apps will upgrade their data
| stores forward only._
|
| One huge reason to use third-party programs where
| possible. I dislike Apple's tight coupling of utilities
| as it is.
| valleyer wrote:
| Yep, that's a great workaround, as long as you have
| third-party apps you're happy with.
| xoa wrote:
| Yep, though you can mitigate it a little bit in various
| ways. For one weird example, I keep my main user Home
| folder on my NAS and mount it via iSCSI. Mostly that's
| for data integrity/size/backup purposes, but it does also
| make it free to snapshot before trying out a system
| upgrade. If I hate it I can rollback my entire set of
| user data along with the OS.
|
| Though amongst many other wonderful things lost in the
| mysts of Mac history I still desperately miss
| NetBoot/NetInstall and ultra easy clone/boot with
| something like CCC and TDM. It's so fucking miserable now
| in comparison to do reinstalls/testing/restores.
| dagi3d wrote:
| @xoa may I ask what do you use as iSCSI initiator?
| xoa wrote:
| Sorry for missing this! I use Xtend SAN by ATTO [0],
| which has been around a long time but is still getting
| basic updates including native Apple Silicon support now,
| and seems to perform well. It uses a kext and I do worry
| the day may come that Apple kills support despite having
| nothing ready to go for equivalent functionality, but so
| far so good.
|
| ----
|
| 0: https://www.atto.com/products/xtend-san-iscsi-
| initiator/
| larsmaxfield wrote:
| Safari can't be upgraded past a certain point on older
| versions of macOS. That can cause certain websites to
| break. Minor but annoying.
| zapzupnz wrote:
| That's where the WebKit previews come in handy, if you
| stick to a preview version you know matches a stable
| version.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Certain features are not supported unles you're on MacOS
| 26, period, even with Safari TP
| zapzupnz wrote:
| Oh, interesting! Which features?
| MarleTangible wrote:
| While we're talking about Safari, it also developed this
| bug where picture-in-picture leaks memory like crazy
| where it sometimes consumes over 80GB of RAM, gets
| compressed to nothing but freezes the app to the point
| where I cannot type anything in the address bar.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Thanks for the advise. I have not upgraded, and have no plan
| to.
| layer8 wrote:
| At least on Windows 11 it's possible to disable the rounded
| corners.
| cestith wrote:
| Only because those aren't required for account
| centralization, advertising in the main OS menu, or AI
| "features".
| userbinator wrote:
| It's also for a rather unbelievable reason --- if your GPU is
| not "powerful enough", you don't get rounded corners by
| default.
|
| You read that right: apparently rounded corners are so
| resource-intensive that if you don't have or disable GPU
| acceleration, they'll disappear.
|
| As much as I absolutely hate rounded corners in general, it's
| astonishing the apparent inefficiency with which MS have
| implemented them. Then again, mediocrity seems to be par for
| the course with their developers:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28743687
| taminka wrote:
| first time i used tahoe to help a friend w/ their laptop i
| legit thought it was like a knockoff macos or something,
| genuinely the ugliest macos version and even in the brief time
| that i've used it, i've encountered annoying bugs, QC at apple
| is dead lowkey
| MarleTangible wrote:
| When the iOS 26 video player first leaked, I thought to
| myself, this has to be some kind of April 1st joke or a
| knock-off smear campaign or something. Nope, Apple did really
| half-assed their entire iOS to the ground.
| iLemming wrote:
| One of the most annoying things after installing Tahoe for me,
| that for no good reason an ordinary app would randomly lose its
| focus. In the midst of my typing. This is unbelievably
| preposterous and I just can't stop hating Apple for this crap.
| How the fuck this is acceptable? I just have no words. What
| makes it even worse that I couldn't even complain about it on
| their support pages - they just keep removing my comments for
| being "non-constructive". This is some random bug, and many
| people have complained about it, how am I suppose to make it
| "more constructive"? Send them the exact configuration of
| constellations, the number of monitors I use and their
| positioning angles, log the keyboard rate and delay, the
| latency, the level of magnetic interference caused by my
| Bluetooth devices, etc.?
| ridgeguy wrote:
| Interesting. This is exactly the problem I've begun to have
| on my 14" M2 MB Air. I'm on 15.7.3. The issue started with
| 15.7.1.
|
| Here I've been thinking it's a hardware problem, like some
| sort of mechanical intermittent. Maybe not.
| steve_taylor wrote:
| Focus stealing has been an issue in windowed multi-tasking
| environments from the beginning. It's certainly been an issue
| in all macOS/OS X versions I've used since I started in 2011.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I've been using windowed multi-tasking environments since
| 1986. Never been a problem for me (SunOS -> Solaris ->
| Linux). I rely very, very, very much on focus-follows-
| mouse.
| asystole wrote:
| This bug isn't that. It's the frontmost app _losing_ focus
| to nothing.
| jijijijij wrote:
| You are using it wrong.
|
| Just install the SuperTyping app. It's sooo good and
| intuitive. Totally worth the $189, if you consider how
| often you need to type something.
|
| I also recommend Little Snitch as firewall and Parallels
| for virtualization.
|
| Does anyone have a recommendation for bootloader or
| filesystem app? Preferably subscription model for
| intuitive accounting.
| mdnahas wrote:
| Agreed. Since sharing input between multiple applications
| (and the OS services) is its primary role, you would think
| that UI designers would have "thou shalt not steal focus"
| as a commandment, but that is not the case.
|
| My latest version of the problem is with Ubuntu Gnome.
| Upgrade software and, later, you will be interrupted with a
| pop-up window to enter your system password. Not only is
| this an interruption, I'm always doubtful that this is the
| system asking for a sudoer password!
|
| UIs, in my experience, are very bad at handling
| "interrupts". Sorry, my dad designed chips, so I use that
| hardware term when talking about notifications and other
| times another application needs to notify or get the input
| from user. Personally, I'd have the UI change the
| color/texture of the system menubar/taskbar and wait for
| the user to click it.
| bsder wrote:
| > how am I suppose to make it "more constructive"?
|
| Obviously by shutting the hell up, you ungrateful serf. The
| beatings will continue until morale improves.
|
| Seriously, though, if you want this to stop, people like you
| are going to have to start voting with their wallets.
|
| I finally pulled the plug on macOS a couple years ago for
| Linux, and I haven't been unhappy about it. However, I did
| make a point of buying a laptop that was well supported on
| Linux (a Lenovo X1 Carbon that was in the same price class as
| an equivalent Mac).
| marssaxman wrote:
| I did the same a decade ago, and I've been fully content
| with my Linux-only life - but a new MacBook recently
| arrived along with a new job, so now I'm using Tahoe
| whether I like it or not. It's generally difficult to vote
| with someone else's wallet.
| bsder wrote:
| Well, be glad you're working for a company that is still
| willing to stump up properly for hardware.
|
| Too many companies are balking at spending money on
| hardware right now. While I would love to think that this
| will drive Linux adoption, it probably won't. Microsoft
| is going to cave on TPM 2.0 for Windows 11 or extend
| Windows 10 support much further.
| DerArzt wrote:
| I can't speak for all companies, but the feeling I get
| from mine is that the issue is more about the maintenance
| and support for Mac rather than the little extra spend to
| get a MacBook pro instead of the standard windows box.
| NBJack wrote:
| It will be interesting to see how RAM prices affect the
| behavior of all companies.
|
| I wouldn't mind if this finally lights a fire under
| certain software companies to also actually optimize
| their shit for memory use, but... I'm not that
| optimistic.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Don't worry, Microsoft has your cloud desktops all ready
| to go! Very little RAM needed.
| nine_k wrote:
| Happened to me many times. As my other colleagues, I ran
| a Linux VM inside macOS. The overhead is not that large
| and is totally worth the sanity. Of course I had to use a
| few corporate-managed macOS apps, like Zoom, or Outlook,
| but this is not a very big deal.
| adrianN wrote:
| The IT department must hate you. I'm not in IT but I
| think it's hard to be compliant with some kinds of
| regulations if you allow end users to run VMs.
| nine_k wrote:
| The dev environment is Linux anyway, mirroring the
| production environment.
| foobarchu wrote:
| It's literally impossible to run docker containers on mac
| without virtualization. An IT dept that forbade
| developers with macs from virtualizing would be facing a
| lack of developement in any company using docker/k8s
| psadauskas wrote:
| I'm in the same situation, have to use Mac for SOC2
| reasons after having used Linux for 10 years. The apps
| are fine, it's the KDE window management I miss the most,
| and a VM won't really help there.
| nine_k wrote:
| Why, running KDE in VirtualBox in full-screen mode must
| be fine :) At least, I did it breathlessly with Xfce, on
| much older Apple hardware, and it was... just fine.
|
| (OTOH running text-mode Emacs from a headless VM in a
| full-screen built-in Terminal may suddenly feel sluggish.
| Kitty or WezTerm solves this.)
| psadauskas wrote:
| Last time I tried, it didn't work well (or at all) with
| multiple monitors.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I appreciate your frustration, but at the same time what is
| Apple supposed to do? If it's affecting only a tiny number of
| users, and you just happen to be an unlucky one, and they
| don't know how to reproduce it, and you can't help them
| reproduce it, then what? I think they just have to wait until
| somebody (such as yourself) is able to figure out with some
| kind of logging what is happening. E.g. the first question to
| answer is probably what actually gets the focus, if anything?
| To produce a bug report that at least suggests which area of
| code might be responsible.
|
| I had a similar problem at one point, then finally figured
| out it was when I accidentally hit the fn button which
| triggered the emoji picker window and moved focus to it
| (IIRC), but it was off-screen because I'd previously used it
| on a secondary monitor. Reconnecting the monitor and moving
| the window back to my primary display fixed it. (Obviously,
| it's a bug to show a picker window outside of visible
| coordinates, and I think it got fixed eventually.)
|
| But it also might not be Apple at all, if it's some third-
| party background utility with a bug. E.g. if that were
| happening to me, my first thought would be that it might be a
| Logitech bug or a Karabiner-Elements bug. Uninstalling any
| non-Apple background processes or utilities seems like a
| necessary first step.
| tw04 wrote:
| I can tell you bartender 6 has been perpetually broken
| since release and does this. I finally gave up on it after
| the devs sent me "fixes" that never fixed anything.
| JoBrad wrote:
| Windows has had a "prevent apps from stealing focus" option
| for at least a decade. It was one of the things that I
| still dislike the most about macOS, and Apple can
| absolutely address this.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Windows has no such option, and regularly steals focus,
| particularly Visual Studio/Debug tools/applications
| loading. It had an option for a short period with the
| original TweakUI, but Microsoft removed support for it
| even in the registry.
|
| No OS should steal focus, Windows absolutely is guilty of
| it.
| AnyTimeTraveler wrote:
| Many Linux display managers let you chose what to do,
| when a window requests focus. For me on Sway, it just
| turns the border red.
|
| I chose what happens after. Can recommend. I wasn't even
| aware of my privilege.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Windows itself isn't guilty of this in my experience
| (lifetime of use until Linux switch last year), but other
| apps like shitty Akamai. Some years ago a coworker wrote
| this blog post and a simple tool to find out which
| programs are doing it:
| https://forwardscattering.org/post/30
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Windows is absolutely guilty of this, and it is trivial
| to reproduce.
|
| Reproduction steps:
|
| - Start a reply to this comment in your browser, type
| some example words.
|
| - Create a BAT file with the following contents:
| @echo off timeout /t 15 /nobreak >nul
| start notepad.exe - Run the BAT file.
| - Immediately switch back to the browser tab, and place
| your focus into the HN reply box. Type a word.
| - Wait for notepad to open - Continue
| typing. Your typing will go into Notepad and not the
| browser tab you had focused last.
|
| This occurs commonly and continuously on Windows, it is
| damn obnoxious. The OS should never ever change focus, it
| should however flash the window/taskbar, that is
| acceptable, but not shift my typing into whatever
| arbitrary program opened. This used to be fixable via
| "ForegroundLockTimeout" which is what classic TweakUI
| altered, but was killed in Vista.
|
| If you're a Visual Studio user, it is a daily annoyance.
| You hit Start/Play, go about your work, and then suddenly
| some time later focus shifts out from under you.
| paulmooreparks wrote:
| I'm running Windows (25H2, 26200.7462). I used the batch
| file you pasted and tried your repro steps, multiple
| times (I started writing this comment, in fact). It
| didn't steal focus. (Edit: See below). I'm quite sure
| that I haven't had a steal-focus issue at the OS level
| for many years, and I use Windows all day, every day. I'm
| also a Visual Studio user.
|
| Edit: I tried it with Firefox and got a repro there. No
| stealing with Edge.
| nottorp wrote:
| Why does a window manager allow applications to steal
| focus?
|
| Focus should change only in response to user commands.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I've found that the login dialog in Win 11 no longer
| consistently takes focus on the password field. Really
| annoying to login blind and find your typing was rejected
| because it doesn't do the sensible thing any more.
| efreak wrote:
| When I hit Win+L to lock my screen and come back 4 hours
| later to input my pin, I turn on my monitor (that I
| turned off because every 5 minutes Windows turns it on
| and off again), push esc or Ctrl a few times to clear off
| the image, and start typing in my PIN. 90% of the time by
| the time my monitor displays the picture, it's sitting at
| the unlock screen with the last 2 digits of my 4-digit
| PIN
| jdiff wrote:
| Where's that hiding? Discord is horrifically guilty of
| this across every OS, so I'd love a way to quash that on
| at least one.
| WD-42 wrote:
| GNOME on Linux prevents it. You get a notification
| "Discord updater is ready" instead which you can activate
| if you want to give it focus - which I never do. F the
| Discord updater.
| klondike_klive wrote:
| Adobe programs were the worst offenders for this in my
| experience.
| crazygringo wrote:
| How does that even work?
|
| When you launch an application or open a dialog, you
| expect the new window to "steal" focus. When you close a
| dialog, you expect focus to go back to the main window.
| If it didn't, it would impair usability.
|
| So how would an OS decide when "stealing focus" is
| allowed and when it is not?
|
| Like, I'm frustrated with it too. I hate when an app pops
| up a dialog while I'm typing and my next keystroke
| dismisses it and I have no idea what I've done. But at
| the same time, I'd hate to have to manually switch focus
| to a pop-up dialog every single time before dismissing it
| with Enter or Escape too -- that would be way too
| annoying in the other direction.
| nazgul17 wrote:
| Dunno, not deleting the posts would be a good start.
| iLemming wrote:
| Exactly. They're just acting like Trump during the
| pandemic - "no testing - no cases..." Why not just keep
| the posts and allow people exchange ideas for
| workarounds?
| m0llusk wrote:
| > ... what is Apple supposed to do? ...
|
| This seems like an example of a situation that modern
| machine learning could help with. Take bug reports
| permissively and look through all of them for patterns.
| Loss of focus should be the kind of thing that would stand
| out and could be analyzed for similarities and recurring
| features. Making sense of large amounts of often vague and
| rambling reports has been a problem for a long time and
| seems like a domain that machine learning is well set for.
| eloisius wrote:
| They could throw some small portion of their billions of
| dollars into proper quality control and reproduce it
| themselves if they wanted to. It's an industry-wide
| malaise, but it isn't inevitable. It's amazing that every
| year it becomes more and more economically nonviable for
| basic shit to meet the most modest standards of usability,
| yet we can use the power consumption of a small country to
| have Copilot in Notepad.
| crena wrote:
| The way I see it, money can't buy one of the most
| important ingredients: the motivation to do the best work
| of your life. No matter how much cash you throw at a
| problem, you're likely just going to get people who want
| to "do their job" from 9 to 5. Those are exactly the kind
| of workers that companies like the Apple of 2026 are
| looking for. It's a big ship, and it needs to stay steady
| and predictable. People who want to achieve something
| "insanely great" or "make a dent in the universe" are
| just a distraction.
|
| In my experience, shipping a product as polished as Mac
| OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard requires a painful level of
| dedication from everyone involved, not just Quality
| Assurance.
|
| As long as neither the New York Times nor the Wall Street
| Journal writes about how bad Apple's software has gotten,
| there's even no reason for them to think about changing
| their approach.
|
| The drama surrounding Apple's software quality isn't
| showing up in their earnings. And at the end of the day,
| those earnings are the "high order bit," no matter what
| marketing tries to tell us.
| noduerme wrote:
| Well, if there's one thing history has shown us
| (including the history of Apple's own insurgency against
| the PC), it's that complacency and stagnation make the
| incumbent a target for every newcomer who _does_ have the
| drive to make a dent in the universe. And there are
| always a lot of people with that drive. This is how we
| keep ending up in the cycle of chaos > new paradigm >
| perfect software that probably should not be improved
| upon > collapse under weight of new features > chaos >
| new paradigm... repeat.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _They could throw some small portion of their billions
| of dollars into proper quality control and reproduce it
| themselves if they wanted to._
|
| How?
|
| How do you reproduce something when you have no idea of
| the cause and it's not happening on any of your machines?
|
| And remember they don't have just this one unreproducible
| bug reported. They have _thousands_.
|
| If you have experience writing software, you're going to
| end up with a lot of unreproducible bug reports. They're
| a genuine challenge for everyone, not just Apple.
| Garlef wrote:
| > If it's affecting only a tiny number of users
|
| Tiny number of users with such an enormous user base
| (10-16% desktop share) still means there's thousands of
| users affected.
| materialpoint wrote:
| Apple has had 30 years to make UI focus and input stable,
| and not let something invisible steal input focus.
| Fortunately for mac, this is much worse on Windows.
| two_handfuls wrote:
| I wonder whether this could be a touchpad malfunction,
| causing phantom clicks that move focus. To diagnose, you
| could temporarily disable it and use an external mouse.
| Avamander wrote:
| External mice also suck with macOS though.
| Arainach wrote:
| Not sure why this is getting downvotes, it's absolutely
| true. For a very long time you couldn't even set
| different scroll directions for external mice and the
| touchpad - even if it's (maybe? I forget) supported now
| it's always been an area Apple didn't care about and was
| far behind Windows and Linux.
| mercanlIl wrote:
| I assume it's getting down votes because it's off-topic.
| The parent comment was suggesting external mice as a
| temporary measure to debug the intermittent issue they're
| facing.
|
| Whether or not external micr suck on MacOS doesn't really
| matter. The objective was to diagnose an issue.
| Avamander wrote:
| Well, if the suggestion is to _use_ an alternative for a
| while to diagnose an issue that causes equivalent or even
| worse issues, then it might not be(come) very debuggable.
| anemoknee wrote:
| It's not supported as of now. Tools like Scroll Reverser
| are still needed to specify scrolling behavior between
| the touchpad and an external mouse.
| AndrewDavis wrote:
| Recent switcher to macos. I can't find a way to
| separately set mouse acceleration and scroll wheel
| momentum.
|
| I use a trackball for RSI reasons, in order to get across
| the screen in a single flick means high sensitivity,
| mouse acceleration is absolutely needed to be able to
| make small movements. This makes my scroll wheel useless
| because a single scroll moves the page about 1/10 of a
| line
| NBJack wrote:
| I will pile on here and claim Apple is shockingly hostile
| to accessibility. From the weird way tabs work for focus
| to the limited options for text clarity, to the lack of
| control for mice customization, it feels like it has been
| a low item on their priorities for some time.
| spockz wrote:
| Have you tried Better Mouse? IIRC, it can set different
| settings per HID.
| reboot81 wrote:
| I cant use mice without https://linearmouse.app to adjust
| acceleration. (0$)
| mavamaarten wrote:
| Oh is that supported now? I've always used some tool
| (ScrollReverser) to fix this.
| Arainach wrote:
| Another comment suggests that third-party tools are still
| required and that Apple still hasn't added support for
| this, which makes me wonder if anyone at Apple uses an
| external mouse or if this is a scenario they literally
| don't care about.
| shantara wrote:
| That was my experience as well. macOS adopted the iOS UI
| pattern of list cells using a swipe gesture to show a
| delete button and other actions. This doesn't work with
| mouse and you have to use the right click context menu.
| This is a constant annoyance when switching between the
| Mac with an external mouse and the one with a trackpad,
| as it breaks your muscle memory.
| dent9 wrote:
| Gotta use Scroll Reverser unfortunately. Sometimes even
| that breaks though. Sad
| vehemenz wrote:
| Shortcuts.app and AppleScript works for this.
| TheCleric wrote:
| I have a Logitech MX Vertical and it works flawlessly.
| varenc wrote:
| I have a great time using my G502 on macOS, but I
| absolutely rely on SteerMouse to configure its behavior.
| daniel_sim wrote:
| the steermouse g502 combo is just incredible. been my
| staple for years
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| i have a logitech mx something and it's absolutely
| awesome.
| NBJack wrote:
| Those are great but often expensive mice. I wish the
| Apple tax didn't extend to third party hardware, but here
| we are.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It's not really an Apple tax. Those are just great mice,
| and I've used variations of them on Linux for more than a
| decade.
|
| (except that my latest one has just suffered catastrophic
| battery failure)
| dvdbloc wrote:
| Catastrophic? Like a battery fire?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It has just stopped holding charge. It can be 100%
| charged according to Solaar, unplug the cable and it is
| discharged in < 1 minute. Warranty replacement on the
| way.
| plorg wrote:
| I loved my Performance MX. I finally had to replace it at
| work (software wouldn't install after migrating to
| Windows 11) and the MX Master 3 I got seems much
| ergonomically worse to me. I also am not a fan of the
| thumb wheel replacing buttons. Only thing I won't
| complain about is that the resolution is better. From
| testing my coworkers' mouses (older Masters) I'm pretty
| sure they have each been a step downhill from my
| perspective.
|
| My sister in law gave me her G700S to fix the main button
| microswitches, and she convinced me that it's the
| apotheosis of the design - it's what should have replaced
| the Performance MX. No soft-touch plastic, extra buttons,
| and the higher resolution sensor. I'll probably have to
| get one off eBay.
|
| Edit: also all of the Masters have non-user-replaceable
| batteries.
| tempestn wrote:
| But the battery only lasts a day or two. The G604 is
| almost as nice, but battery lasts weeks. But it will
| likewise need switch replacements before long and is
| likewise no longer made. None of Logitech's current mice
| fill the same niche. Why do they discontinue their most
| popular mice without replacing them? Who can say. I'm
| pretty confident a direct 700/604 replacement with better
| switches would sell well.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > But the battery only lasts a day or two
|
| Yes, but the battery is standard and easily replaceable.
|
| My main gripe with the G700s is the weight, although it's
| not much heavier than the mx master 3. It also helps to
| have a great mousepad, or else I get tired of pushing
| that brick around. There are also aftermarket pads if you
| use it on the desk and they wear. I haven't tried any,
| though, my pads are still fine.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| > Yes, but the battery is standard and easily
| replaceable.
|
| The G604 that the prior post referenced uses a single AA
| battery, so also standard and easily replaceable.
| plorg wrote:
| I have a 20-year-old hard plastic gaming mouse pad I use
| at home and it's terrific. At work I have some
| promotional neoprene covered pad with a terrible Qi
| charger on one side. The mouse pad similarly works great.
| The biggest annoyance I have with these things is that I
| have replaced the switches on all of them, the process of
| which tends to destroy the skates. None of the
| replacement skate kits ($10, highway robbery) on eBay or
| Amazon or whatever include the thick adhesive like the
| originals, and all the foam tape I can find is _too_
| thick, so I 've taken to building up layers of double
| sided tape until they are both even and proud of the
| recesses in the mouse. This isn't exactly a criticism of
| Logitech except that they could absolutely sell repair
| parts for their peripherals and they don't.
| plorg wrote:
| I can't say I like the 604 from looking at it, but that's
| a pretty surface level judgment and I'd have to use it to
| really compare. For my purposes a rechargeable mouse that
| lasts more than a day is fine because I'm using this at
| work and I just plug it in when I leave. Having a
| replaceable rechargeable battery also means if it starts
| running out of juice before one day I can just pop in a
| new battery and it'll be good for a couple more years.
| ajolly wrote:
| G604s are pretty annoying to open up but if you don't
| want to solder on eBay they have full replacement boards
| that you can just drop in that have new switches already
| soldered in there for you.
| Joeri wrote:
| You have to use third party software to configure them
| properly, then they work fine. I used logitech's drivers
| for a while but they've become the biggest pile of
| garbage I have ever seen call itself a driver. I now use
| BetterMouse instead.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Depends on the mice. As a sibling says, Logitech mice
| with their drivers work great. The app isn't great and
| loads a boatload of javascript crap. Can't vouch for
| bettermouse, never tried it.
|
| Another option which sidesteps the Logi Options crap is
| Logitech "gaming" mice. These have an integrated memory
| that actually remembers the configuration set by the
| driver. So, you only have to put up with the shitty
| experience once, and then the mouse remembers those
| settings wherever you use it. Some models can actually
| remember multiple setting sets.
|
| One of my best mice is a G700s. I haven't used the
| Logitech G crap in like... ten years? The mouse is still
| going strong. Its only issue is that it goes through
| batteries like a hot knife through butter. I like it so
| much, I actually bought a second one for work. Got it
| used, since they weren't making them anymore.
| crucialfelix wrote:
| The window losing focus but OP reports is due to this:
|
| https://support.logi.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/37493733117847-Op...
|
| Which would only happen if you are using it wireless.
|
| It happened to me this morning.
| pjerem wrote:
| > Logitech mice with their drivers work great.
|
| That's not macos fault in this case, it's just that
| Logitech mouses (MX Master at least) doesn't act well at
| all without driver. Like, for scrolling, it's like the
| mouse is sending raw smooth scrolling each time you just
| touch the wheel and without the driver that presumably
| fake it on the computer side, there is no synchronisation
| between your actual scroll and the steps you physically
| feel in the wheel.
| shlant wrote:
| a touchpad malfunction that only happens after an OSX
| update?
| plorkyeran wrote:
| Yes, there is a very large amount of software that's
| involved in making touchpads work and that software is
| part of the OS.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| I once had a vexing problem with my old Intel MacBook --
| macOS failed to boot, but Windows seemed totally normal.
| Can't possibly be a hardware failure, right? The symptoms
| disappeared after replacing the SATA cable!
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| This reminds of the infamous GPU issues of the unibody
| models (the last non-retina ones). I have one such 2012
| 15" MBP which has a dedicated GPU which, as I understand
| it, has developed soldering issues.
|
| Non-Mac OSs don't know how to turn this GPU on out of the
| box, so it just sits there without bothering anybody.
| But, for some reason, MacOS turns it on and it craps the
| bed, rendering the machine unusable.
| terinjokes wrote:
| I had the 2010 version of this model, with the same
| symptoms starting in mid 2011. I would get 5-8 crashes a
| day from the GPU being on the fritz.
|
| Apple ended up replacing the mainboard in a free out-of-
| AppleCare repair. I never had the problem again and I
| used the machine regularly until about 2018.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| In my case, it lasted one or two more years, and I only
| learned about the repair after they stopped offering it.
| By that time, the machine had already been replaced for
| other, unrelated reasons.
| oreilles wrote:
| When your trackpad worked in a previous OS version and
| suddenly don't in the newest, that's called a software
| bug. Not a trackpad malfunction.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Trackpad malfunction may be hardware, or it may be
| software, but in either case it more clearly specified
| the issue than simply "software bug".
| lloeki wrote:
| I have similar behaviour on a Mac Mini, and only since
| Tahoe.
| cpt_sobel wrote:
| I've had the same issue while using external mouse and
| keyboard, so I definitely don't touch the touchpad.
| two_handfuls wrote:
| But was the touchpad disabled at the time? Phantom
| touches could happen even if your hand is not near the
| touchpad.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| It's not, it's just increasingly badly made. Started
| creeping in the release before Sequoia
| rufo wrote:
| Random possibility - if you have Bartender installed, it's
| buggy as shit on Tahoe, and has some really weird stuff it
| does with hiding the cursor and otherwise changing the focus
| around. I haven't switched off yet because the alternatives
| don't anywhere near as much functionality, but I probably
| will at some point soon, because while the updates have made
| it somewhat better it's still a pretty terrible experience at
| times.
| lurkersince2013 wrote:
| Avoid using Bartender:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1d8a0wv/if_you_ar
| e...
|
| https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/bartender-change-of-
| ownersh...
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Never heard of Bartender before, seems to be this:
|
| > superpowered your menu bar, giving you total control
| over your menu bar items, what's displayed, and when,
| with menu bar items only showing when you need them.
|
| Which also, for some reason has permission to record your
| desktop and recently had a change of owner? I'd be
| reformatting my computer so quickly if I found this out
| about software on my computer...
| rufo wrote:
| I replied to the parent post, but in short, I used it
| through a subscription service that specifically didn't
| update until the ownership issues were clarified to their
| (and ultimately my) satisfaction.
|
| The screen recording permissions are needed for it to be
| aware of when menu bar icons update so it can move them
| in and out of the menu bar; I believe later versions
| allow you to skip screen recording permissions if you're
| willing to forgo that feature.
| rufo wrote:
| Yep, I'm aware of the (incredibly-poorly-handled) change
| of ownership. I've been using it through a SetApp[1]
| subscription, and they stayed on the pre-acquisition
| version for quite a while; long enough that enough
| details came out about the new owner and I felt
| _relatively_ okay with continuing to use it after it got
| updates, especially going through another party. The
| Tahoe issues are making me rethink that heavily now - but
| the alternatives I briefly looked at when I upgraded to
| Tahoe all seemed incredibly lacking in one way or
| another, and I haven't wanted to blow up my menu bar yet
| again :/
|
| [1]: https://setapp.com/
| chuckadams wrote:
| If all you need is to hide infrequently-used menu entries
| so they don't spill under the notch, then zNotch is a
| pretty good alternative.
| literallyroy wrote:
| Delinia does this currently (I don't think the fix is public
| yet).
|
| You can run a python script to track the focused window every
| few seconds to identify what's stealing focus.
| anon373839 wrote:
| I have no information to add, but I also have started
| experiencing this after "upgrading" to Tahoe. Never was a
| problem before.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| The support pages are not for you to contact Apple. They are
| there for users to help other users. The cynical person would
| say they are there to get unpaid labor from other users so
| Apple can spend less on support.
|
| If you want to report something to Apple you use the
| "Feedback Assistant App"
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| The support pages are exactly this. They're called Level 0
| support in most companies internally.
| mikae1 wrote:
| "Just award them with some stars or points or whatever,
| and they'll be happy."
|
| I wish these people would wake up and spend their time
| helping peers on a forum for some open source project
| instead.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| There's a bunch of hyperactive people in those Apple
| "support" forums who don't actually help anyone. They
| respond to almost every discussion thread aggressively
| deflecting any criticism directed at Apple.
|
| They pretend to offer "solutions" so their posts don't
| come across as unconstructive, but their solutions are
| always essentially the same, often culminating in a
| factory reset. There is never any attempt to get to the
| bottom of anything or diagnose what the actual issue is.
|
| They are volunteering their time to make people shut up,
| bow their head in shame and go away. I don't think this
| is what you want in an open source project.
| lossyalgo wrote:
| That may be true to some extent but I am still often able
| to find some kind of answer, granted it's often just "NO,
| Apple doesn't do this".
| zarzavat wrote:
| Indeed. Apple should close those forums. It damages their
| brand to have such antagonistic people pretending to be
| support agents. A company of Apple's wealth could afford
| to have a small army of people in the Philippines do the
| same job with much less aggression.
| xp84 wrote:
| Wholeheartedly agree. The few times in my life that I've
| bothered to post there with a problem, it's been all the
| more upsetting that the patronizing generic advice and
| scolding of the frustrated users, is coming from random
| volunteer fanbois on the Internet, not even paid Apple
| staff who contractually _have_ to be positive about
| Apple. A company with such rabidly loyal supporters
| shouldn't deploy them like this. And if it was wise back
| in 2010 when Apple software was for the most part quite
| good... it sure isn't wise now when they're reaching what
| I hope is a temporary nadir in quality.
| immibis wrote:
| I don't think anything Apple does at this point can
| damage their brand. It's indestructible.
| ArmadilloGang wrote:
| Tim Cook runs a well oiled machine. At some point,
| leadership will change. And I don't think it is as simple
| as, "Just keep going what Tim was doing." There are so
| many moving parts that it is nigh certain Apple will go
| through a period of brand damage when things begin to
| fall through the cracks. Will that fall be dramatic?
| Probably not. But I think you underestimate just how much
| a shift in leadership can tip the scales.
| Barbing wrote:
| >small army
|
| Instead we get:
|
| https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/669252
|
| >"... Now, the few Apple engineers that get back to me
| for some of these issues and the Apple support as well
| often tell me that Apple really cares about customer
| feedback. I really want to believe this ... but it's so
| hard to believe it, if less than 1% of my submitted
| reports (yes, less than 1%, and it's probably much less)
| ever gets a response. A response, if it ever comes, can
| come after 3 months, or after 1 year, or after 3 years;
| only rarely does it come within 1 month. To some of the
| feedbacks, after getting a response from the Apple
| engineers, I responded, among other things, by asking if
| I'm doing something wrong with the way I submit the
| feedback reports. Because if I do something wrong, then
| that could be the reason why only so few of them are
| considered by the Apple engineers. But I never got any
| answer to that. I told them that it's frustrating sending
| so much feedback without ever knowing if it's helpful or
| not, and never got an answer. ..."
|
| Why is this Apple's path?
| smsm42 wrote:
| I pretty much expect 0 support from any major company
| unless I am covered with juicy Enterprise support
| contract. They are too big to care.
| Barbing wrote:
| Same! Though--
|
| In my exp. their _support_ is fantastic which is another
| reason it's odd they will simply leave countless
| _feedback_ submissions open nearly indefinitely. They
| ignore their free laborers!
| mikkupikku wrote:
| I wonder if other cult brands attract the same kind of
| personalities, or if Apple has somehow done something
| special to encourage it. When a Harley Davidson owner
| says he has a problem with his bike, do Harley zealots
| jump out of the woodwork to attack the dissenter and
| defend the brand from which they derive their
| personality?
| bombcar wrote:
| Given that it appears in Windows, I presume if there was
| a Harley Davidson support forum, there'd be fanatics
| defending them there.
|
| (They do defend them IRL, it's "commonly known" that HDs
| have issues that the install base "overlooks".)
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| " When a Harley Davidson owner says he has a problem with
| his bike, do Harley zealots jump out of the woodwork to
| attack the dissenter and defend the brand from which they
| derive their personality?"
|
| I'm no Harley owner but you and I both know the answer to
| that.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Honestly I'm not sure. Motorcycle interest might select
| against relevant personality traits/disorders. Maybe they
| bond over commiseration over Harley's decline (a
| narrative I've heard of)
| Animats wrote:
| Fanatical supporters of brands with a high defect rate
| are a thing. Norton motorcycles. A broad range of English
| cars. Amiga computers.
| ack_complete wrote:
| This shows up in a lot of other areas, like small game
| companies that have a devoted following. It can get
| pretty nasty because these types of people are able to be
| condescending just short of ToS, while baiting other
| people into crossing the line. A common thread is weak
| moderation or biased moderation.
|
| As a developer, it's easy to be blind to this because
| they're on "your side", but it's bad for the health of
| your support forums.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yes, fanbois, lecturing people that they're using it
| wrong.
|
| It's not just on Apple's forums, Microsoft has the same
| kind of guys. They tend to look really popular too
| because all the other fanbois upvote their comments.
|
| And not only there, many open-source software forums have
| the same problem.
| dostick wrote:
| Exactly same are the Google "support forums".
|
| At least you know it's not working as place to submit
| issue reports. It is better than other way, like Figma,
| 1Password and many others: a Support Forum with an army
| of yes-men "support specialists". They would answer your
| query with basic troubleshooting and then will say that
| it will be passed to development team or will be
| considered, etc. perfectly designed system to pacify user
| and dismiss their report.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| Are those the people who recommend "fixes" like resetting
| the PRAM / NVRAM to solve application level issues, or
| who recommend removing all files from the Desktop to
| somehow speed up general responsiveness? The Apple pages
| are awash with them.
| lossyalgo wrote:
| Then we would have zero support, or they would shut down
| the forums entirely. Or are you implying that the
| companies would be forced to finally offer official
| support?
| xp84 wrote:
| There is official support. Apple Support should be more
| deluged with callers, but they rely on these forum mod
| suckers to carry water for them and tell people it's
| their fault to lessen that load.
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| For Windows support I assume it accrues some benefit to
| the unpaid support, like it contributes to them getting
| their Microsoft Certified Windows End User Support
| Helpful Guy badge.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _If you want to report something to Apple you use the
| "Feedback Assistant App"_
|
| and watch years go by with no fixes or improvements to
| basic OS fundamentals.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Feedback Assistant
|
| They finally found a marketable name for /dev/null.
| JanNash wrote:
| well said. well, sad. but true ...
| Nextgrid wrote:
| As an Easter egg, I wonder if they can make it accept
| input in stdin and just discard it. If I was working
| there and didn't mind burning _some_ bridges (I'm not
| sure how many people would get wind of it as it's quite
| obscure) I would be tempted to implement it.
| krferriter wrote:
| This is starting to make sense. In the past I've been
| confused at a seemingly useful question thread there and
| the answer from some other user there with some like "top
| support user" badge or something, is just not an answer at
| all, and then the thread gets locked because they deemed it
| resolved.
| m463 wrote:
| > They are there for users to help other users.
|
| lol. Can't tell you how many times I've clicked "I have
| this problem too" on a page where users can't help each
| other because apple is doing/hiding something stupid.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| I have experienced the same, and still have no idea what is
| going on.
|
| Especially annoying when every app is likely to have single-
| key shortcuts which end up being accidentally triggered.
| Zizizizz wrote:
| Do you have Admin by Request on your machine (if its a
| company laptop). That was the culprit for me.
| Zizizizz wrote:
| I had this, it was our company's security software prompting
| an update (Admin by Request) that was getting hidden. An
| update to that software and the latest tahoe update seems to
| have resolved that issue.
| fzeindl wrote:
| That is incidentally one of the many papercuts that are
| widely accepted in Windows, but never were a problem on a
| mac.
|
| Don't try to interact with a windows desktop while it is
| still booting up. Better to wait for everything to settle
| down, otherwise apps will constantly snatch away focus and
| your typing will go into random applications.
| sumo89 wrote:
| I recently built a windows PC again for gaming. Haven't
| used one for years. Everything's fresh, loads of room on
| hard drives etc and still sometimes it'll just be weird and
| needs a reset. But it doesn't surprise me, it's sad we've
| come to tolerate that from the world's most popular OS.
| IrishTechie wrote:
| I have a Windows 11, macOS and Ubuntu Desktop VM that I
| alternate across throughout the week, I find I need to
| reset all three periodically to sort out random
| weirdness. It has more to do with which machine I've used
| most in the last few weeks not which OS is in-use in my
| experience.
| mcny wrote:
| Familiarity might be the biggest differentiator. I switch
| between windows on my work computer and fedora gnome on
| my personal computer (and only interact with Debian
| server over ssh) so I am more at ease on Windows than I
| am with something like cachy OS and KDE.
| lnenad wrote:
| I have the same setup, just Arch instead of ubuntu on my
| laptop and I very rarely have any issues (like maybe once
| per month) that require me to reboot.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Once every few weeks and once per month seem pretty much
| the exact same - and about in line with my own experience
| with Windows on my work machine.
| f1shy wrote:
| I have Win10, mac and Ubuntu, in 3 different machines I'm
| using constantly. None of them is perfect, but windows is
| just infuriating, macos in the middle, and I can more or
| less live with ubuntu...
| lostlogin wrote:
| And as always, I imagine Mac hardware with Ubuntu.
| f1shy wrote:
| In my case I have 3 different computers. So no. The
| Ubuntu is a Z book
| lostlogin wrote:
| I agree.
|
| Mac OS used to be rock solid. We had machines at work
| that had uptime measured in years. My own machine would
| go months.
|
| It doesn't anymore. Restarted twice today.
| bloak wrote:
| > the world's most popular OS
|
| Wikipedia claims that Android "has the largest installed
| base of any operating system in the world", if you're
| going to measure popularity that way.
|
| (Of course it's hard to know how to define an OS. Is
| Android a kind of Linux? Are the various things called
| "Windows" or "MacOS" to be regarded as different versions
| of the same OS just because marketing people decided to
| use the same name? If not, how much similarity in code or
| design is required?)
| gegtik wrote:
| I assumed he was talking about desktop OS
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| Can you even consider Android a singular OS? I personally
| don't in the same way I don't consider Fedora and Ubuntu
| the same OS, and there's far more differences between
| something like HyperOS and AOSP/PixelUI as there is
| between Ubuntu and Fedora.
|
| Android is an app platform.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Didn't someone recently uncover that this was usually do
| to ram losing bits over time? ECC would fix it? Maybe I'm
| misremembering
| corndoge wrote:
| As an aside, unless you are playing games that need NT
| kernel anticheat or are using a store other than steam,
| odds are the overall experience and performance is better
| on linux at this point.
| demiters wrote:
| And even Mac is doing well with games, most of my library
| runs natively. Baldurs Gate 3 runs better on the newer
| Apple chips than my somewhat aging gaming PC.
| jama211 wrote:
| Depends on your hardware. On my machine cyberpunk runs at
| 40fps on Linux but around 60fps on windows. Which is
| annoying as I'd rather it be better
| lostlogin wrote:
| > the world's most popular OS.
|
| No.
|
| Most common? Loathed? Used? Most tolerated?
|
| It's not liked, and 'popular' implies that.
| elzbardico wrote:
| I'd say that most PC users have vague knowledge that
| linux or MacOS exists.
| foobarian wrote:
| Did the same just end of last year, NVME drive, gobs of
| RAM, and yet... sometimes the whole UI freezes solid for
| multiple seconds at a time when I close one out of my
| 30-40 Chrome tabs. I know it's not a cheap app to run,
| but this doesn't happen on MacOS.
| neutronicus wrote:
| This is a constant irritation for me on Windows.
|
| I work on a desktop Windows/Mac application that takes
| forever and a day to launch (CAD package), and pops up a
| million pop-ups during the process. I try to get minor
| admin tasks done while it is compiling/launching, but it
| steals focus every 10 seconds!
|
| Still beats using XCode, though
| hbn wrote:
| Windows 11 also broke the active window from focusing
| when waking from sleep. Whenever I wake my PC, no window
| is active. I'll still have a fullscreen Chrome or
| whatever, but if I try to do Ctrl+T to open a tab nothing
| happens because nothing is in focus. I have to Alt+Tab
| once to bring it into focus.
| ajolly wrote:
| Change the ForegroundLockTimeout registry setting to
| increase the timeout, or you can set it to the max
| integer value to never let the app steal the focus.
|
| by default if you haven't typed anything for a little bit
| Windows allows an application to steal focus. If you
| change that value you can prevent windows from ever
| stealing focus or change how long they have to wait
| before they're allowed to.
| draven wrote:
| > Don't try to interact with a windows desktop while it is
| still booting up
|
| I experience the same with macOS. For example Discord
| steals focus.
| antod wrote:
| I remember using the NT5 betas (that became Win2k) and
| being so pleased that the focus (not) stealing was working
| much better. They "fixed" that for the final release
| ajolly wrote:
| They have changed the default focus lock timeout behavior
| over the years, but you can still very easily tweak it to
| whatever you want
| lostlogin wrote:
| > That is incidentally one of the many papercuts that are
| widely accepted in Windows
|
| A flashing cursor in an inactive text box. Possibly the
| most annoying of bugs.
|
| Looking at you Windows, COMRAD and every login I ever do.
| technofiend wrote:
| I've been beefing about this for decades; X Window didn't
| do this by default and you could adjust window manager
| behavior however you liked to prevent windows stealing
| focus in X, even for newly realized windows. Microsoft
| Windows decided for some reason the newest window gets
| focus, which is annoying as heck. I really don't want my
| attention involuntarily switched because my window manager
| things it knows better than I do where I should be looking.
| ajolly wrote:
| You want to change the ForegroundLockTimeout registry key
| or set it via power shell.
|
| by default if you haven't typed anything for a little bit
| Windows allows an application to steal focus. If you
| change that value you can prevent windows from ever
| stealing focus or change how long they have to wait
| before they're allowed to.
|
| Windows has a ton of little settings you can tweak like
| this if it's not working quite how you like it.
|
| I personally tweak it the other way to allow a window to
| pop up and still focus sooner .
|
| If you set up via PowerShell you can do it more
| dynamically and if you're doing it via the API there's
| behavior in there too force a lock
| ajolly wrote:
| Check/change your ForegroundLockTimeout registry value.
|
| by default if you haven't typed anything for a little bit
| Windows allows an application to steal focus. If you change
| that value you can prevent windows from ever stealing focus
| or change how long they have to wait before they're allowed
| to.
| shortercode wrote:
| I looked into this and the issue is the inbuilt SecurityAgent
| briefly taking focus. For me I believe it's related to some
| management setting our company has added not getting on with
| Tahoe.
| mcv wrote:
| My MacBook is corporate, and it's therefore loaded with a ton
| of corporate auto-update, VPN and apparently questionnaire
| software. Stuff pops up at the most annoying times. And
| sometimes, indeed it takes focus away from the thing I'm
| currently typing. Extremely annoying.
|
| But apparently Apple is not the only offender. Just as I was
| typing this (on Harmonic on Android), a popup popped up, ate
| a few of the characters I typed and disappeared again. No
| idea what it said. Why do people do this? Don't hijack let
| applications I didn't ask for hijack my input.
| mgoetzke wrote:
| Dont get me started on the number of times Signal/formerly
| Skype opened up a dialog in-the-midst of me typing and me
| accidentally accepting a call because i happened to write
| 'space' at that moment in time
| phkahler wrote:
| Tahoe made at least one undocumented change to timer events
| in the GUI. This resulted in a difficult to debug problem in
| solvespace. I suspect we were doing something "wrong" and had
| to correct it, but the fact remains they made a change to how
| some GUI events work and didn't tell anyone.
| nkotov wrote:
| By chance are you using any Logitech stuff? I have a similar
| issue and narrowed it down to one of the Logi Options taking
| focus away randomly.
| crucialfelix wrote:
| Do you have a logitech mouse? If so you need to reinstall the
| logi and/or G Hub apps. The cert changed and that's what's
| causing it to fail and keep grabbing focus away. Incredibly
| strange bug.
|
| https://support.logi.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/37493733117847-Op...
| ljm wrote:
| I updated to iPadOS 26 on my iPad Pro, opened Safari, and
| tried to log into a website. For some reason the full-screen
| keyboard didn't load, all I could get was a miniature thing
| that floated on the left part of the screen (like the two-
| handed layout but with the full keyboard in one half, like
| typing on an iPhone 5s).
|
| The memes about Steve Jobs turning in his grave are true. He
| would not have stood for slop like this for even a moment.
| Apple's quality game was miles higher back in the day.
|
| Even if they tried to do some kind of Snow Leopard
| maintenance release for all of their products, I don't think
| they could raise the bar on quality high enough in just a
| single release. They'd have to do it a few times with nothing
| new to show for it.
|
| This speaks nothing of the transition to MacOS looking more
| and more like a dysfunctional toy since Jony Ive left and
| Alan Dye took over.
|
| Tiger and Snow Leopard were the peak.
| gizajob wrote:
| If only Stevesie was still here to roll some heads :(
| imbnwa wrote:
| > One of the most annoying things after installing Tahoe for
| me, that for no good reason an ordinary app would randomly
| lose its focus. In the midst of my typing.
|
| So its not just me!
| dijital wrote:
| I've been troubleshooting this on and off since early
| December.
|
| There's a handy Python script here to show log which
| application is stealing focus: https://superuser.com/a/874314
|
| If you find it's SecurityAgent then you might be hitting this
| bug: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/807112
|
| I suspect it's related to a JIT privilege management app my
| company uses.
| mastazi wrote:
| I had the same issue, and in my case it turned out it was
| caused by Logitech G Hub which was running in the background.
| I uninstalled it and did not experience the issue again. My
| suggestion is to check any background process that might be
| doing that.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Oh decent timing, this happened to me first time today, I
| even looked down at the track pad to see if my hand was close
| enough to accidentally swipe it because I felt it wasn't
| j-krieger wrote:
| I had to upgrade my iPhone to iOS 26 to setup my watch. I wish
| I had never done it. Nothing is where it's supposed to be from
| a UI perspective. Stuff breaks often. I can't use my contact
| search bar to search contacts. It only searches past calls.
| What the hell.
| usefulcat wrote:
| I don't like all the changes either, but I just opened the
| contacts app and started typing a name and it showed me
| exactly what I expected--several of my contacts with the name
| I typed. iOS 26.2.
| ost-ing wrote:
| Apple software has noticeably declined from my experience, both
| iOS and macOS. I find the lifecycle of Apple products to be
| offensively short, also.
|
| If I buy a product and the hardware is good for 10 years
| (because I looked after it), I expect the software to also run
| just as well as when I purchased it - that is the case with
| Linux, why isn't it the case with macOS?
|
| Every year the software upgrades invariably degrade system
| performance. Outrageous.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I find the lifecycle of Apple products to be offensively
| short, also.
|
| Apple is _miles_ ahead of Android when it comes to phones and
| tablets, most in the Android ecosystem is e-waste four or
| five years in, while Apple stuff can still be re-sold for
| actual money at that time assuming you didn 't bust your
| screen.
|
| For laptops, Apple is so far ahead it can't even be
| described. Most Windows laptops _physically break apart_
| before macOS ceases to support any Apple laptop.
|
| Only thing we can maybe talk about is desktop PCs ever since
| the switch to M that basically made meaningful upgrades
| impossible, but eh, in my attic there's a 2009 Mac Pro still
| chugging along as my homelab server + gaming rig.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| I'm using a MacBook Pro 2016 for dev still works great, and
| its still better than every windows laptop available now.
| The touchpad itself is still superior - its crazy when you
| think about it. I know people on their 3rd or 4th windows
| laptop since I've been using mine. I tried a M4 recently
| and its battery life is fantastic, and its faster so I'll
| probably upgrade when this one dies, but it still works
| well.
|
| Edit: just did a google and it seems I can still sell it
| for about $600AUD, I don't know how anyone is buying a non
| apple lap top.
| ost-ing wrote:
| The hardware is very good, it can absolutely last 10 years
| and is miles ahead of competition - which pains me even
| more that the software degrades. I will eventually install
| linux on my M1 but I shouldn't have to.
| TheDong wrote:
| > Apple is miles ahead of Android when it comes to phones
| and tablets, most in the Android ecosystem is e-waste four
| or five years in
|
| I have a very old android tablet (Nexus 7, 2013). I can
| install Linux on it and it works just fine. I can convert
| it into a full screen kiosk mode thing that displays photo
| albums, put it next to my tv as a song controller, etc etc.
|
| Older iPads no longer get updates, and I can't install
| linux on them. Apple is wildly behind a lot of other
| hardware in terms of software-support since I can install
| linux on a lot of other stuff. Apple devices turn into
| useless e-waste bricks, other devices can get a second life
| running linux.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I have a very old android tablet (Nexus 7, 2013).
|
| Yeah, Nexus and being old, that's the thing. Everyone
| else other than Nexus, you gotta be lucky if you even get
| kernel sources and device trees that you can compile, but
| the code quality will usually be so rotten there's no
| hope of mainstreaming it to the Linux kernel.
|
| > Apple devices turn into useless e-waste bricks
|
| Only the iDevice lineup though. The Intel and M series
| devices all can be made to run Linux.
| brailsafe wrote:
| > Apple is miles ahead of Android when it comes to phones
| and tablets
|
| Eh, I had to use a variety of iPhones for work recently,
| don't remember which models, from probably the last ~7
| years though, and they really felt limited and frustrating
| on the software side. My already years old Pixel 7 feels
| miles ahead, and so did my Pixel 4a, even with the worse
| hardware of the latter. They just feel more capable.
|
| I've been a mac guy for work for at least 15 years though,
| now with an M4 on Sequoia, and definitely won't be buying
| anything else (windows for most gaming), but Tahoe is not
| looking promising.
| everdrive wrote:
| >Apple is miles ahead of Android
|
| And Mussolini wasn't nearly as bad as Hitler. A relative
| measure like this sets an artificially low bar. If these
| devices had replaceable screens and batteries, they would
| be good until the mobile standards stopped being supported.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > And Mussolini wasn't nearly as bad as Hitler.
|
| Damn, I haven't seen an instance of Godwin's law outside
| of political threads _for years_ in the wild.
|
| > If these devices had replaceable screens and batteries,
| they would be good until the mobile standards stopped
| being supported.
|
| The problem is, even replaceable components don't matter
| when the OS support drops and the device becomes a bad
| netizen as a result. And no, there is no viable FOSS
| competition to Android and iOS, many including giants
| such as Mozilla learned that lesson the hard way.
|
| And that's before getting into the whole issue with BSPs,
| horrible code quality (good luck trying to get any SoC
| BSP upstreamed to u-boot or god forbid the Linux kernel),
| or the rapid evolution in mobile SoC performance.
| everdrive wrote:
| >Godwin's law
|
| I'm not calling anyone Hitler, though, just pointing out
| the flaws that can come with relative comparisons. A
| known, extreme example here is useful as it's well known
| and illustrative.
|
| Anyhow, Apple & Android should just support old hardware
| for longer.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Anyhow, Apple & Android should just support old
| hardware for longer.
|
| Apple already does. The iPhone 6s, released 2015, got a
| security update just a few months ago [1]. That's _ten
| years_ worth of security updates, I 'm amazed that people
| are still using such old phones.
|
| If we go by the metric of "app developers can still
| publish app updates", the minimum target version is iOS
| 18 [2], which means you can still target the iPhone XS
| from 2018, that's a 7 year old phone.
|
| The true catastrophe is Android, and that's actually not
| Android's fault. That's the fault of Qualcomm, MTK,
| Samsung and other more obscure SoC vendors - only in
| 2023, with the Pixel 8 [3], came the first SoC with seven
| years of support. As said: most BSPs are utter dogshit,
| and so are the firmwares for all the tiny chips and IP
| cores. The Linux kernel is a very fast moving target and
| it's (by intent) a gargantuan effort to keep forked
| kernels up to date. And it's made even worse by the
| embedded industry's trend of continuously "improving"
| their chips/IP cores without changing model numbers,
| making it sometimes outright impossible for a kernel
| module to deal with two different steppings and
| respective quirks on its own.
|
| Apple in contrast insists on writing _everything_
| themselves - that 's why they fell out of love with
| NVIDIA a decade ago, NVIDIA refused to give Apple that
| level of access. That allows Apple to keep even very
| outdated stuff supplied at least with critical security
| fixes.
|
| Google _could_ do something here, say by adding a
| requirement to the Play Store license that BSPs must be
| actually accessible open source and vendors have to
| commit reasonable effort in upstreaming their kernel
| level drivers, but I guess Google is too afraid of
| getting hit by anti-trust issues.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone
|
| [2] https://developer.apple.com/news/upcoming-
| requirements/?id=0...
|
| [3] https://blog.cortado.com/en/7-years-of-software-
| updates-for-...
| sofixa wrote:
| > Most Windows laptops physically break apart before macOS
| ceases to support any Apple laptop.
|
| If you buy the $199 Windows laptop that can barely run
| Windows, yes. Anything comparable in price to a MacBook?
| Not really.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I've yet to spot a full aluminum frame in any Windows
| laptop even _matching_ Apple 's price point. And I've yet
| to come across to a touchpad comparable in size, feel
| (Apple's is virtually flush with the case, most Windows
| touchpads are recessed, every one I came across was
| plastic while Apple's is glass) and gesture behavior
| either.
|
| > Anything comparable in price to a MacBook?
|
| The current MacBook Air is at ~1100EUR here in Germany.
| That's not _that_ expensive, particularly as even the
| entry models still blow away the competition for CPU.
| sofixa wrote:
| I bought an Asus Zenbook UX303 a decade ago that had a
| full aluminium body, a dedicated Nvidia GPU, and cost
| like 800EUR. A sibling still uses it today. I've upgraded
| to an Asus ROG Zephyrus that has a fancy plastic body
| that doesn't leave sweat and fingerprint traces like my
| work MacBook Pro does.
| yuryk wrote:
| I personally hold Swift and SwiftUI responsible, as Apple has
| increasingly adopted them in its own products. Moreover, by
| introducing frameworks that are exclusive to Swift, the
| company effectively compels developers to use this rather
| mediocre language.
| werdnapk wrote:
| I have a fully functional iPad mini for my kids that only
| supports iOS 12. I can barely install or use any software
| though because it's not supported on such an old OS.
| scarlehoff wrote:
| I agree. This is the first time I regret updating macOs.
|
| I hoped the .1 or .2 would fix things, but I'm still seeing
| glitches and even random freezes.
|
| Microsoft is a disaster right now, but if the new intel
| processor can compete on battery life with mac I might go back
| to linux.
| type0 wrote:
| > if the new intel processor can compete on battery life with
| mac I might go back to linux.
|
| Unfortunately Intel is cutting down their Linux involvement
| so I wouldn't have high hopes for it. Newer AMD laptops are
| probably on par with Intel on Linux now.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| It's a pity Lenovo isn't doing Linux support for their
| Snapdragon laptops. I'd switch.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Tahoe is a macOS mis-step on par with Windows 8 or Windows
| Vista.
|
| Other than that weird resize thing written about here (which I
| didn't notice, thanks SizeUp for providing me with hotkeys
| remarkably similar to Windows) - why? Vista and 8 were
| immediately obvious changes in the UI, but in general it still
| looks and feels just like macOS has for well over a decade now.
|
| New icons, new fonts, but... that's it?
|
| Oh and HyperSwitch for some reason can't switch to Finder
| windows any more, but that's probably because HyperSwitch
| hasn't seen an upgrade in years...
| kaashif wrote:
| I switched from Windows 11 to macOS after a disastrous upgrade
| experience and drastic downgrade in performance on my Windows
| laptop.
|
| I mean Windows 10 wasn't great but I got used to the taskbar
| searching the web somehow and the dual config menus everywhere
| and so on. But 11 was just terrible.
|
| macOS has its pain points but man oh man what a disaster
| Windows is.
|
| I have had Linux on my personal desktop and laptop forever so
| that hasn't been an issue, only used Windows for work.
| victor106 wrote:
| I agree. I have been kind of an Apple fanboy but the Tahoe
| thing is one of the worst products to come out of the company.
| I really think people should be fired for releasing this.
|
| This is akin to MobileMe -
|
| https://www.cultofmac.com/apple-history/steve-jobs-mobileme-...
| rayiner wrote:
| It's such an utter piece of crap.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Unfortunately for Apple, Linux has not rotted the same way that
| macOS has. Will Linux win the desktop wars through attrition
| because it won't suffer the same enshittification as for-profit
| software?
|
| If it wasn't for Apple Silicon and its stellar impact on
| battery life, I'd be gone. iOS 26 might make it happen anyway!
| bitfilped wrote:
| I hope so, Tahoe seems particularly bad, but the downhill slide
| has been happening for several releases.
| jader201 wrote:
| I was in the market for a new MBP (still on my 2015 MBP). After
| all of these articles and reports of how terrible Tahoe is, I'm
| holding off.
|
| I'm hoping they'll wake up and fix this with the next release,
| but I'm not super optimistic.
|
| We'll see.
| acdha wrote:
| The M4 I bought last month shipped without Tahoe and hasn't
| been updated. If you can get one which isn't already
| upgraded, you can leave it on the better release as long as
| Sequoia was ever supported on that generation.
| pier25 wrote:
| Staying with Sequoia and iOS 18 for as long as I can.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Apple's worst release in years (maybe ever), Microsoft's worst
| release in years (maybe ever), meanwhile mainstream Linux UX
| has been taking baby steps forward on a nearly-daily basis for
| a decade straight.
|
| I'm not saying 2026 is the year, but...
| hahahahhaah wrote:
| 2026 is the year of nothing on the desktop so may as well
| pick Linux.
| fainpul wrote:
| 2026 is the year of the shitty desktop OSes.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Tried Linux (Omachy) recently and the mouse pointer drops
| frames or chokes movement under load. Just can't use an OS
| that does that full stop.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I wouldn't call Omarchy "mainstream". Yes it's very popular
| among developers but that's about it and under the hood it
| uses some pretty non-mainstream components like Hyplrand
| WM.
|
| I would argue the OS closest to "mainstream Linux" is
| Ubuntu or Fedora with Gnome DE. Gnome has many many faults
| but it's probably the closest DE you're going to get to
| what Windows and MacOS have.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| I'll give one of the more mainstream ones a try when I
| have a free afternoon, frustrating thing was it wasn't
| underpowered at all this was with a RTX3090 so very
| concerning investing in that, perhaps wrongly assumed
| Wayland etc would have been a similar feel to Mac Quartz
| Composer fluidity by now.
| physPop wrote:
| it does but you need various config tweaks
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| Oh God you fell for the hype and used DHH's juiced up
| distro. I encourage you to try a properly maintained distro
| e.g. Ubuntu, Fedora, or Leap instead of a racist
| narcissist's hobby project.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Linux's value proposition would have to be "Everything's
| different learning curve yada yada but it's so clean and well
| done users will see the light" Meanwhile run ps on an Ubuntu
| desktop. The same process bloat and shit that ruined Windows
| and macOS. Linux is a mess, almost by design.
| seemaze wrote:
| Linux is the worst desktop we have, except for all the
| others..
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| >Tahoe is a macOS mis-step on par with Windows 8 or Windows
| Vista.
|
| Are you just saying that because it has new glassy windows and
| is a resource hog? What is that different about Tahoe vs
| Sequoia?
| TuxSH wrote:
| Not OP, but there are plenty of minor annoyances (I had the
| "pleasure" of upgrading my work laptop to Tahoe) :
|
| - Apple Music requires one more click to pop the multiplayer,
| UI is worse and the click hitbox for the progress seek bar is
| too small
|
| - Volume +/- now acts like a notification (top-right corner
| of screen and clickable). Horrible design decision (gets in
| the way of browser tabs)
|
| - The "A > B > C" folder thingy at the bottom of Finder
| windows is gone, and the tabs' styling looks unsettling
|
| - Weather (and Stocks, to a lesser degree) looks worse, lots
| of space wasted
| weaksauce wrote:
| though use linux is in a great state. tahoe and windows are
| really bad right now and i don't regret moving to linux even a
| little bit.
| neonmagenta wrote:
| oof. i'll be holding off after seeing all this. already have to
| deal with adobe's bad updates
| btbuildem wrote:
| The most annoying part about it is they won't admit the obvious
| colossal mistake and fix it.
|
| I've blocked Apple's update servers via /etc/hosts so this
| monstrous thing doesn't sneak onto my machine in the middle of
| the night, still happily on Sequoia.
| caro_kann wrote:
| When I saw the first liquid glass demo I decided not to upgrade
| both my phone and macbook for couple of years to come till they
| fix it.
| ramijames wrote:
| The worst part is the audiocore substack that is glitching. I
| waited to major subversions to upgrade and still got bit. I
| hate this.
| dunham wrote:
| Yeah, for me with a USB headset, the audio will go noisy
| about two minutes into a video / podcast. It clears up if I
| restart and doesn't happen when playing to the internal
| speakers.
| cyri wrote:
| same here. still running on the previous version on all
| devices. Gonna sit this out ...
| danaris wrote:
| Given the departure of Alan Dye and his replacement with
| someone (whose name I have temporarily forgotten) who comes
| from an _actual_ UI design background, I am very optimistic
| that the next few iterations of macOS and iOS will actually
| start to improve the UI situation.
| MarleTangible wrote:
| I still think Alan Dye was secretly fired. When you live in a
| bubble and everybody around you is propping you up, you think
| everything is fine and dandy, but users don't care about your
| or anybody's feelings.
|
| Dye didn't bring something that users didn't know they
| needed, he brought chaos to the entire ecosystem, and he's
| the only Apple executive folks are willing to talk garbage
| about.
| danaris wrote:
| I mean, it feels like it would make some sense, and
| honestly I'd _love_ for it to be true--but everything I 've
| heard, from people who know Apple much better than me
| and/or have inside sources, is that not only was he not
| secretly fired, his departure blindsided the C-suite.
|
| If Cook and his other senior staff had recognized the
| problems Dye was causing and wanted him gone, what possible
| motivation would they have to make his firing _secret_? How
| could it possibly serve them _better_ to have it look like
| they were chumps?
| jwr wrote:
| Tahoe actually harms their hardware sales. I would normally
| upgrade to the latest MacBook Pro as soon as they become
| available, but I know that the next M5 generation will come
| with Tahoe installed and I intend to keep my current machine
| for as long as I can...
| gherkinnn wrote:
| The M1 hurt their future hardware sales, as now, 5 years
| later, it remains a viable machine. The M1 MacBook Air has
| become a bit of a meme.
| grliga wrote:
| similar here, i bought refurb m3 mbp last nov just to get
| pre-tahoe
| mkzet wrote:
| I regret dearly the upgrade as well. I've turned a beautiful
| $3500 hardware into a close to Windows Vista machine that
| frustrates me daily. Just looking at it kills my productivity
| instantly, I just use full screen for all my apps now.
| ketzu wrote:
| > Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is not exactly in a position to
| attract switchers.
|
| Yes, because my apple hardware does not run properly with any
| other operating system. I would have switched to linux a while
| ago otherwise.
| mcv wrote:
| I would love linux on Apple hardware. Lots of people would, I
| suspect.
|
| I guess Apple has realized that their hardware is so good
| that they don't have to worry about the software anymore.
| bluescrn wrote:
| > Tahoe is a macOS mis-step on par with Windows 8 or Windows
| Vista
|
| Not even close.
|
| It's taken a few steps in the wrong direction, but nothing
| compaered to the user-hostility of Win8 (attempting to move
| users from 'real Windows' into locked-down dumbed-down touch-
| centric mobile-like app store hell), let alone Win11 (creating
| an e-waste mountain, then pushing AI slop into everything)
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Tahoe is a bit shit, yes. But I was there for both Vista and
| Windows 8 and they were both utterly unusable.
|
| Vista ate every bit of RAM it could find, had severe driver
| issues and riddled with instabilities. It would not run on half
| the hardware at the time. I faintly remember a DX10 shitshow as
| well. And 8 hopelessly tried to apply Metro to the desktop and
| added a third (or was it forth?) settings panel. Also killed
| the Start menu.
| MarleTangible wrote:
| Just to be playful, Tahoe killed the launchpad and brought us
| the random size rounded corner madness.
| gkanai wrote:
| I am still on Sequoia and dont plan to move to Tahoe.
| bborud wrote:
| I don't understand why Apple change things needlessly. What
| other purpose does it serve? How does this positively affect
| the bottom line? How does it improve life for Apple's users?
| Breaking basic interaction with windows purely because someone
| feels we should waste more screen real-estate on ornamentation
| by having bigger radius rounded corners is, for lack of a
| better word, stupid.
|
| I'd like Apple to focus more on the things that actually matter
| to users. To fix bugs, to work on performance, to simplify
| things rather than complicate them. Focus on making it a better
| platform for doing work and less a playground for pointless
| fiddling with design and sloppiness.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| There has to be work done. Each sprint, new FEATURES must be
| completed.
|
| Features, people, FEATURES.
| dillydogg wrote:
| We finally have processors in our pockets that can
| calculate the pretty lights and colors, so make them
| calculate, people!
| bborud wrote:
| I'd like to use that extra processing and efficiency to
| get longer battery life when the phone isn't doing
| anything special, and to have better performing apps.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Because if you don't make periodic cosmetic changes, people
| will think you're going out of business.
|
| It's why your favorite shoe company, that you buy from every
| 2-3 years when you wear out your favorite shoes, always has
| new styles and discontinues other styles. Converse is a great
| example.
| autoexec wrote:
| Generally I agree with you. My advice is that when you find
| a pair or shoes you like pick up at least 3 pair because by
| the time you need to replace them they'll be gone, but
| Converse isn't a great example of that because I can get a
| pair of Chucks which look/fit basically exactly like any
| pair I've ever had. It's actually kind of nice that
| Converse doesn't seem to play the same game as the
| tennis/running shoes I wear out.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| FYI: You can't get the cons that they sold about a decade
| ago. They changed the sole a bit so they are now
| "slippers" in order to avoid tariffs. (I also suspect
| there's a reason why they also sell "boots" too.)
|
| I do wish I heeded your advice. I bought some awesome Doc
| Marten boots/sneaker hybrids called "Boury" a few years
| ago, and they stopped making them. I can't find any in my
| size anywhere, like EBay. I walked all around Disney
| World with them in shorts, and they looked / felt
| awesome.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| But when Apple released macOS Snow Leopard (widely held to
| be great), it announced 0 new features over Leopard, to
| much applause. It focused exclusively on fixing issues, and
| was better for it.
|
| Journalists will report whatever they get fed anyway
| (notice how they all talk gleefully over the wobbly new
| iPhone with a jutting-out camera bump when only a few years
| ago they talked gleefully about how flat the iPhone was,
| and then gleefully wrote about how their screen estate was
| invaded by a notch etc), so if Apple focused on fixing
| issues instead of short-attention-span apps (when was the
| last time you used "Image Playground"?) the media could
| report how committed to reliability and quality Apple is,
| gleefully.
| enaaem wrote:
| Good design should be timeless. For example, I like wat Leica
| did for their M serie cameras. At a certain point they
| decided that the design was done, and stopped messing around.
| For that you need leadership with good taste, because
| designers will always design.
| bborud wrote:
| Mostly, but they made mistakes too. Just look at the M5 vs
| the M6 vs the M7. The original M6 came out in 1984 and it
| is still the preferred model to this day in terms of film
| cameras. The M5 was too large and the M7 was too
| <<electronic>>. People preferred the cameras that stuck
| closer to the original DNA. M6 cameras still fetch a pretty
| penny today. (So much so that Leica made a reissue a few
| years ago).
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Managers are incentivized to do things to the real world that
| show up as "* Led implementation of [bla]" on their resume.
|
| It's more effort to do things that also make sense than only
| to produce the bullet point.
| codyb wrote:
| When I read the welcome screen which includes the "hit
| features", all I remember was
|
| "You can change your icons!" - What? Was that the big issue of
| my day? (Although, after I saw what they had done to them, it
| certainly loomed larger in my mind)
|
| and
|
| "Notification summaries that may be incorrect"
|
| Miserable. Won't be upgrading the personal computer, am fast
| moving away from Apple as a whole, am telling others not to
| upgrade for as long as possible.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I'm as picky as the next guy, but I'm not seeing Tahoe being
| THAT BAD. I was holding off, but various events led to me
| buying a new laptop so I got it by default.
|
| Resizing isn't great, but it's also deeply shitty in Win 11. I
| feel like window manager thought leadership has failed across
| the board, but the regression isn't that big of a deal in day
| to day usage, and is definitely not unique to Apple.
| leokennis wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's pure nostalgia but I long back to the
| "Lion era" of OS X.
|
| Apple had a HIG and third party developers used it. Different
| apps looked consistent: toolbar, sidebar etc.
|
| Apps had borders. If there was too much content there were big
| blue scrollbars.
|
| Buttons had borders. Windows had texture. You could find stuff.
|
| I could go on forever. But the OS was simultaneously better
| visible to the eye, and less visible to the mind. Stuff worked.
| ksec wrote:
| > iOS 8+ did improve on iOS 7's worst bits
|
| Or iOS 8 and 9 did _revert_ back a lot of iOS 7 changes.
|
| I am not against changing UI, but it seems every time they are
| doing it they forgot all the lesson learned from previous
| attempt, and in such short period of time suggest they haven't
| learned anything.
| MarleTangible wrote:
| And that's exactly why I'm waiting for the 27 series to
| upgrade.
| balops wrote:
| Windows vista was a good OS. Windows 7 was vista with a new
| skin. People were just really dumb and didn't realise vista
| needed new drivers and when 7 came out all the drivers were
| written so stuff worked and for some reason it made people
| think 7 was good and vista was bad.
| ekropotin wrote:
| I have maybe unpopular opinion, but Apple always been terrible
| in UX.
|
| Just to give a few examples which annoys me the most:
|
| - Finder. It just something else. After 10 years of using OSX I
| still can't figure out how to use it efficiently for selecting
| the path - this experience is different every time, depending
| on the context where Finder was called from. I just don't get.
|
| - Lack of the true tiling window manager experience. Yes, there
| is Yabai, but it still suck due to the fact that you can't have
| truly independent spaces each with individual layout and stack
| of windows.
|
| - Infamous Magic Mouse's charting port at the bottom.
|
| I just wish I could have normal Linux natively on MB Pro.
| dlandis wrote:
| Regarding the window manager and Finder; I had a better
| experience with the Windows equivalents way back on Windows
| 2k or even Windows 98 more than quarter century ago. Truly
| baffling.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| Yes, even the Windows 98 Explorer with IE integration
| (let's load a JPG of clouds to the left of the file detail
| pane) was better than modern equivalents. In Windows 10 (or
| was it 7?) they introduced a stupid column view in detail
| view that became focused with tab, so you couldn't just tab
| between the 3 places of directory list, file pane, address
| bar.
|
| They also added stupid "quick launch" areas with places
| nobody went, like "3D Objects", and reduced the menu area
| to a "grope and find a button" ribbon.
|
| The older Explorers were usable like File Manager on
| Windows 3.11 was: address bars that were usable from the
| keyboard and mouse (no subdivision buttons for parts of the
| path), acceptable launch speed, and no extra "features"
| that were unnecessary (like it ignoring "use same view for
| all folders" when your directory happens to have MP3s in it
| - it'll switch to showing rating / bitrate etc.)
|
| I believe all developers should use older versions of the
| software to see how usable they were in comparison to the
| modern "improvement".
| lostlogin wrote:
| Tahoe: The opposite of Snow Leopard.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| I wonder if they'll show charts of how few people have upgraded
| in the same way they mocked Windows 10 adoption and Android
| versions a few years ago at the Keynote, to rapturous applause.
| I for one am staying on Sequoia as the OS looks like a
| children's toy on Tahoe.
| michelb wrote:
| I do hope things turn around, but having to wait until
| September is going to be painful.
| Xiol wrote:
| Another thing to add to the list of reasons why I'm not
| upgrading.
| AndrewSwift wrote:
| FWIW: option double click sny corner to make any window full-
| screen without going into full screen mode.
|
| Double click any side or corner to move it to the edge of the
| screen, and hold down option to make the effect symmetric.
| euazOn wrote:
| Ah yes, the classic Apple move of hiding basic functionality
| behind obscure shortcuts. Thanks for the tip.
| paustint wrote:
| Nice - I didn't know about that one!
|
| I just found out today that hovering over the green traffic
| light icon shows an arrange menu... but the "maximize" option
| there leaves some padding on all sides of the window - weird.
|
| I swear by https://rectangleapp.com/ - same outcome but with
| keyboard shortcuts instead of the mouse.
| phoronixrly wrote:
| That's genuine 2000s Linux experience there. Ironic that these
| days Linux provides a more refined and _consistent_ UX than both
| MacOS and Windows.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| This post is very well presented and it highlights how absolutely
| bizarre the latest update was. The video demonstration was also
| very well done.
|
| I remember a few years ago, people complained when Apple merely
| made the entire operating system uglier. (Something about a
| gradient on the battery?) A lot of people would talk
| hyperbolically ("apple KILLED macos!"), and that's
| indistinguishable to an outsider when an update like this brings
| other people out of the woodwork to say, "Hey, these changes are
| genuinely bizarre and absurd, what happened?"
| projektfu wrote:
| I especially liked the part with the hand trying to grab the
| plate. Perfect imagery.
| 1f60c wrote:
| Me too, made me chuckle :)
| danielecook wrote:
| I laughed at the animation quite hard - it's the perfect
| analogy for the issue at hand!
| g947o wrote:
| Pun intended?
| isABaby wrote:
| The graphic actually helped me a lot to understand why you
| have to touch things to grab them, seeing as I am a 2-day-old
| baby.
| irl_zebra wrote:
| imo this comment wasn't worth creating a new account for
| Bayko wrote:
| Everybody has a big ego when it comes to their own sense
| of humor, till they create an account on hackernews and
| get told they should stop being funny. I hope the other
| guy gets it
| Wyverald wrote:
| That was a sensible chuckle indeed... but then it also made
| me realize that grabbing things IRL _moves_ them, not
| _resizes_ them. Nothing IRL really resizes.
|
| So while it makes a lot of sense to grab inside the object to
| move it, IMO it actually makes less sense to grab _inside_
| the object to resize it. (Imagine the reverse argument -- IRL
| you can actually grab the middle of the plate to move it, but
| if grabbing the middle of the window resized it, that would
| also be very bad.)
|
| I've been trained to grab the edge to resize windows. So I
| wouldn't try to reach so far inside the rounded rectangle as
| OP, although it doesn't invalidate their entire argument.
| TheDong wrote:
| > Nothing IRL really resizes
|
| A few things sorta do.
|
| If you want to increase the size of saran wrap or aluminum
| foil, you grab the edge and pull. Same for increasing the
| size of toilet paper before tearing it off.
|
| When you want to stretch your fitted sheet onto your
| mattress, you grab the corner and pull to stretch it over.
|
| When you want to make your pizza dough larger, you toss it
| above your head in a circle, so I guess that one doesn't
| really match the macOS gesture, I guess you should be
| spinning windows to make them bigger.
|
| However, when you're doing other baking things, like
| placing fondant or a pie crust, you do stretch from the
| edges some.
| rkomorn wrote:
| > When you want to make your pizza dough larger, you toss
| it above your head in a circle, so I guess that one
| doesn't really match the macOS gesture, I guess you
| should be spinning windows to make them bigger.
|
| Please don't give them ideas...
| 1bpp wrote:
| Reinventing Aero shake.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| You grab the corner to move the corner, not the window. You
| grab it and move it (the corner), just like the plate.
| wt__ wrote:
| > IRL you can actually grab the middle of the plate to move
| it
|
| Really wouldn't recommend it though, all sorts of
| consequences for the food (if present), your hand, the
| hygiene of the plate and potential damage to underlying
| surfaces. Generally preferable to pick it up and put it
| down again.
| below43 wrote:
| We hold the edges of things to pull to expand them. Sliding
| doors, table cloths etc.
| creeble wrote:
| It's funny. one of the most significant UI axioms I ever
| learned came from Bill Atkinson: "Always make the 'click zone'
| a little larger than the visual indication of the affordance."
| This becomes tricky or impossible for some things like touch-
| keypads, but for most things it makes the difference between
| frustrating and magical.
|
| Apple seems to have forgotten its own innovations.
| m463 wrote:
| > This post is very well presented
|
| I suspect you must be very careful, overwhelmingly complete and
| understandable presenting this kind of stuff.
|
| otherwise:
|
| - if it isn't, the post might be buried in drama.
|
| - or else, the post will be another obscure warning that nobody
| sees.
|
| for me, I noticed after the ios 26 "upgrade" I must continually
| forget, then repair my bluetooth devices. But I don't have the
| benefit of a clearly understandable article that calls apple
| out.
| MyFirstSass wrote:
| Does anyone know if Stephen Lemay replacing Dye will potentially
| "save" the increasing mess that is OSX, at least UX wise, or is
| it more of a meaningless figurehead swap in a big org?
|
| Tahoe is tragically bad by almost every UX measure, and following
| various Apple subreddits i wonder if they just don't care anymore
| - since the majority of people are shocked by the amateurishness
| of both bugs and design choices in the latest update - this comes
| on top of literally every major bug being ignored from the alpha
| to releasing anyway then continuing to ignore feedback.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| He will prevent it from getting much worse than it would have
| under another decade of Dye, but I don't think he can totally
| reverse the trend.
|
| I think this is just what happens to companies as they get
| older. Most of the people who pioneered the Human Interface
| Guidelines aren't at the company anymore, and management
| doesn't see much financial growth in Mac sales compared to AI
| and services.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| > compared to AI and services
|
| It's probably the services (Care, iCloud, Music, and even
| TV), Apple's AI isn't on the overall map at all compared to
| the competition.
| coffeeling wrote:
| A lot of Apple's services revenue is Apple Store mobile
| games, AIUI.
| diskzero wrote:
| I worked on Finder/TimeMachine/Spotlight/iOS at Apple from
| 2000-2007. I worked closely with Bas Ording, Stephen Lemay,
| Marcel van Os, Imran Chaudry, Don Lindsey and Greg Christie. I
| have no experience with any of the designers who arrived in the
| post-Steve era. During my time, Jony Ive didn't figure
| prominently in the UI design, although echoes of his industrial
| design appeared in various ways in the graphic design of the
| widgets. Kevin Tiene and Scott Forstall had more influence for
| better or worse, extreme skeumorphism for example.
|
| The UX group would present work to Steve J. every Thursday and
| Steve quickly passed judgement often harshly and without a lot
| of feedback, leading to even longer meetings afterward to try
| and determine course corrections. Steve J. and Bas were on the
| same wavelength and a lot of what Bas would show had been
| worked on directly with Steve before hand. Other things would
| be presented for the first time, and Steve could be pretty
| harsh. Don, Greg, Scott, Kevin would push back and get abused,
| but they took the abuse and could make in-roads.
|
| Here is my snapshot of Stephen from the time. He presented the
| UI ideas for the intial tabbed window interface in Safari. He
| had multiple design ideas and Steve dismissed them quickly and
| harshly. Me recollection was that Steve said something like No,
| next, worse, next, even worse, next, no. Why don't you come
| back next week with something better. Stephen didn't push back,
| say much, just went ok and that was that. I think Greg was the
| team manager at the time and pushed Steve for more input and
| maybe got some. This was my general observation of how Stephen
| was over 20 years ago.
|
| I am skeptical and doubtful about Stephen's ability to make a
| change unless he is facilitated greatly by someone else or has
| somehow changed drastically. The fact that he has been on the
| team while the general opinion of Apple UX quality has degraded
| to the current point of the Tahoe disaster is telling. Several
| team members paid dearly in emotional abuse under Steve and
| decided to leave rather than deal with the environment post
| Steve's death. Stephen is a SJ-era original and should have
| been able to push hard against what many of us perceive as very
| poor decisons. He either agreed with those decisions, or did
| not, and choose to go with the flow and enjoy the benefits of
| working at Apple. This is fine I guess. Many people are just
| fine going with the flow and not rocking the boat. It may be
| even easier when you have Apple-level comp and benefits.
|
| My opinon; unless Stephen gets a very strong push from other
| forces, I don't see that he has the will or fortitude to make
| the changes that he himself has approved in one way or another.
| Who will push him? Tim Cook, Craig Federighi, Eddy Cue, Phil
| Schiller? The perceived mess of Tahoe happened on the watch of
| all of these Apple leaders.
| discordance wrote:
| Thanks for the first hand insights. Do you know if much has
| changed in the past 18 years since your tenure there?
| diskzero wrote:
| I still have friends who work there. Some of them came to
| Apple from Be or Eazel, and are still working on Finder,
| Safari, Dock, etc. A lot has changed and in my opinion not
| for the best. Compared to them, my time there was a flash
| in the pan. When I look at Safari, Finder and the general
| state of the UI, I am deeply saddened. I see a bizarre
| combination of stagnancy, gratuitious change and general
| aimlessness across the desktop and mobile. I also have a
| deep distrust of anyone who works at big company, let alone
| a big company on one component for a long amount of time.
| To me, it leads to a focus away from external customers and
| to becoming an expert at internal politics. I probably need
| counseling, but I loved the dictatorship of the Steve era.
| Yes, we can point to flaws like the Mac Cube or the hockey
| puck mouse, but I really appreciated someone just
| maniacally fixated on getting things done and cutting
| through the BS that I saw later on in jobs in big tech.
|
| It would be nice if veterans of the post-Steve era would
| post on here. Maybe they are scared, bound by NDAs or could
| care less. Like I said, I need some mental health treatment
| about my time(s) at Apple I was there working on Final Cut
| Pro after Be, went to Eazel, and then rejoined Apple as
| part of Steve's mass hiring of Eazel employees at the
| behest of Andy Hertzfeld.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Thanks for this interesting read.
|
| I'm asking you to judge people's state of mind here, which is
| near impossible, but please bear with me...
|
| > Several team members paid dearly in emotional abuse under
| Steve and decided to leave rather than deal with the
| environment post Steve's death.
|
| Normally during an event like this there is a change in
| culture as well which I think we have seen under Cook. So why
| did they assume that the abusive situation would continue?
| Jobs was generally known to be harsh to the point of abusive,
| but if the situation did not change on his death maybe the
| abuse was equal parts cultural rather than just from the CEO,
| so why not leave earlier?
| diskzero wrote:
| This question is forcing me to do some deep thinking about
| my time there, which I haven't done is quite a awhile.
|
| Some people left early, like Don Lindsay. Don was
| instrumental in bringing Aqua to life, along with Bas of
| course, and led the team up and through the release of
| Cheetah and more. This task wasn't easy at all. To me it
| seems like he was finally going to receive some reward of
| those hard years of work. But instead he chose to leave to
| go to Microsoft. This boggled my mind, as leaving to
| Microsoft to me seemed incomprehensible. Maybe Don had
| enough of the abuse? Maybe he was sick of the increasingly
| crowded commute? The daily visits from Steve pointing out
| every detail of the UI that bothered him? Did you know the
| UX designed many of the big banners and posters for the
| WWDC events. Steve didn't want any old graphic designer to
| do those, so Bas, Imran and others would work on them. Don
| had to deal with that too.
|
| When Steve left to receive cancer treatment in 2004, he
| still had influence, Bertrand Serlet was running
| engineering, Jony Ive was focussed on industrial design. We
| were working on Tiger with the brushed metal interface and
| there was a lot of activity on that. Tim Cook was running
| the business, but Bas and others were keeping the ball
| rolling on the UX with remote input from Steve.
|
| I wasn't around for the next two leaves of absence, the
| last one being final, but heard that things were becoming
| increasingly fractious with camps emerging around Tony
| Fadell, Scott Forstall, Jony Ive and general politcal
| unpleasantness as Tim Cook was given various ultimatums
| about "I won't work with this or that person." Everyone was
| trying to say that they represented the vision of Steve and
| somehow knew what would Steve do given any sitution. Geez,
| if we knew what Steve would do or wanted, there could have
| been a lot of really distressing confrontations avoided
| over the previous years.
|
| This type of internal sniping didn't happen with Steve
| around, or if it did, it wasn't very effective. I think it
| would have gotten you fired. Tony Fadell pushed it to the
| limit with Steve and Scott. I remember someone once asking
| Steve about getting free lunch at Apple, like you could get
| at Google and they were told "If all you want is free
| lunch, then you should be working at Google."
|
| For me, there was a certain amount of clarity that came
| from Steve's abusive behavior. It could wear you down on
| one level, but also brought focus and drive to getting
| things done. I think it was very unhealthy one one level
| and very exciting on another. There weren't endless meeting
| on calendars discussing minutia. It also meant that the
| obvious horrors of the Tahoe wouldn't happen. Steve himself
| would have grabbed the windows with different corner radii,
| stacked them up and excoriated whoever was responsible.
| Some of my work was called "real bottom of the barrel
| shit", "the worst he has ever seen" and told "this is not
| the way we do things at Apple." I assure you, what he was
| complaining about was nothing remotely close to what we are
| seeing in Tahoe.
| hyperjeff wrote:
| I'd love to hear more! Have you collected stories on a
| blog or to places like Folklore.org?
| diskzero wrote:
| The extent of my writings are here in HackerNews
| comments. I don't have the time or discipline of Andy to
| be able to sit down and write like he does. Maybe
| someday, but for now I am using the free time I have
| outside of work to make music and ride bikes as fast as I
| can.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Maybe he would consider to collect, proof-read, and edit
| if you pointed him to your comments here?
| mvkel wrote:
| Lemay's appointment was widely celebrated, but he'd been at
| apple since 1999 and never got the gig. My guess is that there
| are valid reasons for that that may not be design-related.
| afandian wrote:
| Question for people who have installed Tahoe. Of the regions in
| the article, which bring window focus / key window? Is it area
| clipped to the round rect? Or is it similarly weird?
|
| If there was a background window in that area outside the corner,
| would it receive the click event?
| latexr wrote:
| > Of the regions in the article, which bring window focus
|
| Just did a quick test in a VM, and it seems all of them. I.e.
| if you could resize the window, clicking that space (even if
| empty) brings it into focus. But then I also tested on Sequoia
| and the same happens.
|
| It seems then that basically everything remained the same
| except for the _visual_ presentation of the corner.
| afandian wrote:
| Thanks for going to the effort!
|
| > everything remained the same except for the visual
| presentation of the corner
|
| This either seems very well-researched change, or very
| shallow one.
| 1over137 wrote:
| >It seems then that basically everything remained the same
| except for the visual presentation of the corner.
|
| Which just goes to show how holistic design is utterly
| lacking. They seem to think just swapping bitmaps is "UI
| redesign".
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| Never noticed this change, but unlike the blogger I never try to
| grab the window inside the corner. I tend to aim for the edge
| itself.
| gatkinso wrote:
| Its not a great update and hopefully with Dye out they will make
| some changes, but personally I don't have this issue.
| afandian wrote:
| Do you mean you don't observe the same thing? Or that it
| doesn't cause you difficulty?
| gatkinso wrote:
| I observe the same thing but it doesn't cause me difficulty.
| I think I more or less aim for the edge, vs the inside or
| outside.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| Also, the cursor changes
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Most of the Tahoe and Liquid Glass related gripes are
| overstated or sometimes just against the idea of changing
| anything well-established
| dajt wrote:
| I disagree. I generally don't get too upset by UI changes -
| having been programming since before Windows I've seen many
| of them - but LG is a loser.
|
| I upgraded my mac to Tahoe and I don't like any change to
| the UI that I have noticed.
|
| I upgraded my phone the other day, thinking it was just an
| update to whatever it already had, and ended up with LG on
| there and it is a disaster. I enabled the 'more opaque'
| feature and it did almost nothing.
|
| LG is an awful experiment IMO. I'd put it at worse than
| Vista (which I skipped) and Gnome 3 which didn't bother me
| because I don't expect anything from linux desktops. I also
| skipped Windows 8 so not sure about the ranking there. But
| I'd say it's that level of disaster.
| mindok wrote:
| From a company that spent decades harping on about taste,
| usability, human interface guidelines etc, it's a train
| wreck. If Microsoft did it you'd just shrug your shoulders
| and carry on with life because good taste and usability was
| never a core promise.
| internet2000 wrote:
| That's funny. I perceive resizing windows as easier now, because
| the cursor change is more dramatic when it gets in the resizing
| area. Pre-Tahoe, the diagonal one in particular looked almost the
| same, except with an arrow end in the bottom. Now it splits into
| two triangles.
|
| I still operate off muscle memory, so it's not actually easier or
| harder, of course.
| robomc wrote:
| Yeah the really misleading part of the screenshots in this
| article is that it doesn't show the "resize cursor", which
| basically makes this a non issue.
|
| Also, for anyone reading this who hates the general aesthetic,
| go into Accessibility and hit "reduce transparency". This has
| been a desirable setting for last few OSX versions.
| indymike wrote:
| After using Tahoe for a week, I've found I leave it in my bag.
| Window operations are painful and it feels like a bad try at a
| tablet os without a stylus or touch screen. Fortunately, my Mac
| is now the auxiliary laptop and I can do everything I need to do
| with my linux laptop.
| bikelang wrote:
| Should we crowdfund some billboards in Cupertino expressing how
| big a misstep we collectively think Tahoe/iOS 26/Liquid glAss
| was?
| 1over137 wrote:
| No. Direct that money to open source projects and let Apple
| ruin itself.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I think people wildly underestimate how expensive skilled
| software development, leadership and especially design is
| (considering even Apple can't apparently find good
| designers).
|
| The price of renting a billboard isn't going to cover more
| than a week's worth of those people's fees. Billboard-induced
| shame has actually much more chance of succeeding.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| There's no relief in open source. I've watched Ubuntu and
| Gnome copy some of Apple and Microsoft's worst ideas over the
| last 20 years and somehow put an _even worse_ spin on them. I
| fully expect to see "Gnome 52 - Liquid Sugar" or something
| in a couple of years.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| >There's no relief in open source. I've watched Ubuntu and
| Gnome copy some of Apple and Microsoft's worst ideas
|
| The whole point of FOSS is that a single groups decision or
| opinion do not dictated your computing. There are enough
| forks or alternatives.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| Proprietary software prisoners will do absolutely everything
| to appease there abusive prison guard except simply quit
| walking into the golden cage every morning.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I mean, I don't hate it, but it seems like a clear step back.
| 9dev wrote:
| If you do, make them play that scrambled egg GIF from TFA in an
| endless loop. They'll eventually get it.
| layer8 wrote:
| If they didn't realize how broken things are by themselves,
| mere pressure from the outside won't be turning the ship
| around.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It's hard to realize things when you're in an echo chamber.
|
| It's also hard to measure the quantity and genuineness of
| bitching online because people complain about everything and
| there's an inherent incentive online to complain to bring in
| ad revenue regardless of how genuine it is.
|
| But it's a direct and unmistakeable sign (to you _and_ your
| peers and colleagues) when someone paid actual money to rent
| a billboard just to remind you how much you fucked up.
| brailsafe wrote:
| please yes, they could use some real world roasting
| lateforwork wrote:
| Yes, I would gladly contribute $25. You can rent partial time
| on an electronic billboard on Highway 101 for under $2K per
| month.
| brigade wrote:
| Are there even any billboards in Cupertino?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I'd like to see a Super Bowl ad sponsored by one or more of the
| big Linux players.
|
| "Hi, I'm a Mac."
|
| "And I'm a PC. Wow, you suck, Mac. What the hell happened?"
|
| "Yo momma, PC."
|
| <wild gesticulating and arguing ensues for 20-30 seconds>
|
| "Hi, I'm Linux. Neither of these people care anything about
| you. You see, you're not their customer anymore. When you're
| ready to make computing personal again, check us out."
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I guess you're not thinking like a marketer/product person
| (and I don't claim to be one either, at least not anywhere
| skilled), but your proposed ad shows exactly what's wrong
| with the Linux mentality and why it didn't go anywhere with
| consumers and won't go anywhere until this changes.
|
| The ad should show something people _want_ , not vague
| promises of being their customer or personal computing (a
| term essentially unknown by the new generations). Show
| something the new machine can do that the competition can't -
| built-in adblocker, cross-compatibility with Mac _and_
| Windows apps via VMs /rented servers, etc.
| supercoffee wrote:
| A translucent billboard with some white text would drive home
| the point.
| miyuru wrote:
| the person responsible for this mess was poached by meta a
| month ago.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46191194
| le_meer wrote:
| Aerospace is the answer :)
| Avi-D-coder wrote:
| Yep, came here to say this. It's the only thing that makes
| macos useable.
| dutchCourage wrote:
| I wish I found out about it earlier. Aerospace is a tiling
| window manager for MacOS. As someone who prefers keyboard
| navigation over mouse navigation, I can't recommend it enough.
| noname120 wrote:
| yabai too! I have fn + right-click set to resize window under
| cursor
| lateforwork wrote:
| This behavior is similar to Windows 11. You have to position the
| mouse just outside the window. It is non-intuitive and awful.
|
| These are problems humanity solved over 35 years ago (see
| NeXTSTEP). Why are these designers breaking basic features that
| worked for over 35 years?
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| This is probably not a coincidence. I can pretty much guarantee
| you a developer said something to a designer like "hey, most of
| this is outside the window, is that fine?" and the designer
| said back "well, I think so, but let's check what Windows did,"
| and then they okayed the decision at least in part because
| Windows did it.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Which is all the more bizarre, because historically it was
| usually Windows which copied MacOS ;)
|
| That the roles got reversed became painfully clear when macOS
| copied the Windows Vista style popup mess for access
| permissions.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The macOS style popups are arguably worse.
|
| Windows Vista may have been plagued by programs assuming
| administrator access for everything but at least it
| isolated the security prompt.
|
| You can verify that you're interacting with a real UAC
| prompt (by pressing ctrl+alt+delete for instance, which can
| be configured to he required before approving a prompt).
|
| Any program can replicate the macOS security dialogs. You
| just have to hope that you can safely enter the password to
| your account into one, or activate TouchID when prompted.
| 1over137 wrote:
| History always repeats itself. The young generation always
| thinks the old generation was rubbish and they have nothing to
| learn from them and can do better.
| rectang wrote:
| And the elder generation is always convinced that the young
| generation is degenerate, incompetent, and destined for ruin.
| 1over137 wrote:
| Yup! And the cycle continues.
| vehemenz wrote:
| And yet, sometimes the criticism is warranted, and
| sometimes it's not. That's why it's good not to
| overgeneralize about patterns.
| rectang wrote:
| I think that's unnecessary waffling. Of course there are
| exceptions, but the prejudiced negative views that the
| old and the young hold of each are generally wrong.
|
| For example, the constantly recurring critique that the
| music of the young is not about musicality[1] is always
| wrong. It's as wrong today as it was about Elvis.
|
| [1]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45637667#45639674
| Y_Y wrote:
| > overall, the young copy the elders and contend hotly with
| them in words and in deeds, while the elders, lowering
| themselves to the level of the young, sate themselves with
| pleasantries and wit, mimicking the young in order not to
| look unpleasant and despotic.
|
| "Socrates", in Plato's _Republic_
|
| None of us are immune to cycles in fashion, and the need to
| differentiate ourselves and our work from what came before,
| even if what came before was pretty much a solved problem.
|
| Maybe it's humanity's way of escaping local minima, or maybe
| it's an endless curse which every generation must bemoan.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > None of us are immune to cycles in fashion, and the need
| to differentiate ourselves and our work from what came
| before, even if what came before was pretty much a solved
| problem.
|
| I am. If it isn't broke, I don't fix it. And I suspect
| others are as well. The problem is that too many people are
| not immune, so it doesn't matter if some are.
| asaddhamani wrote:
| Call me cynical but I think designers need to occasionally
| break things that were already solved long ago to justify their
| continued relevance. Explains a lot of redesigns that make
| things only worse, reshuffling interfaces, hiding things behind
| menus in form over function redesigns, etc.
| em500 wrote:
| Non-tech people tend to think similarly about developers,
| breaking things that worked fine until yesterday / last week
| / last month, for no user-visible benefit.
| betaby wrote:
| Sometimes that's true.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| The _exact_ same thing applies to development. How many
| things broke because of a React rewrite or moving to micro
| services?
|
| I wish the average dev would recognise this.
| rhet0rica wrote:
| Fun fact: NEXTSTEP went 10 years without shipping a basic
| design refresh, except in prereleases (4.0PR1 and traces in
| 4.0PR2.) This was because it was a good fucking GUI that did
| its fucking job, and had "usability before aesthetics" as a
| core design tenet in its developer documentation.
|
| Steve's brain fell out when he got back his throne at Apple.
| Aqua was a mistake.
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| Honestly, for me, the loss of resource forks in the
| transition from Classic Mac OS to Mac OS X was a real sore
| spot for me. Sure, a UNIX-based OS like OS X was going to
| facilitate a different paradigm for file handling by default,
| but Apple really should have found a way to keep resource
| forks as a thing. I loved how intuitive file handling was in
| Classic Mac OS. No pesky three letter file extensions driving
| program associations and the like.
| wk_end wrote:
| Engineers (hopefully) come to learn the value of Chesterton's
| Fence young, because engineering failures tend to make
| themselves known quickly and loudly.
|
| Designers probably have perverse incentives. Showy new designs
| get promotions. Even when they hurt usability, it's often only
| in insidious ways.
| aurareturn wrote:
| Yes, this. I've worked with designers who only see the
| product as a personal art project for their portfolio.
| Business and user problems are secondary to them.
|
| Do not hire visual designers as UX designers - unless you
| know what you're doing.
|
| The best UX designers design to solve business and user
| problems and work within constraints.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Quickly and loudly is pretty good. It's much preferable to
| loudly with a five year delay.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| the inability to just hold win+mouse1 to move or win+mouse2 to
| resize is driving me insane compared to KDE
| keyringlight wrote:
| IIRC, win8 was the last windows to have thick graphical window
| borders, and that was after they got rid of the texture/aero
| look from vista/7, so at that point you at least had something
| graphical to grab onto which (mostly?) matched where the cursor
| was. Then in win10 onwards they shrunk the border down to one
| pixel with the zone around it where you can click off the
| window but still affect it.
|
| On the back of my mind I think part of this was the move to fit
| scaling to large resolution monitors (i.e. 4k+) work better, as
| a graphical border of a fixed pixel width will shrink
| proportionally compared to a border that is as thin as it can
| be. For a while I've felt that it's a missed opportunity on
| high res displays to not use more detailed art for window
| chrome as pixel wide will only get smaller and more difficult
| to distinguish, such as the minimize/maximize/close icons which
| remain pixel wide line art even at big scaling.
| matsemann wrote:
| I think the designers at Microsoft use Macs as their daily
| driver or so. So much usability thrown away the last years to
| look more like Apple.
| eigenspace wrote:
| My guess is that both Apple and Microsoft people see this as a
| tradeoff.
|
| If the anchor point for window resizing was more inside the
| window, then you encounter an annoying problem where youre
| trying to click or drag content, but you end up just resizing
| your window instead.
|
| The obvious solution is to just keep the old bezel that
| separate the content from the scroll wheels / resizing handles
| and make it visually obvious what you're doing, but apparently
| they think that's too ugly.
| Lammy wrote:
| Compare to Aqua and Platinum where every resizable window/pane
| had a big square drag target _clearly labeled as such_ with some
| diagonal lines:
|
| https://guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/system/managers/filema...
|
| https://guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/system/managers/filema...
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Better in that it was clear, but worse that you had to resize
| from the bottom right. Made expanding to the left, or up, very
| annoying. I'd take the current situation over this.
| Lammy wrote:
| True, but not a 1:1 comparison, because Classic Mac OS
| windows were much better at staying where you put them, even
| between sessions. John Siracusa wrote a lot about how this
| was missing from Mac OS X:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| People also didn't regularly plug classic Macs into
| external monitors, changing the screen resolution
| temporarily.
|
| For this and many other reasons, I just don't think the
| paradigm would work today. It's philosophically smart but
| limiting in too many other ways.
| Lammy wrote:
| Yeah that is also true. I have had that experience with
| certain CD-ROMs (maybe like two or three ever but has
| happened) on my PowerBook 2400c. If the authoring machine
| had a higher display resolution than my machine, and the
| author had the writable disc image's window open to a
| place outside my screen resolution, and the window
| positions got saved to the DesktopDB/DesktopDF, and the
| DesktopDB/DesktopDF got written to the CD-ROM, then it
| would open in the position outside my screen resolution
| every time my own DesktopDB/DesktopDF got erased. One
| particular artist's CD-ROM is completely outside of it
| which annoys me every time.
|
| Relevant TA: https://web.archive.org/web/20090625152558/h
| ttp://support.ap...
| AkelaA wrote:
| It also - as seen in that screenshot, had large, always visible
| scrollbars where it was easy to see how far down you were in a
| folder or document, and could easily click and drag to scroll
| to where you needed. Now in the service of minimalism we have
| scrollbars that consist of a thin, semi-transparent line that
| fades out after half a second and is nearly impossible to click
| and drag due to how small it is.
| bsimpson wrote:
| The default modality changed.
|
| Classic Macs were designed for the mouse or trackball. Modern
| Macs are designed for multitouch scrolling. When it's easy to
| get the scrolling infrastructure on demand, the desktop might
| not need the same click-first affordances.
| userbinator wrote:
| You're missing the fact that the scrollbars also _indicate_
| where you are in their range, which is important regardless
| of how you do the scrolling itself.
| bschwindHN wrote:
| I think their point also covers this - since it's so easy
| to scroll, you can always just do a little two finger
| scroll wiggle to have it appear and see where you are.
| And that's only if you haven't configured it to always
| display.
| nkmnz wrote:
| You don't even have to scroll. Placing two fingers on the
| pad makes the scrollbar appear immediately. I'm happy for
| each additional pixel of space on my screen, but I also
| think a scrollbar should be completely configurable
| userland behavior.
| bschwindHN wrote:
| It should, unfortunately apple doesn't believe the same I
| suppose. I'm lucky enough that I'm happy with their
| defaults and don't spend much time thinking about
| tweaking stuff on my computers, but I can understand it
| being super frustrating if you're not okay with the
| available settings.
| nkmnz wrote:
| Yeah. Defaults should make the details of the system go
| out of the user's way, for >95% of the users, >95% of
| their time. The remaining <5% of users are power users
| and hackers, and the remaining <5% of usage are strong
| taste and individual hacks.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > but I also think a scrollbar should be completely
| configurable userland behavior.
|
| It is configurable, right in System Preferences >
| General. (Or I guess it's "Settings" now on modern
| systems, don't know what menu it's in there.)
| nkmnz wrote:
| Based on some discussions of users that have already
| downloaded Tahoe, I was under the impression that this is
| no longer possible? Also, I think it's not possible to
| have the scroll bar outside of the window instead of
| overlaying some content.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Hmm. I haven't used Tahoe myself, but this piece by John
| Gruber would seem to imply the option still exists. Maybe
| it got moved? https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/1
| 2/macos-26-cut-co...
| nkmnz wrote:
| I dread the day I must find out :)
|
| P.S.: seems like the setting still keeps the scroll bar
| on top of the windows content (e.g. a website), not
| outside of the content.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Traditionally the setting has moved the scroll bar
| outside of content. I can't say for sure what they've
| done in Tahoe, but I'm not sure how else it would work--
| if the scroll bar is persistent it will _persistently_
| cover your content.
| RunSet wrote:
| > since it's so easy to scroll, you can always just do a
| little two finger scroll wiggle to have it appear
|
| That changes the effort required to show useful
| information from zero to more than zero. Which, while it
| not be a great quantitative change, is an enormous
| qualitative change.
|
| Like Chesterton's Fence, it was there for a reason.
|
| "At last (and at least) we have reclaimed that narrow
| vertical strip of screen real estate on the screens
| eastern-most vestige! Now to find a good use for it!"
|
| The true annoyance is that in many cases explicitly
| enabling them does not restore the original
| functionality.
| quitit wrote:
| There is an imbalance between the harms you're pretending
| to endure versus:
|
| 1. The trivial ability it is to resolve, and
|
| 2. The existence of an easily accessible user setting to
| enable the behaviour that you desire.
|
| Fundamentally your complaint thus comes down to a gripe
| that the OS's defaults don't match your completely
| subjective idea of how just one of many OS elements
| should work.
|
| Which raises such an interesting question, because of all
| of the UX behaviours present on macOS - this is your
| hill?
| userbinator wrote:
| _At last (and at least) we have reclaimed that narrow
| vertical strip of screen real estate on the screens
| eastern-most vestige! Now to find a good use for it! "_
|
| ...extra padding?
| quitit wrote:
| Many of the complains surrounding the former iOS7 and
| today's Liquid Glass are tied to the requirement of the
| interface never moving. Which isn't just an unreasonable
| requirement, but a ridiculous one.
|
| Just like iOS7+ it is possible to position and layer
| interface elements in a way where the visual effects will
| render a screenshot difficult to read, but in practice
| the elements are frequently in motion or as you've
| already pointed out easy to make them move. That motion
| is what negates the layering problems, thus making visual
| occlusions rare, short-lived and easily resolved.
|
| There is a certain unreasonableness in ignoring that
| reality, and also ignoring that there is a user setting
| to keep a full-sized version of the scroll bars always
| visible.
|
| This isn't to take away from legitimate criticisms such
| as the issue with the resize hotbox not being updated to
| match the more rounded corners, but rather highlight that
| not all online forum criticisms comes from a bona fide
| place.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Now in the service of minimalism we have scrollbars that
| consist of a thin, semi-transparent line that fades out after
| half a second and is nearly impossible to click and drag due
| to how small it is.
|
| You can make them always on still. I've done so ever since
| their disappearing act started. It's not even much hidden,
| it's in the "Appearance" setting pane.
| Lammy wrote:
| They're still too small and too light. Some times when a
| document is big enough I'm actually not able to find the
| scroll thumb on macOS Sequoia. Some times wiggling the
| scroll thumb around by scrolling slightly back and forth
| with my mousewheel/trackpad helps to make it visually
| appear, but other times I just have to give up.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Also I've noticed sometimes things don't even work
| correctly with "always on". Some developers don't test it
| because it's not the default.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| These developers also haven't bothered to test with any
| mouse other than an Apple Trackpad, which turns the
| scrollbars on by default.
|
| Of course we all make mistakes, but anyone who has made
| this mistake should really fix it!
| consp wrote:
| The scrollbar thing is a more widespread mess. I've seen
| plenty of apps (cross platform) which hide the scrollbar as a
| tiny grey bar only visible when scrolling. Which on some TN
| panels is neigh invisible... If I can't see the scrollbar
| there is no additional stuff to read. I'm now pretty sure
| this is apple's bad design leaking though to the rest of the
| world.
| concinds wrote:
| Apple scrollbars have never looked uglier. I would prefer
| them to always show but they're so ugly I keep it default.
| On Aqua they looked great! On Windows they're still great!
| quitit wrote:
| If one chooses "Always" under the "Show scroll bars" option
| on the Appearance System Settings panel. They will be
| rewarded with thick*, always-on scroll bars that do not
| disappear.
|
| *They're the same thickness as Aqua.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Sadly, this doesn't restore the 'resize box', you just get
| scrollbars ending in a weird curve.
| quitit wrote:
| Yes, the scroll bars settings affects the scroll bars.
| Lammy wrote:
| They are still very low-contrast compared to what was.
| quitit wrote:
| The scroll bars for those curious:
| https://imgur.com/a/uhVO8IA
| zahlman wrote:
| > Now in the service of minimalism we have scrollbars that
| consist of a thin, semi-transparent line that fades out after
| half a second and is nearly impossible to click and drag due
| to how small it is.
|
| This is endemic now. Cinnamon does it by default and I hate
| it. I only managed a partial fix, and then I had to do more
| work per-app (especially Firefox) to make them behave.
| masklinn wrote:
| It should be noted the drag handle was removed back in Lion.
| And the square cutout was removed in Panther, both of which
| were iterations of Aqua.
|
| (and yes Lion was garbage, first upgrade I skipped since Tiger,
| and definitely the first "what the fuck are they doing").
| zapzupnz wrote:
| Going back to Lion would almost feel like bliss compared to
| Tahoe. Hell, bliss compared to Big Sur.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Note that downside: you could _only_ resize from that bottom
| right corner, not from any other edge!
|
| I do think that was better overall, and it's something I miss
| about Snow Leopard, but I can see why they changed it.
| Lammy wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46581813
| leptons wrote:
| >Note that downside: you could only resize from that bottom
| right corner, not from any other edge!
|
| This was one of the worst things about MacOS and why they
| lost me as a user early on. I used to be a Mac Sysadmin for 3
| years, and the awful window system (and Finder) made it a
| living hell. I still don't find much to like about the GUI
| part of MacOS.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I don't see what's wrong with both, or even whatever
| combination you choose to configure.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Windows also used to have a "grip" indicator. Nowadays I only
| see this in resziable textboxes in browsers...
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| To be fair, this grip indicator only (and still) exists when
| the window has a status bar. It's part of the Windows status
| bar design, not of the window design. Of course, many more
| applications used to have status bars than they do now, so
| that's why you see it less often.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| What's up with that, anyway? Statusbars are great. They are
| one of the most useful parts of the window.
| Lammy wrote:
| > To be fair, this grip indicator only (and still) exists
| when the window has a status bar.
|
| Here's a resizable window in Platinum that has a drag
| handle but does not have a status bar: https://guidebookgal
| lery.org/pics/gui/settings/appearance/ma...
|
| edit: I missed "Windows" in GP comment. Well let it be
| known that at least Platinum wasn't like this :)
| npunt wrote:
| In the Aqua image the big bright blue scrollbars stand out far,
| far more than the content. That sucks, honestly. So does the
| percentage of the screen dedicated to their presence.
|
| Also, horizontal scrollbars suck. One thing later versions of
| Finder did well was adjust columns to minimize the presence of
| them.
|
| We just don't need UI that big anymore. These days our cursors
| are much more accurate, from the magical Mac trackpad to high
| DPI optical mice, and we're 40+ years into GUIs so the limited
| number of people who opt-in to a full computing experience can
| already be expected to know the basics.
|
| Yes Tahoe sucks, but going back to Aqua or classic MacOS would
| also suck, just in a different direction. If you actually spend
| time using classic MacOS and Aqua these days, man is it
| frustrating to get basic things done. Everything is so slow and
| you're constantly resizing windows to see whats in them. I own
| several Macs from the 80s-00s and they are really in need of
| many quality of life updates that later MacOS revs added. On a
| modern Mac, enabling 'show scrollbars' gets you to a pretty
| optimal Finder experience, minus all the stupid Mac bugs and
| Tahoe nonsense like this article points out.
| Wyverald wrote:
| Very much agree. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Not saying
| GP's opinion was pure nostalgia, but a lot of people
| certainly selectively remember only the good parts as they
| complain about the now.
| zwischenzug wrote:
| Hard disagree with all of this. I feel like I am constantly
| lamenting the simplicity and usability of old scrollbars and
| cursing their will o the wisp modern implementations.
|
| Scrollbars used to be invisible to me. They only bubbled up
| to my consciousness when I needed them, and then there was no
| friction in their use. Now I am having to think about them
| constantly. To me that is 'standing out'.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I actually don't think there's anything wrong with horizontal
| scrollbars, as long as you're using an input device (like an
| Apple trackpad) that makes it equally easy to scroll either
| axis.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Great comment. I had forgotten how much better things were in
| terms of visual indicators. Slick looking design should never
| come at the expense of usability.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Why did they stop this?
|
| It was parctical (just like clearly visible scrollbars).
|
| And my conviction is that computers are for practical and not
| the pretty things primarily. Can be pretty but not on the
| expense of usability. This last one is increasingly and sadly
| untrue nowadays!
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Yeah, but scrollbars are bad and every bathwater has its baby.
|
| (P.S. scrollbars aren't even bad)
| skdjejdjwjdj wrote:
| Man, I love platinum. I know the internet favours Aqua by a
| wide margin (and fairly so, it is gorgeous), but something
| about platinum just feels right to me.
| kenanfyi wrote:
| I have been using Moom for a long time for especially two things:
|
| - moving windows without holding from any particular position
|
| - resizing windows without grabbing a particular corner
|
| Life changing small things.
| ervine wrote:
| I didn't realize it was moom giving me my "move app to other
| monitor" hotkey, and moom didn't launch on startup after
| upgrading to tahoe. I've been using that hotkey for years.
|
| That's when I realized there's no default hotkey for moving an
| app to an external monitor. That is absolutely wild. (Happy to
| be wrong)
| kenanfyi wrote:
| I think there is an option in Keyboard Shortcuts to set a
| keybinding for moving to other displays, but it's not by
| default like in Windows.
|
| For this kind of stuff Raycast is more than enough though. I
| use its window management features extensively.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I love how this information is produced. Succinct, excellent and
| simple visuals, clear argument, and a solid amount of sarcasm and
| cynicism to keep us entertained and to provide an air of senior
| technical person.
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| MacOS always had its own quirks, but it had a good intuitive
| design that was well thought out.
|
| All the Apple engineers and other visual designers get quite
| defensive really quick when we mention that Tahoe really
| screwed things up, because it's more than just a transition
| into glass design, but a complete dismissal of design
| principles, to the point that the entire system is slowly
| becoming user hostile.
|
| Every critique of the 26 series can be explained like this
| article with really in depth design principles, which is
| already engraved in Apple design guidelines, but Apple itself
| just dismissed it all. Everything from being able to clearly
| distinguish UI elements, to general accessibility, to
| discoverability, everything got worse.
|
| Operating Systems are one of the most complicated systems we
| created, not because they're a collection of processes and
| thread, but because everything is built on top of them and
| creating something that's well thought out and stable, and
| intuitive is really hard. Designers just randomly creating
| visual elements just because it looks cool and not paying
| attention how people are going to use it is simply half assing
| the whole thing.
|
| That's still one of the reasons I believe Alan Dye was let go,
| fired in a sense, he had power over the company, but with that
| power he screwed things so much that we need to rediscover all
| the things related to usability in very high detail as if we're
| rediscovering the wheel, just so that we can get back to square
| one.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| > All the Apple engineers and other visual designers get
| quite defensive really quick
|
| Is there evidence of this?
| levocardia wrote:
| At a meta level, good design is a very useful tool for
| discussions about good design!
| kristopolous wrote:
| I swear, this reign of visual artists as dictators has to stop.
|
| I'm sure people noticed this issue internally and brought it up
| but some thing by some designer was seen as biblically sacred and
| overruled all reason.
|
| I've been at companies were you get severely punished...
| sometimes fired for subordination for fixing an obviously broken
| spec by a designer emperor.
|
| It's normal to be "I guess 2+2=5 here, whatever" as if the
| designer went in a tiny room, had a seance with the divine...
|
| Yo, newsflash, everyone makes mistakes. Failure is when you force
| them to stay uncorrected.
| robbies wrote:
| I know enough people at Apple who are at the mercy of the
| overlord design teams, and it sounds exactly like what you
| described
| kristopolous wrote:
| I've met some great designers as well. They usually come from
| more modest backgrounds.
|
| It's kinda the rule for programmes too.
|
| The ones that went to a small liberal arts school you've
| never heard of programming as their second career are usually
| more effective to work with then the Stanford/MIT crowd.
|
| The problems start I think, when you have an expectation that
| your collaborators are somehow either superhuman or subhuman
| and not peers.
|
| Humility and mutual respect gets things done.
| deltaburnt wrote:
| This is a pretty discriminatory comment that I've honestly
| seen zero hint of in reality. And this is coming from
| someone who didn't go to a particularly prestigious school.
| I honestly rarely even find out what school my colleagues
| went to school. But the ones I know who did go to those
| prestigious schools are beyond humble.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Not really. That's bad faith. I've worked at lots of
| places, probably hired about 200 engineers over my career
| so far and have noticed this pattern.
|
| I stopped looking at the educational background years ago
| in a fear that it would influence my bias either way. We
| shouldn't base someone's suitability at 40 upon what
| opportunities they were afforded at 17.
|
| I do have a somewhat prestigious pedigree btw. I removed
| it from my resume around 2010 and never looked back
| crena wrote:
| Apple designers used to build interactive demos in
| Macromedia Director, so I'm assuming they knew a bit about
| scripting. That probably helped them think in a way that
| really clicks with software development.
|
| I've worked with some younger designers who couldn't even
| put together a consistent click-dummy once the client
| wanted to see flows outside the happy path. To be fair, all
| they really had to go on was their education and Figma's
| panels.
| gedy wrote:
| I think the mistake comes from when UI/UX started calling
| themselves a part of product leadership, vs basically being one
| of the team.
| al_borland wrote:
| Wasn't Jobs the one that set that dynamic up, where Ive was
| basically the #2 at Apple? It seemed to work as long as Jobs
| was there as the final quality filter.
| drob518 wrote:
| Yep, Jobs knew what he wanted and he generally had good
| taste. He would push everyone until he got what he thought
| was right and spend extra to get it. Supposedly he sent the
| original iPod team scrambling to find a new headphone jack
| just before launch because he didn't like the mushy tactile
| feel of the jack they had selected. He wanted a very
| tactile "click" as the headphones snapped in.
| acdha wrote:
| That's not a bad thing (user experience is important) but
| remember that Liquid Glass was designed by someone without a
| UI background. Alan Dye designed the boxes iPhones come in
| and was installed by Jony Ive, an industrial designer.
| Neither of them had training or experience in usability, and
| all of the UX people I know are basically complaining non-
| stop about how many basic UX principles the 26 releases
| violate.
| kace91 wrote:
| >I swear, this reign of visual artists as dictators has to
| stop.
|
| Visual artists and graphic/ux designers weren't exactly
| claiming for Tahoe either.
| valleyer wrote:
| The point is that Apple's _own_ design team was.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _I swear, this reign of visual artists as dictators has to
| stop._
|
| > _I 'm sure people noticed this issue internally and brought
| it up but some thing by some designer was seen as biblically
| sacred and overruled all reason._
|
| Funny how Apple went from Jony Ive sacrificing hardware
| usability for "beauty" (touch bars and butterfly switches) to
| Alan Dye mucking up macOS and iOS with Liquid glAss.
| postalcoder wrote:
| The Touch Bar implementation sucked but I'm going to defend
| that attempt 100 out of 100 times. If Apple didn't remove the
| function keys I think it would have been a hit feature. There
| wasn't proper commitment to the feature.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| True, if they'd kept the function keys and just added the
| touch bar above it it would have been great. Weird thing is
| there was more than enough space for both so I don't
| understand why they didn't do that.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Or replace them with physical keys with tiny LCDs screen
| on them to indicate their meaning in the current context.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yeah but still, function keys for me are so important I
| don't like switching them for any reason. Even the Fn+
| functions for like volume etc I don't really like, I
| would much rather have additional buttons for that.
|
| In that sense a touch bar in addition to function keys
| would be very nice, because it's a much smoother way to
| adjust volume.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Oh, I agree, I want my function keys! But this would
| allow software to communicate what the function keys
| actually do in this context. When you hold a modifier
| key, the labels could change.
| Wyverald wrote:
| Curious why you liked it so much. Removing the fn keys was
| a big no-no, yes, but also it was just located in a place
| I'm never going to look at. So why do you think it would've
| been a hit feature?
| postalcoder wrote:
| Modern UI design has trended toward hiding more and more
| things. I think it's super useful to expose a new, hyper-
| malleable control surface to the user (the stream deck is
| popular for a reason!). If the touchbar was ubiquitous,
| competition would force developers to think more deeply
| about interaction design and building apps that
| thoughtfully use it.
|
| Adoption engenders development, and development engenders
| adoption. All of the best use cases of a touch bar are
| ones we would have seen had such a virtuous cycle been
| allowed to occur.
| mcpeepants wrote:
| > hyper-malleable control surface [...] (the stream deck
| is popular for a reason!).
|
| I agree with the sentiment - making a control surface
| that adapts to the user's current task makes total sense
| to me, and is a compelling feature in theory.
|
| The execution (and how the touchbar differs from the
| Stream Deck) is where I think the argument falls apart.
| There is effectively zero ability to navigate the
| touchbar without using your eyes and taking your focus
| off the display, and your work. The Stream Deck can
| easily be used without looking. A static grid of real
| buttons whose function changes within context is a more
| useful implementation in the real world, even though it
| is technically _less_ capable.
|
| IMO the touchbar concept is flawed in exactly in the same
| way as the modern car user interface.
| Wyverald wrote:
| Why put it above the _keyboard_, though? what you
| described sounds just like the macOS menu bar, but
| perhaps a bit more customizable. Why not just do that
| (make the menu bar more customizable)?
|
| As a user of the touch bar, I _hated_ having to look down
| from the screen, and move my hands away from the keyboard
| home row / touchpad area, _all the way up_ to the
| touchbar area to finally use it. It completely breaks the
| flow every single time. I don't think just inserting
| physical Fn keys beneath it would have won me over at
| all.
|
| I'm not familiar with the stream deck, haven't even heard
| of it until just now.
| charles_f wrote:
| The fn keys you can almost circumvent, but the escape key?
| Common!
| jahller wrote:
| the esc key is still there. i'm still using the m1
| macbook pro with the touchbar.
| xuki wrote:
| The original version removed the ESC key as well. By the
| time they added it back, the damage was done.
| roryirvine wrote:
| The worst bit was that the touch-sensitive area didn't
| extend as far left as the physical keyboard - so not only
| did the ESC key become virtual with no tactile feedback,
| it also shifted position.
| vile_wretch wrote:
| That was when I started remapping caps lock to esc and
| have never gone back.
| hyperjeff wrote:
| Full agree. The TouchBar was a genuine innovation that gave
| new ways to interact with data and context. But without the
| function keys (and the real ESC) there were frequent
| accidental touches on the bar and a real tactile loss for
| existing function key intuitions. And now an extremely
| rare, genuine, programmable HCI innovation is scuttled
| because of an unthought-thru roll out. A missed
| opportunity. (I keep my 2019 MBP with the good keyboard
| largely for this, but ultimately the laptop was ruined by
| the super hot Intel cpu, which also makes the touch bar
| uncomfortable to use at times.)
| postalcoder wrote:
| Bret Victor being behind the touch bar explains so much
| about its potential. Apple has such a weird track record
| of releasing really interesting stuff that they let
| languish without enhancement. And then you have weird
| episodes where they have too much conviction on the wrong
| things, like the butterfly keyboard, where they release
| multiple iterations which all end up failing.
| cratermoon wrote:
| In my experience, part of the problem lies in visual artists
| not wanting to iterate the way software development does. Sure,
| they might iterate on the design as they work on it, but once
| they've found their final design, they strongly resist changing
| it, even as the actual development and testing of the software
| to implement it iterates and finds problems.
|
| It's a throwback to BDUF.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| that's a lot of words to say "bad at their job".
|
| If they aren't willing to try out their design and find
| issues with it, or be open to feedback from others, they're
| incompetent.
|
| Looking at the non-tech people in my life, exactly ONE had a
| positive initial reaction after installing ios 26. Do these
| people at apple not do "normal" user testing?
| ncruces wrote:
| That's a bit like software developers iterating until all
| unit tests pass, and then considering all user feedback dumb.
| drob518 wrote:
| Yea, the programmers aren't to blame here. In fact some of the
| visual effects they have achieved are pretty cool. The
| designers are at fault because they prioritized visuals over
| usability. Literally nobody I know thinks "Liquid Glass" has
| been an improvement. The feedback is universally negative.
| halapro wrote:
| The worst part here is that the style works decently on
| mobile but they shoehorned it onto a 25-year-old UI and
| shipped it.
| grishka wrote:
| Because they absolutely can't have disparate visual styles
| in their product lines, practicality be damned -\\_(tsu)_/-
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| "Consistency".
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Consistency is the absolute fucking worst design
| principle.
| drob518 wrote:
| I'd tweak it to say that a foolish consistency is the
| absolute worst design principle. All things being equal,
| consistency is a good thing, but it sometimes gets
| prioritized to the point of absurdity and becomes
| counterproductive.
| thfuran wrote:
| It definitely isn't. It's good in many contexts, but
| zealous adherence to some pithy design principle without
| consideration is bad engineering and bad design.
| grishka wrote:
| There are two different things that can be called
| consistency.
|
| _Visual_ consistency means that your app looks as
| similar as possible across platforms. Regardless of those
| platforms ' native UI. It's the bad kind.
|
| _UX_ consistency means that your app behaves the same
| across platforms, but adopts their style and conventions.
| You actually want this.
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| I think the core issue here is that consistency bounds
| are arbitrary and some people tend to push to much on
| these. Finding the middle is hard and is political.
| Arguing with UX or QA whether previously unrelated
| features on different screens should behave the same is
| exhausting. That's why I prefer small projects where I am
| the only customer or all users are extremely aligned
| (internal developer tooling).
| vincnetas wrote:
| yeah, but somehow consistency was not a concern when
| picking icons for menu items. as pointed out by some
| previous discussions on this matter.
|
| i also hate this "consistency" idea. was working on
| mobile app for android/ios. and a requirement was for
| apps to look identical on both platforms. whyyyyy. sure
| for designer it looks nice, but as a user who uses either
| ios OR android im used to conventions of particular
| platform. why throw that all away just to look identical
| an both platforms.
| the_other wrote:
| Allegedly the next gen MBPs will have a touch screen. I
| think Apple have pushed a touch-enabled macOS UI out a
| year ahead of the hardware: maybe to iron out issues;
| maybe 'cos they could... I worry that we're stuck with
| this shit for a few more years, 'til the touch screen
| goes the way of the touch bar.
| grishka wrote:
| These rumors about touchscreen MacBooks have been going
| around for at least 10 years. At this point I don't
| believe any of it. Especially with how they sell
| keyboards for iPads.
| rwmj wrote:
| At least it's not GNOME, where they shoehorned an
| unusable mobile-style interface on the whole thing _and
| they don 't even have a mobile version_.
| Y_Y wrote:
| To be fair, there is sorta kinda a mobile version: Phosh.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosh
|
| And amusingly Ubuntu uses Qt for its phone clone of
| Gnome.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Touch
| rwmj wrote:
| All 4 users must be really happy.
| hliyan wrote:
| I'm fond of saying that most problems in the software world
| are due to one thing trying to do two things, or two things
| trying to do the same thing. In this case, it feels like
| the former: getting the same implementation to cater to
| both desktop and mobile is obviously the most efficient
| solution from a development perspective, but not an end
| user (and ultimately business) perspective.
| coffeeaddict1 wrote:
| I hate it too, but to my surprise, all of my colleagues (with
| an iPhone) said they love because it looks great.
| blell wrote:
| I love it both on an iPhone and a Mac. It runs great and it
| looks great. It's a mistake to look at what people say on
| the internet. They are usually hopelessly contrarian.
| sirwhinesalot wrote:
| I had friends use those exact words but replaced with
| "Windows Phone" and "Windows 8 Computer".
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| The navigation top bar on iOS especially is a huge
| improvement overall. Especially for views that stack a
| safe area bar in the second line.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| > It's a mistake to look at what people say on the
| internet.
|
| Touche.
| audunw wrote:
| I'll add a third perspective that's probably often gone
| unsaid: I love it on Apple TV, and kinda like it on iPhone
| and Mac. It definitely needs to be improved though. There
| are definitely a whole bunch of usability issues, but they
| shouldn't be too hard to fix. And Apple has shown
| willingness to iterate until they get it right. Unlike
| Microsoft which just moves onto the next thing (the system
| settings UI design in Windows 11 is fine.. but can they
| _pleeeease_ just integrate all settings into that UI now..
| how many generations of settings / control panes are there
| in Windows now?)
|
| The huge corner radius is one thing I do wish they reverted
| in Mac OS.
| phearnot wrote:
| I suppose it's exactly the programmer's job to make sure
| cursor grabs the edge of the curved window border, not the
| arbitrary point outside.
| drob518 wrote:
| In this specific case, yea, the programmers might be at
| fault, but most of my gripes with Liquid Glass are not like
| this. They are design issues. This seems like maybe more of
| a bug stemming from an underlying design issue (corner
| radius being ridiculously large).
| echoangle wrote:
| Is that something the programmer decides or are they just
| implementing what the designer decided?
| jdiff wrote:
| More than anything it looks like a value that was
| forgotten and never updated from past versions where the
| radius wasn't so severe.
| febusravenga wrote:
| Exactly. I don't know how about "big design houses" like
| Apple, but in my small shop designers _only_ care about
| static screen stories. They don't care how user will
| click those icons, how focus will work, how any dynamic
| aspects of complex UI works.
|
| In past it was "given" by desktop env, now it's all
| rebuilt in material or other design but without any
| advanced behavior, it only "looks good on static screen".
| ryandrake wrote:
| At a place like Apple, I can bet that it's not like some
| contract engineering shop where a blob of programmers
| just sit there blindly implementing whatever is written
| by someone else in Jira tickets. The final product that
| ships in the OS is going to be the result of massive,
| often heated negotiation between HI and the engineering
| DRI. A huge change to the look and feel is unlikely to be
| implemented if there's strenuous objection from
| engineering leadership.
| nkrisc wrote:
| And it's the UX designer's job to specify the click target
| area based on best practices and usability testing with
| real users.
|
| If this is the click target area specified by the designer
| (or it was simply unspecified) then it's absolutely the
| designer's fault. I'm a UX designer and I've made mistakes
| like this before, though this one is pretty egregious
| because the issue is core to the interaction.
|
| It's sometimes easy as a UX designer to forget to specify
| some of the smaller details (though this example isn't what
| I'd call a "small detail"), particularly because they're
| the kinds of things you don't notice when they work, and I
| don't have to implement it. The developer has to sit down
| and write code for what will or will not happen.
|
| I've made mistakes in the past where in an mobile interface
| I neglected to specify the click target area for some
| controls. Typically the minimum clickable area we'd use was
| something like 44x44 but the visual was smaller than that,
| and I didn't specify it, so the developer made the visible
| element the one that would respond to the click events. It
| was too small and it caused issues. I owned up to that one,
| I didn't want to let the developer take the blame for that.
|
| I've also been fortunate enough to work with developers who
| would notice these things and then ask me if it was
| intended and whether they should increase the clickable
| area. I was always so grateful to have colleagues like
| that, and I'd always offer to set some time aside to come
| take a look at things on their local environment before
| they moved things forward just to catch any issues where
| they could immediately fix it instead of having to push
| fixes later on.
|
| I don't know where the failure happened at Apple, but based
| on what I've seen from "Liquid Glass" it's clear there's
| some real institutional failures involving either the
| design leadership, the development leadership, or somewhere
| in between both. It's really quite embarrassing the quality
| of GUI and UX that has come out of Apple recently.
|
| This is the first time ever where the hurdle of rolling
| back my iPhone to an earlier version of iOS feels worth the
| effort. I disabled as much of the liquid glass effects as I
| could because I found it difficult to read and now it all
| looks like shit, whereas before I could read it and it
| looked nice.
| kule wrote:
| Yeah I don't like the glass effect and I realised it's
| because it creates movement and drags your attention to
| things that should be background items. On the phone, video
| controls and app folders are particularly egregious.
| lloeki wrote:
| > The designers are at fault because they prioritized visuals
| over usability
|
| I bet designers aren't at fault here either because Liquid
| Glass violates at least three rules of design every second
| that passes.
|
| https://www.vitsoe.com/us/about/good-design#good-design-
| is-i...
|
| Instead OP mentioned "visual artists"; I agree. Liquid Glass
| is an art show; something that belongs in the realm of
| concept cars, not on the road.
| darkhorse222 wrote:
| >I'm sure people noticed this issue internally and brought it
| up but some thing by some designer was seen as biblically
| sacred and overruled all reason.
|
| I disagree. Seems more like the group that implemented border
| radius at the OS UI implementation level did not work with the
| group that handles window sizing. Not everything is a
| conspiracy.
| leptons wrote:
| Of course it's not "a conspiracy", but it is a major,
| gigantic, huge, alarming failure by Apple. Resizing a window
| is just about the most basic and useful thing a window system
| can do after opening a window, and Apple totally messed it
| up. It's like they've never worked with a window before, but
| TBH though, their window system has always sucked.
| clnhlzmn wrote:
| Seems like you could make the corners round (not making a
| judgement on that in any way) and still give the resize handle
| a more sensible size/shape/location right? As in this isn't a
| visual design problem.
| Arainach wrote:
| It's tricky because you're now cropping into rectangular apps
| which may actually use all the pixels they get and want hit
| testing in them.
|
| When Windows went to a 1 pixel border and shadow effects, it
| still had hit testing in a region around the window to
| account for that. No idea what they're doing with rounded
| corners in Win11.
| Perepiska wrote:
| I worked for a company with a large website. The designers were
| elite and worked in a darkroom on expensive Apple equipment. At
| some point, it turned out that users couldn't see a certain
| color on the website because it could be seen on an Apple
| monitor, but not on a mass-market laptop's TFT screen.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I worked at a really large social media company, and there
| was a design which looked beautiful on all of the employee's
| high-res screens and monitors but used too much space and
| just didn't work for most of the users. It never got
| launched, which feels like what should have happened here.
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| To be fair to those designers, color reproduction is a really
| hard problem, and shitty monitors have terrible color
| reproduction.
|
| You want your designers to have accurate color reproduction
| for obvious reasons, but they should be testing their work on
| shitty monitors, too.
| nosianu wrote:
| > _You want your designers to have accurate color
| reproduction for obvious reasons_
|
| I don't know, I conclude the opposite. If you need accurate
| color reproduction when you publish online, you are doing
| something wrong.
|
| I used to co-own a small digital printing business, so I'm
| aware of what all of it means, and I had an appropriate
| monitor myself and a paid Adobe Design Suite subscription.
|
| But for the web, when our setup is too good it's actually a
| detriment. It is predictable that you end up publishing
| things that require your quality setup. There is a good
| reason not to bother with a high quality monitor usable for
| serious publishing and photo/video editing when you only do
| web thing. Which is exactly why when I bought my last
| monitor, which is for business work and coding and web
| browsing and other mundane things, I deliberately ignored
| all the very high quality displays, even though the company
| would have paid whatever I chose. It is not an advantage
| for that use case.
| nosianu wrote:
| I have difficulty reading the light gray text on white/bright
| background that too many sites favor these days. I have a
| pretty good 4K 32 inch monitor. Even with a full Adobe color
| space capable and calibrated device in a darkroom I don't
| want to read that combination.
|
| I don't get it, I have medically tested 120% color vision (it
| was a lengthy test), definitely nothing wrong on my side, so
| I don't understand at all what the designers and coders are
| seeing that they think that that is a great idea. The
| difference between the pixels is objectively bad, one can
| take a screenshot and look at the background versus text
| pixels.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I believe the heavy sarcasm is completely justified, I second
| it.
|
| Most of the software creeping towards complete unusability
| devolve through non-practical apparence tweeking bullshit,
| ruining usability, while the functionality is intact (apart
| from bugfixes).
|
| The other reason for decay is the overcomplication - pilin new
| and new marginal things on the top of the functionality heap -
| combined with sloppines, rushing through things, but that's an
| other discussion.
|
| Did we reach a peek in software quality recently? So things
| only go down from here? I have this growing itchy feeling. I
| feel obstructed, forced to jump hoops, also disgust touching an
| increasing amount of software, most of those used for many many
| years without trouble (i.e. did not really registered its
| usage, it was doing things silently and well, but now starting
| to jump into my face or kick my legs).
| JoachimS wrote:
| Your comment reminded of these fantastic sketch.
|
| The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
| ezst wrote:
| I need evidence that sufficiently large organisations don't
| eventually devolve into... whatever that is. And then, names,
| so I can apply there, while there's still some work ethics
| left in me.
| concinds wrote:
| I want OS vendors to stop prioritizing "design" above
| performance. Opening a Finder window used to be instant, now it
| takes 0.3s-1s. Opening Safari used to be instant, now it takes
| seconds. Even menus in the menu bar take a few dozen
| milliseconds too long, which becomes obvious when you compare
| it to apps with custom truly-instant hamburger menus.
|
| Computers are faster than ever, every task other than UI
| rendering is finished faster than ever, but these geniuses keep
| slowing down the UI with every update. It's criminal.
| tantalor wrote:
| > fixing an obviously broken spec
|
| Going off spec is not the correct way to deal with this, and I
| could see how that might get you in trouble. It's counter
| productive.
|
| Better choice is to escalate, but at some point you have to
| simply disagree and commit.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| Windows is following the same path. In both it's getting harder
| and harder to tell the window boundary and where to drag it
| resize.
| erickhill wrote:
| That egg scramble plate GIF is pure gold.
| treetalker wrote:
| Yeah, but to be fair to Apple, the guy wasn't even trying to
| grab the shadow of the plate.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| It's a great analogy but I wish, in the video, he had been
| grabbing the plate and it somehow didn't move. Then, when he
| grabbed the air outside of the plate it should have magically
| moved. That would have highlighted how crazy Tahoe is.
| jamesjyu wrote:
| I highly recommend Moves, which makes it possible to resize with
| a modifier key drag within any part of the window:
| https://mikkelmalmberg.com/moves
| semiinfinitely wrote:
| I will never update to tahoe. if it becomes forced I'll switch to
| linux idgaf
| hermitcrab wrote:
| All that 'glass' eye candy is a sheer sign that looks is more
| important to Apple than usability. And I don't even care for how
| it looks.
| asaddhamani wrote:
| The iOS compass redesign is particularly egregious
| 1f60c wrote:
| I think you meant the Measure app, but yes. I hate it so
| much.
| asaddhamani wrote:
| yes thats the one
| ickelbawd wrote:
| I thought this was going to talk about the struggle of sizing
| windows to arbitrary widths. I often try to keep slack and my
| email windows side by side and Mac OS seems to go out of its way
| these days to frustrate my efforts and maximize the one window or
| the other.
|
| The resize corners grab area is also very frustrating though.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| I've used Rectangle for years so I can arrange windows more
| quickly. Not good for arbitrary sizes, more for set positions.
|
| https://rectangleapp.com/
| Supermancho wrote:
| I install Rectangle App on any mac I use. The keybinds are
| convenient and the auto-sizing/tiling is pleasant as can be.
| thenaturalist wrote:
| This is so simple.
|
| This makes me angry.
| g947o wrote:
| Imagine Steve Jobs allowing this to happen.
| katzenversteher wrote:
| "You're holding it wrong!"
| mbrumlow wrote:
| Idk. I don't resize windows with the mouse at all. I use the key
| bindings to move to a tile position or fill screen.
|
| I almost always never use a mouse for more than maybe moving a
| tab to another window.
|
| So I am wondering, are people fighting using a Mac in the most
| effective way simply because of old patterns and habits?
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Maybe you don't use the mouse because it just doesn't work as
| expected? ;)
|
| > So I am wondering, are people fighting using a Mac in the
| most effective way simply because of old patterns and habit
|
| "Most effective" doesn't mean "most intuitive". I don't want to
| learn keyboard shortcuts just to move or resize a window.
| That's the entire premise of graphical user interfaces.
| eviks wrote:
| What if your needs aren't as simple and you want to increase
| the size just a bit to fit more text than the tile permits and
| you don't want to waste the whole screen for that?
| charleszw wrote:
| That omelette does look delicious though.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| I agree it makes using my computer worse, but I'd like to see how
| far Apple is willing to go here.
|
| They won't do perfectly circular windows, that would be crazy--
| but I think we all know they can go further than this.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| I agree that a circle would be too much. But they could at
| least do a full squircle instead of this half assery so that we
| don't have to look at those ugly flat sides. /s
| rajivjain wrote:
| My biggest peeve with macOS Tahoe is the App Launcher redesign.
|
| It seems like a clear regression in usability. By moving from a
| high-density, full-screen experience to a constrained, scrolling
| window, they've increased the interaction cost for launching apps
| via the mouse. It feels like a 'unification tax. Sacrificing
| desktop utility to align with non-Desktop modalilties. Does
| anyone see a functional upside here, or is this purely aesthetic
| consistency?
| Ringz wrote:
| Yep. I hate it. Its easier to open the Finder and use the
| shortcut to open the application folder.
| dajt wrote:
| I was shocked when I first hit this. I'm also confused as to
| why the settings app constrains the window size but I think it
| did that in the previous version too - not a justification!
|
| I complained about it to a team mate and he thought it was fine
| and I was weird for using the app launcher and not cmd-space.
| Although on Windows I always use win-r to run stuff.
|
| Tahoe UI changes and LG are such a mistake and Apple being
| Apple will probably just double down on it.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| It's consistency with the rest of Spotlight. I imagine they
| want to enhance it, but getting people to use it might be the
| first step.
| data-ottawa wrote:
| I don't know why it's so laggy when you open it. First time you
| open and scroll it jitters and not all app icons are loaded, so
| they kind of chunk and overlap.
|
| You get worse icon pop-in if you add your app folder with grid
| view to the dock. These aren't stored on the network, so it's
| baffling they take so long to load the icons.
| VerifiedReports wrote:
| The removal of Launchpad was an inexplicable blunder. The OS
| now provides no way to organize your applications.
|
| Why would I want my dev tools, audio apps, 3-D-modeling apps,
| and office apps all jumbled together?
|
| It's as if Apple is trying to catch up to Microsoft in the race
| to regress.
| egypturnash wrote:
| You can still make subdirectories in /Applications.
| VerifiedReports wrote:
| This is not reliable; it messes up some applications.
| VerifiedReports wrote:
| I love how someone downvoted a fact.
| halapro wrote:
| They want you to search. I probably have 200 apps on my phone
| and their automatic categorization is good enough for me.
| Most common ones I just search anyway.
| EagnaIonat wrote:
| It works great on phone, on the operating system there are
| numerous applications that you don't care about.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| That's exactly what I did with Launchpad most of the time.
| But Launchpad gave you the option of both. Are they also
| going to take away categorisation in Preferences and force
| you to search for everything there too?
| EagnaIonat wrote:
| > The removal of Launchpad was an inexplicable blunder.
|
| It wasn't a blunder. It was absolutely intentional to force
| users to start using the AI component.
|
| I suspect someone probably pointed out no one would use it
| because launchpad has a better UX, so they removed it and
| forced the three finger pinch to launch spotlight.
|
| I'm currently using the following to fix it.
|
| - Bug in preferences that disabling show home also disables 3
| finger pinch.
|
| - I'm using AppGrid as my new launchpad.
|
| - Using better touch tool to activate launchpad with 3 finger
| pinch.
| blell wrote:
| What AI component?
| EagnaIonat wrote:
| Spotlight is used to train ML models on Apples servers.
| There is no private information used and they go through
| a process to remove PII information.
| zapzupnz wrote:
| Maybe they didn't want people seeing their awful new icons at
| large enough sizes that the seams would be showing...
| concinds wrote:
| > It feels like a 'unification tax. Sacrificing desktop utility
| to align with non-Desktop modalilties
|
| No. Launchpad is just the iOS springboard brought to Mac, with
| big icons and folders and pages. When it was added people
| complained of "iOS-ification".
|
| This time they made a proper, unique Mac equivalent, integrated
| in Spotlight and built around the keyboard. It's not as good,
| the window was too small in 26.0, doesn't support
| uninstallation like Launchpad, but it's definitely less iOS-
| like.
| rick_dalton wrote:
| I think you have it backwards. The new app launcher is
| unequivocally more like iOS. Like iOS' app launcher it: 1.
| does not support making your own folders which launchpad had
| 2. has groups per app type like "Creativity" or
| "Productivity" which are literally taken verbatim from the
| iOS app drawer/launcher page. Both designs are obviously
| inspired by iOS but I don't see it as a mac optimized version
| at all.
| vehemenz wrote:
| This is a weird one. I think their reasoning was that most
| people don't use Launchpad, so they integrated it into
| Spotlight to eliminate redundancy.
|
| I much prefer the new app launcher in Tahoe, but it was created
| at the expense of Launchpad, which some people actually relied
| on. I don't know why they couldn't have kept both options.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| I don't have this issue _at all_. I have a very generous amount
| of space to grab the corner with and it changes mouse pointer to
| the diagonal arrow.
|
| Edit: despite all the negative feedback, I'm quite happy with
| Tahoe and I enjoy the visual changes. I think some of the subtler
| changes is more intuitive and Spotlight's improvement is quite
| nice.
| robrain wrote:
| Pleased that I'm not alone. The comments here suggest that I
| should just bin my Mac and buy a Linux-capable machine instead
| since MacOS is now "unusable", "heinous", "diabolical", "worst
| OS EVER".
|
| I updated, carried on enjoying the best desktop experience
| (IMHO). It's not perfect, but was and remains better than the
| alternatives for me. Very little "struggle".
| elcritch wrote:
| I'm hoping something like this takes off on FreeBSD:
| https://github.com/gershwin-desktop/gershwin-desktop
|
| I've only owned macbook laptops but have run Linux at work since
| 2002. The lack of cohesion and non-stop changes in Linux is just
| as tiring and this MacOS Tahoe stuff. Gnome 3 cared just as
| little for users. FreeBSD + KDE Plasma is pretty good now, but
| lacks feeling and design.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| that looks like xfce?
| elcritch wrote:
| I think they took the window manager from it to make running
| gtk apps easier. Admittedly gershwin or similar have a long
| way to go, but gnustep has the basic design from openstep.
| There's another similar project but from the ground up.
| pxc wrote:
| There's a superficial relationship because XFCE is often
| configured with a dock-like taskbar, but GNUstep is a GNU
| clone of Cocoa and the window manager from NeXTSTEP. It tries
| to mimic early macOS a bit more deeply.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| Also the resize cursor is completely unreliable, the cursor often
| doesn't change to the resize one when the mouse is over the
| correct resize areg. So it's even harder to tell if your cursor
| is in the right place before clicking. If you click in the wrong
| place it can have frustrating consequences, like activating
| another window or even clicking something inside it.
| re wrote:
| I have had issues with resizing Quick Look windows with their
| rounded corners on macOS for the last several major versions,
| well before Tahoe. The resize cursor indicator there also
| doesn't seem to appear at the correct location for the actual
| resize handles.
| userbinator wrote:
| Rounded corners are ironically symbolic of the dumbing-down
| that's affected the software industry. Instead of the sharp
| precision of 90-degree corners, we get vague curves that don't
| make sense anymore as though the corners have been worn away.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I might even give Apple a tiny bit of credit if some designer
| had piped up at some point and said "you think we should square
| off the corners when the app is 'maximised'"? But, no, either
| nobody pointed out that the emperor wore no clothes, or they
| were ignored.
|
| (I say "maximised", even though that isn't the right term,
| because there is no right term. I don't mean 'full screen',
| since the borders _are_ actually squared off properly in that
| mode, thank the lord; I mean 'full screen except for the
| global menu bar')
| DevKoala wrote:
| I have been using Rectangle and Spectacle before it. Wanting to
| resize windows like in this article isn't natural to me anymore.
| paustint wrote:
| Same. Once in a while I end up on a screen share with someone
| and see that they have all these odd sized windows and they try
| to drag them around and resize them - drives me crazy!
| titzer wrote:
| Tahoe is proof is that UX for desktop has finally jumped the
| shark.
|
| In all my years using computers I have never been so disappointed
| so profoundly by a 36 gigabyte operating system upgrade.
| reddalo wrote:
| I'm so glad I haven't updated.
| glkindlmann wrote:
| It may have jumped the shark, but it may be that now there's
| space for actual experimentation and innovation again. This
| talk from Scott Jenson (who worked at Apple in Human
| Interfaces) was thought-provoking and gave me a little
| optimism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZTOjd_bOQ
| areoform wrote:
| Apple is at the point where they need a Jobs-ian correction
| again.
|
| Steve Jobs would have had a fit over this product line. As '97
| era Jobs put it, "The products suck! There's no sex in them
| anymore!"
|
| My modest proposal for Apple diehards (especially employees) is
| to feed all the data that exists on Jobs into a multi-modal model
| so that Apple can hear just how much their shit sucks from Jobs'
| digital ghost.
|
| A good starting point would be the https://stevejobsarchive.com/
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >"The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!"
|
| Enter "Lickable Pixels" -- the phrase that stuck to describe
| the Aqua era.
|
| Introducing Mac OS X's Aqua interface, Jobs said at Macworld in
| January 2000: "We made the buttons on the screen look so good
| you'll want to lick them."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface)
|
| Then there was the red hot irresistibly sexy and well designed
| IBM Thinkpad TrackPoint -AKA- Keyboard Clitoris -AKA- Joy
| Button, and IBM's explicitly lascivious "So Hot, We Had To Make
| It Red" ad.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/hodidb/so_hot_we_...
|
| Ted Selker, the inventor of the TrackPoint, told me the story
| of how that ad got written and refined by focus groups: He
| slyly suggested the slogan, and IBM's ad designers begrudgingly
| put it on the page in small text in the corner, below the photo
| and ad copy. Then they A/B tested it with the text a little
| bigger, then a bit bolder, then even higher, and it finally
| worked its way up to the top of the page in BIG HUGE BOLD TEXT!
|
| More about Ted's work:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34425576
|
| Ted Selker fondly reminds me of "Mr. Lossoff" the "Button Man"
| in "A Nero Wolfe Mystery" episode "The Mother Hunt", where
| Archie drops in on "Mister Lossoff's Distinguished Buttons" in
| the garment district of New York:
|
| https://youtu.be/h-QgWOSVKm4?t=724
|
| He's totally THAT enthusiastic, a distinguished expert
| fiendishly obsessed with buttons! He even carries around a big
| bag of replacement Joy Buttons that he hands out for free like
| candy to anyone who's worn theirs out.
|
| I know this from personal experience: Ted and his wife Ellen
| once ran into me working on my Thinkpad at some coffee shop in
| Mountain View, and Ted noticed my worn out Joy Button. He
| excused himself to run out to his car to fetch his Button Bag,
| while Ellen smiled at me and rolled her eyes up into her head
| and shrugged, and we hung out and talked until he got back. I
| really appreciated a nice new crisp one with fresh bumpy
| texture, because mine was totally worn down, and it made his
| day to get rid of a few. (I imagine their house has hoards of
| boxes and piles of bags full of them!)
|
| The common thread: design that makes you come. Back for more,
| that is. Buttons to lick till they click. Nubs to rub till
| they're bald. Products you touched obsessively until they're
| worn smooth. Tahoe gives us clownish corners we can't even
| grab. Apple dropped the ball -- and frankly, it's a kick in the
| nuts.
| halapro wrote:
| To be fair, Liquid Glass is as fuckable as it gets, but
| please Johnny I'm just trying to do my taxes here.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| It has more of a Real Doll vibe to me.
| mrweasel wrote:
| It's not just Apple though. Something is wrong in the software
| industry. Desktop/PC operating systems aren't going away, but
| the industry have decided that it's no longer a relevant
| product category.
|
| Windows is going down a strange path, where it's productivity
| is suffering because Microsoft is measuring success in terms of
| CoPilot adoption. Apple is stuck trying to invent the next
| iPhone, but in the meantime they are trying to make the iPhone
| sexy by slapping on a new skin. Then they forgot about macOS
| and quickly moves over some stuff from iPhone. Neither of the
| products apparent have UX designers anymore and QA is meeeh.
|
| I don't understand either company. Both use to have talented
| UI/UX teams and actually listened to them. Is it really just
| short term stock price thinking that make them both forget that
| their operating systems should be about productivity and user
| ergonomics?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Something is wrong in the software industry
|
| Software and technology went from being a productivity tool
| to an ad delivery vehicle (or delivery vehicle for whatever
| bullshit is en-vogue like media subscriptions, AI, etc - that
| ultimately sooner or later comes back to ads).
|
| Turns out you don't actually need much UX or design when the
| product's productivity capabilities no longer affect your
| bottom line.
|
| My question is what those people think will happen when the
| transition completes and everything fully became an ad
| delivery machine with no productivity features? Ads only work
| as long as people have disposable income to spend on the
| advertised products/media, and they won't be having any money
| if you break the productivity tools they used to make said
| money. Ads can't work if the entire economy becomes ads.
| wang_li wrote:
| >Something is wrong in the software industry. Desktop/PC
| operating systems aren't going away, but the industry have
| decided that it's no longer a relevant product category.
|
| Half of humanity is not very smart. Once you've sold
| computers and software to everyone who is smart, you have to
| sell to the not smart half. And that not smart half isn't
| going to like or even be able to use complex software. Since
| there are far more people out there simply consuming things
| and few people creating things, the bias is going to be for
| the simpletons.
| hrdwdmrbl wrote:
| I would highly recommend Magnets to anyone users who prefer
| shortcuts anyway: https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/
| st3fan wrote:
| This 100%
|
| Please please please make this better Apple. Or just give us an
| option for square windows.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| I started with an Apple Lisa. I've never enjoyed Apple products
| less than I do right now. And there were some rough days in the
| 90s! I switched from a AW Ultra 3 to a Garmin. Considering an S26
| because of the semi-matte screen. The Mac, though, I probably
| can't replace, but man Tahoe/Liquid Glass sucks.
| chmaynard wrote:
| This controversy could have been avoided if the GUI changes in
| Tahoe had been opt-in only. In other words, the Sequoia GUI
| should have remained the default, with the option of choosing to
| switch to Liquid Glass.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| When has Apple ever really allowed you to do anything like
| that?
| BoneShard wrote:
| Maybe I'm too old and every modern computer is a marvel to me,
| but as someone switching between win/macos/linux all these
| complaints amuse me. While in windows I'm using powertoys and I
| can move/resize windows using any space inside a window. It's the
| same with linux/gnome - a couple of config settings. Then, when I
| started using macos I looked for a similar solution - found
| BetterSnapTool and just started using it.
| hopelite wrote:
| I get your point and think it is a matter of when things are
| relatively "perfectly" done as in iOS/MacOS, every little
| anthill seems like an eruption volcano, but let's also not make
| excuses for some of the rather disgusting issues in Tahoe that
| Steve Jobs' would have never allowed to ship.
|
| I can't recall them all right off the top of my head, but I
| waited til 26.2 to update because of all the comments I saw
| about glitziness, and this resizing issue is just one of the
| quirks I have noticed are still not resolved; not to mention
| that my M4 Mac has not crawled and locked up as often as it has
| since I updated to 26.2. But again, to put it in perspective,
| that's only been very little hassle compared to what seems to
| be nothing but misery, suffering, and existential questions
| suffered by the wretched souls condemned to Windows.
|
| Edit: another issue I have noticed in iOS is that now things
| like saving bookmarks in Safari is no longer a two step/tap
| process using long-press, it's a three step/tap
| process....WHY?? Same with "add to home screen". Also, the long
| press horizontal context menu (i.e., copy, paste) now does not
| slide left to reveal more options, it just changes mode to a
| vertical list. What is going on??? That's sickening...in my
| opinion. Horizontal, vertical? Pick one.
|
| Second Edit: I just experienced another Tahoe glitch in at
| least Safari, where hyperlinks become un-clickable and the only
| way to resolve that is to seemingly restart safari. I don't
| find that acceptable in Safari of all places.
| hopelite wrote:
| I was just reminded of another glitch in iOS, when typing if
| you select the left most suggested word, the selection
| highlight is not only aligned with the rounding and position
| of the underlying rounded background, it literally
| overlaps/extends beyond the background. Again... rather
| gross.
| c-hendricks wrote:
| Wait which powertoy does resizing and moving of windows? I've
| been using AltSnap while still having powertoys installled for
| changing caps lock behaviour.
| BoneShard wrote:
| You're actually right, it's AltDrag for resizing and moving +
| PowerToys for snapping/zoning.
| paustint wrote:
| Not sure if it replaces everything, but I have been using
| https://rectangleapp.com and would not be able to use MacOS
| without it.
| BoneShard wrote:
| yes, looks like BetterSnapTool and rectangleapp have some
| overlapping functionality https://folivora.ai/bettersnaptool
|
| I guess I found BetterSnapTool first and it solved my issues
| with window management in macos.
| john_alan wrote:
| Tahoe is a nightmare. I'm Literally not buying a new Mac because
| of it.
|
| Dye destroyed macOS. I don't know what they do, but they have to
| backtrack.
| tbirdny wrote:
| I agree. I would like to buy a new Mac but that would mean I'm
| forced to use macOS 26. It may be years before I buy a new Mac.
| blinded wrote:
| I game on windows because of anti cheat software requirements.
| Windows is garbage. The windows + tab order is never consistent.
| Not having a good built in shell and don't get me started if you
| ever have to edit the registry for anything. Super poor
| experience.
| Daneel_ wrote:
| I fully agree, but the winkey + tab order is simply in order of
| last used, with the most recent being at the upper left and
| oldest at the lower right.
| blinded wrote:
| Interesting! Thanks for that
| jdkee wrote:
| Steve Jobs would never have let this ship.
| amelius wrote:
| Why does the UI have to change all the time? Can't they just keep
| it the same?
|
| If cars were like computers, the steering wheel would be in a
| different place after every maintenance check.
|
| Anyway, I'm on Linux, using Gnome Classic as my WM, and I don't
| have these stupid "everything is suddenly different now" issues.
| imiric wrote:
| Cars have similar UX issues as well. See the whole touchscreen
| saga.
|
| It's also an issue on Linux, to an extent. GNOME has a tendency
| of forcing UIs on users, and Ubuntu with Unity, now GNOME
| again, etc. Though, thankfully, since the user is free to
| choose their own desktop environment and window manager, it's
| not as pressing of an issue.
|
| I realized many years ago that simpler UIs deliver the best UX.
| This is a large reason why I love the command line so much.
| Most programs have a fixed and stable interface, and can be
| composed to do what I want. For graphical programs I prefer
| using a simple window manager like bspwm on X, and niri on
| Wayland. These don't draw window decorations, and are primarily
| keyboard-driven, so I don't need superfluous graphics. I only
| need a simple status bar that shows my workspaces, active
| window, and some system information. I recently configured it
| with Quickshell[1], and couldn't be happier. I plan to use this
| setup for years to come, and it gives me great peace of mind
| knowing that no company can take that away from me. I will have
| to maintain it myself, but there shouldn't be any changes in
| the programs I use to break this in a major way.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/imiric/quickshell-niri/tree/main/fancy-
| ba...
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Car designs do change all the time, mostly just for novelty
| too.
| pwg wrote:
| > Why does the UI have to change all the time? Can't they just
| keep it the same?
|
| Because if they kept it the same, then there would be no need
| to continue to employ all those UI designers. Therefore, to be
| assured of their continued employment, the UI designers have to
| make constant changes to justify their existence. Meanwhile, we
| get to suffer with their changes.
| JoachimS wrote:
| I see this sentiment sometimes, but don't buy it. What I do
| buy is that customers, as well as investors expect the
| company to keep developing new products, create new releases
| and version. To drive sales.
|
| Companies don't build things to motivate having developers -
| Remember they are the "cost center", while sales are the
| creators of value. The developers are a necessary burden and
| would be axed as soon as they don't provide what is needed.
|
| Old products are boring. New products are interesting.
| Customers likes new thing. Media writes about new things,
| even writes negatively if updates are slow to come.
|
| Compare to cars, skis, tennis rackets even dishwashers, new
| coke, new christmas special of somesuch not the same as last
| Christmas. Things that have new models every year or season,
| every six months etc. We create newness, not because it is
| really needed, but it drives sales.
|
| Moving to a once a year makes Apples products guaranteed to
| get buzz, sales repeatedly. And investors can predict when
| that will happen. All are happy. Almost.
| empiko wrote:
| I believe that sentiment to some extent. As soon as you
| establish an org, they will keep generating projects for
| themselves. Almost no manager will tell you that their work
| is complete and it is time to downsize their team. If you
| have an UX team with N people, the team will make sure to
| generate workload for N people, probably even more.
|
| On top of that, managing a huge redesign is a great career
| opportunity for everyone involved. The incentives are
| simply stacked in favor of doing redesigns for their own
| sake all the time. You need a clear minded top level
| manager to stop these kinds of ideas.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Most of these changes aren't that disruptive because they keep
| the fundamentals, but there are a few things Apple makes sure
| you never get used to like iTunes/Music or iPhone Photos.
|
| What bothers me about Linux is that realistically your entire
| DE will change at some point if/when the one you're staying on
| becomes too unsupported. They did this kinda recently at work,
| not cause IT wanted a fresh new look but because of some
| compatibility issue.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| I agree with you, on Ubuntu MATE 24.04.2 enjoying getting work
| done instead of popups and unfathomable UI changes. Let's be
| friends.
| lunar_rover wrote:
| Are we reaching the death of UI design? Feel like we're now at
| the point where being mid-bad makes something one of the best for
| many.
|
| I miss Windows 7 and OS X.
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| I think we need to call it as what it is, half assed design.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Scott Jenson - who worked on the classic Mac for Apple, and
| Android for Google - recently gave a talk on this:
|
| https://youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQ?si=BVOxUPjoULhwiclE
|
| The tl;dw is that copying UX lets others invest energy in
| identifying the paradigm. Linux, which tends to be starved for
| resources, has historically been reasonably well served by
| letting Apple and Microsoft define UX, while Linux focuses on
| implementing it. However, those headlining companies haven't
| been investing in desktop UX excellence in recent years. It's
| time for open source projects to embrace experimentation and
| take the mantle of cutting edge UX, because Apple et. al.
| aren't paving the way anymore.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| I haven't had to move the mouse near a window corner to resize it
| in years -- I just hold down the Shift and Fn keys and the window
| under my mouse resizes as I move it. Strongly recommend getting
| BetterTouchTool for this - changed my life.
| itwillnotbeasy wrote:
| Who asked for those rounded windows anyway? They create so many
| problems; every app has its own border-radius, and it wastes
| precious screen space...
| rishabhaiover wrote:
| Unrelated but iOS 26 is so bad and janky that I've finally
| decided to switch to an android phone. I hate it so much. Thank
| god I haven't upgraded to Tahoe.
| eviks wrote:
| > Since upgrading to macOS Tahoe, I've noticed that quite often
| my attempts to resize a window are failing.
|
| That should nudge users away from this rather primitive method of
| window resizing using tiny 19px corners and instead set up a
| productivity app where your can use the full 33% of the window
| size (so conveniently huge! and of course customizable) to resize
| via an extra trigger (for example, using a modifier key)
|
| (nice plate picture joke!)
| 1f60c wrote:
| I set up Raycast (https://www.raycast.com/) with the same
| keybinds as Magnet (https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/) because I
| learned those first and haven't looked back.
| eviks wrote:
| Look back and discover a better way, those are not ergonomic
| defaults even though you got used to them. But also
| convenient app switching beats having your content get
| shifted around due to constant window resizing, that workflow
| mostly works for stuff you need "permanently" side by side.
| And on laptops this also runs into screen size limitations
| AlienRobot wrote:
| "I need to resize my window."
|
| "You shouldn't need this."
| eviks wrote:
| "My reading comprehension failed, help me!"
|
| "You should use this more convenient way to fulfill your
| window resizing need!"
| mvkel wrote:
| Seems very clear now that we are going to see touch screen
| MacBooks. Which is a very silly idea. But explains why the UI
| "snaps" like an iPad, and everything is designed for touch.
| drob518 wrote:
| Apple really screwed the pooch on this last set of UI upgrades.
| They have been known as UI experts for decades and then they
| produced this unusable mess. I've upgraded my iPhone and iPad,
| but I've been delaying upgrading MacOS, hoping that they will fix
| most of the mess before I switch. If I was Tim Cook, I'd be
| looking for a scalp. This is as bad as the butterfly keyboard
| mess in terms of usability, IMO.
| antfarm wrote:
| It's obvious, the new Apple UI (and Liquid Glass) is optimized
| for visionOS, not macOS or iOS.
| graypegg wrote:
| I've been more and more confused by Apple's product positioning
| for MacOS. They still have a sizeable "pro" (emphasis not
| sarcasm) market that spans across a very aspirational set of
| careers: Film, YouTubers, developers, photographers, artists,
| musicians, etc.
|
| Considering how many people only buy a MacBook PRO no matter what
| they plan on doing with it, they really need to keep the actual
| salary-earning pros happy with it or else it'll lose all
| credibility. A Mac in a recording booth has a look to it that
| sells well, but that aesthetic won't last if you stop seeing
| them. Being an effective tool for the pro minority should
| honestly be the priority for MacOS, even at the cost of making it
| incongruous from iPadOS/iOS. *
|
| * disclaimer: what do I know honestly haha, I'm sure they'll
| print money anyway.
| jojule wrote:
| When resizing, I expect to drag from the edge of a window. This
| is exactly how it works in macOS Tahoe, with a sufficient drag
| zone on the both sides. The only "strangeness" is that the drag
| zone extends further outside the window in the corner zone. IMO
| this is nice.
|
| All that said, I REALLY would love to have a hotkey combo I can
| beep pressed down to resize anywhere over the window. Just like
| in many Unix/Linux window managers.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yeah, I have to agree. The blog post seems convincing when you
| look at the images, but now that I've actually been _playing_
| with it, I can always drag the corner to resize. In fact, the
| corner provides much _more_ draggable area than the window
| edges do. There 's no problem.
|
| So I agree it's strange that the drag zone extends so far
| _beyond_ , but that's not really something to complain
| about...? Everywhere _inside_ the corner where it feels
| reasonable to resize, it resizes. The article is expecting an
| absurd level of a drag zone on the inside.
|
| Again, the large drag zone _outside_ the corner is kinda weird.
| But honestly that 's more just an understandable artifact of
| the corner drag zone being a square. If it were me, I probably
| wouldn't bother to round off one corner of the drag zone
| either.
|
| There's a lot of stuff to criticize about Tahoe, but this would
| be about last on my list...
| VerifiedReports wrote:
| And yet Mac OS didn't support resizing from edges, or any
| corner of the window except the lower-right ONE, until well
| into the 2000s. Incredibly dumb.
| nescap wrote:
| There is this obscure setting you can enable to be able to
| click anywhere on a window while holding Command + Control to
| move it.
|
| defaults write -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture -bool true
|
| This only supports moving around windows, not resizing.
| etempleton wrote:
| Just this week it also dawned on me the impracticality of the
| large corners after twice in a row failing to grab the corner of
| a window. Tahoe is absolute amateur hour.
| raffael_de wrote:
| Let's be honest, everything windows on macOS is and always has
| been an utter cluster fuck.
| aadishv wrote:
| I find it very ironic that Apple's Mac hardware is the best it's
| ever been, and some of the best (if not _the_ best) in the entire
| industry, yet their software team seems intent on burning down
| their entire reputation. Maybe they think that 's better than
| getting fired over the laughingstock that is Apple Intelligence
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| The era of Apple design with great care to little details is long
| gone.
| MacConfusesMe wrote:
| I'm on macOS 15.4 on a 2021 M1 Max. I haven't rebooted for
| months.
|
| Is it possible for me to update to whatever was released just
| before "Tahoe", or will it just put me on that now?
| waz0wski wrote:
| Yes you can still update to 15.7.3 the usual way in Settings
|
| It'll present you the Tahoe upgrade but underneath in small
| print it'll show other updates, which you have to then open and
| manually select the 15.7.3 update
|
| And you really should keep up on the point updates because
| there's been a ton of major security patches since 15.4
| alejoar wrote:
| I use easy-move-resize [1] to resize windows from anywhere inside
| the area of the window, using a modifier key. In my case I like
| using cmd + middle mouse button + drag.
|
| This is standard in Gnome and a must for me back when I switch to
| MacOS for work.
|
| [1] https://github.com/dmarcotte/easy-move-resize
| locusofself wrote:
| Just tried this. Pretty cool. Kinda strange how the mouse
| cursor doesn't move with the window, but still might be worth
| using.
| callc wrote:
| I came here to say something similar. Ever since I found out
| about alt + left click drag anywhere in window to move, and alt
| + right click drag practically anywhere on any side to resize,
| anything else feels user-hostile.
|
| I rarely use windows anymore, but just like you installed a
| tool to get this behavior.
|
| This UI feature saves approx 3 seconds on average for resizing
| windows. Plus, more importantly it more predictably works, and
| is an easier target to hit than a 2-10 wide pixel line or
| square region.
| fghorow wrote:
| The doco mentions "left" and "right" mouse. I have the ctrl-
| click already mapped to right mouse on my trackpad. Before I
| take the plunge, how well does this work with a trackpad on a
| MB Air?
| paustint wrote:
| I use https://rectangleapp.com which has been a lifesaver. I
| only use the following three shortcuts and disable the rest:
|
| cmd+option+f = maximize to fill entire screen
|
| cmd+option+ctrl+left/right = move window to other monitor on
| left/right
|
| I occasionally use cmd+option+left/right if I need to have two
| windows side-by-side on the same monitor.
|
| MacOS window sizes have always felt weird to me - no easy way
| to maximize without making it go into full screen mode.
|
| As I was writing this, I just realized that hovering on the
| green traffic light shows a menu to choose some window
| placement options.... not sure how I never realized this
| before, but even the "maximize" option there doesn't go all the
| way to the edges - weird.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| >Living on this planet for quite a few decades, I have learned
| that it rarely works to grab things if you don't actually touch
| them:
|
| Yes, but that is skeuomorphic design, which is old and ugly. We
| live in the era of anti-skeuomorphic design, where nothing makes
| any sense but it looks sleek.
| hit8run wrote:
| Those big radius borders are a waste of space just for the sake
| of fashion. Form follows function not the other way around.
| mindok wrote:
| And the title bars of the windows. On a 13" screen, that's a
| fair percentage of available screen real estate down the toilet
| bob1029 wrote:
| I just saw the upgrade notification and thought to myself "no,
| thank you".
|
| Still running Sonoma on my MBP and iOS17 on my phone.
| arexxbifs wrote:
| I don't really care if it's because of bizarro designer hegemony,
| device unification, cost cutting, bad developers or something
| else, but it's astonoshing how far the desktop paradigm has
| fallen (and not just in MacOS). What baffles me the most about
| things like this isn't that crap slips through, it's that crap
| accumulates in an alarming rate and that apparently tech-savvy
| people aren't just seemingly fine with stuff like this, but will
| happily step up and _defend_ it.
| daxaxelrod wrote:
| Use rectangle and this will never be a problem for you.
|
| https://rectangleapp.com/
| chupchap wrote:
| Result of UI people work on UX. As an industry we need to de-
| hyphenate UI and UX.
| jd3 wrote:
| I noticed this and modified the .car to just make window corners
| sharp. It looks a bit jarring, but functionally speaking, it
| feels like a big improvement.
| gjvc wrote:
| the macOS window manager has been awful for many years
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Window-resize radii seem to be a fixable problem (make it a user
| setting!) on many OS's. I can only -wish- that my Linux distro's
| resize radius wasn't -painfully- small. I've probably wasted
| HOURS fishing around until the red icon popped up.
| crapple8430 wrote:
| Funny, on Linux I just use the special key (normally alt or
| super) to do all my window moving and resizing. It requires no
| precision at all and works even in tiling WMs without
| titlebars. I always found it weird Macos and Windows don't have
| this and it's a little painful to need to be precise with the
| mouse.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Could be distro-dependent. Yep I can use a key to move a
| window ... depending on where I 'grab' ('alt' works anywhere,
| 'super' only outside the browser window). But horizontal,
| vertical resizing requires a THIN edge, and diagonal re-
| sizing requires grabbing a tiny corner (character-sized),
| keys have no effect.
| manoDev wrote:
| I'm shocked this update was pushed by the same company that
| created the HIG. I guess companies really do keep growing to the
| point of mediocrity.
| dabinat wrote:
| I noticed Apple's software quality decline the moment they
| committed to 1-year release cycles. Because an x.0 release
| inevitably has issues, it offers less than a year of stability
| (sometimes only a few months if it takes until x.4 to be fully
| stable) before things get broken again in y.0. And because Apple
| stops signing old versions pretty quickly, you're often stuck on
| an unstable new version if you take the risk and upgrade.
|
| Additionally, it is hard on all developers (Apple included) to
| release updates for all of its many platforms on the same day,
| which IMO reduces software quality across the ecosystem.
|
| (Apple also has the luxury of only supporting the latest OS
| versions with its software. Customers often expect third-party
| developers to support a wider range of OS versions and devices
| than Apple does.)
| systemtest wrote:
| I have been using OS X since 10.4 Tiger. I still remember
| standing in line at midnight trying to get a copy on DVD.
| Getting to test all the new features back home in the middle of
| the night was so exciting! Well worth the EUR129/EUR29 they
| charged for it. Nowadays the yearly releases are more of a
| "meh". I hit install, they added a new grouping feature to
| Reminders and that is about all I use from what they added.
|
| Still bitter that my 2006 Core Duo MacBook only had support up
| to 10.6 Snow Leopard but back then that was over 4 years of
| being able to use the latest OS, so comparable to four releases
| with the current cycles.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| I used that same MacBook until 2014. At least Snow Leopard
| was a gem.
| systemtest wrote:
| I used it up till 2011. It had multiple top-cases replaced
| under the extended warranty, display CCFL was changed a few
| times due to flickering, disc-drive got swapped once, new
| logic board because the audio-jack was stuck on SPDIF, new
| power adapter.
|
| The only device I ever got Apple Care on and I got
| thousands in repairs covered for free. This was from before
| Apple would just replace the entire device.
|
| All my other MacBooks have been trouble free luckily.
| didip wrote:
| So... it's a good thing that the design emperor is poached by
| Meta, yeah?
|
| Funny enough, I never suffered this because my mouse pointer has
| always been configured to be comically large. So I had adapt with
| inaccurate click area for many many years due to my own cause.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Not updating to Tahoe and hoping they make a major change for
| whatever is next. My M1 is getting a bit long in the tooth, and
| was thinking about upgrading to an M5, but not if it comes with
| Tahoe.
| lolive wrote:
| Probably off topic question [coming from someone who spends
| 99.99% in i3+iOS+maximed windows in W11]: when do you need to
| have overlapping windows, or even windows that you resize by
| hand? Windows should take a zone in your screen. Punto. Even W11
| has understood that by now.
| pentagrama wrote:
| This feels like a surprisingly good moment for Linux desktops to
| position themselves as real alternatives and actually gain
| ground.
|
| MacOS Tahoe has been heavily criticized for its UI decisions,
| especially Liquid Glass, which many people feel actively hurts
| usability rather than improving it. On the other side, Windows
| keeps piling on user-hostile features, dark patterns, and
| friction that increasingly frustrate power users and regular
| users alike.
|
| Distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, and others have mature
| desktops, solid performance, and fewer design decisions that get
| in the user's way.
|
| I honestly cannot remember another moment where both major
| desktop platforms were being questioned this openly at the same
| time. If Linux is ever going to take advantage of dissatisfaction
| at scale, this feels like it.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| _> This feels like a surprisingly good moment for Linux
| desktops to...actually gain ground._
|
| I agree, and its likely that both macOS and Windows will
| continue to get worse.
|
| That said, it's important to be realistic because users can and
| will put up with quite a lot of discomfort before switching,
| and this is because for every bad feature or misstep, there are
| 100 others that are so good you don't even notice them. And
| when you switch, you start noticing all those others features
| you never noticed before, because they are now gone. Some of
| these features will be hardware, some OS, some application
| support, and some of them you can fix and some you just have to
| get used to.
|
| An approach I recommend is to _add_ a linux laptop to the mix.
| You can buy a used, powerful laptop cheap, install Linux on it
| and try to use it for a time, keeping your other machines
| around. Chances are you 'll find various trade-offs - Linux
| will NOT be a strict improvement, it will have downsides. Linux
| is particularly weak with power management and certain devices
| like fingerprint readers. Depending on the apps you use, it can
| be weak there, too. That said, Linux is very usable, easy to
| install, and you should try it. But I think it does people a
| disservice to imply its better on every axis. It's better on
| some, worse on others.
| steine65 wrote:
| Well put. I dual booted because I still can't trust my
| CachyOS desktop not to do something surprising during
| important calls. But damn it is relieving to have full
| control again.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Also alternatives to Office, browsers, and pretty much anyone
| who can come along and say "we make tools that do what you want
| them to do."
|
| All of these are longshots, but it really feels like we've hit
| a historic level of discontent.
| tgv wrote:
| Linux isn't there (on the desktop), and I doubt it'll ever be.
| It lacks so much: newbie support, drivers, easy configuration
| (user friendliness in general), and software. There's so much
| software that doesn't run on Linux. Linux also lacks mature
| frameworks that make development for macOS and .NET easy. The
| only thing desktop linux does well is browsing. That would be
| enough for most people, but they also have tablets and phones,
| and no need for a desktop.
| IsTom wrote:
| > lacks mature frameworks that make development for macOS
|
| Really? And windows does?
| tgv wrote:
| C#, or rather .NET, is pretty decent. I rate it lower than
| the macOS frameworks for UI development, but it brings a
| lot of functionality, which has been refined since the days
| of Visual Basic. Linux simply doesn't have that development
| effort. Completely understandable, but it holds Linux back,
| in particular on the desktop.
|
| If you're not convinced: look at the difference between
| desktop Linux and Android. Although Android Studio seems to
| be a bit of a disaster nowadays, there's a lot of
| development support for Android, and it shows in the 1.6
| million apps that have been built for it. Android has got
| what people crave: easy, slick, user-friendly apps, no
| technical hassle. It's an uphill battle, and at the same
| time, the focus is shifting away from desktop. So I think
| the year of Linux for the desktop will likely never come.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Absolutely
| notenlish wrote:
| User friendliness isnt that bad depending on distro,
| configuration is fine, but not great.
| reorder9695 wrote:
| The big problem isn't friendliness, it's that you don't buy
| a laptop with it installed. Most people are not
| realistically going to install a different operating
| system, they're going to use the one the laptop comes with.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://system76.com
|
| https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en
| tgv wrote:
| I am quite sympathetic towards Tuxedo, and am considering
| to replace my work laptop (a 6yr old MBP) with one of
| those when it stops working, but those are Apple and
| gaming laptop prices, not mass market prices.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| It's unusable even with the "user-friendly" distros like
| Mint and Ubuntu. Starting with the fact that Mint and
| Ubuntu don't even agree on what window system to use.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Why should they?
| morshu9001 wrote:
| So you don't get a separate set of random video-related
| problems depending on which you use
| fluoridation wrote:
| I don't understand. First, how is that a problem? Second,
| why is it the default expectation that different
| operating systems will have the same set of flaws?
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Fragmentation makes compatibility and help-finding more
| difficult. And newbies do get the expectation that the
| mainstream options aren't all that different, cause
| that's what everyone tells them.
| fluoridation wrote:
| You kind of moved the goalpost there. That's different
| from them being unusable. Windows and OSX are different
| from each other too, are they unusable as well?
| morshu9001 wrote:
| I didn't say that fragmentation is the only thing that
| makes them unusable, it's just one of many. Yeah it is a
| big thing though.
|
| People do have difficulty switching between Mac and
| Windows, but each has critical mass so it's still easy to
| get help with the finer details. And unrelated to
| fragmentation, anyone tech literate won't have nearly as
| many showstopping issues to ask about there in the first
| place.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Linux desktops aren't all immune to excessive minimalism and UI
| churn either. Just look at Gnome where they've decided it's
| good in terms of usability to put all options in a hamburger
| menu and remove any sorts of sensible config options from the
| UI (a while back it was basic things like "show icons on the
| desktop") to achieve this supposed sleekness.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Also Gnome disappeared after 2, got replaced with Unity in
| Ubuntu which was a whole new ugly thing, then that got
| replaced with Gnome3 which is very different from Gnome2,
| also Xorg got deprecated...
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| We're at the stage where almost any UI change no matter how
| small on Macs is heavily criticized. It seems a lot of people
| are getting very upset over a lot of micro detail. There's no
| way to please all of them. I've upgraded to Tahoe. Honestly, I
| barely notice any difference. It looks alright. There's very
| little for me to get upset over here. I'm pretty sure I'm in a
| bucket that describes the overwhelmingly large majority of
| users here: indifferent about the changes, overall not too
| upset, barely notice it.
|
| As for Linux. I also have a Linux laptop with Gnome for light
| gaming (Manjaro). It's alright. But a bit of a mess from a ux
| point of view. Linux always was messy on that front. But it
| works reasonably well.
|
| The point with the distributions that you mention is that they
| each do things slightly differently, and I would argue in ways
| that are mostly very superficial. Nobody seems to be able to
| agree on anything in the Linux world so all you get is a lot of
| opinionated takes on how stuff should behave and which side of
| the screen things should live. This package manager over that
| one.
|
| I've been using Linux on and off for a few decades, so I mostly
| ignore all the window dressing and attempts to create the
| ultimate package manager UI, file managers and what not and
| just use the command line. These things come and go.
|
| It seems many distros are mostly just exercises in creating
| some theme for Gnome or whatever and imitating whatever the
| creator liked (Windows 95, Beos, Early versions of OSX, CDE,
| etc.). There's a few decades of nostalgia to pick from here.
| elAhmo wrote:
| The changes in Tahoe do not fall under the bucket of "no
| matter how small". We have grown to accept many small, but
| very annoying changes, starting from disappearing scrollbars
| to not showing full URL in Safari, to name a few, which were
| all driven by smaller touchscreens on iPhone/iPad, but with
| Tahoe things became quite extreme.
| rmuratov wrote:
| This won't happen until Microsoft Word is available on Linux.
|
| It's like the console wars -- different camps say "our console
| is better, it has more teraflops." In reality, nobody cares
| about that -- buyers will get the console that has the games.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| You guys still use Word?
|
| Seriously, I think it depends if you're talking about
| business or home. For business, sure. For home--and this is
| quite relevant to the rest of your comment--I think it comes
| down more to gaming.
| downrightmike wrote:
| It is, it is copilot 365 now.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| If you applied these standards of critique to Linux UIs, this
| post would be an entire encyclopedia, indexed by DE. I'd take
| even the worst modern Mac OS (Lion?) over that.
| zecg wrote:
| I feel like people who say this haven't seen KDE in a very
| long time. On a thinkpad it not only "just works", it works
| flawlessly, never demands attention without justification
| (i.e. no ads or superfluous items in notifications), every
| bit of hardware works, all the special keys, fingerprint
| reader and it's all recognized and usable and configurable
| from KDE.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Yeah, I used whatever the default was, Gnome or Xfce. I'll
| seriously try KDE next time then.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| Is there any particular distro you're using KDE on for this
| to work flawlessly on a Thinkpad? I have a Carbon Gen 6 on
| Windows 10 but one day will need to migrate. The device
| itself is sound and reliable.
| zecg wrote:
| CachyOS, it's basically a nice installer to jump into
| rolling arch. (I made sure it's a Ryzen thinkpad, might
| be relevant)
| Maken wrote:
| GNOME has exactly the same quirky behavior with rounded
| windows, where the drop shadow is actually the clickable area
| to resize the window.
| kurtis_reed wrote:
| Stop using MacOS?
| tokamak wrote:
| I find MacOS terrible (any version) and wish my employer would
| not force Mac upon me. I hope one day we will be able to use
| Linux on Mac hardware (in enterprise setting).
| freeAgent wrote:
| I've noticed this as well and it's infuriating. It's extremely
| unintuitive and I constantly find myself missing the resize zone.
| hacker_homie wrote:
| The curves are a lie, the window is still square, can we stop
| putting lipstick on the pig, I just want my computers to work not
| look like some computer in a sci-fi movie.
| gulnaw wrote:
| When performing the resize action on any windows, the cursor
| changes to the resize cursor. The only time it doesn't change to
| the resize cursor is when you're not focused on that specific
| window. I don't really see the frustration this article is trying
| to portray.
| reader9274 wrote:
| Also Finder can never remember to start the new window size as I
| last left it.
| eru wrote:
| I don't have this problem, and I can't seem to reproduce it.
| claysmithr wrote:
| I'm on Tahoe and really not seeing this issue.
| nine_k wrote:
| What's jarring is not even that macOS Tahoe has such weird shapes
| of windows. What really astonishes me is that nobody seems to
| have _anticipated_ how users would try to resize windows, and did
| not reshape the corner drag area (which I would expect to be a
| quarter-circle, or a quarter-ring along the rounded edge). This
| can 't be a mistake, this can only be deliberate _cutting
| corners_ by management in order to ship ASAP. And then nobody
| cared to issue an update.
|
| Verily, the last UI redesign that was based on honest research
| and watching real users act was WinXP.
| choppaface wrote:
| It's not cutting corners. Apple does most of their testing
| using strictly internal resources, like secret "mini malls" in
| the Silicon Valley area. They fail because this testing biases
| their sampling; users must sign draconian NDAs to participate,
| among other things. These samples are effectively biased due to
| Apple's corporate culture regarding secrecy and competition.
| So, Apple actually works very hard. It's just they culturally
| prefer a lot of techniques that their competitors (e.g. Google
| and Facebook) have throughly proven as inferior.
|
| But is Google better? Not really, they killed a lot of good
| products like Reader.
|
| But is Facebook better? Not really, Cambridge Analytica and
| Metaverse and .. facebook products are disposable.
|
| But I think these Apple UX bugs are misdiagnosed. Yes they are
| atrocious. But think about how atrocious and non-representative
| and non-competitive Apple's testing population is.
| nine_k wrote:
| This all is pretty curious! But my point is that _every
| developer_ involved would notice how crazy the end result is.
| No need for a focus group to demonstrate that emperor 's new
| clothes barely cover the body, and don't match the body
| parts.
|
| But nobody from likely hundreds of people _inside Apple_
| involved in the project was able to effect a change towards
| sanity. I 'm afraid many just didn't feel like speaking.
| hopelite wrote:
| In the spirit of not being intimidated, I am going to just
| say what I've been wondering; if this could be a result of
| the oppressive nature of all the "DEI" stuff at Apple
| having turned into a kind of intimidation cudgel. Are you
| going to speak out and point out the emperor has no clothes
| if doing so will have your head?
|
| The circular self-congratulation of DEI introduces an
| intimidation factor where the objective and scientific
| truth is inherently no longer the basis for decision making
| because there are multiple layers of a kind of aristocratic
| privilege that cannot be questioned, let alone criticized,
| because critique of their actions equals critique of their
| divinity, i.e., becomes heresy.
|
| So we end up with this point where no one pointed out the
| increasingly ridiculous reductions of the emperor's
| clothes, only ever cheering on with positive affirmations,
| to the point that everyone's intimidated to even point out
| the emperor is walking around stark naked.
|
| I could see how a combination of the DEI intimidation
| tactics with the advent of AI, the hash economic factors,
| and general desire to not rock the personal benefit boat
| could have resulted in institutional paralysis.
|
| Is there anyone with a force of personality left at Apple?
| Ultimately, this is on Cook as the Chief _Executive_
| Officer poorly _executing_. It really makes you wonder if
| the leadership doesn't actually use any of their own
| company's products. How do you not notice these glitches
| immediately like everyone else if you are using them? I
| could see Cook not having even regularly used an iPhone or
| actively interacted with any Apple product himself in years
| as his real life Siris around him do every single thing for
| him every day all day, besides maybe giving him briefs on
| screens that happen to be iPhones and iPads. At that level
| you actively have to make choices to remain connected to
| the ground. I doubt Cook finds being grounded comes easy.
| fireflash38 wrote:
| Why do you immediately jump to saying DEI?
|
| You say DEI then describe brown nosing. That's a thing
| that happens in any org.
| dfunckt wrote:
| What feels plausible to me is changing the underlying 19x19 px
| control would break layout of many existing apps, and the
| design team was hell bent that window corners had to be that
| round. I'd say it's simply form over function, and that likely
| a meta-level argument about user empowerment or whatnot won.
| nine_k wrote:
| Exactly my point. It was _too hard_ to make the grab box
| different. It was not too hard to pretend that the hyper-
| rounded corners would also make some layouts look and maybe
| act problematic. It was not too hard to splurge time and
| effort on liquid-glassing the entire UI toolkit.
|
| In a word, it's hubris. It's not care about the user, it's
| not even care about market domination or setting a fashion
| trend; both have been flunked. It looks like somebody's ego
| needed an affirmation, or someone's grip on corporate power
| needed a demonstration. It's a _bad_ , bad sign of a deadly
| corporate disease.
| dfunckt wrote:
| Agreed. I think you may be too generous with hubris -- that
| requires agency, but it may just be incompetence. I don't
| generally like the "old days" argument, but this is
| consistent with overall trends -- it's frivolous.
| hopelite wrote:
| I get a sense that this is ultimately a matter caused by
| the board. It would have been briefed on and likely been
| the ultimate leader on the overall product and services
| strategy and pipeline. All this frivolous Tahoe Liquid
| Glass smoke and mirrors redesign, and even the unified OS
| release numbering gives me the impression that they're
| either out of ideas or there's a blank spot in the
| pipeline/timeline. I think there's a case to be made that
| the helm lacks some direction now that Steve Jobs'
| pipeline seems exhausted and momentum needs to be
| generated without him.
|
| Considering how Vision Pro rollout and the AI development
| went, I'm having doubts about Apple adapt to an AI world,
| e.g., fundamentally rethinking what hardware means if you
| no longer need to interact with a screen or hardware in a
| similar fashion anymore, i.e., keyboard and GUI
| manipulation.
| AlanYx wrote:
| There's also the problem that not every window in Tahoe has
| the same corner radius. Some people thought this was
| laziness/lack of polish or a bug, but Alan Dye confirmed on a
| podcast that it was intentional.
|
| So then they're left with a conundrum: do they adjust the
| 19x19 region on a per-window basis, depending on the per-
| window corner radius, or do they stick with one standard drag
| region? Probably it should be the former, but that comes with
| its own set of issues.
| alargemoose wrote:
| Do you recall what podcast? I know hearing him say this was
| intentional is only gonna make me frustrated, but I'm dying
| to hear the justification for such a bad decision.
| fluoridation wrote:
| That's like asking, "if the title bar can have different
| sizes, should we make the hot area for moving the window
| also of different sizes?" The answer to both questions is
| "obviously yes!" The shape of the thing and how it responds
| to user input do not match by coincidence.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| It did seem like they fixed iOS slowly after 7, where they went
| too far with flatness.
| debo_ wrote:
| I hope "cutting corners" in this context was an intentional
| pun.
| maxkfranz wrote:
| I always stay one major version behind so I only get security
| patches after an initial, yearly upgrade. Not experiencing Tahoe
| myself yet, I felt that perhaps the UI issues people are talking
| about were a tad overstated, but the example in the article
| states it very plainly.
|
| I'm taken aback. Change the look, that's fair enough. But it
| should have some usability testing for this kind of thing before
| it goes out the door.
| mertd wrote:
| I must be the minority that barely noticed any changes after
| upgrading to Tahoe.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Wow that's an insane bug and I'm hoping it is a bug.
|
| I'm glad I saw this blog post. I'm not going to upgrade until
| stuff like this gets addressed.
| diimdeep wrote:
| It is case of Corporate Memphis induced design, SF people
| increasingly detachment from common sense, and general sign of
| societal decline.
| rikima_ wrote:
| Going to stay on Sonoma for another year
| rsch wrote:
| At least it is not as bad as on Windows 11. There the resize area
| is inside or outside the visible frame depending on which side
| and which corner of the window.
| burntcaramel wrote:
| This is why Steve Jobs demoed software. Watch when he unveils
| Aqua, there's a couple of slides of the lickable visuals and then
| he sits down and demos it. He clicks and taps and shows it
| working. Because that's what you the user will do.
|
| He'll show boring things like resizing windows because those
| things matter to you trying and if he cares about resizing
| windows to this degree then imagine what else this product has.
|
| Apple today hides behind slick motion graphics introductions that
| promise ideal software. That's setting them up to fail because no
| one can live up to a fantasy. Steve showed working software that
| was good enough to demo and then got his team to ship it.
| halapro wrote:
| > He'll show boring things like resizing windows
|
| If you use something long enough, you'll get used to its
| idiosyncrasies. Jobs would have clicked and dragged 10px away
| from the rounded corner here instinctively. This is why the
| owner of an old car can turn it on and drive away in a blink
| while his son has trouble: _hold the accelerator 10% down,
| giggle the key a little while turning, pull the wheel a bit,
| ..._ all comes natural to the owner.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, and Mac owners will do the same thing. I don't use MacOS
| but people will just figure out the new behavior, be briefly
| annoyed by it, and then get used to it and move on. Apple
| could have done better here but users acclimate to much worse
| UX than this.
| eviks wrote:
| So why would he have different instincts?
|
| > This never happened to me before in almost 40 years of
| using computers.
|
| > If you use something long enough, you'll get used to its
| idiosyncrasies.
|
| Or you don't and get constantly annoyed by some basic thing
| that is broken (the owner of an old car would curse it every
| day when giggling the key)
| post-it wrote:
| Inside the window is where the content is. It makes sense for
| most of the resize hitbox to be outside that. They could make it
| bigger though for sure, or add an accessibility option for it.
| josephd79 wrote:
| I started using aerospace, a window tiling manager a long time
| ago and will never look back. Once you get used to the
| keybindings there's nothing better.
| vasuadari wrote:
| I never had this problem for ages. As I use hammerspoon with
| hotkeys to resize and move the apps between displays.
| stephenbuilds wrote:
| Tahoe is the first macOS I'm planning to skip if I can
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I've updated my phone and now it can't talk to MacOS and I don't
| want to upgrade. I can't imagine much about sharing internet or
| whatever has changed between these OS versions...
| aikinai wrote:
| Wow, this was so well presented! I almost didn't click on the
| article since I assumed it would be a meandering explanation
| about awkward edge cases or something. But this is so clearly and
| succinctly demonstrated! Amazing work by the author.
| voiprodrigo wrote:
| This is very well presented and I hope Apple sees it. And this is
| the kind of thing that I don't think would fly with Steve Jobs,
| most likely with very harsh reaction. Attention to the details
| was a big part of Apple's DNA much because of him, and it's a bit
| sad to see that eroding.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I have a few computers. Win, MacOS, Fedora, and iOS for mobile.
|
| Out of all the things, the UX I cannot forgive is:
|
| 1. Hold Siri button
|
| 2. say "Create appointment at 3PM tomorrow."
|
| The result is that no alert/notification/warning of this
| appointment occurs, unless I open the appointment and create the
| alert manually, at least at time of event. I cannot imagine any
| use case where one would create an appointment that required no
| reminder.
|
| If I had created this appointment via Gmail or even Outlook, and
| synced... then there are notifications.
|
| My point here is that the UX rot at Apple is not new. I am
| curious as to how this rot begins at BigOrg, and how it can be
| cured, if it can be addressed. I have never worked at BigOrg, so
| I really don't get it. Is there some missing UX role in the
| c-suite? How does my gripe, or Tahoe... ever happen? I understand
| how it happens at MSFT, but is this just what happens at all
| BigOrgs, eventually?
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Whether appointments have an alert by default or not is a
| setting in the Calendar app.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Oh wow. Confirmed!
|
| However, can you please explain to me the use case of "Siri,
| create an appointment at 3PM tomorrow" - where I would want
| no alert, at time of event, at the very least? I am pretty
| good at imagining edge cases, and I cannot imagine even one.
|
| I have never been more upset at a default setting. I want to
| name and shame, and worse. Who made this call, a hippo? Think
| of the lost productivity at scale. "It just works UX" was
| supposed to be the entire point of Apple.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I would imagine a majority of office workers create
| appointments with no alerts. They're looking at their
| calendar all day.
|
| That's only speculation, but that's why it's a setting. You
| can have it either way.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I would entertain this explanation, if actual office
| productivity calendars like Gmail and Outlook did not
| only have at time of event alert defaults, but also 10
| mins prior by default. You know, like something actually
| useful.
|
| Sorry, I have been spinning out on this for a while. I
| might be ridiculously upset about this. But, remember
| what Jobs said about boot times at scale?[0] Well...
|
| [0] https://www.folklore.org/Saving_Lives.html
| rickcarlino wrote:
| They took our scroll bars and now they are coming for our resize
| controls.
| moi2388 wrote:
| The rounded corners are stupid to begin with. They are also there
| in a maximised window, meaning you now always have a slight
| visible border around your app and see the background in the
| corners.
|
| Absolutely stupid design
| ed_balls wrote:
| Volume bar now blocks access to the latest tabs in the browser
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| It's a massive UI failure, design over function, something Jobs
| would have never tolerated.
|
| I'm glad other people are pointing this out. At first I thought
| my eyes were going. It's especially bad with the magic mouse for
| some reason.
| arlyle wrote:
| i went to Sonoma from Tahoe. it felt like an upgrade rather than
| a downgrade. why Sonoma? it was the version appeared in Recovery
| mode.
|
| but its size still makes me use scientific notation to write it
| in kilobyte unit.
|
| i am calling everyone(apple google..) here to switch their
| mindset to: "how can we reduce code size?", "what can we get rid
| of?", "how small can my product be?"...
|
| set rules to measure everything in kilobytes and make your
| employees realize how big the number you are typing.
|
| if every company thinks like that and stop the madness for a year
| or two, we might be able to solve the main issue: obesity.
| findthebug wrote:
| did downgrade because of stuff like this. never look back.
| danans wrote:
| Overlapping windows seem like a dated skeumorphic paradigm at
| this point. I almost never want to see just _part_ of a window.
|
| For a long time, I've found that either full screen or tiling
| (driven by keyboard shortcuts) is a far less frustrating a way to
| interact with windows, so I almost never use window-resizing.
| Window resizing is also horrendous when you try to do it with a
| touchpad.
| NamlchakKhandro wrote:
| Meanwhile, window management in linux is Superior.
|
| lmao mac.
| fuzzy_lumpkins wrote:
| it's like windows and iOS teamed up to upset everyone
| macinjosh wrote:
| Seems to me Apple is getting ready to make the black arrow mouse
| pointer obsolete.
|
| In the next generation or two iPads and MacBooks are going to
| essentially merge as a product line.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if Apple abandons classic macOS (w/
| Terminal and a filesystem) all together. To continue to support
| developers all they need is a tweaked Xcode for Apple dev and
| their version of WSL for everything else. All the parts are
| already in macOS/iPadOS (native virtualization and
| containerization).
|
| iMac and Mac Pro are all but dead now too. Mac Mini and Mac
| Studio will be the only desktop options and will be bought by
| people who are Millenials and older or ML/AI praciticioners. We
| may even see a special AI/Local LLM Mac Studio that would be the
| equivalent of mac pro of the ai era.
|
| Your fingers will need these big round edges to grab. They may
| let you use a bluetooth mouse but they aren't going to cater
| their UX to you.
|
| They year of the Linux desktop has come as commercial desktop
| OS's die.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| That's like xfce!
| tensility wrote:
| I would love to go back to more skeumorphic system interfaces.
| The layered panes of glass metaphor has been a pain in the ass
| from a usability perspective from the get go, enough so that I
| cheered to hear of Alan Dye leaving Apple.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Thank God this is not just me. I thought I was going insane.
|
| Has text selection also changed? When I drag a block and copy it,
| I often find I've missed the first character. It's happening
| almost every time and I swear this wasn't happening to me before.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I've used every release of macOS since the Mac OS X Public Beta
| in late 2000. Until now. I'm skipping 26 altogether and hoping 27
| tones down the worst excesses of the Alan Dye era.
| billforsternz wrote:
| No one serious ever talks about "upgrading" to Tahoe without the
| quotes. I hope Apple are seriously embarrassed about this and
| determined to mend their ways.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I just remember all the people who will tell you that Apple (and
| Google, and Microsoft) have teams of people testing this stuff
| therefore it's great and your opinion that there is a problem is
| wrong. >:(
| classified wrote:
| > Living on this planet for quite a few decades, I have learned
| that it rarely works to grab things if you don't actually touch
| them.
|
| Hilarious. Is Apple attempting to defy the laws of physics?
| qxxx wrote:
| I don't know what you have, it works on my machine. Just tried
| it. I can grab the rounded corner (+- few px inside/outside). I
| can't grab the corner like shown in the gif. I am on Tahoe 26.2
| (25C56)
| nescap wrote:
| After a bit of testing, the target area seems to have certain
| dimensions that are based on pixels (19x19 according to OP).
| With a lower resolution, the corners become much easier to
| grab. I have had no issues resizing windows, and I'm on 26.0
| (25A353).
| nxpnsv wrote:
| My first reaction was that it never bothered me, but now I
| realize I also didn't update to Tahoe yet. I'll wait a bit
| longer...
| dagi3d wrote:
| one of my biggest fears is to upgrade my mb air by mistake will
| stay on sequoia as longer I can
| iamcalledrob wrote:
| Surprisingly, this is an issue on Windows and Linux too -- macOS
| has just joined the sad party.
|
| The location of the drag region is either the 10px-or-so just
| _outside_ the window (GTK apps), or just _inside_ the window (I
| see this in Electron apps). On GNOME, anyway.
|
| On Windows this is caused by the removal of the thick window
| border with Win10. It wasn't really removed, it was just made
| transparent instead, thus the drag region moved outside the
| visible window to avoid the content size changing (for backwards
| compatibility). Apps often end up in a broken state too, because
| if you eschew system decoration, you lose the invisible border
| (which you don't even know you have), and it's easy to end up
| with a 1px drag region.
|
| It's infuriating, because of the issue the author highlights --
| you try and grab the window corner and fail.
|
| It's a sad state of affairs, and a great example of how the
| basics are going backwards on desktop.
| kosolam wrote:
| And the HiDPi/retina issues with 32" Dell monitors for example
| especially when using rdp is super annoying.
| willtemperley wrote:
| Normally bug reports should include the exact version and
| machine.
|
| I personally don't see this behavour on Tahoe 26.2 and an M2 MBP.
| deanc wrote:
| I'm on latest Tahoe and M3 MBP and the issue is even worse than
| the author describes. There is about a 5px window also for
| grabbing the straight edges of the window to expand in one axis
| only.
| vim-guru wrote:
| Apples products are still the best on the market, but if they
| keep this up; they will sooner or later become irrelevant.
| hasperdi wrote:
| "Best" is a relative term. It depends on the purpose / criteria
| sbinnee wrote:
| I am glad that I restrained myself from buying a macbook and went
| for a thinkpad. I think I saw icon issue on Tahoe not long ago on
| HN.
|
| I know that macbook has been crushing laptop market with their M
| chip. Macbook is amazing for sure. I very much enjoy using it at
| work. But for personal computing, I need Linux setup.
| nicbou wrote:
| I haven't upgraded to Tahoe yet, but overall MacOS is still
| solid. It has lots of quirks that would benefit from a quality
| of life release, but generally the OS gets out of the way and
| the hardware is solid. I could not say the same about Windows
| and to an extent Linux.
| _def wrote:
| I recently learned about a shortcut you can enable for moving
| windows, is something similar around for resizing? On linux I do
| this via alt + left click and alt + right click
|
| `NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture` setting allows you to drag windows
| at any point if you hold ^[?]
|
| `defaults write -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture -bool YES`
| gcbirzan wrote:
| I'm using Easy Move+Resize, though, I don't recommend using cmd
| as the only modifier (you're already using ctrl+cmd, so
| shouldn't be a big deal), since that screws up with cmd
| clicking on links to open in a new tab.
| fnoef wrote:
| Liquid glass is a piece of crap from Apple. I didn't update my
| iPhone, nor my Mac. I will hold for as long as possible, and will
| consider switching away from the apple ecosystem if they do not
| address this fiasco of an update.
| brikym wrote:
| I still call it liquid ass.
| pranavm27 wrote:
| Made a decision on not to upgrade midway installation. Feels like
| it payed off. And I am on M2 256 GBs so it would have been worst
| for me.
| avazhi wrote:
| Yeah, I'll be on Sequoia until it's unbearable (probably 4 more
| years), and then I'll either put Linux on that machine or I'll
| just buy a non-Mac. Been using Macs since Snow Leopard but
| between ios 26 or whatever it is and this shit, I'm done.
| aristofun wrote:
| It all started with a dumb move to replace input language icon
| flags with text.
|
| Apple keeps being a hardware company unfortunately.
|
| Their software is not nearly as good as it could and should be if
| they had real competition.
|
| Windows/linux is not a competition since they dropped bootcamp.
| Because that implies switching to a subpar hardware.
| supermatt wrote:
| It is comical how far apple has fallen with its UI overall.
|
| They were praised for their human interface guidelines, and yet
| they now break almost every rule. I appreciate things change but
| those guidelines haven't even evolved they have just been
| ignored.
|
| Have they truly innovated in the last 10 years? What capitalist
| reason is for them to actually invest the manpower in the
| enshittification of the product experience? It feels
| counterintuitive. Maybe they are just too big to communicate
| internally?
| gurghet wrote:
| I'm one of those who instinctively click OUTSIDE the windows. I
| guess your instincts depend how long have you worked on a Mac.
| virde wrote:
| Might be the best problem TLI5'ing GIF I've seen :)
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| There is no option to simply decrease the corner radius?!
| blackhaz wrote:
| If I would be running this company I would imagine a person, or
| the entire group of persons, who implemented this were nothing
| else but saboteurs sent by a competitor. I would fire the whole
| team immediately.
| pasloc wrote:
| I have not had any problems resizing. Honestly, I think my
| resizing got more precise with Tahoe. In earlier versions I had
| sometimes wrongly clicked for horizontal and vertical resizing.
| It's better now for me at least.
|
| And I do not get why people so upset with Tahoe. I really really
| love it.
| deviation wrote:
| Interesting, in the era of productivity tools I just realised I
| don't re-size windows anymore. I just use Swish or Spectacle.
| poolnoodle wrote:
| I've had the same struggle whenever I tried some Linux distro in
| my life. I don't know why but resizing windows is so fiddly.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| They want you to do the pinch in/out gesture /s
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Crazy how all the mainstream desktop OSes became shit all at the
| same time. If I was crazy enough, I might think that the
| government is giving us a message that we all need to move to
| Lennox because the state-mandated back doors are being co-opted
| by a foreign entity to spy on us.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I've noticed a gradual increase in my annoyance with technology
| over the last couple of years. A lot of things now just feel
| irritating and not-quite-right.
|
| Eg on my iPhone filling in a password sometime is kinda blanks
| the screen while I'm trying to fill the password in.
|
| My keyboard is absolutely terrible.
|
| Lots of other little annoyances I can't remember right now.
|
| This window thing is another good example of just not enough
| thought being put into things.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| I swear Apple broke the iPhone keyboard permanently in like
| 2015. I don't know what it is, but I can't type reliably on any
| newer phone I've had, to the point where I call instead of
| texting. And the rare times I go back to use that iPhone 5 in
| my car for music, it's so easy to type, so I'm not just
| remembering wrongly.
| jonplackett wrote:
| And those screens were TINY so how can it now be worse?
|
| I think one of the big issues is the autocorrect seems to
| make as many correctly typed words into random bullshit words
| as it does typos into correct words. So you feel like you're
| walking on ice, just constantly monitoring what you last
| typed to make sure it didn't make it into nonsense.
| morshu9001 wrote:
| The old autocorrect didn't seem any better though. I
| actually disabled it on both, so narrowed it down to purely
| a keyboard issue.
| layer8 wrote:
| The keyboard is still bad when you turn off autocorrect.
| janpmz wrote:
| And what to do about the slow mouse?
| SilverSlash wrote:
| I have a multitude of complaints about Tahoe, many of which
| others have already pointed out. One more thing that doesn't get
| mentioned as often but probably should is their new placement of
| the volume / brightness level UI which pops up when you change
| those two.
|
| It used to be in the middle of the screen and worked just fine.
| But then someone thoughts of putting it exactly where browser
| tabs usually are and I _constantly_ find myself in a situation
| where I change the volume and try to click on a tab that this UI
| is on top of. Then I need to move my mouse outside the UI
| otherwise it stays there, and wait for it to disappear before I
| can change tabs. It's infuriating.
| altern8 wrote:
| I downgraded back to Sequoia after 1 day.
|
| I have no idea what Apple were thinking, this OS is basically
| unusable, and extremely ugly.
|
| I hope I won't somehow be forced to upgrade at some point.
|
| Apple needs to start thinking about their users again instead of
| shareholders.
| pilif wrote:
| As much as I like to hate on a new OS like the next person, I
| think it's worth pointing out we're probably not seeing the full
| picture here:
|
| When trying to reproduce the problem as shown in the article by
| resizing the Safari window currently displaying the article, the
| drag cursor changes shape at the visible border of the window,
| not the shadow and consequently, dragging works as expected.
|
| https://youtu.be/kNovjjvYP8g
|
| This might be an application- or driver specific issue, not
| necessarily a common Tahoe issue.
| froddd wrote:
| This is absolutely true. The demo in the original article seems
| quite deceptive in that respect. Nobody would attempt to resize
| a window by launching their cursor at the corner with great
| speed as the demo shows. The resize pointer seems to show in
| exactly the right place, and allows for an extra hit area
| slightly outside the rounded corner -- I don't see any problem
| with that.
|
| As for the fact that one cannot resize from inside the window,
| it makes absolute sense for every other corner of the window,
| where the user would instead be clicking an icon or some other
| button (try the top right corner of the finder, where the
| search button sits).
|
| So, while I agree on the whole that Tahoe is a huge step
| backwards in terms of design, this seems like an odd gripe to
| point out, as it doesn't in fact seem to be an issue at all.
|
| Edit: clarification
| Sweepi wrote:
| > Nobody would attempt to resize a window by launching their
| cursor at the corner with great speed as the demo shows.
|
| ... great speed? Interpolating from the zoom, I would say its
| not fast at all.
| froddd wrote:
| I'm referring to the demo in the original article. The
| mouse pointer moves rather rapidly onto the inside of the
| window. You can just about see the resize pointer flashing
| as the user does so. I don't think I ever attempted to
| resize a window with such erratic mouse movements.
| Approaching the corner at reasonable speed shows the resize
| pointer where expected.
| Sweepi wrote:
| > I'm referring to the demo in the original article. The
| article from noheger.at? I am also referring to it. My
| guess is that the pointer speed is exaggerated due to
| zoom of the gif, and/or that we are using the mouse in
| different ways.
| froddd wrote:
| Yes, that demo. You can clearly see the resize pointer
| flashing briefly, but the user continues aiming right
| inside the window. I'm not sure why he's not stopping
| when the resize pointer appears. It seems erratic.
| afandian wrote:
| Arguably the feedback via the cursor change is feedback
| to help you learn, like the icons that appear in the
| close / minimise / zoom, or stickers on the keys of a
| musical instrument. You pretty quickly learn which one is
| which, or you can't use them effectively. At some point
| you'd hope that common actions become muscle memory.
|
| So if it was something that was learned whilst using the
| previous version, and worked, I'd argue it wasn't
| 'erratic'.
| pilif wrote:
| _> As for the fact that one cannot resize from inside the
| window, _
|
| if you check the screencast I posted, you'll see that you can
| indeed resize from inside the window. Not by a huge margin,
| but definitely from inside the actual window boundaries.
| froddd wrote:
| Indeed, just enough. And the correct resize pointer shows
| all along the rounded edge, so I agree, this doesn't seem
| like the problem it's made out to be.
| monooso wrote:
| I'm not sure "it works this way in Application A, and this
| other way in Application B" is a particularly strong rebuttal.
| pilif wrote:
| It wasn't meant as a rebuttal. Just as a point of thought: By
| showing that at least one application doesn't exhibit the
| problem, I thought I was showing that the problem might not
| be related to the Tahoe redesign at all but might have other
| causes.
|
| It definitely serves to prove that this is not a design-issue
| but just a simple bug and thus has at least some chance of
| being fixed.
|
| FWIW, I cannot reproduce the issue demonstrated in the
| original article with _any_ window of _any_ application on my
| machine (M1 Mac Studio), but I thought that listing a very
| commonly used application alone would be enough to challenge
| the article 's assertion ("the macOS designers are stupid
| because they make me do something that doesn't make sense in
| order to resize windows").
| throwaway132448 wrote:
| > It wasn't meant as a rebuttal.
|
| "As much as I like to *" is a common way to start a
| rebuttal (the subsequent "I'm not going to see/do that" is
| implied by that turn of phrase).
|
| > but I thought that listing a very commonly used
| application alone would be enough to challenge the
| article's assertion
|
| So it was a rebuttal? Why the disingenuous doublethink?
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| Judging by this comment
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46599464
|
| It seems to be common.
| shultays wrote:
| I think another problem is the tiny resize cursor, on windows (at
| least on mine) it is a lot bigger and more distinct compared to
| regular cursor and when your cursor changes to resize arrow it is
| more apparent.
|
| I don't really see/care where my mouse exactly is. If it is
| outside or inside the window. Once my cursor turns to resize
| cursor, I just start dragging.
| river_otter wrote:
| Great first blog post! The corner highlighting in the gifs and
| images was very clear. Also, I really like the formatting of how
| you inserted the gifs inline with border radius and shadow
| effect: I haven't seen blogs with your styling and it was
| refreshing.
| worksonmine wrote:
| What's going on at Apple? I don't own any Apple devices but the
| intuitive UI is their biggest selling point (even if a colleague
| had to explain that I have to drag the program to some window to
| install it).
|
| This seems like a very strange thing to release for a company
| that's supposed to care about the details.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| This complaint is made with a level of consideration and effort
| that Apple should aspire to when they make the OS itself. Bravo!
| trumbitta2 wrote:
| I just want to add that designers are usually bullied by upper
| management into designing beautiful things that make upper
| managers look good with their friends. No matter how impractical
| those beautiful things are.
|
| Edit: Oh, and the "beauty" is in the eye of the managers.
| sgt wrote:
| I tried this resizing (also on Tahoe) and I can't reproduce this.
| It has a fairly well sized area around that corner in which I can
| click and drag to resize.
| alentred wrote:
| Modern interfaces are digging a bigger and bigger gap between UI
| and UX, while UI-UX is actually a balancing act.
|
| Let's face it, new glass UI is stunning - not for everyone's
| taste, like everything in art - but it has the _Wow_ effect.
| Fresh look, transparency, new colors, wow! Same goes to many, not
| all, web sites, apps, etc.
|
| On the UX side, with some exceptions, it is a disaster, though.
| Why on Earth would I want an ill-readable text behind a semi-
| transparent panel? Windows that only use 90% of my OLED screen I
| paid for? Do I want every web app invent its own navigation? Not
| in my worst dreams.
|
| I like the new UIs, designers do an excellent job. Now, we must
| also bring back the UX people! Real user-oriented UX, not dark
| patterns UX that trick users to sign up for services they don't
| need. Its a pity, the latter actually killed the UX domain I
| think.
| trinix912 wrote:
| But is it really stunning? When we first got Aqua and Vista
| they were stunning because nobody had seen anything like that
| before. But Liquid Glass isn't really new in that sense. It's
| just some transparency with background blur which anyone who's
| used, say, Windows 7, has already seen.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| The old linux/X11 method of meta+dragging to move or resize
| windows from anywhere in the window, not having to hunt for the
| edges of the window, is so obviously superior to Windows and
| MacOS it's downright silly. They both should have swallowed their
| pride and implemented this 30 years ago.
| 6P58r3MXJSLi wrote:
| Easy move + resize solves this
|
| https://github.com/dmarcotte/easy-move-resize
| hrnnnnnn wrote:
| I recommend altSnap to get this functionality on Windows.
|
| https://github.com/RamonUnch/AltSnap
| url00 wrote:
| I use this all day everyday. Love this, changed how it feels
| to work with GUIs for me.
| jackwilsdon wrote:
| Moving windows like this is already built into macOS but it's
| hidden behind a flag for some reason: defaults
| write -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture -bool true
|
| You can then use Control+Command+Click to move windows from
| anywhere inside them. Sadly this doesn't provide resizing.
| atommclain wrote:
| FWIW I have a note in my dot files that for this to take
| effect you need to logout and then log back in, not sure if
| this is (still?) the case.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I think you still need to. I just tested and it doesn't
| take immediate effect. Which means I've now got to try to
| remember that keyboard shortcut and try it out the next
| time I restart...
| piker wrote:
| A lot of the design changes over the last decade seem largely
| Jobs-ian marketing driven. The round corners and friendly
| surfaces were useful in bringing the mass market into computing.
| Now that computer use is ubiquitous, it will be interesting to
| see if we start migrating back to the way the original
| programmers envisioned things like always-visible scrollbars and
| obvious click targets.
|
| We've spent billions. Are UIs a lot better off than Windows 3.1?
| ainiro wrote:
| OSx updates have turned into a "lottery". Typically your machine
| goes down 50% in performance, and starts acting like a Commodore
| from 1982.
|
| They keep on asking me to upgrade to some new OS, I consistently
| keep on telling it to sodd off!
| tomaskafka wrote:
| Apple is completely lost, exhibit #3281.
|
| Also, years after reporting, you still need to pause typing for
| one second after switching keyboard language via keyboard
| shortcut, otherwise the original language stays selected.
| dannersy wrote:
| I had a failing work laptop that had bad battery power and
| finally just said fine, give me a Mac. The battery and build
| quality is the only good thing I can say about it. I absolutely
| hate the OS, despite using MacOS in the past and felt only mildly
| inconvenienced. It is still amazing to me how unwieldy it is to
| make keyboard shortcuts, have tiling that isn't embarrassingly
| bad, and something that is visually consistent. Now I know most
| people aren't using this tool like I do and Linux has been
| historically bad at this, but lately, I'm not so sure. KDE and
| COSMIC seem to handle these cases flawlessly, and even GNOME,
| which is divisive in the DE discussion seems to get these things
| right. MacOS/Windows have officially crossed over to being more
| cumbersome rather than less than your bog standard Linux distro.
| Have you ever tried to do anything other than adjust volume for
| your sound settings on Windows 11? It's absurd. You can see the
| remnants of the Windows 10 attempt at simplifying it with a new
| flavor of 11 nonsense, and to really do anything meaningful you
| STILL end up with the old school Control Panel style settings
| window. A company worth billions couldn't come up with something
| better for decades. Tahoe is a similar stumble. How does one take
| these companies serious as a consumer product anymore if you're
| anything but a casual browser user?
| pete1302 wrote:
| IMO: There should be 2 update channels, Security
| updates(MANDATORY), <ALL OTHER UPDATES>(no reason to be
| mandatory). end of discussion.
| atommclain wrote:
| I was just looking into this today. I want to keep my computer
| updated with the cli tool softwareupdate. Before I was using
| the flag --all to apply any update, but then tried to change it
| to --recommended as I wanted to avoid any major macOS upgrades
| (ie Tahoe). But Tahoe is listed as a recommended upgrade.
|
| Now I call it with --required which only applies critical and
| security updates. Then I call it again with --safari-only, and
| one more time with --list to see what remaining updates are
| available. Frustrating (but sadly not surprising) there isn't a
| way to apply all available updates excluding major OS updates.
| ht-syseng wrote:
| This app I found to fix the problem on my system:
| https://mikkelmalmberg.com/moves
| wt__ wrote:
| It's not just that I haven't upgraded my Mac, but also I'm
| actively avoiding buying a new or refurbished one until (if) they
| fix all this stuff, because there will be no way to downgrade to
| an earlier version...
| herpdyderp wrote:
| I haven't tried it in many a year but I'm fairly certain that
| if you have the installer, you can downgrade to any version
| that runs on your computer.
| alden5 wrote:
| on a mac you can downgrade freely if the hardware supported it
| at one point, isn't like all their other hardware which
| prevents you from downgrading, all arm mac's can downgrade to
| sequoia
| wt__ wrote:
| Hmm - that's a point. Thanks.
| irusensei wrote:
| I've upgraded because I wanted to have access to the latest OS
| features but I got to admit I'm not a fan of the UI either. I
| have an M3 Max with 128GB and sometimes my computer UI feels
| sluggish. What is even going on?
|
| My biggest beef is there seems to be a lot of bugs in Safari. If
| I open Discord and switch tabs a few minutes later the tab is
| dead and a refresh doesn't work you need to retype the discord
| address again on the tab window.
|
| On a full screen safari If I click on the share button by
| accident and don't pick any of the options the address bar for
| that tab becomes uneditable.
|
| In IOS long pressing a video would show options such as opening
| on a new tab or downloading the file. Now for certain websites
| the options show for a split second before it switches to the
| full screen player.
|
| There are many other annoying bugs but those are the most
| annoying ones.
|
| BTW it's also amusing how not only iCloud doesn't flag a false
| Apple billing phishing message as junk but Apple
| """Inteligence""" will highlight it as priority.
| https://imgur.com/a/HaHxsUR
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > If I open Discord and switch tabs a few minutes later the tab
| is dead and a refresh doesn't work you need to retype the
| discord address again on the tab window.
|
| I get this on iOS26 all the time and it's extremely annoying
| since I don't always have the correct URL. Can't make heads or
| tails of what triggers it (I don't use Discord).
|
| Safari 26 slowly leaks _something_ on older macOS releases and
| opening new tabs or typing into the address bar becomes
| unbearably slow after a while[1]. The best solution is to
| downgrade to Safari 18.6 - though this seems to only work on
| Intel Macs.
|
| Basically a total mess. I don't want to upgrade my MacBook to
| 26, but Apple seems to be embracing some dark patterns in their
| update dialog and I'm worried I'm going to accidentally upgrade
| and enter a world of pain one day.
|
| [1]
| https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1nm534e/sluggish_saf...
| yuters wrote:
| They've made Tahoe available on some older Intel hardware, and
| in my case it rendered my MacBook Pro barely usable. Obvious
| planned obsolescence in this case convinced me to fully jump
| ship.
| sevkih wrote:
| See: [shipping the org
| chart](https://betterthanrandom.substack.com/p/shipping-the-org-
| cha...)
| weagle05 wrote:
| I laughed for a solid 5 minutes at the video of grabbing a plate.
| dhbradshaw wrote:
| Often on HN the comments are a better read than the original
| article.
|
| This time the article is so good -- clear, funny, succinct,
| accurate -- that it's a better read than the comments.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Something that baffles me about macOS: the pointer bug. I've been
| aware of this for ages--as far as I can recall, since Snow
| Leopard; maybe others have insight--and it _still_ hasn 't been
| fixed.
|
| Simply put: the pointer doesn't always switch context properly.
| So, you'll have it hovered over a resize control and it will
| refuse to change from the default pointer. Or you'll be working,
| and suddenly notice the pointer is a 'drag' one, even though
| nothing's being dragged and nothing draggable is active.
|
| I would _love_ anyone with any knowledge, especially an
| (ex-)insider, to shed light on this issue.
| fluoridation wrote:
| This is Windows, but it might shed some light on the situation.
| I have a Qt application that I made, and occasionally when I
| switch from one window to another, the cursor doesn't switch
| from resize to normal, or vice versa, until I move the mouse.
| The precise effect is consistent, but difficult to describe,
| hence why the "sometimes". I think it happens because I'm not
| handling the window switch event as one that may require re-
| evaluating the cursor shape.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Absolutely, I've always suspected that it's something to do
| with that. There's also something about the underlying tech
| that makes the macOS pointer behave 'more independently' of
| the rest of the UI, like it's running in a separate thread?
| I've definitely noticed scenarios in the past that would
| 'block' the pointer from updating (even its position) on
| Windows, that wouldn't on Mac.
|
| So maybe the pointer is not as tightly-coupled to the
| underlying UI components, so some scenarios can cause them to
| briefly lose track of each other?
| aalert wrote:
| First failing autocorrect on iOS, now this... Love how it is
| solved in Omarchy Linux - Super Key + Right Mouse Button anywhere
| on the window.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Well prepared article, and the window resizing pisses me off
| also!
|
| For practical reasons I am stuck inside Apple's macOS garden, but
| I wanted to share a few things that at least make me feel content
| using macOS:
|
| First, I have at least two VPS systems so via mosh/ssh/tmux I
| always have Linux dev environments, the ability to use throwaway
| VPS for sandboxing, etc.
|
| Second, when actually working on macOS I stick with tools that
| make me happy: Emacs and terminal windows, a uv-based Python
| enviroment and tuned-up Common Lisp, Haskel, and Clojure dev
| environments.
|
| Anyway, I am just sharing my 'macOS therapy' - hope it helps
| someone here.
| meken wrote:
| Wait I literally thought the ChatGPT desktop app has been broken
| for months (both dragging and resizing the window has been super
| inconsistent).
|
| Could it be that I just need to drag the window outside of the
| pane..?
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| I know most wont care but to me the biggest red flag was when
| they changed the cursor stem to be like the windows cursor stem,
| it's angled geometrically correct but when you actually stare at
| it then it looks wonky and wrong. It's one of those things an
| amateur designer would assume is correct because theoretically it
| is but a talented designer knows the angle has to be off to feel
| correct.
| hoherd wrote:
| It looks wrong because it isn't symmetrical. If you go into
| System Settings -> Accessibility -> Display increase your
| pointer size, screenshot it, and rotate it, you can see that
| it's not symmetrical. It looks wonky because it is wonky.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Good point. I'm not on Mac anymore but this would really tick me
| off too.
|
| In fact I am not on Mac anymore because with every release there
| were more features I didn't use (because they only work within
| the Apple ecosystem) and more and more things that ticked me off.
| Eventually I decided it wasn't for me anymore, after being on the
| platform for more than 15 years. Oh well. I am very happy on KDE
| now.
| julienreszka wrote:
| I just tested and didn't have any issue.
| dceddia wrote:
| That looks so ridiculous that it has me wondering how hard of a
| technical change it would've been to change that drag target, and
| if they just punted on it.
| thomasdd wrote:
| MacOS 26 is an UI-disaster!
| thomasdd wrote:
| MacOS 26 is an UI disaster!
| grougnax wrote:
| I second this. The design team at Apple must rework their copy
| as soon as possible.
| digitalsushi wrote:
| i am positive there's a bug in tahoe where the login screen
| passsword text input is waiting for something to settle in the
| background, either with my weird unicomp keyboard, a remap i do,
| or even the external monitors.
|
| my password is always incorrect unless i count to about 20 or 30
| seconds. once i have 'redocked' for the day, unlocking it
| subsequently doesnt have the requirement. but every dock
| insertion, it comes back.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Yes! It takes a LONG time for my bluetooth keyboard to connect,
| after the login screen is shown.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I've been an Apple user since before there was such thing as Mac,
| OS X or macOS has been my daily driver for over 20 years. The SIP
| bullshit, buried dark pattern allow buttons to download programs.
| The totally out of control background processes and snooping and
| remote online checks for every program execution nanny state
| bullshit. I'm 100% done with iOS macOS all of it.
|
| New Desktop is FreeBSD+MATE. Config is a pain initially but idc.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| The share buttons on iOS seem to fail like 15% of the time as
| well. Randomly.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Ugh, this caught me as well.
|
| And it's not just Tahoe. The various iOS/WatchOS updates from the
| fall are all broken in one way or another.
|
| For example, WatchOS's music app can't play more than 2-3 songs
| from a downloaded playlist without crashing.
|
| The WatchOS Outlook app won't launch (which also means the watch
| face complication is broken).
|
| iOS Safari's search bar/address bar periodically freezes after
| you enter a search term. If you click the bar, the search term
| disappears, so you have re-type it.
| otikik wrote:
| I have realized that I only need 3 window sizes: maximized,
| minimized, or half-of-the-screen vertically. Rectangle [1] is a
| great way to get key combinations for resizing and moving my
| windows around. It works well across multiple monitors and it's
| free. I didn't even notice this issue, but I see how it could be
| problematic for people.
|
| https://rectangleapp.com/
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I'm surprised you can even see the border of each window lol
| thiht wrote:
| The little video seems really weird to me, the author is clearly
| trying to resize outside of the border?? I just tried it myself
| and the resize zone feels more than reasonable:
| https://imgur.com/iip8DIL there's like 5mm on each side of the
| actual border to grab and resize!
| Tyr42 wrote:
| I tried to resize my already mostly fullscreen window now, and I
| cant, as it always triggers the hot corner for notes. I guess I
| have to have full sized windows then.
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| I've noticed the occasional momentary failure to resize a window,
| and this probably explains it, but it's worth noting that the
| cursor changes to a "resize arrows" cursor when it enters the
| resizing zone, so as long as I'm paying attention I know exactly
| when I can or can't click and drag to resize. It is preposterous
| that much of the zone actually lies outside of the visible bounds
| of the window.
| fifticon wrote:
| Well, moving/dragging windows on windows 11 (earlier?) is no
| picnic either, with the scrollbar nazis having decided, that
| windows title bars must be the next to die. Apparently this is
| all intentional, and app developers are encouraged to leave tiny
| drag-concentration-camp areas somewhere in what used to be the
| titlebar, which today's presumably incredibly IT savvy users are
| then expected to decode with no problems whatsoever. Well paint
| me green and call me a dinosaur, because to me it looks like each
| app chooses to interpret those 'guidelines' in its own way, and
| often in a way I fail to decode reliably.
|
| In my head, I can hear GPT laugh hysterically, while it explains
| to me that I can just continue to use alt-SPACE to bring up the
| MOVE system menu, if I am overwhelmed, while it gleefully assures
| me that MSFT has 'no current plans to get rid of that feature'
| (which we know is Kremlin-speak for 'the system menu is NEXT
| brother'.
| fifticon wrote:
| Funnily, all this weirdness was already solved with the
| original titlebars, which did not try to be both a drag handle
| and a menu. Apparently, only peasants use windows that are not
| maximised. Which reminds me, it has now been 2 years or more
| since microsoft turned keyboard-layout-switching from a
| standard feature into a standard bug :-/.
| cornedor wrote:
| To make this easier in MacOS: defaults write -g
| NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture -bool true
|
| This allows you to drag windows around by grabbing the window
| anywhere you want while holding ctrl + cmd.
| fifticon wrote:
| And also, it reminds me of minimalist design furniture design,
| where e.g. handles are hidden, and you just press a secret area
| to toggle e.g. a cabinet door open. I wish we could take all
| designers and architects, and people who encourage them, who
| wants to do such designs, and lock them inside TESLAs which we
| then push from a bridge into cold water, and then watch them
| try to exit those same TESLAs from under the water. If it's
| good design, it should be be a problem. MUHAHHA.
| nkotov wrote:
| I wonder if it's because there's a hidden agenda of introducing a
| touch friendly interface where pixel perfection doesn't matter.
| Maybe the rumors are true about a touchscreen MacBook.
| josh_p wrote:
| Even if this is true, it doesn't justify breaking the interface
| for keyboard/mouse users. They're big enough to handle both
| cases.
| petterroea wrote:
| The hand grabbing the plate made me audibly laugh
| gyoridavid wrote:
| I'm so glad I'm still on sequoia!
| adolph wrote:
| I can't remember the last time I resized a window. Does everyone
| not already install Magnet or an alternative first-thing to
| emulate the impeccable DWM?
|
| https://dwm.suckless.org/
| NoSalt wrote:
| IMHO, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of Mac OS X.
| When I "upgraded" to 10.7, they lost me. It was then that I
| switched to Linux full time, and I haven't looked back. Every now
| and then I do pull out my Wallstreet with Mac OS 9 on it so I can
| relive the heyday of old school computing.
| whompyjaw wrote:
| It makes me really happy when companies continue to fuck up and
| enshitify their software because it adds more ppl to the
| Linux/FOSS evosystem. I have a MBP and I love it dearly (the
| hardware, macOS is fine), but Apple has been disappointing me
| with each software update on macOS and iOS. The quality of their
| software is degrading so badly. I know Asahi linux is around, but
| Im at the point ill just go full Framework and make my ecosystem
| Linux based (with GrapheneOS on my nee pixel). Just so tired of
| companies doing such a bad job with billions and billions of
| dollars. It's truly unbelievable.
| hbn wrote:
| It's bad but not as bad as Windows 11. I swear I have a 2x2 pixel
| grid on my 4k monitor where I can grab the window resize handle,
| and it doesn't align to where the window's actual corner is at
| all.
|
| Even worse: because the min/max/close buttons are all shunted
| into the top right corner, if you're trying to resize from the
| top right and you miss, you close the window.
| progforlyfe wrote:
| Apple does not want you to resize windows. They want to set the
| window size for you so don't need to re-adjust it. Apple always
| knows what's best for the customer.
| dent9 wrote:
| This is a fake issue. You should just be using window snapping
| which finally is included directly in the os
| capital_guy wrote:
| I usually find these apple design nitpick articles tiresome but
| the gif of the guy grabbing at the plate was hilarious and also
| accurate about user expectations
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| Hopefully getting a true UX practitioner in as Head of Design
| will help avoid these incredibly obvious usability issues.
|
| Ref: https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job
| seanparsons wrote:
| Flipping things around as I see it as a desktop Linux user: "OMG
| this one thing doesn't work in macOS, looks like 2026 wont be the
| year of the macOS desktop!"
| nymalt wrote:
| Not upgrading my personal iphone/macbook and I wish I didn't
| upgrade my work iphone/macbook (unfortunately I had to)
|
| For the first time in 15 years I am considering to not buy apple
| as my next phone/laptop regardless of the specs.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| What does it take for a megacorp to admit a mistake and correct
| it???
|
| I think it all boils down to this one question. It's not
| complicated.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| Let's also not forget the introduction of unnecessary and
| confusing icons: https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/
| jamescontrol wrote:
| This is why I'm always wait as long as possible to update major
| versions, seems like there is fuckups big and small in every
| single major macOS update.
| vesche wrote:
| Been using this for a few years, works like a charm:
| https://rectangleapp.com/
| marcofiset wrote:
| Yeah, I don't even remember the last time I resized a window by
| hand.
| Wojtkie wrote:
| I think it is really telling of the quality of the UI when the
| best way to use it is after enabling a bunch of accessibility
| settings. I found the Liquid Glass color background effect make
| some websites unusable on Safari due to the background becoming
| the same color as the text.
| aanet wrote:
| That pic/movie of trying to grab the corner(?!) of the plate full
| of food...
|
| _priceless_
| MaysonL wrote:
| If you pay attention to the cursor, instead of aiming at the
| corner of the window, the UI gives you great feedback of where
| you should click: when the cursor changes to 2 arrowheads
| pointing diagonally or orthagonally to the window, resizing is
| available. Why aim for inside the window? I do think the expanded
| corner radius of Tahoe sucks badly.
| jesse_dot_id wrote:
| Great article.
|
| I put a Teams meeting on my second monitor. I put Teams on my
| first monitor. I minimize Teams to look at something in a browser
| on the first monitor. The Teams meeting on the second monitor
| minimizes, too.
|
| Mac window management UX is dogshit in a lot of different ways.
| There are a lot of problems that I either have to just deal with,
| or try to find some third party app to solve in lieu of Apple
| actually caring about UX again.
| leptons wrote:
| >Apple actually caring about UX again
|
| I doubt Apple ever really cared about UX. It took Apple 24
| years after Microsoft's Windows 2.0 introduced resizing a
| window from any edge, for Apple to finally implement it in
| MacOS Lion in 2011. Apple UX is ridiculous.
|
| If they cared about UX, they'd throw out their "HIG", hire some
| competent people, and start over.
|
| Why is the first item on the first menu of every software
| program "About this software"? Is it because the most
| frequently used thing by every user is to know what version of
| the software they are running? Apple specified this in their
| "HIG" long ago and it never changed, and it's been stuck there
| ever since. And it's completely stupid. MS Windows applications
| typically have "About this software" as the last menu item on
| the last menu, which is objectively a far better place for it
| than the first thing on the first menu, since it is rarely
| needed when using an application.
| sebnukem2 wrote:
| The idiotic rounded corners of Tahoe are so ugly I just wish I
| didn't upgrade. I hope Apple will make the radius configurable.
| AaryanM23 wrote:
| use rectangle, it's OP
| elzbardico wrote:
| Weird. I have no such trouble.
| miladyincontrol wrote:
| Is this a monitor resolution or custom HiDPI scaling issue or
| something? I genuinely do not have their issue with resizing
| windows, nor do my tolerances seem anything as odd as they claim
| to have.
|
| Seems like most the attention this is getting is people wanting
| to grave dance Apple at any chance given.
| rtaylorgarlock wrote:
| The OS which requires you to click in order to update also makes
| it, uh, challenging to resize windows. Sublime. A tiling manager
| would never.
| bluenose69 wrote:
| The cursor changes when you get to resizing corners and edges, so
| I don't suffer from the problem pointed out in the original
| article. However, I do find something annoying: sometimes when
| I'm resizing (or maybe dragging) a window, it gets expanded to
| fill the whole screen.
|
| I think that kind of behaviour ought to be controlled by the
| green dot at the top-left of windows, not by some particular
| mouse movements.
|
| There was a time when the changes to the mac UI were quite good,
| or at least not annoying. Sometimes it seems as though they are
| changing stuff just to change stuff.
| kcplate wrote:
| This is the first UX issue I have seen since moving to MacOS 26
| that I have been able to reliably recreate and haven't been able
| to just attribute to a subjective opinion. I never knew about
| before this post mainly because any window resizing I do is via
| rectangle. It's definitely a flaw they need to address.
| cdrnsf wrote:
| It's not unusable, but this whole update cycle hasn't offered
| much in the way of improvements. It's basically a bad UI, Safari
| updates (which shouldn't be coupled to the OS), a phone app and
| additions to system apps I don't touch.
| notShabu wrote:
| This is the sort of thing that apple (used to?) take pride in
| doing well. e.g. new hires in orientation would be asked if there
| was anything 'special' about their offer letter and it was a
| thicker more premium kind of paper. Emphasizing the magical
| 'feel' that differentiated apple products.
| nrvn wrote:
| The whole article is tongue in cheek. And I struggle to find any
| comment here that would actually verify and confirm (or not) the
| results of the author.
|
| So here I am, random hacker news links verifier.
|
| Scrolling to the image below "So, for example, grabbing it here
| does not work:" text and reproducing the issue with a small
| caveat: just moving cursor 1 (ONE) pixel right turns the cursor
| into the "diagonal resizing mode" cursor. Overall, the resizing
| area of the window corner is comfortably bigger than the author
| draws. Dragging empty space outside the rounded corner is weird
| but what isn't in today's user interface designs?
|
| All in all have never experienced difficulties resizing windows
| in macos.
|
| Miss the times of windows 95/98 and macos 9 (as some other
| commenters here) when OS UI was designed by humans and for humans
| and everything was explicitly clear including the area for window
| resizing.
| spinningarrow wrote:
| I agree with this. I was curious and tried it out just now -
| there's a good part of the inside corner that is draggable and
| a decent amount outside as well. The cursor changes to indicate
| resizability make it quite difficult for me to make a mistake
| here.
| LevkaDev wrote:
| I've spent months building a proper window manager for macOS, and
| the fundamental problem isn't the UI -- it's that macOS has no
| proper window management API.
|
| Third-party apps have to use the Accessibility API, which was
| designed for screen readers, not window manipulation. Some
| windows simply refuse to be resized below certain thresholds, and
| there's no way to query the minimum size in advance. You request
| 500px width, get 800px back, no error.
|
| The real question is: will Apple ever provide a proper public
| API, or will this remain a cat-and-mouse game with Accessibility
| permissions?
| teekert wrote:
| Omg, I though I could only just grab that super tiny edge. Turns
| out can grab the "air" around it. Thanks for the heads up, makes
| life a lot easier!
| grougnax wrote:
| This is clearly an issue, and it isn't even the biggest issue on
| macOS Tahoe UI.
| michelb wrote:
| Again it's becoming painfully clear that people at Apple do not
| use their own systems in any meaningful way.
| NoPicklez wrote:
| These are the sorts of small details that I remember Apple being
| known for and putting a lot of thought into, often times a little
| obsessive.
|
| Not to say this isn't the case anymore but
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