8 ms·

I got a mac for the first time this year. Honestly, it feels like taking a shower after getting home from the beach on a sunny day when you've been wearing suns

I got a mac for the first time this year. Honestly, it feels like taking a shower after getting home from the beach on a sunny day when you've been wearing sunscreen. Everything just works with no extra garbage, no constant intrusive updates, no hassle. The only issue I had was the lack of alt-tab, and that was solved by an app called alt-tab.

exabrial 3y ago
brah... control-tab or even better: control-tilde
- just_boost_it 3y ago
  Neither does exactly what alt-tab does! Now command-tab does what I want.
- explaininjs 3y ago
  The Windows approach of one button for cycling through windows is a bit less mental overhead than needing multiple keyboard shortcuts to first cycle through applications then windows in that application. In windows you just mash the key until the thing you want comes up.
makingstuffs 3y ago
I know of this app which allows you to port that functionality: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ Disclaimer: I have never used it, one of my colleagues mentioned it a while ago.
- johnsea 3y ago
  It works well; I use it together with Karabiner such that shortcuts are closer to what I have on Linux and Windows
akmittal 3y ago
Having moved to mac 4 years ago I can't think of going back to windows. Only downside I find is you need to buy Apple hardware at premium to experience MacOS
- iansinnott 3y ago
  It used to be that you could create a Hackintosh with cheap hardware. Had a really fast "mac" this way a few years back. Unfortunately since apple is moving away from Intel this may not be viable anymore.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    I hackintoshed with an old laptop years ago, and more recently with a custom built tower. When it’s good it’s really, really good. That old laptop had a better LCD panel than you could get in any Macbook of that era, and that tower ran circles around any real contemporary Mac. The problem is that no matter how hard you try, there’s always little glitches that are downright impossible to eliminate unless you have the chops to tinker with DSDTs and kernel extension development.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  Windows is apparently moving to a "we'll be an app on any platform you move to" model, and I kinda think it's the best of both worlds. I wish macos moved to the same model and it could be just an app on a linux or windows machine. Apple is already shifting their weight to service revenue for growth, this could be a realistic direction to take.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
Except for apple music constantly popping up?
- revscat 3y ago
  This has never happened to me. I exclusively listen to music on my phone, and work every day on my Mac. I have never had the Music app open itself up, not once. Nor I have I experienced anything that is even related to music, such as asking me to subscribe to a service.
  - dghlsakjg 3y ago
    It doesn't pop up on its own, but it is the default response to a lot of actions. Accidentally press the play button? Apple Music. Charge your iphone through your computer? Apple Music. I find it pretty annoying, but it is also easy to eliminate the default behavior
    - superb_dev 3y ago
      I've never had Apple Music open when I plugged in my iPhone
    - chongli 3y ago
      I leave Music running all the time. I have all the store and subscription features turned off. I just have the program loaded with all of my MP3s, something I've been doing since it was called SoundJam MP [1]. I have all my playlists in there and it works fine with the play/pause/prev/next buttons on the keyboard. I think they bug me about subscribing to Apple Music once every major OS update. I promptly say no and turn off any of the extra features they added. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundJam_MP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundJam_MP
- shpx 3y ago
  Yea, that's annoying. You have to install the noTunes app and set it to run at log in: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes/releases https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes/releases
zbrozek 3y ago
I got my first mac through work this year and I hate the UI. It's very nice that it doesn't come with as much bloat (but it does still come it, e.g., Apple news, music, etc). I absolutely hate the window management. Inconsistent behavior on double click of the title bar (Chrome maximizes and Slack doesn't) is annoying. Lack of snapping and tiling (a la super-arrow) drives me nuts. That command-tab will switch me to a different workspace completely defeats the purpose of having a workspace at all. And I also hate the nonstandard keyboard layout and shortcuts. Yes, you can install a dozen little extra utilities to customize your way out of most of these things... but I'm not going to. I use systems usually quite-close to stock because of how often I'm using not-my-system or how often the system is reimaged or whatever. Also it's a corporate machine and I can't be bothered to see if each and every bodge-app is permitted by security policy. The hardware is very nice, however. I would totally buy a MBP personally if I could run Windows or Fedora on it, and swap the keyboard for something sensible.
- d357r0y3r 3y ago
  Try Rectangle: https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/ One of the first things I install on a new MBP.
- weikju 3y ago
  There’s a setting to enable/disable switching to a space with an app’s window when switching to an app. That should help with one of your issues. Kb shortcuts are standard - for a Mac ;). Heck in most apps you can even use standard readline shortcuts like ctrl-e for end of line, ctrl-a for start of line , ctrl-n and -p for next and previous etc. Same as in emacs or in a terminal window.
- jwells89 3y ago
  > Inconsistent behavior on double click of the title bar (Chrome maximizes and Slack doesn't) is annoying. This is actually on third party app devs, not apple. Note that double-clicking the titlebar works the same in stock apps, as well as in most mac-only native apps. Cross-platform apps like Slack often hide the native titlebar and draw their own which doesn’t implement all the native behaviors or even try to mimic them. Papercuts like this are part of why Mac users are more likely to be discontent with cross-platform apps. For many Electron apps a decent work around is to install them as PWAs, which can be done with both Safari (File > Add to Dock…) or your preferred Chrome-cousin. Those draw proper titlebars.
glimshe 3y ago
I take this refreshing shower at night, when I close my Mac work computer and go use my Windows personal computer. Everything is easy to accomplish, my personal use software just works and I don't have to struggle with extra clicks and movements for everything. It's incredible how different people are - and that's a good thing.
- soraminazuki 3y ago
  People are free to have their own opinions. But some things aren't matters of options, but hard cold facts. Windows, especially after Windows 10, has been actively hostile and repeatedly ignores the clear will of its users. At boot time, it regularly takes the computer hostage in an attempt to coerce me to mass-enable its many spywares. After disabling then one by one, I can login to my desktop only to find that it has changed my default browser again. So I have to change that back, which is kind of futile because various parts of the OS now ignores the default browser settings anyway. After that, I have to dismiss the relentless ads and remove the crapware that keeps getting installed at every turn and corner. This is a very, very far cry from "everything is easy to accomplish, my personal use software just works and I don't have to struggle with extra clicks and movements for everything." Both things can't be true at the same time. I have to click, click, click, go through all sorts of hoops, and finally give up and throw my computer out the window in frustration to try to achieve what I want in Windows. And what for? Out of pure corporate greed.
  - blackoil 3y ago
    > People are free to have their own opinions. But some things aren't matters of options, but hard cold facts. I feel same way about Mac users. Can't understand how people accept that turd of OS that comes with poor defaults (Window Management/Finder/keyboard), weaker customization and tonnes of bloat (Music/Notes/Messages/Mail/...) and then they pay a premium for it.
    - soraminazuki 3y ago
      That's literally your opinion about features. And a possibly outdated one too, because current model keyboards are fine. Also the fact that you chose window management as a major problem on Macs tells me that you have a strong dislike for things that's unfamiliar to you. There are some annoyances with Macs, especially if you're a dev, but window management isn't one of them. Macs have the best touchpad gestures and virtual desktop management UX. GNOME comes close these days, but Macs still feel a bit smoother. As for your problem with "bloat," most of those are just stock utility apps. Any major desktop OS have had those since ages. You do have a point with Apple Music, but Notes, Messages, and Mail? Are you serious?
jchw 3y ago
I find macOS annoying no matter what I do. AltTab is nice, but the window management still sucks in my opinion. The security bandages used to work around traditional desktop security models makes it feel incredibly annoying to use; I'll try to set a keyboard shortcut (not a global one mind you) in iTerm2 and suddenly I need to enable iTerm2 to have accessibility access? Disabling SIP is needed for a myriad of things that aren't really that advanced, like for example, it is needed for some reason by some of the macOS "tiling WM" toys, and it's needed to even use any kexts. No joke: Discord will direct you to disable SIP if you want to .. capture audio during screenshares. It's also needed for macFUSE. macOS also has no equivalent to WSL2. "But it's POSIX!" I can hear you say. Very fair point, but there are a lot of uses for lightweight Linux VMs, like, well, testing Linux things. Docker Desktop tries but it's slow. I really wanted to like Podman Desktop but it's similarly slow, and I had trouble with networking in a difficult-to-debug way. I strongly recommend Orb Stack here: it basically brings the WSL2 experience to macOS, except maybe even a bit better, vastly prefer it to Docker Desktop. That said, it's a monthly cost, which is definitely not ideal. There's also Colima but I have to say I don't love it either; no IPv6 support isn't a killer but it was annoying to find out the hard way. I could probably make do with macOS if forced, but I wouldn't enjoy it. That said, I can't really take having to deal with the rest of the Apple ecosystem, so I am stuck very deep into Linux. To be fair, this is nothing new for me: Linux has been my primary desktop OS since high school. But I wouldn't say it's a good desktop OS. I mostly use it because I don't really feel like I have any other options and I already paid the cost to get deep into it anyway. (I don't hate everything about Apple obviously, but to be honest, my desire to use Apple Silicon devices was mostly tied to high hopes for Asahi Linux)
- MisterSandman 3y ago
  > and suddenly I need to enable iTerm2 to have accessibility access? This is a strange thing to complain about, you have to do it literally once and it takes less than 5 seconds and 5 clicks. And I would rather have a nice settings panel showing what apps have access to what, rather than the mess that is Windows privacy settings.
  - jchw 3y ago
adamddev1 3y ago
I was also pretty pleased with my move to MacOS but one thing I really miss is the file navigation from Windows. Like when I want to drag a file somewhere a few difectories deep. I wish I could hold it over a folder and then have it open that next folder, and so on. Is there a way to enable this? Also the in application file picker makes it difficult to go up and down directories.
- jwells89 3y ago
  > I was also pretty pleased with my move to MacOS but one thing I really miss is the file navigation from Windows. Like when I want to drag a file somewhere a few difectories deep. I wish I could hold it over a folder and then have it open that next folder and so on. Is there a way to enable this? Macs have had a feature like that since the 90s called spring loaded folders. Pick up the file you want to move, then hold it over the base level destination folder for a moment until it “blinks” and it’ll open the folder in a new window. Rinse and repeat as you’re drilling down to the folder you want, then drop. Back/forward buttons in Finder windows can also be hovered over with a dragged file to trigger those.
- rocketbop 3y ago
  > Also the in application file picker makes it difficult to go up and down directories. You can use Command up or down keys.

exabrial 3y ago

brah... control-tab or even better: control-tilde

just_boost_it 3y ago
Neither does exactly what alt-tab does! Now command-tab does what I want.
explaininjs 3y ago
The Windows approach of one button for cycling through windows is a bit less mental overhead than needing multiple keyboard shortcuts to first cycle through applications then windows in that application. In windows you just mash the key until the thing you want comes up.

makingstuffs 3y ago

I know of this app which allows you to port that functionality: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ Disclaimer: I have never used it, one of my colleagues mentioned it a while ago.

johnsea 3y ago
It works well; I use it together with Karabiner such that shortcuts are closer to what I have on Linux and Windows

akmittal 3y ago

Having moved to mac 4 years ago I can't think of going back to windows. Only downside I find is you need to buy Apple hardware at premium to experience MacOS

iansinnott 3y ago
It used to be that you could create a Hackintosh with cheap hardware. Had a really fast "mac" this way a few years back. Unfortunately since apple is moving away from Intel this may not be viable anymore.
- jwells89 3y ago
  I hackintoshed with an old laptop years ago, and more recently with a custom built tower. When it’s good it’s really, really good. That old laptop had a better LCD panel than you could get in any Macbook of that era, and that tower ran circles around any real contemporary Mac. The problem is that no matter how hard you try, there’s always little glitches that are downright impossible to eliminate unless you have the chops to tinker with DSDTs and kernel extension development.
makeitdouble 3y ago
Windows is apparently moving to a "we'll be an app on any platform you move to" model, and I kinda think it's the best of both worlds. I wish macos moved to the same model and it could be just an app on a linux or windows machine. Apple is already shifting their weight to service revenue for growth, this could be a realistic direction to take.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

Except for apple music constantly popping up?

revscat 3y ago
This has never happened to me. I exclusively listen to music on my phone, and work every day on my Mac. I have never had the Music app open itself up, not once. Nor I have I experienced anything that is even related to music, such as asking me to subscribe to a service.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  It doesn't pop up on its own, but it is the default response to a lot of actions. Accidentally press the play button? Apple Music. Charge your iphone through your computer? Apple Music. I find it pretty annoying, but it is also easy to eliminate the default behavior
  - superb_dev 3y ago
    I've never had Apple Music open when I plugged in my iPhone
  - chongli 3y ago
    I leave Music running all the time. I have all the store and subscription features turned off. I just have the program loaded with all of my MP3s, something I've been doing since it was called SoundJam MP [1]. I have all my playlists in there and it works fine with the play/pause/prev/next buttons on the keyboard. I think they bug me about subscribing to Apple Music once every major OS update. I promptly say no and turn off any of the extra features they added. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundJam_MP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundJam_MP
shpx 3y ago
Yea, that's annoying. You have to install the noTunes app and set it to run at log in: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes/releases https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes/releases

zbrozek 3y ago

I got my first mac through work this year and I hate the UI. It's very nice that it doesn't come with as much bloat (but it does still come it, e.g., Apple news, music, etc). I absolutely hate the window management. Inconsistent behavior on double click of the title bar (Chrome maximizes and Slack doesn't) is annoying. Lack of snapping and tiling (a la super-arrow) drives me nuts. That command-tab will switch me to a different workspace completely defeats the purpose of having a workspace at all. And I also hate the nonstandard keyboard layout and shortcuts. Yes, you can install a dozen little extra utilities to customize your way out of most of these things... but I'm not going to. I use systems usually quite-close to stock because of how often I'm using not-my-system or how often the system is reimaged or whatever. Also it's a corporate machine and I can't be bothered to see if each and every bodge-app is permitted by security policy. The hardware is very nice, however. I would totally buy a MBP personally if I could run Windows or Fedora on it, and swap the keyboard for something sensible.

d357r0y3r 3y ago
Try Rectangle: https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/ One of the first things I install on a new MBP.
weikju 3y ago
There’s a setting to enable/disable switching to a space with an app’s window when switching to an app. That should help with one of your issues. Kb shortcuts are standard - for a Mac ;). Heck in most apps you can even use standard readline shortcuts like ctrl-e for end of line, ctrl-a for start of line , ctrl-n and -p for next and previous etc. Same as in emacs or in a terminal window.
jwells89 3y ago
> Inconsistent behavior on double click of the title bar (Chrome maximizes and Slack doesn't) is annoying. This is actually on third party app devs, not apple. Note that double-clicking the titlebar works the same in stock apps, as well as in most mac-only native apps. Cross-platform apps like Slack often hide the native titlebar and draw their own which doesn’t implement all the native behaviors or even try to mimic them. Papercuts like this are part of why Mac users are more likely to be discontent with cross-platform apps. For many Electron apps a decent work around is to install them as PWAs, which can be done with both Safari (File > Add to Dock…) or your preferred Chrome-cousin. Those draw proper titlebars.

glimshe 3y ago

I take this refreshing shower at night, when I close my Mac work computer and go use my Windows personal computer. Everything is easy to accomplish, my personal use software just works and I don't have to struggle with extra clicks and movements for everything. It's incredible how different people are - and that's a good thing.

soraminazuki 3y ago
People are free to have their own opinions. But some things aren't matters of options, but hard cold facts. Windows, especially after Windows 10, has been actively hostile and repeatedly ignores the clear will of its users. At boot time, it regularly takes the computer hostage in an attempt to coerce me to mass-enable its many spywares. After disabling then one by one, I can login to my desktop only to find that it has changed my default browser again. So I have to change that back, which is kind of futile because various parts of the OS now ignores the default browser settings anyway. After that, I have to dismiss the relentless ads and remove the crapware that keeps getting installed at every turn and corner. This is a very, very far cry from "everything is easy to accomplish, my personal use software just works and I don't have to struggle with extra clicks and movements for everything." Both things can't be true at the same time. I have to click, click, click, go through all sorts of hoops, and finally give up and throw my computer out the window in frustration to try to achieve what I want in Windows. And what for? Out of pure corporate greed.
- blackoil 3y ago
  > People are free to have their own opinions. But some things aren't matters of options, but hard cold facts. I feel same way about Mac users. Can't understand how people accept that turd of OS that comes with poor defaults (Window Management/Finder/keyboard), weaker customization and tonnes of bloat (Music/Notes/Messages/Mail/...) and then they pay a premium for it.
  - soraminazuki 3y ago
    That's literally your opinion about features. And a possibly outdated one too, because current model keyboards are fine. Also the fact that you chose window management as a major problem on Macs tells me that you have a strong dislike for things that's unfamiliar to you. There are some annoyances with Macs, especially if you're a dev, but window management isn't one of them. Macs have the best touchpad gestures and virtual desktop management UX. GNOME comes close these days, but Macs still feel a bit smoother. As for your problem with "bloat," most of those are just stock utility apps. Any major desktop OS have had those since ages. You do have a point with Apple Music, but Notes, Messages, and Mail? Are you serious?

jchw 3y ago

I find macOS annoying no matter what I do. AltTab is nice, but the window management still sucks in my opinion. The security bandages used to work around traditional desktop security models makes it feel incredibly annoying to use; I'll try to set a keyboard shortcut (not a global one mind you) in iTerm2 and suddenly I need to enable iTerm2 to have accessibility access? Disabling SIP is needed for a myriad of things that aren't really that advanced, like for example, it is needed for some reason by some of the macOS "tiling WM" toys, and it's needed to even use any kexts. No joke: Discord will direct you to disable SIP if you want to .. capture audio during screenshares. It's also needed for macFUSE. macOS also has no equivalent to WSL2. "But it's POSIX!" I can hear you say. Very fair point, but there are a lot of uses for lightweight Linux VMs, like, well, testing Linux things. Docker Desktop tries but it's slow. I really wanted to like Podman Desktop but it's similarly slow, and I had trouble with networking in a difficult-to-debug way. I strongly recommend Orb Stack here: it basically brings the WSL2 experience to macOS, except maybe even a bit better, vastly prefer it to Docker Desktop. That said, it's a monthly cost, which is definitely not ideal. There's also Colima but I have to say I don't love it either; no IPv6 support isn't a killer but it was annoying to find out the hard way. I could probably make do with macOS if forced, but I wouldn't enjoy it. That said, I can't really take having to deal with the rest of the Apple ecosystem, so I am stuck very deep into Linux. To be fair, this is nothing new for me: Linux has been my primary desktop OS since high school. But I wouldn't say it's a good desktop OS. I mostly use it because I don't really feel like I have any other options and I already paid the cost to get deep into it anyway. (I don't hate everything about Apple obviously, but to be honest, my desire to use Apple Silicon devices was mostly tied to high hopes for Asahi Linux)

MisterSandman 3y ago
> and suddenly I need to enable iTerm2 to have accessibility access? This is a strange thing to complain about, you have to do it literally once and it takes less than 5 seconds and 5 clicks. And I would rather have a nice settings panel showing what apps have access to what, rather than the mess that is Windows privacy settings.
- jchw 3y ago

adamddev1 3y ago

I was also pretty pleased with my move to MacOS but one thing I really miss is the file navigation from Windows. Like when I want to drag a file somewhere a few difectories deep. I wish I could hold it over a folder and then have it open that next folder, and so on. Is there a way to enable this? Also the in application file picker makes it difficult to go up and down directories.

jwells89 3y ago
> I was also pretty pleased with my move to MacOS but one thing I really miss is the file navigation from Windows. Like when I want to drag a file somewhere a few difectories deep. I wish I could hold it over a folder and then have it open that next folder and so on. Is there a way to enable this? Macs have had a feature like that since the 90s called spring loaded folders. Pick up the file you want to move, then hold it over the base level destination folder for a moment until it “blinks” and it’ll open the folder in a new window. Rinse and repeat as you’re drilling down to the folder you want, then drop. Back/forward buttons in Finder windows can also be hovered over with a dragged file to trigger those.
rocketbop 3y ago
> Also the in application file picker makes it difficult to go up and down directories. You can use Command up or down keys.