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Comment by mediocrejoker | Hacker News Reader

I switched from Linux to Mac about a year ago and something that is underrated in MacOS is the _consistency_ of the UI.

Not just the visual appearance, but for example keyboard shortcuts are relatively universal; Cmd + , is the shortcut for Preferences/Settings in Safari, Chrome, iTerm, Slack, NewsReader etc. I don't know if that would even be possible on the leading Linux DEs.

I love the customizability of linux, but I've decided that a good user experience goes beyond the appearance, and what's required is putting serious thought into user workflows. Those sorts of usability studies don't seem to be a priority for most FOSS projects.

There are things about Linux that I miss on Mac, but overall I prefer a system that's consistent to one that ticks every single box.

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> Not just the visual appearance, but for example keyboard shortcuts are relatively universal; Cmd + , is the shortcut for Preferences/Settings in Safari, Chrome, iTerm, Slack, NewsReader etc. I don't know if that would even be possible on the leading Linux DEs.

Kinda funny, but the inverse is true for me. I am forced to use a Macbook at work and shortcuts are a frustrating thing. Do I have to use Cmd + <x> or Ctrl+ <x>?

Considering both Windows and Linux follow almost the same shortcuts, Mac is the odd one out here.

> Kinda funny, but the inverse is true for me. I am forced to use a Macbook at work and shortcuts are a frustrating thing. Do I have to use Cmd + <x> or Ctrl+ <x>?

No reason to be confused. You need to use Cmd + <x>, because off the top of my head Ctrl is involved only into text editing shortcuts (what GTK+ calls "emacs theme") and some obscure stuff.

Switching between CMD/Ctrl is really weird for someone who has used Win/Linux all their life, where most of the major shortcuts use Ctrl.

To be fair I wouldn't really count this as a negative, this is probably very far down in my list of gripes I have against Apple devices.

It's just that it's equally pointless when a Mac user complains about shortcuts in Win/Linux. Even in this thread, you can see most of the complaints boil down to "It doesn't work like the way it does in <Insert the system you are used to>"

As a cli user, this is a big positive for me. I can use ctrl-c for "terminate program", while cmd-c continues to work for copy.

This is a regular frustration for me under Linux. The shortcuts for Cut/Copy/Paste feel so standardized that changing them in one particular instance feels like having the functions of the brake pedal and trunk lever being swapped only while driving on a particular road.

I switched to MacOS last year for work and one of the first things I did was remap keys to swap CTRL and CMD. Now I press CTRL-C to copy on Windows or Mac. It makes it a lot easier to switch between machines

This reminds me of all of the discussions people had about keyboard shortcuts when Windows 8 first came out.

It was hard to consider it a valid selling point then, so I'm not really sure why people would consider it to be a valid selling point now for MacOS (although I do get why people would find them useful).

Talking about keyboard shortcuts consistency on MacOS, how do you think about Home/End/PageUp/PageDown (or Cmd/Fn + Left/Right/Up/Down), and further on, combined with Ctrl/Shift? The behavior varies dramatically across different apps. It's a nightmare comparing to that on Windows/Linux.

For the most part, the only variance comes from non-native (usually electron) apps. Keyboard navigation in text fields is perfectly consistent between native Cocoa apps because there it’s implemented at the toolkit level so devs get it for “free”. If some cross platform app doesn’t follow suite it’s because their developers took the easy way out and ignored platform conventions.

Not just non-native apps. Try Sublime Text vs. TextEdit.app, iTerm2 vs. Terminal.app, ForkLift vs. Finder.app. The functionality of Home/End/PageUp/PageDown is much more than just navigation inside text fields. Unlike text fields navigation, OS generally cannot force application behavior in these cases. Developers on Windows/Linux all follow the same conventions while Mac developers take various directions whatsoever.

And why excluding non-native apps? They count for a large portion of app ecosystem nowadays and they don't have the same problem on Windows/Linux.

My bad, I thought you were speaking only in the context of text fields. I don’t really use those shortcuts outside of text manipulation.

As for why exclude non native apps... it’s a personal preference thing, and I don’t enjoy using them. I avoid them whenever I can and will opt for a native alternative where possible, even if it means shelling out some cash.

In fact, I’d say that’s one of my gripes with desktop Linux — for some things, an electron app is the only option and nobody cares to develop a GTK+ or Qt alternative. I’m a big believer in use of the local UI toolkit, regardless of platform.

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