How Intuitive Are Macs Really?
jeremyaboyd.com
jeremyaboyd.com
From a UI perspective, it's 90% identical to windows. From a UX perspective though, something fundamental like Finder is still not up to the job IMO. Why is it that when I click Finder, nothing actually opens? I have to hit Option+N to actually display a Finder window.
Don't even get me started on the sort options. What kind of file manager applies a Sort view to every single directory, instead of the one you actually set the Sort view to?
This would be an example of the 10% of the UI which isn't identical.
One of the fundamental differences between macOS and Windows is the menu bar. There's only one at a time, and it belongs to the program which has the focus. A corollary of this is that you don't need a window to have a program.
It's not just Finder, most macOS programs are perfectly happy having no window open.
I've been on OS X since 2003, and it took me a second to figure out what you were talking about here, because if I don't see the window I expect to see, my eyes immediately flick to the upper-left corner. If I see what I expect to see, I've probably already typed Cmd-N or Cmd-O, depending.
There's a lot to complain about with Finder; my personal peeve is that I want two-finger-swipe-right to go back one directory, like the back button in browsers. But this particular behavior is just macOS working the way that it does. If you close all open windows in Preview and quit, then start it again, it will do the same thing.
I find OSX to be generally pretty logical and easy to understand, but certainly no more _intuitive_ than something like Windows. Another way of saying this: if I took someone who didn't know how to use a desktop OS, I wouldn't be any more confident sitting them down in front of a Mac.
I have used Windows setups with as many as 50 screens (command and control center). Having each application exist within its own window with all relevant menus in that window is, by far, a superior approach in these settings.
Even with three large monitors, using a mouse to fly across that screen space to reach a menu is just a pain. Imagine a system consisting of 25 x 4 screens. It would be a nightmare.
Shortcuts? Someone else said MacOS lacks discoverability. It’s true. Tooltips are almost nowhere to be found and lots of applications have no shortcuts. I have watched non-expert users in fear of clicking a button because they have no clue what it does.
The single menu and single mouse button idea worked well on an old Mac with a single 9 in screen. It works fine on laptops. The minute the display grows in size and multiple displays are used the approach breaks down very quickly.
If you own a multi-monitor Mac setup (we have several) and have enabled the menu bar on all screens, you already understand how broken that concept has become. If it was not you would only have one menu bar with your three large screens.
The core difference is that macOS is (originally) document-oriented. You could care less if an app is opened or not, window == document, whereas on Windows, window == program.
Each progressively grew into the direction of the other (e.g Finder progressively losing spatial features and Explorer gaining them, MDI interfaces on macOS vs the win7 taskbar being actually more of a Dock...)
This is, particularly for a novice or intermediate user IMO quite intimidating. It means there is some learnt behavior + keyboard command required to "see anything" and work with the program. If I'm using my trackpad/mouse trying to work out after I start a program why I can't see anything like I've seen new Mac users do for some time it isn't great. Because there is no window its easy to click anywhere else in my search for my "missing program" and immediately lose the "menu bar" that allows you to (Cmd-N) or discover the ability to do that. It's almost like the app never booted up.
Sure you can learn behavior and work around it as I and you have had to do, but if the menu bar behavior changes per window focus anyway I don't see the difference than Windows with menu bar on the window other than "its the Mac way".
- There's no way to create an empty file
- There's no easy way to cut a file/folder (Cmd-x doesn't work)
- There's no (?) way to keep everything consistently sorted and aligned
- ~~Tags are useless and just take up space for nothing~~ This one is entirely subjective. I retract it.
- No "parent folder"...
There's some great features in Finder but it sucks at so many things it's just frustrating to use. Windows Explorer is infinitely better. It has less cool features (no tabs for instance) but is so much better to actually use.
I get that some features are hidden to avoid confusing non savvy users, but preventing experimented users to do basic stuff is criminal.
This is one of the features I never miss and don't use on any other DE (like KDE). I just open the app, create the file and save. Maybe it's just habit, but I personally doesn't find it as a needed feature.
> There's no easy way to cut a file/folder (Cmd-x doesn't work)
Just drag it where you want while pressing CMD? I know it's not cut but it prevents a lot of errors I think.
> There's no (?) way to keep everything consistently sorted and aligned
It's called "Clean Up By". Available in right click menu and in the top menu probably. It'll always keep the order you choose.
> Tags are useless and just take up space for nothing.
On the contrary, this is something I love. I can just throw a bunch of files to a folder and tag them about what I'm going to do with them. Colors allow me to mentally sort them with no overhead.
> No "parent folder"...
Two-finger click to folder name on the finder. The path will be revealed as a reverse-ordered stack. Or just press back. It's parent folder 99% of the time.
Finder can do that too, but it doesn't show you it can do that. You have to know. I recently got a Macbook from work, partially because a Mac-fan coworker had been bugging me to switch from Windows to Mac. At some point I was showing something and typed a path straight into Finder, which blew his mind! He'd been using Macs for ages, and he just wasn't aware that Finder could do that. He learned something useful and new, but it's also quite telling that even some experienced Mac users aren't aware of the existence of such a vital feature.
One of the problems addressing some of the issues you raised Is that you are not really explaining what you want to do. All you do is complain why Mac doesn’t work exactly like windows. Instead you should figure out what you want to do and explore and learn how that is accomplished on a Mac.
> - There's no (?) way to keep everything consistently sorted and aligned
Press CMD-J to open up the visual option, you can auto group and sort, snap to grid (unsorted), choose a default view.
> - No "parent folder"...
You can either press CMD-UpArrow or just right click on the title bar to see all the folders above it.
> It has less cool features (no tabs for instance) but is so much better to actually use.
Windows Explorer is also missing column view, which is a much faster way to navigate the file system completely with the keyboard. I'm often frustrated in Windows Explorer just trying to move around directories.
CMD+C then CMD+ALT+V
I think of it not as copy-paste vs cut-paste but mark-copy vs mark-move.
It makes it consistent with drag and drop where alt is the modifier for copy vs move (the default depending on whether it's same disk vs another one)
Cmd-opt-V will move the previously copied folder/file. I find this behavior superior to having to decide whether to cut/copy a file to select it. Instead, you choose the operation when it is time to actually move or copy. You can also copy a file to multiple locations in combination with a move.
Cmd-up moves to the parent folder.
You have lots of sort and aligning options that are accessible in keyboard shortcuts. Column browser doesn’t have a good windows equivalent for example. Alt or double clicking the bottom bar adjusts the width of all panes or auto adjusts the selected one. So I’m never in a situation where some file name is cut off even in very deep hierarchies.
- There's no (?) way to keep everything consistently sorted and aligned Need more info here, but I dont notice a problem with sorting by name type modified or any other column header just like windows explorer?
I use a nice little app called New File Menu to do that. It supports a bunch of defaults & whatever other templates you want to create. $2 on the Mac App Store. I’m just a happy user.
App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/new-file-menu/id1064959555?ls=...
Website: https://langui.net/new-file-menu/
Depends on what you mean by easy. There's 2 (two) things you need to do to make this easier:
1. Enable New Terminal Tab at Folder service in Finder (goto Finder/Services/Services Preferences.../Files and Folders).
2. Make sure the Path Bar is visible in Finder (it's on the View Menu)
Now right-click the path in the Path Bar where you want to create the folder, select and click the New Terminal Tab at Folder and then touch whatever empty file you want created. Close the terminal window/tab.
Done!
I rarely need to create a new, empty file - but when I do this is how I do it!
Create it for what? To use to launch the app that handles it? Just open the respective app and save an empty or unedited file.
>- There's no easy way to cut a file/folder (Cmd-x doesn't work)
Copy as regularly (Cmd-C), and use Option-Cmd-V to move the file where you want to.
>- There's no (?) way to keep everything consistently sorted and aligned
Not sure what you mean.
>- Tags are useless and just take up space for nothing
They're useful if you use them. Many people do use them. What exactly would you do with that "space" anyway? It's not like they take space in your apartment. It's a UI element which you can use or not use.
>- No "parent folder"...
Cmd+up arrow or Go -> Enclosing Folder.
Looks like all of the complains are basically "they're not where they was on Windows".
(or as others have already said, Command-UpArrow to open the parent folder)
You don't need cut for files, you either want to duplicate the file or move it. For moving you copy it (cmd-c) and then move with cmd-opt-v.
Cut doesn't really make sense for files. With text you cut out the text into a clipboard. Where does the file go when you cut it? Nowhere. There is no place where you can see that you had already cut a file but it's waiting for you to make a mistake and move it somewhere by accident.
Mac has a better duplicate/move UX paradigm and more appropriate for files & folders.
And yes you can cut. Cmd-C, Cmd-Opt-V.
And yes, you can sort and align. Just go to the View menu.
And yes, there's a way to go the parent folder. SEVERAL:
- Go -> Enclosing Folder
- Cmd-Up
- Right click on the window title and choose any enclosing folder from the tree
- Show the Path Bar and double click any enclosing folder from the tree
I don't think you've ever actually used a Mac.
I use all three major desktop OSes regularly now, and overall Windows just feels like the most user-friendly and straightforward, though of course it too has issues (e.g. various settings/control panel options being randomly split between new style and old style systems).
Oh, and Linux seems to be by far the least stable. I have apps freezing the whole damn computer way more often there than the other two.
I'm not sure Windows is such a great example in the conversation about file systems, what with its "collections" and abstract hierarchy which is sometimes upside down and somewhat – but not fully! – circular.
Open an explorer window, click on your name under "quick access". You're in the home directory. You also have a "Desktop" folder there. Go in there. You see your desktop files. So far so good.
Now go back to your user folder and click "up". You're now in "desktop". What?! Only now, there's other stuff in there. How many desktops are there?!
Now go back to your user folder, choose any folder. Click on the address bar. C:\users\your_name\your_folder. Click twice "up", you expect to be in C:\users, right? Ha!
Now type C:\users\your_name\your_folder, or browse through the C:\ in the left pane. Click the address bar and compare with earlier. Now click up. Very intuitive. Depending on how you got somewhere, your apparent hierarchy is not the same.
Back to the "quick collection" thing, there's a desktop entry there. Click it. Looks like the first desktop folder, so no surprise here, right?. Click up. You end up in "my computer"!
Now, do the same operations in Finder. How many different desktops are there? Not sure how Windows is more logical or user-friendly.
I side with the other poster who said that most "common users" just don't understand file systems, and so they put everything on the desktop because it doesn't go away.
I have left firefox overnight and had a tab decide it would like to eat all my memory.
Linux does have an oom killer to deal with out of memory situations but it will kick in halfway to the heat death of the universe and you will reboot first.
Oom looks just like a crash the UI is frozen however if the offender is killed everything actually is working.
The solution is a userspace oom daemon like earlyoom that kicks in before you actually run entirely out of memory and knows not to kill things like X.
Distributions ought to ship with it.
I understand the reasoning for protecting the end user, but like UAC in Windows, or Developer Mode options in Android, you should be able to disable these protections. If I want to run a binary, I want to run that binary.
I go back to Windows occasionally and I still hate every single thing about it. The tiles, the file system, the telemetry, the intrusive updates that guarantee I'll have to wait for an undefined time before I can get some work done, the driver lottery (still...) And many more.
MacOS is more of a workable OS with some really stupid warts. They should have been fixed years ago, but they probably won't be, ever.
Finder is particularly bad, and has needed a complete overhaul for at least a decade.
But Apple's other apps are heading in an MS-ish direction - which is more controlling and constraining, and less intuitive and transparent. It really shouldn't be as hard as it is to export photos from Photos, and the screen grabber should just allow saving to any file location instead of getting in the way with some random-ish defaults, one of which can be customised, if only you remember you need to.
This all reeks of second-rate middle management - untalented PMs trying to justify their existence with poorly-designed updates while more serious issues go unaddressed.
Apple are a weird company. When they're in the zone they can hit it out of the park, like with the M1. But - ironically - desktop UI design is not the model it could be. If MacOS 11 ever happens (not holding my breath...) it would be just as likely to be a step backwards as forwards.
1) Edit the toolbar and add "Path" dropdown
2) View menu -> Show path bar
3) Cmd + up/down arrows to navigate up and down the path hierarchy
But of course, when talking about how intuitive Macs are, having all that hidden by default doesn't exactly make it easy to understand where you are in the filesystem. It feels a bit like the Mac side of their desire to just not have a user visible filesystem on the iPad, which thankfully they've given up on it because shooting documents back and forth between apps via Share buttons was terrible.
Kind of ironic considering all the research Apple did that led to the spatial finder.
How often is that? What hardware do you run it on? What distro do you use?
The problem with these features is that people have varying needs and don’t understand or respect what they are! Filing is a great example, everyone keeps files, but most people have no organization. That’s why once upon a time companies hired people to file things. It’s also why Apple tried to kill the file metaphor for iOS.
MacOS has the wacky finder UI, but the search is best in class and once people discover it, they just go away and do their thing.
Cmd-click on the folder in the Finder window title, and go up as far as you want?
I'm not sure what you're doing wrong here - when I click the Finder icon it shows me the top Finder window, or opens a new one if there is no window. Is this not what it does for you?
macOS will do its thing when you click the dock icon and bring the window to the front, but it can be hard to notice because only a sliver of the window will actually be visible.
Arguably, it's intuitive:
* If you know what you are doing, you can go to the menu bar or click on the icon again.
* If you don't know know what you are doing, the obvious action is to blame yourself and click the icon again, which does open a window (to the Recents folder). So it's gaslighting a little, but it is intuitive.
One of my favorites just happened yesterday with finder - I was trying to figure out how to rename a file, well the usual fx keys aren't doing it so the common process was to go to the toolbar context menu where hotkey is indicated next to the action's text. Rename for some reason had no hotkey indication! [1] so naturally I'm thinking it's somehow not bounded, google around for hotkey editing etc just to findout it's the least obvious key: return.
When you say the 'usual' function keys... do you really mean some other system's function keys? Why would you expect macOS to use the same function keys as a different system? There's no standards body for these things.
But I would argue F2 is less obvious. It's only obvious if you learned it at some point or if you were there when F2 was chosen. Enter is at least a normal text editing key for day to day typing, and it's already the bookend key to finish typing a new name.
Now I've used windows for a decade, and I still overall dislike it. But that doesn't mean these things are done "wrong" they are just done differently and not how I'd expect.
Windows doesn't place the light switches where I'm accustomed to. For example hy are there so many menus bars on each window. It's simpler to always know where the menu is at the top and it creates less screen clutter. Why does windows quit a program when close the document. If I wanted to quit it, I would have quit it. I just wanted a new document. These are just a few of the things that aren't bad but just aren't the philosophy I'd come to expect. Control-alt-delete to log in? Why?! I can't hit that one handed easily! Good thing I have two hands. And yeah bash or shell is kinda mess, but powershell is a verbose and has bureaucratic feel. It's just not my cup of tea but that doesn't mean it's wrong.
For example: an experienced user is more likely to notice that closing a window in macOS backgrounds the app, and more likely to figure out how to fully exit the app process completely (either via Cmd+Q or menu>Quit). Given that, an experienced user is less likely to grow accustomed to all of their apps being in a backgrounded state, and find Finders forced background state unusual/exceptional.
In contrast, an inexperienced computer user will likely leave all apps they use open all the time (possibly not realising they're running) and as such grow more quickly accustomed to having to Option+N for everything (not just Finder).
There's a lot of such examples in macOS.
There are two kinds of novice users:
* Leave all apps and windows open forever * Close everything as soon as context switches, avoiding with multitasking.
You can also blend the two, but closing all windows you leave, but leave open forever when the system forces a switch.
> grow more quickly accustomed to having to Option+N
Novice users don't know what Option+N is. The Mac was always designed to be used without hotkeys.
That's convergent evolution. The UIs started off very different. MacOS's current set of UI abstractions was mostly enshrined in an era when its competitor was Windows 3.1.
> Why is it that when I click Finder, nothing actually opens?
I was going to give a few justifications for this, but I just tested it, and clicking on the Finder icon in the Dock does open a new Finder window for me. (In Big Sur. This definitely wasn't always the case; I'm not certain when it changed.)
But those justifications, for the long period where it didn't, are still kind of interesting/relevant:
1. the Desktop is a Finder window. IIRC, on some versions of macOS, using a switcher to focus the Finder would — if you don't have any open Finder windows — focus the desktop (insofar as keyboard navigation goes.)
2. You can do useful things with the Finder without any windows open. IIRC, Apple's HIG only recommends creating a new window in response to a click on the app's icon (and or having a Cmd-0 accelerator), if the app is useless without having a window open. But the Finder has a bunch of menu-items in the "Go" menu (with keyboard accelerators) to open windows showing specific locations, or to open dialogs for connecting to networks, etc. It'd be annoying if you wanted to open one of these, but focusing the Finder always opened a default window you had to get rid of first. I personally often focus the Finder and then press Cmd+K to mount an SMB share on my NAS, then immediately close the resulting window, because the point was to get it mounted for command-line use.
I agree that there's a lot of counter intuitive if not worse UI ideas.
But it's surrounded by tons of superb tricks. Remember the live document preview years ago ?
Also the GUI guidelines made the system visually more appealing.
The compositor is also weird, I cannot really explain but when I use a Mac I don't see layers.. I don't feel like i'm clicking on a button, then an event is sent, then some logic occurs.. maybe it's only subjective bias (can't be 100%) but it feels more direct. Maybe they tailored the graphical subsystem / compositor to ensure extremely low latency I can't say.. but, even after using countless machines and countless desktop environments.. the first time I used a mac I felt something very different. Not better .. but deeply different.
It's a holdover from two different earlier eras.
First, you have everything up to about 1998, which covers MacOS Classic through Mac OS 8, and Windows up through Win98. At the beginning of this period, when "PC" meant MS-DOS, the usability difference was obviously stark. But even in GUI era of PCs, System 7 compared favorably with Windows 3.1, and Mac OS 8 compared favorably with Windows 95.
Then Windows 98 and Mac OS 9 came out, and I'd say that things at least evened up. All else being equal, OS 9's GUI was still simpler and more intuitive, to my taste, but all else was not equal. Windows 9x had memory protection and pre-emptive multitasking, and Mac OS Classic didn't, and there were issues with system extensions and stability in Mac OS that I personally felt were more troublesome than Windows's famous BSOD problem during that era. This opinion could be a product of my experience working tech support at the time. BSOD was usually fixed by cursing profusely while rebooting. System extension conflicts were fixed at great physical and emotional cost to the person doing the fixing.
So I'd say Windows was generally easier to use than Macs for a while, until OS X eventually came into its own. It's harder to place a start time on this, but let's say 2002ish, with the release of Jaguar. And then there's been a sort of long slow decline as they clutter up the GUI, while at the same time Microsoft was putting serious work into cleaning things up. I'm not sure if the switch happened during the Windows 7 era or the Windows 10 era, but yeah, I'd definitely say I find Windows easier to use nowadays.
Personally, the main thing keeping me on Macs nowadays is frankly just the touchpad, to which I seem to be addicted.
Whether renaming as “enter” is a good shortcut or not, I think the navigation ones are perfectly reasonable in that if you learn one of them, it’s opposite is easily guessed.
Because you're always in an app in macOS, Cmd+O is the more consistent choice: every app you're in will use Cmd+O for "open." In Finder, what you're opening is apps or files, so it works.
Return for rename makes sense in a more subtle way.
Besides opening a file, there are two "main" actions you'll use in Finder: renaming files, and quick-playing files. In a dialogue box, you'll either use Return or Spacebar (the former for triggering the highlighted button, the latter for another button you highlight with the Tab key).
Consider again the consistency-across-apps argument. "Rename" isn't a super common command in all kinds of apps (a DAW will allow you to rename tracks, but that idea doesn't really apply to a text editor or IDE), so using Cmd+R in Finder for "rename" isn't necessarily great for consistency, considering that apps in general will almost surely bind something to Cmd+R ("run" or something like that).
Due to the aforementioned dialogue box pattern, Spacebar or Return are the obvious choices for rename, simply by virtue of being used so much.
Spacebar technically makes more sense because quick-play is adjacent to opening a file, but the ergonomics of "Spacebar = play" across so much media makes it the obvious choice for that. So, Return it is.
cut. There does not seem to be a way to cut and paste a file/folder. The best I could figure out is to drag the icons, hold down the finger, and move the cursor to the desired folder on the sidebar (or another window) and release the finger. This is either extremely difficult to pull of, or I am less dexterous than I think I am.
Why not have cut as an option in the drop down menu? I really can't figure this one out. What UX mantra suggests this.
Also, dragging files around is also a difficult feat to overcome. You either press down too hard (end up opening all selected files in their target applications -- RIP ram, let's restart the computer), or too gently and nothing happens.
I remember this command was I implemented a few years back and I think it was to reduce chances of unpasted files from disappearing or something.
In fact, opening any menu and pressing option reveals many secondary functions.
If you right click to open the context menu, and press OPT, you'll even see the "paste item" option turn into "move item".
It's 100% the wrong way to do it. Maddeningly wrong. In a world where CTRL-X hadn't existed for decades, and Apple's way of doing it was the norm, if someone came along and "invented" CTRL-X for the cut command, it would be universally recognized as an improvement.
Not cutting files is deliberate, I think. What should the OS do if you cut files, and then don't paste them and cut something else? Put them back, put them in the Trash?
A sibling comment pointed out that there's a magic incantation for "paste and delete", but clearly the Mac way to do it is drag and drop.
Which used to be dead easy, and now I'm lucky if I get it the first time.
that's one thing when it's copied text from some web page, but quite another when it's a file or folder.
I think this sentiment largely comes from the era when Microsoft Windows XP was the dominant Windows flavor and also the ME/Vista debacles.
The article isn’t wrong though, so things do seem a bit weird if you don’t know they work. MacOS is far from perfect, it is however much more consistent than Windows.
As to ease of use...
MacOS is not easier to learn - it has just as many quirks as windows, except in different places.
However, I have found it much more consistent than any other desktop. The menubar is one example - always there in the same place, with all the File, Edit, etc menus as expected. Keys are consistent (mostly)
consistency is the key.
2. Right-click on the folder name in a Finder window to see and go up the folder hierarchy.
3. Make sure Finder is active and go to the View menu and select Show Path Bar.
4. I'm not sure what you're talking about with Sort View here, but Windows works the same as macOS and on both platforms, you can have it both ways.
As a long-time Mac, Windows, and Linux user... I'll say that there are plenty of random broken things on the Mac, but there are also a few nice things that work very consistently on the Mac, but you'd never think to try them because you're used to them not working on Linux or Windows. So if you have been using Linux or Windows a long time, you will probably find macOS frustrating, just for the reason that it is different from what you are used to, and not because there are fundamental flaws with macOS or Windows.
Just an example of a couple simple things that are easy on a Mac, but hard on Linux/Windows: saving a file to a specific location. Let's say you have a Finder window open, and an unsaved document open in an application, and you want to save the open document to the folder that's open in the Finder.
1. You could go to the app and hit save, bringing up the save dialog, and then drag the folder (perhaps from the icon in the title bar) into the save dialog. This moves the save dialog to point to that folder.
2. You could save the file somewhere else, and drag the file (perhaps from the icon in the title bar) into the folder.
3. You could save the file on the desktop, and then move it into the desired folder.
I have not really ever figured out a nice way to do this on Windows. I often end up having to navigate through save dialogs on Linux and Windows and it seems unnecessary. Windows certainly doesn't let you move files that are open, which is a frustrating restriction when you run into it.
> Why is it that when I click Finder, nothing actually opens?
It brings Finder forward, and opens a new window if there are no Finder windows open, which is the same behavior as other Mac apps.
> Don't even get me started on the sort options. What kind of file manager applies a Sort view to every single directory, instead of the one you actually set the Sort view to?
Command J lets you set the view options, it's per-directory and includes sorting & grouping. Per-directory options don't do anything in column view. I'm not sure what you're doing, so I don't know what's missing. I switched to column view in the early 2000s and only occasionally switch to list view when I need to sort a massive folder by file sizes (which, unfortunately, requires command-J and checking "calculate all sizes", which is not something you'd know to look for).
In RiscOS, drag-n-drop saving was the norm. You were not presented with a dialog, just an icon you could drag wherever you wanted the file to go. To me, this seems like a much more logical way to work with the desktop folder/file metaphor.
I don't think drag and drop is the most intuitive, but it's way worse with Windows. I think there are at least four iterations of those Open/Save windows (dating to Windows 95).
A tool called Direct Folders [1] adds a recent menu that shows all open folders and revenge, making those windows slightly more usable
You can do this in Windows. Save the file, open the save dialog again, drag the file icon to the Explorer window with the folder you want open. Hold shift to toggle copy/move.
Whoever sets the standard behavior of such an important operation as destructive seriously knows nothing about UI.
IMHO, it's mainly holdover from when Windows was DOS. For a very long time using a Mac was kind of like a religion (they even had explicit evangelists), and many people who used Macs were irrationally attached to the platform. One of the main tenets of the faith was that Macs were much easier to use than PCs (because GUI and no autoexec.bat and IRQ assignment, etc). I think that meme has gotten stuck in popular consciousness, even though Windows has had literally 30+ years to catch up. Also, especially since the OS X era, I think the usability of Macs has stagnated or even regressed in many ways.
It might simply be the fact that I've never used a mac as a primary device. But, clicks, navigating the explorer and settings menus seem to be a lot simpler on windows. It also seems to be almost malicious in punishing you for using something that isn't a 1st party application.
The only other time a software has made me feel so incompetent is shitty TV UIs and Snapchat.
I can see why it is loved by people deeply invested in the walled garden and programmers who get a happy marriage of Linux and mature consumer OS. But, I would find it hard to recommend a macbook to someone who didn't lie in those 2 camps.
I used Mac OS 7 and 8 extensively back in the day, and despite some UI similarities it was a totally different experience from Windows machines. The computers had totally different ports (parallel and ps/2 vs proprietary mac connectors), and a different set of software (Clarisworks vs Word Perfect). There were even developers who made games just for Macs like Ambrosia Software.
Nowadays, you can basically use the same software (Chrome, Slack, VSCode, Steam) on Windows, Mac, or Linux. And can share a USB-C hub between a Macbook and a Dell.
Clicking Finder will open a new Finder window if none was created thus far, or bring up a minimized window.
>Don't even get me started on the sort options. What kind of file manager applies a Sort view to every single directory, instead of the one you actually set the Sort view to?
Not sure what you mean. If I click to select a sort view, it's applied to the directory I'm looking at.
Microsoft needs to stop fucking with working UIs. Metro (or whatever they call it now) is a worthless eyesore full of ads and distracting rotating, flipping, bouncing UI elements. Get out of my face and let me do my work.
Finder is bizarre in that it hasn't really changed much at all in 20+ years.
The stock file manager in Fedora, Pop!_OS and Ubuntu do this. And it's great, so you don't have to make all your folders the same.
Not sure about the Finder Window though.
Perhaps this was changed now? Big Sur does open a new window for me.
spacebar to preview.
select multiple items to preview them all.
It's....more or less unchanged. As well as this crazy installer thing, there's quite a bit about Macs that just seems off.. My list of "things that don't seem right" as a long term Windows/ChromeOS user
- Window snapping isn't built in outside of fullscreen mode (seriously?!)
- Sleeping the mac does not sleep the mac, it wakes up at all sorts of times
- Every time the OS updates, I have to go through a setup process again, trying to upsell me on iCloud drive. Nothing updates as nicely as ChromeOS but I'd hope for at least a reboot and back to where I left off
- TouchID for login works....but not often enough - it constantly pesters me for a password
- Pressing enter renames a file rather than opens it. What?
- The Finder is either named ironically or I'm not getting it - file paths are obscured, seeing file details is hidden behind a dialog.
We bought the M1 because ChromeOS didn't like our old Samsung printer and the VPN software my partner uses and Google had killed the update life for it for...reasons. In an expensive lesson of "whoops", the Mac doesn't like the printer either.
A lot of this is me getting back into it and getting used to things, but I sort of miss ChromeOS.
In Apple's defence, the hardware is amazing and the bluetooth is fantastic. Could have put a port on either side to make charging nicer though.
You can just install Magnet. It's a little unobtrusive app which can do neat things with windows.
> Sleeping the mac does not sleep the mac, it wakes up at all sorts of times
Power Nap is useful. When I open my Mac in the morning everything is updated from mail to apps. It doesn't turn on fans on older Macs for smaller tasks too. You can turn it off.
> Every time the OS updates, I have to go through a setup process again, trying to upsell me on iCloud drive. Nothing updates as nicely as ChromeOS but I'd hope for at least a reboot and back to where I left off
I don't experience this except once-in-a-year release updates. Even in that case OS state including all the applications' state is restored for the last 6-7 years or so.
> TouchID for login works....but not often enough - it constantly pesters me for a password
Unless Touch-ID is disabled for something (long sleep, location change, reboot, etc.) It never failed to recognize my finger.
> Pressing enter renames a file rather than opens it. What?
This is a bit backwards at first, but when considered, it's logical. command+down enters the folders and files (and opens them in the corresponding application).
> The Finder is either named ironically or I'm not getting it - file paths are obscured, seeing file details is hidden behind a dialog.
Finder is neither advanced nor explicit like KDE's dolphin or a more advanced file manager like forklift, but it's hidden features are plenty. Also, the search engine (Spotlight) can find everything, so in fact Finder really finds. Just let it search.
As a Linux and Mac user, Windows feels off for a very long time for me. Mac feels more natural and Linux most flexible and verbose. At the end of the day, macOS has the most efficient use of space and allows deep productivity with less friction. This is my experience after using both for more than 15 years.
Moreover, I've found that trackpad gestures of MacBooks neatly integrate into daily routine and they disappear by becoming instinct. This is one of the best sides of apple ecosystem. One can use the device without thinking about using it. It provides enormous speed gains.
Personally, I like that macOS is more or less unchanged. It’s familiar, and I don’t have to worry about big sweeping changes like Windows 8 or Gnome 3 and Gnome 40.
For everything else there’s usually a tiny utility app you can install the gives you the functionality and runs in the background using very little resources.
View -> Show Path Bar and Show Preview
This can be improved a bit by forcing the Mac to "hibernate" instead of suspend when you put it to sleep:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/51729
By default, it would hibernate only after some time.
You can also disable the "Power Nap" checkbox on Settings > Battery.
EDIT: Typo
Press space instead... mostly will "open" the file (preview it).
This sure used to work.
My 16-inch MacBook Pro (as in, the new keyboard model) just does not want to stay asleep if the screen is open. Even if I put it in Do Not Disturb mode, notifications (like my nightly reminder to take my melatonin) wake it up, seemingly no matter what option I toggle.
As if that's a major future? (seriously?!)
>- Sleeping the mac does not sleep the mac, it wakes up at all sorts of times
It sleeps just fine for me, across half a dozen of Macs over 2 decades.
>- TouchID for login works....but not often enough - it constantly pesters me for a password
Like the first time after a boot/login?
>- Pressing enter renames a file rather than opens it. What?
What what?
>- The Finder is either named ironically or I'm not getting it - file paths are obscured, seeing file details is hidden behind a dialog.
And most people care about paths (as opposed to navigating to folders they created or searching for files) because?
The rest can always enabled to show the paths.
>We bought the M1 because ChromeOS didn't like our old Samsung printer and the VPN software my partner uses.
Maybe just buy a different printer instead of a new computer?
A lot of the complaints are "it's not what some other OS does".
1) Users don't deal with external storage nearly as much anymore, so the "disk image" paradigm feels out of place. Before the Internet, it was more common to insert a floppy disk, drag the application from the disk to the hard drive, and then eject it again. Users were accustomed to opening and ejecting disks based on the icons on the desktop, so when disk images started to be a thing, it worked exactly like floppies did.
2) Users think of applications that have to be explicitly installed, rather than just copied, like any other kind of file.
The second one is the really surprising one: when we think of how to get applications onto our computers these days, the word is "install". You need to install a program before you can start using it. On Windows, you ran an installer program. On Linux, you ran a command. How else can you do it?
But on Classic Mac, an application was just a special kind of file, which you could drag, drop, and manipulate just like any other kind of file.
It didn't even need to be in the Applications folder! You could put it in a subdirectory, you could put it on the Desktop, you could put it wherever you liked, and it would work just the same. I think it's a darn shame that this isn't a guarantee anymore. The other day, I tried putting all of the Microsoft Office applications into /Applications/Office instead of just in /Applications, and the next time the Office updater ran, it installed into /Applications, even though that's not where the apps lived, so now I had two copies of everything. Bleh.
Why is this so much better than running a program or running a command? Well, think about how you would uninstall a program. On Windows, you'd have to run an uninstaller or find the entry in Add/Remove programs; on Linux, you'd have to run a different command. In both cases, you'd have to do something you hadn't done before — you have to know how to do something before you can do it. On Classic Mac OS, you can just delete the application by dragging it to the Trash — something you already know how to do.
Anyway, I'm not defending this approach to installing applications. But I do think it made sense at the time, and the computing landscape changed around it.
Another major change is that the App Store is now the default way for 99% of users to download and install software. Pre-App Store (say, in the Tiger-Snow Leopard days), Mac users with even limited experience knew the `Mount DMG → Drag to Applications` ritual. At the time, it was one of the two primary ways of installing Mac software, the other being using Package Installer to run .pkg installations.
As a Certified Technical Consultant in those days, I found that almost everyone was able to do the Package Manager method; the DMG method created a lot of chaos for about 50% of people. You'd find people running Firefox or Chrome from the DMG, which they'd leave mounted and visible on their desktops in perpetuity.
As a Windows switcher (in 2006) I always felt that the drag-and-drop model was really elegant, but it was unintuitive because, to your point, I had been exposed to the installation model for so long.
Changes to system config won't be rolled back and other files won't be cleaned up.
That's why on Mac OS you sometimes have to get an uninstaller, which sucks because now you have an inconsistency.
It is even worse than that, many applications these days cannot even be installed anywhere other than the default location! At least on Windows you used to be able to do that with a high degree of reliability.
I think the original Mac did it right and everyone else who didn't do the same thing (RiscOS, NeXT kinda) is doing it completely wrong. Which is why I'm a fan of AppImage when I have to use Linux Desktop and "portable" applications when I use Windows. I don't use modern MacOS.
I wrote more about it here: https://voussoir.net/writing/master_of_my_domain
The two biggest issues she had was:
1) finder not easily acting as an image viewer. Eg, she had an SD card from her camera, and wanted to quickly scan through the photos and decide what to keep and what to throw away. The problem was that it took a while to find a view where finder showed images ( think it was called "icon view") and once we found that, it took a while to expose a hidden ui element that we could use to make the images larger.
2) "open file" dialog boxes don't show your home directory by default. She'd have a file in /Users/name/folder and the open file dialog would only show Documents, Pictures, etc, and not her home directory. I finally helped her make symlinks from folders that the file dialog deigned to show her to where she really wanted to go. But why is there no "home" view?
btw for looking through photos I find gallery view to be more convenient.
2) Agreed, this is silly. This is likely fixed by one of the items in this very long list of power-user tweaks: https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.macos
The problem with the mac is that much has been done on top of older patterns, etc....
If you're a hardcore user though, I'd take Mac over windows or linux any day.
UI features don't just need to work well, they also need to be discoverable, or they might as well not exist. The old school Apple was good at that stuff. Recent decades, not so much.
PS Thanks for teaching me this trick!
Just press a random key on the keyboard? How exactly is that intuitive?
Keyboard shortcuts are the absolute worst for discoverability.
Every folder in icon view has a slider at the bottom for exactly this purpose.
2. The home directory usually isn't that useful or interesting to navigate to in practice. I rarely want to go there in my own usage. In finder, if you drag a folder to the sidebar, it will appear in all open dialogs which is handy for frequently used folders wherever they might be (I think I had to do this manually when I installed Sync on my computers but Dropbox did it of its own volition)
I'd argue that removing the home directory by default results in more confusion (as I've encountered multiple times now when helping others switch to macOS).
In Finder, you can go to _View > as Icons_ (or simply ⌘+1).
Then you can use ⌘ +/- (command plus/minus) to zoom in and out, respectively.
2) home folder is listed on the Sidebar by default (its name is the user short name, ie its actual name). If that is not there for some reason, go to Finder -> Preferences -> Sidebar.
Definitely not on by default, at least on Big Sur. I had to Google how to get to it.
Disk images were the mac equivalent of a compressed folder, e.g. zip. And I find the "compressedd virtual usb-stick" idea a lot more intuitive than the whole "we cram files into other files and loose all metadata" shenanigans.
Apps used to be simple files in the finest unix tradition. No weird installer that does who knows what, no wizards, no special system files, no uninstaller.
Want to take your app from one computer to another? Just send the file.
App stores, installer, and the whole sandboxing gunk, is a million times more complex and unintuitive.
The author seems to be oblivious to the simplicity of the old ways, and thus suspects some hidden magic going on in loading the disk image.
Loading the disk image doesn't do "something" and then displays an IKEA esque installer window. The window is literally a finder window with hidden borders.
The idea was: "If a user can drag and drop files, they can install apps."
The workflow described is composed of several orthogonal concepts that each on their own are super intuitive, or at least were, when unix philosophy, file system usage and user empowerment were still at the core of Mac Os values.
Still, I think it's not that the Mac is not that intuitive any more, it's that Windows has more or less caught up.
Windows makes it pretty easy with the one "add or remove programs" section of the control panel.
Deleting an app folder on MacOS is no less intuitive than right-clicking an app in windows and choosing Uninstall.
Certainly in most OSs (I think), there is a good chance that more got installed than just a single folder so anyone who isn't exclusively on a Mac is going to think that deleting a folder is asking for trouble.
I like my MacBook mainly because of the screen, and a little bit because of the touchpad. Those are both hardware considerations rather than OS.
In terms of using it, I have a terminal on shortcut, which I also do on my backup Linux machine. If I had a Windows as my daily machine I think I'd do the same. In terms of installed apps, all the IDEs are on all platforms, and all chat programs are on all platforms. Just about everything else is in a browser. So it hardly matters too much what you pick.
It wasn't in the start menu like in every other Windows version before and after. No, to do that you needed to swipe from the right side of the screen for some sort of a system sidebar to appear (I believe it was called "charms"). I've used the cmd command I was familiar with for months (shutdown -s -t 0) before finally deciding to consult with a search engine, and oh boy, was I pissed when I found out where it was.
Super glad I never have to touch Windows to do my work now.
Not to mention it's not even consistent -- sometimes you drag to Applications, sometimes you double-click a .pkg file, sometimes you go to the App Store.
The other thing, of course, being an application open without any windows but a menubar present. Start QuickTime and... nothing happens except for the menubar changing, which is incredibly easy not to notice at all. Even worse, some apps automatically close when closing the last window (e.g. System Preferences) while others don't (most other apps).
The installation one should be easy to Apple to fix -- when you double-click a .dmg, auto-detect if it contains an .app or .pkg, and just automagically expand, mount, copy or run, unmount, delete expanded file and leave just the original .dmg behind (perhaps asking if you want to delete that too). (Also, macOS needs a centralized place for uninstalling apps as well, particularly .pkg ones.)
The menubar one is trickier. But it doesn't seem unreasonable to either expect an application to quit when closing its main window (e.g. Activity Monitor should follow System Preferences in this), or else for document-centric apps, to open a standardized "start" window with options for types of new documents, a list of recent documents, etc. when all document windows are closed (e.g. what TextEdit and QuickTime could do).
You can also drag into locations that are not /Applications
99% of people just want to install or uninstall with a click, which is why I wish Finder made that the default workflow.
I suppose it's not an issue with Finder specifically, but the fact that macOS defaults to saving your screenshots to Desktop is just terrible. At one point I had hundreds of screenshots on my "Desktop" before I got around to changing the screenshot folder to `~/screenshots`.
I never actually bothered to learn how to use the macOS UI, I went straight from being a Windows user to using zsh for anything that wasn't typing code (never quite got into using vim or emacs as a daily driver). I've become one of those guys who complains when an application doesn't have a CLI. I don't even own a mouse.
The only great thing about the macOS UI is Spotlight, and I use it solely for launching applications, and for adding numbers together.
In fairness, I don't think macOS is any better or worse than Windows (or Gnome, KDE, et al). I just think that if you're sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours a day, a mouse is a waste of time.
To be fair, 4 hours is not a lot of time to learn a new OS :)
For a grand total of 4 hours?
I mean, now they do show a convenient "eject" symbol next to the name of the remove-able drive on the Finder, but the "drag to trash" thing still work, and it always surprises people, they always assume it means you want to delete all files in a disk, not that you want to eject the disk.
Why is copying a file such a hard thing to do? Why is updating the iPad something my mother would have to think about? This is the UX I'd expect from some cheap Samsung tablet, yet I'm sure that with a Samsung tablet, copying a file onto a device over USB wouldn't be an issue.
The best thing you could do is looking for a tutorial to do that, and also a software to control that iPad remotely, so you don't have to videocall your mother to give her instructions.
If it’s just pdfs I would probably email them though
The first time using it about 10 years ago was confusing:
Single button mouse --> no instructions, can't find out how to right click
Double click on window --> fullscreen; uh... move mouse around edges to find how to get back to other windows
Drag window to side of the screen to split window --> nothing; search the application menu --> nothing; Cmd+Right? --> nothing; oook, I have to actually resize everything manually
Try to install software from app store:
- you must login --> failed (server was down that day) - search "how to install XYZ on mac" --> download .dmg and follow these steps
"Natural scrolling" still confuses me everytime I touch one even after a whole week it didn't feel "natural". Especially diagonal scrolls felt off; does moving your 2 fingers right scroll left or right?
I remember trying to help out a friend download music on her iphone to play it there. We finally had to download it on the mac, import it into itunes and sync the iphone with it. No idea if things are better.
More recently, video calling was quite the experience. The browser couldn't access the camera, so a popup came up and I had to restart the browser. Then I wanted to share my screen, another popup came up follow by another restart. Finally, I wanted to share audio from a short clip being played, well that isn't in mac so some trial version of something had to be downloaded and I never actually got it to work.
I can’t stand OSX, but I’m pretty proficient. I think the right click is a symptom of you being so used to Windows or linux.
The average user probably never needs to right click. I bought my mum a MacBook Air and she’s never needed to right click in the 4-5 years of owning it.
I think it’s hidden for good reason. She also never asks if she should right or left click. Cos the mouse has 1 button.
As an example, reading the comments here, one person likes the sorting on macOS and another one despises it! Apparently, the term "intuitive" has a different meaning to different people. If we want to measure it we at least need to be on the same page about what it even means?
Honestly on the desktop since the days of Windows XP I've only seen regress. I'd even argue that XP was a regress in terms of UI vis-a-vis Windows 95. The only thing that improved is hardware handling (IRQ conflicts resolution etc)
I even ran across someone using Peppermint who had no idea they were even using Linux and had no problem using their computer to do the everyday things.
In my experience using Linux, especially the user friendly distros like Ubuntu, Mint, Peppermint, has been dead simple.
Being used to things on other systems get conflated with how intuitive it is.
Same with operation systems. For someone accustomed to Windows conventions things like lack of Ctrl-X on Mac for cutting files (so after Ctrl-V they are removed from old location) will be counter-intuitive. For people living in Mac ecosystem this is natural and does not affect their workflow (they are even epic discussions on the topic in the Internet).
My opinion goes deeper. There's a fundamental problem of aesthetics over functionality in Apple's designs. As I sat in front of my fresh workplace iMac, I had no idea how to turn the machine on. I looked in the back and didn't notice anything other than ports. I looked on the edge... the front... the back again... the front again... the screen...
Finally, I took my phone three levels higher in the building where I knew I got 2G signal. The power button on an dark grey iMac---I discovered after 15 minutes---is in a bottom corner of the back, essentially flush with the rest of the monitor body in the place a person is least likely to look.
The fact that multiple prominent websites exist with this information tells me all I need to know about whether Don Norman would state Apple makes intuitive products or not.
This is in part because of the simple WIMP [0] affordance, some humane design choices such as smiling faces and long filenames, and because a few applications were pre-eminent in their categories. Adobe Photoshop, for example. What people did with Apple computers, they knew how to do and what to expect.
The reputation for ease of use persisted for a long time after it became less of a differentiating characteristic. "Reputation" is sometimes perpetuated by marketing, not by a consensus of thoughtful users.
An OS such a ChromeOS can make a claim to "ease of use" by limiting the user's ability to cause damage.
These days and for some time, I use Linux (Debian), Android, ChromeOS, and M-Windows in that order of frequency. Linux gives me all the tools that I want, Android is mobile, ChromeOS is hard-to-break for restricted computing. For M-Windows, the typical driver requirements make it necessary.
Anyway, going back many, many years, I feel like there was a time where if you gave a mac or a windows computer to someone who had never used a computer before, they'd more easily understand OSX (or even going back to system 7) before they understood Windows.
The OSX experience today is pretty much the same as Windows though, and most people nowadays "learn computers" from their parents' OSX or Android devices, so, new users' intuition is nurtured by the time they get behind a mouse and keyboard.
In my view, the idea that Mac has been more usable and democratizing (for personal computing) is not backed by either market data or personal anecdote.
Pre-iOS, Windows was the most prevasive computing UX.
Once I was shown, it felt to me like I was supposed to pretend that the mouse has a scroll wheel and stroke the mouse where the scroll wheel would be. I didn't find it intuitive at all.
And with the internet and downloads, the process has not changed much except that the disk is replaced by a disk image.
With that mental image, the process seems straightforward enough. And the App store, of course, enables one-click installation as on smartphones.
So, I guess the impediments are that people don't know how to deal with disks and disk images, and the idea that one ought to "install" software, rather than just copying to where one wants it.
Instead of clicking "next-next-next" as you do on Windows, you have at least 3 competing versions of installing things.
* you have pkg installers (sometimes zipped, sometimes just .pkg files)
* you have those .app bundles that you need to manually move to Application (they are sometimes in a zip and sometimes in a DMG, further complicating things)
* you now also have an app store (that keeps requiring you to enter iCloud password - different from OS password - all the time for some weird reason)
And don't try to even uninstall anything.
* app store apps are uninstalled by ... holding them in Launchpad view, which is never needed anywhere else
* other apps... just are not un-installable, really.
"Just download the windows version"
'OK.. am I x86, x64 or ARM? I think it's Windows 10'
'Do I want the zip, the exe, the MSI or standalone?'
It's almost enough just to tell them to use the MS app store.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. That superior trackpad with foolproof palm rejection? Useless. She was inadvertently triggering weird gestures all the time. But it behaved normally when I tried it. Years back I was using a Thinkpad and I was the one with the problem, I had to unplug the trackpad to be able to type. Neither of us are idiots or spastics, so maybe it’s just about being unconsciously trained for one system or the other.
Also the Mac came with preinstalled bloatware.
I wish macOS would steal some ideas from Windows instead of iOS. And Windows really needs to stop stealing ideas from macOS, macOS hasn't been on the forefront of UX since at least the late 90's.
Is it intuitive to tie your shoelaces? No, you learn it. Your tie knot?
Is it intuitive learning to read and write? No, it takes years of practice.
Is it intuitive memorizing the presidents or the States of the US, the capitals and countries of the world? I had to learn to memorize much more effective as an adult in order to do things like learning Chinese script. As a kid nobody taught me how to memorize well and I did poorly. As an adult I look like a genius compared with others.
Is it intuitive all the Spanish compound verb tenses, or German people compound separated verbs at the end? No it is not, but Spaniards or Germans do it naturally and without effort.
I find the mac idiosyncrasies way easier to understand than the Microsoft Windows ones.
When I used Windows I used to to the things one way, like going to Control panel, devices or whatever, only for the next version to change it, or having Clippy then removing Clippy, for shutting down the computer do something, and now with surface is something different.
Most people comply about macs however because they have only used Windows for a long time, and they are used to it, like a German complying that compound verbs are together and he is used to ending the phrases with them,backwards.
Now it's a has-been reputation, based on ancient history attached to the brand name, which only brand loyalists blindly believe.
It's like believing that a Toyota is good because of hearing your dad reminisce about that good old 4Runner truck or Supra he had in 1988.
On Windows you download an installer, it does some magic (usually asking for administrator rights. scary) and then somehow the program is...somewhere. It's linked on the desktop, you can search for it, but it's unclear what happened.
On macOS Programs are essentially treated as files. You download them in their (admittedly weird) containers, drag them into your Applications folder (which is just convention, you could put them anywhere) and then they are there. Want to remove a Program again? Move it to the trash!
I love it, I think it's a very neat concept once you've understood it. Sadly Apple doesn't seem too keen anymore on people understanding it. The invention of the Mac App Store and the "Launchpad", followed by the removal of the Application folder from the Dock tried to abstract this neat feature away from people and naturally they don't understand it anymore.
But this is Apple, actively trying to make their system less intuitive for monetary gain and control over the device, and not an inherent flaw of macOS.
The downside of the legacy windows install process is that it's "scary", prone to accidentally installing malware etc. However, the process is straightforward. The intuitive thing (going to whatever you downloaded and opening the file i.e. the default action of enter or double click) and then answering only yes/ok will let you install the program. Exactly where it ends up is of course not obvious - but for most software you'll find it the "normal" way - you hit the start button and type something.
What baffles me about the MacOS one is that it's opaque. I expect the default action for a downloaded piece of software is to make me able to use it, as quickly as possible. I get how the whole drag dance works (barely) but other than for security-through-obscurity reasons I have no idea why it can't be the default action (e.g. if I double click a downloaded file, it would ask me if I meant to install the program)!
> drag them into your Applications folder (which is just convention, you could put them anywhere)
I think it's close to being great, and it certainly has more potential than the windows legacy system (which for obvious reasons can't be improved upon much!). But if I'm forced to google a few times before installing a downloaded container something is not intuitive. Meanwhile my kid can install any app, and some malware, on my windows machine. Just by guessing.
There are a million dumb things to quibble over with MacOS, but at least it's not Ubuntu.
I think Windows is more intuitive when you first sit down in front of it. You click an app and it opens, click it again and you get another one (usually). All context for the app is on the window for the app, physically connected. The start menu allows you to get to almost everything, things are in 5 different places on a mac (dock, spotlight, apple menu, etc.). I think all of that adds up to make windows vastly more intuitive (discoverable?), especially for a first time user.
Where I really love my mac is in the first tier of shortcuts and features below the discoverable level. I find the hotkeys to be more reachable and intuitive (easy for my brain to remember the associations) than the windows equivalents. I love spotlight and find it to be much better at opening programs than windows search, though this seems largely fixed in windows 10 I think. I really like the swipe gestures on my touchpad, enough that I bought a magic trackpad for use when at a desk. Swiping between workspaces is glorious. I'm a consultant, and jump between client meetings all the time. I set up each client in a workspace and just slide over to that workspace when I'm ready for that meeting or work session. Then I can jump to the next client without cleaning up and just do a full cleanup later in the day of all of them at once.
I have no idea how I lived before cmd+left and cmd+right go to start and end of line without taking a hand off the home row to reach over to home / end. As I say this though I realize the arrow keys are just below home and end, so maybe it's weird that I love this. Better on a mobile keyboard I suppose.
I'm not someone who could never see going back to windows, I like it plenty, but the M1 has probably locked me in for the next few years.
tbh, my ideal desktop situation is 2 or 3 computers with synergy in between. separation of applications / tabs.
I was used to Microsoft Office, then they added the Ribbon. I know it's been years and years but I still feel it's unintuitive.
I'm used to Android. Whenever I need to do something on an iPhone I'm lost.
It's all just what you know.
It died a few years ago. I recently got a Macbook Pro from work, and weird stuff just keeps happening. I'm happily doing something, and suddenly everything goes all wobbly, or something suddenly zooms in. I have to put effort into hunting down the window I want, because alt-tab doesn't switch windows, only apps. ctrl+down gets me the windows from that app. Except when something is maximized, because then I need to remember where I left it if I want to switch to it.
I can't shake the impression that somewhere down the line, Apple lost their direction and started messing things up. The crappy keyboards they added are pretty infamous, but they also managed to make the desktop unintuitive.
Edit: also, why can't you drag and drop files anymore? This used to just work.
Coming from Windows, it can be annoying, but once you build the muscle memory, it can actually be quite nice to have the two methods separated.
Each has had pluses and minuses (often -significant pluses and minuses).
I write code for Apple devices. Native Swift code, so that means that I need to use a native IDE (Xcode or AppCode), on MacOS. If they are able to port Xcode to iPadOS (might be awhile), then I might consider iPads.
Windows 10 is fine. I'm just not familiar with it. My "muscle memory" is MacOS, so it's painful and frustrating for me to switch to Windows.
I generally recommend to folks that they stay with whatever operating system they have "muscle memory" on. The hardware for all of them usually includes high-quality, performative choices (naturally, for a significant cost).
Just my $0.02. I'm not a zealot. I don't get a commission from Apple if people use their products; especially with this crowd, who are just as likely to be CLI jockeys, as GUI users.
In IntelliJ they work like they should. In some other applications also - editing some text, home moves to beginning of line, end to the end of line.
But noooo. Some Apple designer thought that when you press End then you really want to get to the end of the current document, whatever that is. For example - writing a bug report/story in the browser in the text area, want to correct something or change the first word on the line, I press Home to get there, like I would do on Linux or Windows, but on Mac it takes me to the beginning of the website. Why on earth would anyone ever want that to be the default behaviour? Same with the End key. This is just beyond stupid. I guess I can get there with cmd-left/right arrow, but why not make the most used functionality the default?
Why? Because the Mac is so much more 'fluid'. I must use Expose hundreds of times a day - it's instantaneous on the Mac. On Windows there is enough of a delay for me to try to avoid using the equivalent feature. There are lots of similar comparisons.
The little pieces of friction may seem small but they really make a difference. I feel like I'm driving a sports car with the Mac - not so with Windows.
Edit: If you're going to vote me down then please make a constructive comment to tell me why I'm wrong or where Windows is more 'fluid' than the Mac.
there’s the .DMG way where the user opens the DMG and typically drags the app to their applications directory.
I thought this was pretty clever as it’s a glorified disk image containing a .app file, a shortcut to the applications directory, a picture which usually shows an arrow with a box and some metadata that tells finder how to display the whole lot.
So the work flow is, open the .DMG, which opens a special minimal finder window showing the picture and the two icons the user then drags the .APP to their applications directory.
Then there’s the wizard format version which consists of a .PKG file which gets sent through the package manager. This like a windows installer.
But note that Little Sister was pretty instinctively going to the App Store. If Chrome was in there she would've probably gotten it with no problems.
One other thing the author forgot to mention is, in most cases one has to eject the DMG manually and then delete it if you want to clean up your downloads folder. Else you will just have this mounted until the next reboot. I know many people that just just the app from the mounted DMG itself without ever using the one in applications.
But that's one of my favourite things about it!
I remember one time when I had to use Windows after being away from its window-based paradigm (rather than an application-based paradigm) for several years. I had a single window open in Sublime Text, and I wanted to close that window then open a new one. So I closed that window, then instinctively reached for the menu bar to select 'Open Project'. Of course, the menu bar was no longer there, because it was part of the window I just closed. And then when I opened Sublime Text to get the menu bar back, it re-opened its last open document, which was the window I was trying to get rid of.
Thank goodness for that. The way Windows conflates apps and windows is just a mess.
you can modify some settings and "defaults write" to show full paths and extensions.
cmd-shift-g to go to any folder (with tab completion and ~)
cmd-up -> up a folder cmd-down -> open/go in
cmd-shift-h -> home dir cmd-shift-a -> apps dir cmd-shift-u -> utils dir
cmd-k -> connect to server
Don't forget the proxy icon drag/drop. It works with file dialogs, but since big sur, press shift to show the icon :-(
cmd-1234 to toggle views
Also, echoes of the '90s OS wars with some similar blind spots:
- no real definition of what is meant by "intuitive" - experience with another OS bias one's expectations to the equally arbitrary UI decisions the other OS made
Not saying that the install-from-dmg experience the OP describes is some ideal installation process, but it certainly is well within the established UI paradigms. Disks and disk images are a thing. If you want to move a thing from one place to another, you drag it there. Apps go in the Application folder, so if you download an app from somewhere other than the App store, either drag it from the disk image or the downloads folder, to the Applications folder. You don't even have to do that; the app will still work from wherever you put it.
In essence the OP is making a complaint about a standard UI feature which is being used to navigate around the elephant in the room, which is that Apple and Google can't agree on a way to get Chrome into the App store.
I also learn about hidden key strokes for navigating the Finder to actually find stuff. Very useful once you learn them but otherwise they are hidden away so it seems virtually impossible to see the file system as a single entity.
But that approach is not primary in the Mac interface. It’s more common to drag or manipulate elements directly. So window titles and such are actually manipulatable objects, inputs and destinations for actions.
I think this misunderstanding a big reason for “I don’t get it” posts.
Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of problems with the Mac. I use it because I feel it sucks less. I just think that a lot of articles like this don’t manage to get to the real point, for understandable reasons.
Many people use computers 2-8 hour per day for their whole life. It would be worth of the effort to create secondary consistent UI that takes weeks to learn, even if it would increase productivity just 5%.
Normally people are burning productivity by not learning/knowing what their existing UI provides.
e.g. In windows windows-key+arrow, lets you snap windows to the side of the screen (or minimize, mazimize, shift monitor etc). Now I've absolutely no idea when this feature was introduced - but plenty of people are still reaching for their pointer device to drag stuff about.
It's a nice feature. You don't forget it - but it's bad UX as I swear usage of it only spreads by word-of-mouth. No idea if MS invented it - or it was 'borrowed' from another OS.
Back in the 1980s and 90s, the differences between MacOS and Windows were as day and night. (Windows 1 didn't even support overlapping windows. Windows 3 had weird stuff like icons that didn't map to underlying filesystem objects so when you dragged a "file" to the "trash" you weren't actually deleting a file, you were deleting a symbolic representation of the file. Windows put a separate menu bar in every window, unlike MacOS, which was a significant waste of screen real estate back in an age when VGA -- 480x640 pixel -- screens were normal. And Windows font handling was horrendous.)
Circa Windows 95, Microsoft found workarounds for the most obstructive of Apple and Xerox's patents on GUIs. There were still weird differences, though. Mac had pull-down menus, Windows had drop-down. (Today, macOS has drop-down menus because that ship sailed decades ago.)
Anyway, the story of macOS vs. Windows is one of convergent evolution over a period of about 3 decades, and in the meantime, each of those operating systems has been substantially replaced under the hood -- Windows is no longer a graphical shell running on top of DOS, and MacOS is no longer a cooperative-tasking 68000 based system: Windows has VMS heritage rather than DOS, and Mac has BSD UNIX heritage rather than MacOS.
TLDR: in the age of the dinosaurs (1984-94) Macs clearly were easier to learn and use than Windows. Today, not so much.
I personally find it infuriating how Linux manages to screw this up. I blame a lot of things, like the propensity to hardcode paths and separate files by type leading to the (in my opinion) awful .desktop file standard. In older versions of Windows, the menu was just a menuized view of a folder structure (which largely contained shortucts but could contain anything).
And of course, the Option key's symbol is the diagram that Doc draws in Back to the Future when he's explaining alternate timelines.
Those who did not use Macs before Mac OS X may not realize that Mac OS X started out approximating Mac OS 9 behaviors and never really completely ported over all its nice behaviors. The Finder in particular was a joy to use on Mac OS 9, and is somehow still clunky today. Even when they sort of move forward it does not seem as well thought out, e.g. pop-up windows worked beautifully on Mac OS 8.5 but Stacks seem like a kludge by comparison.
Finder is getting a lot of heat here, but I live it’s simplicity. Column view is the best view, quick look is amazing and I don’t know how one can live without it on other OSes. I know a million tricks but one that I see as really superior is how you can drag a folder to a save menu in order to quickly access it to save the file. Also macOS is smart enough to have two files with the same name open. And you can even move them while open.
One feature I believe not many people use but I can’t go by without is active corners. It just makes Mac OS so fluid with your mouse, it’s a beauty.
Here's AppStore mini-review: https://grumpy.website/post/0RsaxCu3P
"Get 15 people, put them in 15 different offices with no communication between them, set them to work on one feature at a time. You will get something very similar to the App Store."
Here's Apple Music review (spoiler: swearing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8ZikfrpFU
Reality: “There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It's all learned.“
Well, condidering the different ways to do the same thing in Windows and Linux, it's still quite easy.
But admittedly it could be easier.
For non-devs, just the shared folders via icloud, airdrop, photos shared/synced - most things that aren’t even that advanced bring most value imo
Just to test I donwloaded the .dmg for Chrome.
Like A LOT of .dmg based "installers" there is a Chrome application and a link to /Applications, with a nice obvious "arrow" between them.
I've always found this to be pretty self evident that I must put the Chrome app into the Applications folder.
It's understandably hard to market a computer with the line that it is "easy to use" -- customers don't want to feel "stupid." And Apple has had a lot more financial success as a computing analog to BMW, Mercedes, Miele, Bosch, etc. than as the "friendly computer."
The transition to OS X came with a focus on "it just works" rather than "easy to use" -- and from my perspective many things, like the Finder and window management, became more difficult than in classic Mac OS.
NeXTstep was a powerful operating system for power users (marketed towards education and science, not your mom and dad.) Its focus was not on ease of use, though it did have a consistent high quality GUI (better than OS X, IMHO). Mac OS X is in many ways just a reskinning of NeXTstep.
(IMHO the Lisa Office System was the height of usable, intuitive, usable Apple GUIs.)
Finally, Apple has an intuitive easy to use operating system to sell, and it makes them a lot more money than Macs do: iOS.
Just please, please, don't try making macOS into something that works anything like Windows. There are people who like it this way.
Yet I had to Google several times to just install a single piece of MacOS software.
The windows exe installer system isn’t perfect but it beats that…
I think its a lot less intuitive but others seem to suffocate in analysis paralysis when presented with too many options so ymmv.
- discoverability (you need to discover how to do it)
- consistency (you don't need to discover it again done in other way)
- helpful error messages (e.g. "Chrome not found...")
If you have these three things done, even something ancient like DOS can be usable.
At this point, SElinux sounds usable as a daily driver.
I miss this.
Apple Menu > App Store > Search > Buy > Install > Open
It's basically the same as iOS.
>> but I switched to Mac because the hardware is just better than even the best Windows hardware for the same price, and the software typically JUST WORKS.
author claims Windows to be a superior operating system but "just works", isn't that the clearer signal to better software?
Everyone with strong feelings on $X (such as a BigCo or any other topic really) thinks that the community gets way too much anti-$X hate. The people who feel the opposite way think the forum is biased in exactly the opposite direction. These biases are in the eye of the beholder—they are predictable from your own passions. That makes comments like yours here particularly unhelpful, because they'll mostly just provoke the other side into passion wars, which are predictable and tedious and usually turn nasty.
I don't mean to pick on you personally. You're far from the only person suffering from this condition—in fact it seems universal in some form.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Wow, that's just the marketing.
The jargon was outside their understanding, and unless we were physically looking at the phone, we couldn't guess what word in the Appstore meant Download.
And it got worse, the requests/requirement to login with Apple ID on various occasions were frustrating.
And from a tech geek, I had a work IPhone where I struggled to change settings and found annoyances with bugs.
Apple's posture is that the defaults are good for most people. Their settings management is second class in all of their products compared to Windows and (especially) Linux and Android.
Windows has installers, which makes since for "installing", but I agree there is a lot of inconsistency in windows installers. And at least Mac is consistently weird.
The MacOS desktop is...a poor experience even compared with linux. And don't get me started on the Finder app. That has to be one of the most infuriatingly bad applications I've ever used. It's opinionated in mostly the wrong ways and is cumbersome to use to navigate around to actually find anything.
I'm forced to use Mac at work, and I find both Windows and Linux to be more powerful and less constrained as technical work environments.
Too much of MacOS is designed around hiding functionality and protecting non-technical users, but the way they do it is uneven and awkward. Building code requires you to accept license agreements in ten different inconsistent places, you have to hit hotkeys to delete things or mark them as executable. File paths are hidden unless you jump through hoops, Apple is always shoving Safari and iTunes down your throat, the context menu is littered with useless garbage like "Look up X", the desktop environment requires 3rd party plugins for power use, XCode is the single worst IDE I've ever had to use, ...
Finder is the worst file browser in the world. This is probably my top complaint and sums up why Apple is so frustrating. It's like Apple is trying to hide information from you and gives me the impression that they only care about the superficial appearance of their Finder app over its actual functionality. Explorer and Nautilus are miles better in every use case: finding files, listing files, managing files, navigating directory trees, mounting remove volumes, ... Finder makes all of these tasks incredibly tedious, hiding them as much as possible so the app looks minimal and uncluttered. It's horrible.
Apple even removed the escape key from their laptops at one point, which should go to show you that technical users are not their primary audience.
I'd recommend Mac for editing text documents, but not much else. Even file management feels second class to the point I'd want to work on video and 3d workflows in Windows instead. I'd never want to program on a Mac.
I've yet to use an intuitive machine.
The most intuitive thing is the command line ... but you have to learn so much before you can use your machine from the command line ... its not an investment worth making unless you're a developer.
Are you joking? Searching in a windowed app usally brings up a dialog with various search options that can be ticked. Learning options for grep/awk/sed etc. is incredible tedious.
Like most things, there is a difference between intuitive for person A and person B and this is not the same as whether a power user can invest time learning a tool and then become super fast at it. An expert in Grep could probably find something in a file much more quickly than someone in Windows or MacOS but I would argue many people would find windowed apps more intuitive.
I'm a Windows user and had to help a Mac user. Let's just say Mac definitely is my cup of tea.
And since those that i was helping ( an architect and a large property owner) didn't even remember their password to install an application.
I wouldn't consider them a actual user of the OS either ( just a consumer).
If they have OS X, they are free to search for someone who can actually help them, but it's not me. And it's almost the first thing i say on the phone.