Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

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It is "p" for pallette IIRC. Same as in Chrome devtools and others.

In a development context, I do not want platform-specific quirks. Consistency is really important for me otherwise it is a jarring context switch when e.g. copy-paste changes when moving between OSes (which I do hundreds of time a day - laptop is Mac, developer workstation is in the office and is Linux, so I remote desktop into it for code, but "office productivity" stuff is on the mac). MacOS is really irritating in this regard (different keyboard layout for fundamental things (copy paste etc) compared to Linux/win, different physical key layout compared to every other physical keyboard in the UK, different functions for home/end compared to Linux/win, different position of window controls compared to Linux/win, different position of menu bar compared to Linux/win etc)

I look on with confusion when I see people ranting about wanting more native UI elements - I want the opposite! VS Code & Chrome look and act identically on Linux and windows and Mac (more or less) and that's how I want it to stay! And indeed I would encourage further abstractions away from OS-specific allowances (e.g. position of window controls is still wrong on Mac)

You're in the minority, is the thing. Most computer users don't use multiple platforms on a regular basis. That's something that's really only common among some very specific niches, like web developers. Consistency across platforms is a bad thing for most users who want all the software on the one platform they choose use to behave consistently.

I'll also point out that the Mac had the same copy and paste keyboard shortcuts before Windows and Linux existed, so if any platform should be criticized for not matching, it'd be the one(s) that copied the shortcuts but added their own changes.

I don't use a Mac because everything about its UI is exactly the same as Windows and Linux, it's precisely the opposite. I use it because it's different (and IMO, better for me).

(And calling the window controls placement on macOS "wrong" is a bit rich. The platform that basically created the GUI can't be "wrong" about something so subjective as which side of the window those controls belong on.)

It sounds like an OS-specific tool would be entirely the wrong choice for you as you work cross-platform.

(Personally, I love the fact that copy/paste work in my Terminal with the same keys as every other app)

And, if you weren't aware, the keystrokes and design pre-date most other GUI systems in use today (Ctrl-C/V/X and things like dialogue boxes and menus work were part of IBM's CUA standards which, in turn, were an imperfect copy of the existing MacOS guidelines).

Likewise, MacOS used to have a hugely important rule; because in English we read from top-left to bottom-right, important stuff should be bottom right and stuff we use infrequently or is dangerous at the top-left.

Which is why the Apple menu and the window close button are top-left, why the primary button in any dialogue box is bottom-right. (And there is research, for example eye-tracking studies, showing that this helps significantly with user comprehension of what's on screen). However, Apple gave up on all this research when His Steveness returned and now just wings it - but it's this user-centric stuff that people refer to when talking about the "Macness" of an app.

I definitely see the appeal of cross-platform apps for people using multiple systems. I suspect that's a small portion of users, though: most of us work on one primary platform. In my case, I'd be happy to throw money at a native Mac app that looks, feels, and moves like a native Mac app.

macOS hotkeys have been ossified over decades. That's consistency.

Just remap them if you need, macOS offers great support for this.

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