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>Also, the fact that everything I want to tweak requires buying an app?

I find this is often the case with MacOS, sometimes with open alternatives available.

I wanted windows/linux like window snapping and found a free solution called Rectangle[0], but discovered however they do it was causing mouse lag in games. Apple dev friend investigated into it with logs from my machine and discovered they are "just not doing it properly, go buy bettersnaptool[1]"

Sure enough I go spend $8 on bettersnaptool and all my mouse lag is gone and I've got the tweakable window snapping I crave.

This is often the case it just depends if the open software solution is done "properly" or will have some small bug that may or may not bother you. Rectangle worked flawlessly in every other instance except once I would launch a game, the mouse lag was not present on desktop applications.

[0] https://rectangleapp.com/ [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580?mt=...

What about security, when installing "countless" of apps for minor things

Do you trust Apple's app review

For me it’s less about app review trust and more certificate revocation trust. Devs aren’t in the clear just because they get past the app review.

But in general, yes, I trust apps from the App Store. I haven’t had a reason not to.

Ok :-)

>Also, the fact that everything I want to tweak requires buying an app?

Like three finger (middle click) on the touchpad ... Apple just can't do it ... Linux sorted it for multiple manufacture's touchpads years ago.

Tap with three fingers does the spotlight quick lookup of what’s under the cursor by default. On a machine from 2012 and an OS from 2018.

I’m not certain but I think if you turn it off, bettertouchtool would let you make it do something (anything!) else you wanted.

Edit: I think I misread your “Apple cant do it” meaning physically, while you probably meant exposing a setting without using (paid) third party apps

Rectangle is fully open source, so rather than working with the community to fix the problem you're having (about 1/10th the effort you went into debugging the problem), you instead opt for a paid app? What you do if you were using Linux?

https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle

I don't have the skills or knowledge, I just want working snapping without affecting anything else negatively.

Maybe I should have bugged my dev friend who did the digging to submit a bug report, but I didn't think of that at the time.

If you have had the skills to write this comment, you have the skills to submit a bug report.

Rectangle has a simple bug report template, and maintainers would probably guide you if you'd have trouble providing the requested information.

  macOS version:
  Rectangle version:
  Logs if applicable (In Rectangle menu, hold option, "View Logging..."):

Maintainers are used to receiving barely understandable bug reports written in broken English or a foreign language by non-technical users, and the issue can usually be debugged if the users are willing to follow directions and respond to questions.

People talk about free software but to me there’s the cost of time that’s often overlooked. Submitting bug reports is one way to help “pay” for your “free” software. Sometimes there are usability or productivity or compatibility costs as well, all costing time. But we owe it to the developers and maintainers to put in that work in exchange for all they’ve done.

Paying $8 is also valid, but I wouldn’t complain about it. It’s just the cost you choose to pay to get what you want.

Exactly, it's perfectly fine to not report a bug and pay for a different product instead. The issue starts when we attribute this to not having the needed skills to report a problem, and we defer the work to our friends. Many of us have that acquaintance who is suddenly capable of doing basic things when you stop offering them your time.

Free software is only free if you value your time at $0.00/hour.

why wouldn’t closing the rectangle before launching game be the solution?

Because I don't mind throwing a few bucks at a dev so I can be lazy?

The mouse acceleration curve on Mac drives me insane. There is a way to set it to "0" with some command line incantation, but it still does not set it to 0.

Also, the fact that I can't independently control the scroll direction of mice and trackpads is insane to me. The whole selling point of Apple is that "it just works" , but I can't even get my mouse working properly! That's like the lowest bar for an OS.

> Also, the fact that I can't independently control the scroll direction of mice and trackpads is insane to me.

Oh yeah I just plugged a mouse into a work Mac recently and was super confused at this. Yes I’ve gotten used to natural scrolling on touchpads by now, but no that doesn’t mean I want it on a scroll wheel!

This starts to make sense when you see the mice that apple sells don't have wheels, they have a touch surface on top. And if you aren't using an apple mouse you're off the happy path and stuck toggling settings forever.

Yeah, I used to use a Magic Mouse years ago. They now aggravate my RSI terribly though. This kind of thing feels like Apple telling me their stuff is not for me.

> "it just works"

It does just work. You're just using it wrong.

Keep that second sentence in mind whenever people say that first line and you'll never have any issues with apple fans

I'm a fan of apple MacOS as of late, specifically because the rigidity leads to easier computer usage to me.

I'd hesitate to lump all apple fans around the few vocal ones. The vast majority of people that like apple don't push a cult of "it just works". Most people I know just recognize a computer as a computer, not an identity.

What I find amusing is just how much of an identity being anti-Apple has be come. You know, the people who will jump at any vague opportunity to profess their hate for anything Apple. I used to be in that camp.

I gave up on fanboyism years ago and nowadays I've found I like almost every platform for different reasons.

My secret to happiness on a Mac: focus your energy on figuring out how the designers want you to use a tool. Don't fight the design, work with it. Don't change the defaults, live with them.

Some folks love to fiddle with settings and tweak configs to get everything just right... but this is a recipe for disappointment when an upgrade removes the secret config you found or hard-codes a setting that was previously available as a preference.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted because your opinion is (in my opinion) perfectly valid. I spent 6 to 12 months forced onto a Mac by the company I worked for and I reached the same conclusion. Learning to subjugate one's personal preferences to the way the designers designed it is a good strategy on Mac (and to some extent Gnome on Linux).

I spent untold hours on Mac trying to recreate my Linux environment, and after cobbling together a number of different tools (some paid, some not) I got it pretty close - and then a new version of the OS came out and broke everything. It took a few months before most of the tools I used were updated, and due to accessibility API changes some of them never did get updated.

Some of the defaults are just plain bad and assume you never want or need to use another computer. The scroll wheel thing is particularly bad. Like imagine if Apple decided all their laptops now were going to come with Dvorak keyboards instead of Qwerty. "Sorry Gram, I need to change your keyboard layout before I can solve your computer problem".

Don't mess with users' muscle memories for your design for literally no gain. That's bad design.

Honestly, I think Apple just forgets people use a mouse. The default trackpad scroll direction matches iPads and touchscreens. Their oversight was coupling trackpad and mouse wheel scroll direction. Until I had a job where I needed both I didn't really care...and I found an open source utility that addressed it[1].

[1] https://github.com/Caldis/Mos

How do you "zero mouse acceleration" people survive? I have three monitors side by side. If I went with zero mouse acceleration, I'd need a 3 meter wide mouse pad in order to be able to move the mouse cursor edge to edge! Or do you do that mouse bicycle move where you constantly pick the mouse up, bring it back to its original position, move it some more, pick it back up, and so on? Such a weird subculture :)

Well the m1 only supports one external monitor so thats not much of an issue ;)

I use a Logitech G502 and I just like the high sensitivity. I don't need a huge trackpad or to pick up the mouse. When mouse movent maps 1:1 to pointer movement, your brain and muscle memory can do a much better job at fast & precise movement.

The Mac Studio supports up to 5 monitors.

I used a total of three external monitors with the original m1, via a displaylink hub. Saying "m1 does not support it" is not accurate. Its not like a amd 3950x supports any external monitors, does it?..

The 3950x isn't a GPU or APU. It doesn't support any display out because that's not it's job. The low end AMD laptop APUs natively drive 3-4 monitors.

If you want to be pedantic...

The Apple m1 is an SoC, not a CPU. It is not comparable to an AMD 3950X. It is perfectly reasonable to talk about the display capabilities of an SoC, because the GPU and display controllers are built into the SoC.

Apple themselves markets the macbook air as supporting:

> One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz[1]

And yes, I'm aware of the display link hacks. This works by emulating extra GPUs in software (VGC). The m1 supports multiple displays via display link in the same way MacOs runs Gnome via an Ubuntu VM.

[1] https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/

If you want to be pedantic...

You mentioned the M1, which is an SoC, not a computer. So when you said the M1 only supports one external monitor, you were being vague and incorrect. The M1 Mac Air only supports one monitor, but the M1 Mac mini supports two. If you expand the M1 SoC to encompass both the Pro, Max and Ultra versions, you can connect 3, 4, and 5 displays respectively.

14-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro: Two external displays at up to 6K over USB-C and one at up to 4K over HDMI 2.0

14-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max: Three external displays at up to 6K over USB-C and one at up to 4K over HDMI 2.0

Mac Studio with M1 Max or M1 Ultra: Four displays at up to 6K over USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 and and one at up to 4K over HDMI 2.0

https://www.macworld.com/article/347919/how-many-monitors-ca...

Displaylink is not a hack. Its commercially supported. You buy a displaylink hub, you can pick up the phone and they will sort out your problems. The same tech is used, for years, to provide multimonitor support for laptops in corporate offices. This was always the surest way to allow all sorts of dell, lenovo and apple laptops to work with multimonitor setups. Its not without flaws, but it does work. Saying "m1 does not support more than one ext monitor" is misleading; it sure does, with the extra (and not necessairly cheap) accessory.

Very fancy mouse with tiny precision.

Way back in the late '90s and early '00s, lots of PC games with mouse look simply drew a window behind the game and placed the mouse cursor in the center. Every frame it would measure the distance the cursor traveled from center and reset it to poll for mouse movement. This meant that your OS mouse acceleration settings directly impacted how your mouse felt in game. If you've ever had a game glitch out and show a mouse cursor stuck in the middle of the screen, this is why.

Some of us who grew up playing these games got used to using Windows with no mouse acceleration. This is because it is easier to build muscle memory without it, since a certain distance traveled with the mouse will always produce the same camera movement in game regardless of how fast the mouse was moved.

How we deal with it? I think there are three factors, at least in my case;

1: Mouse sensitivity. I run my mouse at 1600 DPI, which is 2-4x higher than your typical typical cheap office mouse. I can zip across a large display pretty quick.

2: Fine motor skills. Years of Quake and other fast paced shooters have elevated my mouse accuracy above that of your typical computer user, allowing me to function on the desktop at a high mouse sensitivity.

3: On-the-fly DPI adjustments. My mouse has buttons for cycling through a number of sensitivity presets. I set mine to have 400, 800, and 1600 DPI. When something requires high mouse precision (such as photo editing) I turn the sensitivity down.

> 1: Mouse sensitivity. I run my mouse at 1600 DPI, which is 2-4x higher than your typical typical cheap office mouse. I can zip across a large display pretty quick.

I run my mouse at like 17000 DPI, then lower the sensitivity to compensate.

This gives me sub-pixel precision in FPS games.

Not that it helps much. I still have shit reaction times.

> 3: On-the-fly DPI adjustments. My mouse has buttons for cycling through a number of sensitivity presets. I set mine to have 400, 800, and 1600 DPI. When something requires high mouse precision (such as photo editing) I turn the sensitivity down.

Ahh, very interesting and very cool. That's the explanation I was looking for! Didn't realize mice had this feature or that OSes supported it.

Operating systems do not implicitly support this, but lots of mice do at the hardware level. They can be configured with software provided by the manufacturer, and usually support storing these configurations on the mouse itself so they can be used without any extra drivers or software running in the background or on operating systems not officially supported.

...by turning sensitivity up?

I don't understand how this is even a question. It's such an obvious answer.

My sensitivity is configured so that it takes about an inch and a half of mouse movement to move across one monitor.

But then you must be sacrificing small, precise movements. Assuming your monitor is 1920 pixels across, and your mouse's DPI is high enough, you'd need to move your mouse 1/1280 inches (or approximately 20μm) to move the cursor a single pixel. How does your hand physically move 20μm? If your 1.5 inches of movement spans a 4K monitor, then you need to move your mouse 10μm to move the cursor a single pixel.

EDIT: babypuncher's reply seems to address this using on-the-fly DPI adjustment. Pretty cool!

If you use a trackball you have actual momentum to help keep the cursor moving (and no mouse surface to worry about). I usually use pointer acceleration anyway because I find it’s more comfortable for me now to make smaller movements, but in the past I’ve used a flat profile and just flicked the trackball when I wanted my cursor on the other side of the screen.

Large mouse pads.

Growing up playing first person shooters has wired my mind to a degree that it's difficult to overcome the muscle memory. This makes mouse acceleration terribly frustrating. Fortunately, using a track pad with mouse acceleration doesn't use the same muscles and is much more bearable (if slower) to use.

> The whole selling point of Apple is that "it just works"

It does (generally) just work! However, it works they way they want you to use it.

That's fine for me and I usually am happy to adapt. It doesn't mean infinitely configurable.

it sort of reminds me of an interview someone did w/ a farmer's market vendor of gourmet jams/jellies....when they had a spread of 29-30 jams, no one bought any because it was too intimidating/confusion/bred indecision or whatever

They changed their lineup to 6 jams and sales went thru the roofff

Okay, except this is nothing like that. Computer programs can have defaults.

When you don't like the default, you go to the settings screen to change it. If you don't want to deal with settings, you never have to open up the screen.

But the scroll settings is much more annoying than that. Apple provides two completely independent settings for "Mouse" and "Trackpad". Under each, there is a toggle for scroll direction. If you toggle one, it magically and silently toggles the other as well.

That's not "simple", that's not "easy to use", that's 100% bad UX. If there's only one global setting, why present it as two independent options which are magically linked?

Maybe they should present it as one setting. But linking it makes sense for the vast majority of users. Because if it wasn’t you would see a flood of people asking why their mouse or trackpad is scrolling in the wring direction.

I‘m more and more convinced that the Apple way is the right way for the vast majority of users and deeper customization should only be available through the CLI or extensions.

> Okay, except this is nothing like that.

And yet… desktop Linux isn’t widely popular.

Probably because it's hard to come to a store and buy one.

Linux is “selling” a billion “jars of jam”, a different one for each person… Apple is “selling” like 6.

Why is this relevant? You probably know that Ubuntu is the most popular one. It should be enough to only offer this one.

Ubuntu’s customizability (valued by the article’s author) is Linux offering a billion jars of jam.

Default settings still exist and can be delivered just fine.

Original comment was “this is nothing like that”

I’m pointing out how this is like that.

> Okay, except this is nothing like that. Computer programs can have defaults. When you don't like the default, you go to the settings screen to change it. If you don't want to deal with settings, you never have to open up the screen.

This is possible, but never as easy as it sounds when written down like that. Even when advanced settings are tucked away out of sight from regular users, at the kind of scale OS X or iOS operates in (or Linux, for that matter), there will be a non-negligible number of people who by accident or intent fool around with the advanced settings and get themselves into a state from which they lack the expertise to extricate themselves.

This is why Apple layer their own UX on top of Bluetooth, for example. And why many settings have no UX, you have to know the magic incantation to use in Terminal.

Again, I don't disagree, I'm just pointing out that "Making a boat for passengers AND for sailors" is a hard problem.

versus ubuntu where the kernel may be fine, but it's certainly nontrivial to bork some random config file or the nvidia/xwin/wayland configuration setup or some other part of the app layer on top of it, and rather than spend the next few hours trying to google whatever arcane setting it is, I've just thrown up my arms and wiped the drive and reinstalled the OS from scratch...

Don't get me wrong, I run ubuntu on a home fileserver/nas box but when I need it for some scientific computing package or something, the best way to run it is on top of Mac OS in a VM....

Hated that I couldn't flip scroll direction because I wanted the trackpad to be natural and mouse to be inverted. Found this: https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/

I recently tried https://linearmouse.org/ and it seemed to offer both acceleration and sensitivity settings for mice.

That’s interesting, may be that’s why I feel it strange when operating a mouse on Windows/Linux?

Are there links to this acceleration? Thanks.

The acceleration seems to scale with the mouse sensitivity setting. With the setting at 0 there is very little or no acceleration. You'd need a mouse with adjustable dpi setting to use it like that though.

> Also, the fact that everything I want to tweak requires buying an app? I had to pay for an app in order to properly emulate middle clicks on the touchpad! That's bonkers!

Yes I have noticed this too! I love my MacBook, but the idea that I would pay what, $20, for the top tier window snapping app is completely ridiculous. That’s something that should be built in to the shell!

> Window Snapping

Use https://www.spectacleapp.com/ - it's free.

It's not exactly the same, but better in many ways - excepting the auto-drag snapping. Snapping is via key combination instead.

IIRC Spectacle is no longer maintained and is spiritually succeeded by https://rectangleapp.com

But Apple gets a 30% cut of the money you spend on the extra apps?

For those using Windows, macOS and Linux regularly with Keyboard/Mouse I recommend for mac:

CursorSense to customise the acceleration graph (or disable).

SensibleSideButtons so you can use mouse4/5 in the browser.

ScrollReverser so scrolling on mouse and touchpad both make sense.

Rectangle for window snapping.

SensibleSideButtons is great, though I wish it was part of the OS in the first place.

I love Rectangle. I have a couple of external displays, and a 25 key macro pad. I've assigned various buttons on the pad to move my windows around using Rectangle.

+1 for SensibleSideButtons and ScrollReverser. I find using a mouse painful without them, and I greatly appreciate that they're both free.

+1 for cursorsense

> On Mac:

> * Open Spotify

> * Press play button on keyboard

> * Apple Music opens ??????

I just tried these steps. Spotify plays.

Same. Used half a dozen different MacBooks over the last 5 years and always had the right contextual behaviour for the function/touchbar keys

If I have Spotify open, then Spotify plays. If I don't have it open, then Apple Music starts up instead.

Try out BeardedSpice[0] which handles the media keys

[0] https://github.com/beardedspice/beardedspice || brew install —cask beardedspice

After a clean boot? I find I have to manually start Spotify once for it register on the media keys.

The audio behavior is always a little funky on macOS, for the specific steps given I think the problem is that the 'play' button on the keyboard is more like a 'resume' button really, which can cause it to do seemingly bizarre things if you haven't been doing any audio recently. I would expect that if you clicked play in Spotify, then pause, then hit the key on the keyboard it should behave.

It DOES work in this scenario.

* Apple music opens and transmits your unchangeable device hardware serial, and your IP (coarse location) to Apple

Modern Macs literally have a one-touch "send my supercookie to the manufacturer" button.

> and macOS has good MS Office support.

This. I get the M1 must be very good but what I really want is something I doubt I'm going to get: native Office support in Linux. I use Office rarely but on those rare occasions it sucks to use Office 365.

WSL gives you all the *nix bits of Ubuntu and native MS Office support.

But the kernel is wrong. I kind of buy this philosophically until I tried it. It just feels like you put the the wrong person in control, while all the time you really want to deal with another.

Yeah, Office 365 web version burned me hard too many times while collaborating. I had to switch to desktop only (which is still 365).

Depending on your needs I find older Office versions play pretty well in Wine. 2007 is insanely easy to install and 2010 isn't too bad with PlayOnLinux or Crossover. Word, Excel and PP work very well although as you get outside those it's less good.

> I had to pay for an app in order to properly emulate middle clicks on the touchpad! That's bonkers!

That’s just the traditional way in which the Apple ecosystem works. They provide you with a pretty phenomenal starting point and App developers fill in the gaps.

Base macOS with Amphetamine, Magnet, and perhaps some utility for file/network access provide you with a desktop experience that comes close to the productivity of a tiling window manager, but certainly meets or exceeds the features built into Windows 10 or KDE for window management. Plus you can use AppleScript if you really want to get creative with desktop management.

The problem is that most of these apps are only available in the App Store which can only be used if you dox yourself to Apple (an Apple ID requires an email and working phone number).

It also transmits your hardware serial to Apple when you use it.

https://github.com/newmarcel/KeepingYouAwake https://rectangleapp.com/

Both fully available off the App store. I'm sure you can find alternatives for most apps away from the App store.

Wireguard is only possible in the App Store because Apple won't notarize VPN apps for self-distribution. Many don't realize this.

On Mac:

* Press cmd + option + S

* Press space bar

* Spotify opens and plays

or

* Press cmd + option + spacebar (opens terminal)

* `sp` (my spotify cli alias)

* Spotify opens and plays

Custom hot keys are easy in MacOS settings menu. Even easier is the free app Hotkey! https://codenuts.de/en/posts/hotkey/

It seems like an oversight to have a physical backlit button with play/pause icons on it taking up space on the mac keyboard that can't be generally used to play/pause applications.

It's like making TVs you can install arbitrary applications on, but shipping them with remotes with branded buttons to open one or two specific preinstalled applications.

I just tested this with the most bizarre app I could think to open at the moment. Play/pause works as expected on Plex HTPC app

> Custom hot keys are easy in MacOS settings menu.

I use this feature all the time. Unfortunately, lately there seems to be a goblin in my system that's occasionally going in and deleting App Shortcuts for a specific app and I have to re-create them. Any ideas? I was thinking the app was getting updated or something like that so Mac forgets the settings.

defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1

Works on my M1 Max well enough to be satisfied with my mouse in SC2.

This simply hasn't worked for me in years. Haven't tried in about a year, though.

Its not enough, you need a program called USB Overdrive, it completely fixes the issue

So you need a third party tool to make an official device work properly?

Didn't that halve the cursor speed as well?

This helps, but does not actually result in a flat acceleration curve.

In the before-times, in the long-long-ago, we could modify basic system settings from a nice discoverable GUI control panel. Why is the future year of 2022, no doubt filled with flying cars and personal jetpacks, continually found to be unable to deliver features we took for granted in 1995?

This doesn't work. Mouse acceleration isn't exposed using a defaults key anymore. You need to use a tool like linear mouse to modify the scaling value.

I recommend linear mouse for acceleration - free and can also modify scroll behavior

LinearMouse works for disabling mouse acceleration and is open source