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.
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!
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'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.
I gave up on fanboyism years ago and nowadays I've found I like almost every platform for different reasons.
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 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.
Don't mess with users' muscle memories for your design for literally no gain. That's bad design.
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.
They changed their lineup to 6 jams and sales went thru the roofff
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?
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.
And yet… desktop Linux isn’t widely popular.
I’m pointing out how this is like that.
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.
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....
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 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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
EDIT: babypuncher's reply seems to address this using on-the-fly DPI adjustment. Pretty cool!
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.
Are there links to this acceleration? Thanks.