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Comment by cecida | Hacker News Reader

I'd like that. I'm a big fan of the whole design and build of the Macbook Pro, but macOS is starting to feel very dated.

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What about it is dated? and is windows better?

I agree MacOS feels dated, some examples: The Windows window manager is far better than the MacOS equivalent, the UI is higher quality, more consistent and more discoverable, and PowerShell is better than zsh.

What I miss most in macOS is the raw graphics performance of Windows, even for day-to-day computing. Probably a combo of available graphics cards, drivers, and how the OS treats graphics performance. Finder is def getting a bit creaky, but I've never hit limitations using it.

As for PSH: use fish and don't look back. :)

PowerShell is better than zsh.

  brew install --cask powershell

TIL, wild.

> and PowerShell is better than zsh.

Could you elaborate?

I guess it depends on what one is looking for, because to me Windows feels the most dated of any desktop environment mainly due to its poor implementation of virtual desktops.

Even the version of Spaces from OS X 10.5 Leopard (circa 2007) is better, and various *nix DEs had better virtual desktops since the mid-late 90s onward. That makes Windows harder to use for me than lack of snapping on macOS does, particularly with how Windows makes me feel like I need to maximize most windows which drives a greater need for good virtual desktops.

> the UI is higher quality, more consistent and more discoverable

The last thing that can be said about Windows is consistency

https://ntdotdev.wordpress.com/2021/02/06/state-of-the-windo...

That article misses the Layer 9. Windows 3.1 UI, which is still present in Windows 10 and 11.

https://i.imgur.com/fMC5ayA.png

Powershell is available native on MacOS: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/insta...

But so is current versions of bash, csh, sh, zsh, fish, etc etc ad infinitum in Macports.

That's a good question, and I cannot really give you a coherent answer tbh. I just find Windows to feel more modern. I suppose a few examples are:

Snap/Windows Management in macOS is a pain.

Using Brew as a package manager isn't exactly a wonderful experience.

The taskbar feels pretty ugly and dated - that little dot, and then having both the top and bottom bar in play just feels outdated.

Even having to use Parallels is a bit of a pain - build a hypervisor into the OS.

I'm the furthest thing from a designer, and I understand that Apple went with a different UI paradigm. It's just starting to feel a bit left behind. It's still my daily driver though.

Well if you find this design outdated, how can you be so easy in reverse with windows 10 where advanced settings often result in un-burying NT era hideous and messy interfaces?

Because settings related stuff is needed so rarely.

Pretty rich considering Windows 11 added a low-rent version of the OSX dock.

And rounded corners everywhere.

This is because most of MS designers are using Macs.

Not being able to snap/tile windows to a screen border or corner without third-party software is just baffling, and the official tiling method only supports two windows side by side in some weird fullscreen mode. Back when Windows introduced this feature I made the jump from a 256MB RAM computer to a brand new laptop with 2 whole CPU cores. It's time Apple caught up to every other desktop OS in this regard.

> is windows better?

In terms of UI yes, provided you don't need a functioning search feature. Windows 10 also finally added support for virtual desktops and scrolling in unfocused windows. Though unfortunately Windows 10 was such an unpleasant experience for me overall that I don't see myself using it in the foreseeable future.

Magnet works fine, if Apple replicated the functionality people would be complaining that they killed off a successful third party app. Can't please everybody.

i think disproportionately more people would enjoy the feature being made native. There's no reason the third party app has to go away, fans could keep using it.

7.99 in the App Store.

Microsoft even have PowerToys for free to improve your already good experience.

Mac also has free alternatives like Rectangle. It lets me snap windows to screen edges in various sizes with keyboard and mouse, and that's all I need.

> to improve your already good experience.

The whole reason I stopped using Windows 10 is because it was not a good experience, to put it very mildly. But I likely was an untypically bad case, judging from Windows still being on the market.

Rectangle is great. The fact that some apps (mostly Electron based it seems) are terrible at remembering where they were last opened does appear to be a MacOS trait.

Moom also has this snap to edge feature, and allows quite a few other window manipulation tricks too.

Look at PowerToys window manager vs any of the apps on Mac. Night and day difference. This is like table stakes for a modern OS in terms of UX, and even the paid offerings on the Mac side are quite a shadow of PowerToys (which is made by Microsoft itself, and free)

Windows Subsystem for Linux for native linux CLI. I've appreciated Mac being Unix-like, but the small differences end up being quite annoying. Much nicer to use an environment that's close to 1:1 with your servers

Personally I use a Mac for the hardware, and that's about it.

Wsl really did make Windows better developer platform than Mac. I'd still prefer straight up Linux, but that is not possible in all organizations.

> I've appreciated Mac being Unix-like

Mac is a Unix. Darwin is a BSD. It has its own PID1, launchctl, instead of systemd.

It's not* a Linux-like (Kernel ABI is different) but if you work with Macports, you can make your userspace a clone of Linux. There's very little that I can't get for Macports that is on Linux (not GUI stuff).

You can get plenty of the equivalent "native linux CLI". Macports for native, lima or minikube to run linux containers. Virtualbox et al for running linux VMs.

I would say at this point in time MacOS is a superior OS for laptops but inferior to both Windows and big Linux distros for desktop. Windowing is awful, multi monitor support is inferior, the OS doesn't even have native support for mouse 4 + 5 buttons, and there's no subpixel text antialiasing which makes fonts look awful on 3rd party monitors. Beyond that, the lack of Nvidea support and OpenGL support makes it a poor platform for desktop 3D modelling and games.

This is a personal anecdote, but I also feel like the quality and robustness of Mac OS has declined compared to the direction of Windows or Linux over the last few OS upgrades.

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