Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

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Over the years, Apple has implemented inadequate window management in MacOS in a number of ways, empowering the user by giving them the choice of which method to be frustrated by.

For example, the CMD+Tab task switcher seems natural, but it has an issue where you can select an app and it does absolutely nothing, which is both infuriating and incomprehensible. Is it ignoring me because the app is minimized? Did it send it to another desktop? I have no idea! It must be deterministic, but I'll be damned if I can figure it out. I am sure "real mac users" get it, and I'm happy for them, but poor benighted souls like me just wonder why their $2500 computer isn't doing what they're telling it to. And whatever that perfectly good reason is, there is an even more perfectly good reason to make it work the way users expect.

The Dock has the same issue with letting you click on an app, and then not bringing that app on screen, or telling me why it's ignoring my command. Both of the above patterns work better in Windows, and have worked better for decades, and Apple designers should be a little ashamed of that.

Mission Control is probably the most useful method, because it actually brings selected applications on screen (the minimum functionality you would expect). However, it does not support keyboard shortcuts for navigating and selecting an application! How is this possible? It feels like a couple story point ticket to me, yet it remains a problem after a decade. Maybe Apple stubbornly assumes everyone will use a touchpad for everything, despite them selling products without touchpads in them. For money.

The other problem with Mission Control is that it should not require your entire screen to switch apps. It feels too form-over-function to me.

I tried the newest entry, Stage Manager, for several months. It's like a cross between Mission Control and the Dock. It works well (that is, it does what it's supposed to), except it's missing the ability to change the size of the window thumbnails. It takes up quite a lot of the screen for the value it gives you. Not that being able to select a window and switch to it isn't valuable, just that that's how the Dock should already work, and Dock doesn't take up 10-15% of the screen.

> but poor benighted souls like me just wonder why their $2500 computer isn't doing what they're telling it to.

This is the essence of 99% of my frustration with computers (smartphones especially) anymore. I find myself literally shouting I DIDN'T ASK YOU TO DO THAT at my devices. I grew up hearing the platitude that computers only do what we tell them to do. I wish that was true!

> I grew up hearing the platitude that computers only do what we tell them to do.

That platitude is from the command line age. With GUIs we will never have that as long as there are no realtime deadlines.

The most frustrating thing is when you tap something milliseconds after the GUI element changes underneath your fingers, triggering the wrong action.

Let me guess, ex-Windows user?

The OSs are visually similar these days but there are fundamental conceptual differences, still. Window management on macOS, in particular, is a merger from two very different paradigms: classic Mac OS and NeXT. I was a huge fan of the former, though I don’t know if it would have scaled to the terabytes of today.

In any case, my advice is trying to understand whatever underling reason some behavior might have instead of trying to shoehorn a previous habit. I know a lot of my frustration with Windows was that it was not the Mac I’ve been using all of my life.

Without providing the underlying reason that supposedly exists this just feels condescending.

I recently switched jobs, and with the change switched from Ubuntu to Mac for my work computer. I've started to develop severe repetitive stress in my right hand from too much magic mouse usage because there are so many things that just don't have keyboard shortcuts.

So, for the benefit of all of us ex-PC users, what is the underlying reason for this extreme dearth of keyboard shortcuts? How am I meant to be using these Mac OS tools in a way that doesn't kill my hand?

Didn't mean to sound condescending, it was my actual experience with Windows. Aside from some obviously dumb things (like drive letters), some are just different and understanding them decreased my frustration.

I didn't directly address the original post issues because it's hard for me to even understand it, since it's nothing I've ever dealt with. For example:

“…an issue where you can select an app and it does absolutely nothing”

I _think_ the author is struggling with the fact that Mac apps can be open and have no windows. And that's not weird at all, just different. Or maybe it's a virtual desktop thing (Spaces), which I don't use.

Anyway, I use keyboard shortcuts extensively, command-tilde will switch between windows on the same app, for instance, if that's what you're looking for.

But keyboard shortcuts are much more discoverable in Windows than on the Mac. The letters are underlined in dialog boxes. It's uglier, but way more obvious. You can use the Mac with a keyboard only, but you may have to Google some shortcuts, unfortunately.

yeah... I have the same problem. I click on the icon in dock and nothing happens. For example, Microsoft Teams.. I need this to open it and contact someone asap, but nothing happens. I need to search for the teams window on all the desktops. Or right click it and select the window, usually this works. But still frustrating. I have been using Mac for 6 months (before Windows and Linux) and Mac OS is sometimes frustrating when trying to do the most simple stuff like bringing a closed app back to front.

That is a bug with Teams. It apparently doesn't know how to show its own window. Sometimes if you keep clicking the icon you can get the window to show.

It's because the app is hidden, its really arcane but if you: cmd+tab -> hover over a hidden app -> now also hold option -> let go of cmd+tab -> your app will appear

Not always… sometimes the app is just Spotify. Haven’t tried the option trick with it, but there the window is simply closed. Clicking the icon in the dock opens a new window, but tabbing to it does not. And yeah, I never remember the shortcut to open it once I switch to it, because cmd+0 and cmd+1 don’t bring up a new window for Spotify. So I always reach for the mouse and click the icon in the dock.

Normally my favourite method to switch apps is Spotlight, accessible with ctrl+space or cmd+space, I forget which. Anyway, Spotlight is a great app switcher, you can disable most everything else and just type a letter or two to switch. I use Powertoys on Windows to get a similar switcher there.

But again, Spotify breaks this, and switching using Spotlight does not recreate the Spotify window, if I remember correctly. Once again reaching for the dock…

> However, it does not support keyboard shortcuts for navigating and selecting an application!

This is the thing that is most frustrating to me about MacOS—keyboard support is clearly a second class citizen.

It seems like you're supposed to use the trackpad for everything, but when I'm docked I want to use an external keyboard and mouse. The only mouse that supports the trackpad controls that Mac assumes are available is the magic mouse, which my company helpfully provided, but the ergonomics on that mouse are terrible. It's this tiny little flat slab that offers nothing in the way of support.

If I could figure out how to control everything with the keyboard I'd swap that mouse out for an ergonomic one, but virtual workspace management with pure keyboard seems to be impossible even with Rectangle installed.

> This is the thing that is most frustrating to me about MacOS—keyboard support is clearly a second class citizen.

This has been true from the beginning of Mac OS X/OS X/macOS. Though the OS allows you to easily define keyboard shortcuts for any menu item in any application easily, there’s no way to use the system well if you don’t have a mouse (or even better, a trackpad).

And it gets even worse with Catalyst [1] apps, including Apple’s own apps like Reminders and others. It’s an exercise in futility to try to navigate those using the keyboard alone.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Catalyst

Turn on "Keyboard navigation": https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-your-keyboard-l...

It helps a little, such as being able to tab through dialog prompt buttons. Windows is still 10x better at being controlled by a keyboard but at least bridges the gap a tiny bit.

Even that does not always work. Some dialogs stubbornly refuse to respond to the tab key. In fairness, though, I think those are mostly dialogs with “dangerous” options in them: It slows down the automatic response somewhat.

In addition to that, I use raycast to find any menu item. No mouse needed.

Command-shift-? Brings up Search in the Help menu, then type and select the menu item, also, but TIL about raycast:

https://www.raycast.com

I know, but it’s not as fast. :)

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