I shouldn’t have to try so hard to make multitasking work on a Mac
theverge.com
theverge.com
That said, I have 5 workspaces bound to command+1 through command+5 that I flip through on my macs, and that works pretty well. Honestly I find working on a Windows machine to be much worse for multitasking due to its lack of that functionality.
I also used to use Divvy with some specific keybinds to organize my windows, but Divvy is no longer supported and I haven't yet found a tool that makes it easy to replicate that functionality quite the way I liked it.
Are there?
I used to "have" your problem, but the multiple monitor solution fixed it.
Or using an iPad.
This begins to look like the kind of article someone might write when they have a deadline and nothing else to say...
I have to think about whether I want to tab or tilde at the moment, and then I have to make sure to minimize anything I'm not actively working on (or move it to a different space.)
But if I want something on a different space, then I have to think about moving over there because command-~ won't go there. So, I have to keep context in my mind that I want to Just Work.
I think if I could split out things like gmail, google calendar, or other SAASes rather than being separate windows I'd be better off. (I've created electron apps for some of these in the past, but it does make links out of them messy.)
I have a large screen most of the time, so I can keep the necessary context on the screen, but it becomes a larger problem when I'm on just the laptop screen.
How is this a legitimate complaint? Your brain is not yet wired to handle the additional functionality, but you blame the functionality for that, and not your brain?!
I hate that I have to meticulously order windows and keep a mental map of the order of my web browser windows instead of a more streamlined experience. It gives that unpleasant mental shock that bad user experiences do, and it happens on a weekly basis. After 9 years, that's not my fault and it's not just me.
And how is something like Rectangle still not built in?
Why do you take this as if it's some sort of affront?
I take no offense to any of this, I’m just observing the problem looks to be you and not the OS or even hardware.
<snark> But you're right. I'm a hater for wanting my MBP to boot and use external monitors. </snark>
And not for nothing, but Steve Jobs was a prodigiously arrogant asshole who had very little (if anything at all) to do with the Apple of today, and nearly nothing at all to do with how macOS functions now. The man literally killed himself with his own hubris.
Why do I need to download a kext and monkey with defaults to make the charger work? This was the kind of thing Macs were supposed to free me from.
(Though in all fairness, I haven't had to do too much registry surgery since Windows 7)
If you read the thread, you'll discover two things:
1. The MBP is a work laptop given to me by a customer to do development on. I would never pick a Mac to develop Linux code, but that's what my customer has done.
2. I'm not a windows user. Or rather, I have used windows at work, but prefer Linux or BSD systems at home.
Additionally... I can assure you Steve Jobs was a prodigious arrogant asshole who has an awful lot to do with Apple.
I am happy that macOS works for you. But I am not you and I have different requirements. Requirements that macOS does not fulfill.
It is also true that I am a curmudgeon.
I use both macOS and Windows. I think they are both fine operating systems, each has its own annoyances, but I agree with most of the article's points.
But now I'm just ranting. As best I can tell, the only reason to use an MBP is so you can write iOS programs. But my customer really thinks the Apple ecosystem is cool, even though we target Linux in the cloud. Oh. Also. Why/how does macOS break BOTH parallels and VirtualBox between revs? Fortunately the latest VirtualBox works with the latest macOS.
I will be very happy to leave this engagement in the past. Seems like I'm spending 20% of my time keeping a terminal window working on the mac.
And I'm coming from a position of really loving NeXTStep and Classic Macs. In the classic era, we had consistent design guidance. Now it's a mish-mash of random recommendations which may or may not carry on to the next OS rev. And NeXTStep had it's problems, but at least it booted consistently.
I know there are a lot of apple fans out here, so go ahead and down-vote me. Sorry for bruising your ego. But the objective of this post is to try to reach someone at Apple who has the ability to make things better for non-fans.
If your argument is that Linux or Windows are any better on this front, I beg to differ.
Don't get me wrong. I love Linux. But it's hardly a bastion of design consistency or user-friendliness.
As for Windows? I mean... come on. When's the last time anyone tried to steal design ideas from Microsoft? Everything good about Windows was stolen from somewhere else, and, in my not-so-humble opinion, implemented poorly.
I believe I place a higher premium on consistency across releases than you do. I also believe the user should be telling the computer what to do rather than apple telling me they want to change the way I work. But we're all different in that regard.
That's a perfectly reasonable thing to believe. My only contention is that Apple has never hidden their preference for doing exactly this. They're a highly opinionated company. Their platforms have always professed "this is the best way, and if you don't like it, we're not for you." Sounds like they're not for you.
This is not a defense of windows, though it's been several years since I've had to perform registry surgery to enable basic behaviors. It is a plea that apple make their software work so I don't have to keep monkeying with its registry^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpreferences tree.
My favorite era of Microsoft software from a UI/UX standpoint is the period between Windows 95 and Windows 2000, alongside other Microsoft products such as Office 97/2000 and Visual Basic 6. I particularly liked the flat toolbars and the Tahoma font introduced in Office 97 and spreading to the rest of the Microsoft ecosystem; a Windows 2000 installation with Office 97/2000 and Visual Basic 6 looked quite consistent.
It's been almost 20 years since we got to the point where you didn't have to manually configure x. And since then I have never seen features around the edge of the screen (menu bars, docks, etc.) render off the edge of the screen. I saw that this morning on my MBP running macOS. The best minds in corporate support suggest apple shipped this week's MBPs with the wrong graphics driver. (we updated the driver and changed a few defaults and it works fine now. I can actually boot far enough to get a terminal window open.)
Windows Snap is a feature basically every Linux desktop cloned about 1 week after Microsoft showed it off during the reveal of Windows 7. MacOS has about 10,000 apps to do the same thing but poorly.
I still think nobody has made a better tablet interface than Windows 8.
My experience is with (mostly) Debian, some Ubuntu and less Red Hat/Fedora/Centos. Some VMS, some Solaris (which thankfully don't change that much.)
I do not doubt there are people who enjoy macOS and do not use the features about which I am complaining.
I am not saying they should be driven from their homes and publicly shamed (which some people seem to think I am doing.)
I am saying there are more than a few people for which the current window manager does not work well. I am one of those people. The author of the article referenced is another of these people.
I do not believe that either of them are you. I am not implying that macOS does not work for you. I do not have first hand experience with your use of macOS.
But I am saying... theApple? window manager behavior is, in my opinion, sub-optimal and can be improved.
I was not talking about the window manager behavior of windows or any of the myriad of Linux options. I was talking about the macOS window manager. It's the window manager on the Mac, which is a product produced by Apple. It is not the same as Linux or Windows which are developed and supported by different organizations.
As for your assertion that people have not stolen ideas from "windows" I have some very bad news for you. It turns out that both Apple and Microsoft stole from other organizations. Mostly Xerox, some Tektronix, some from the Athena project. There's even a paper trail where apple says "hey. we'll let you buy apple stock cheap if you let us look at what you're doing at parc." And Xerox responds with "where do I sign!?"
At one time Apple had the user interface research group that was the envy of the world: glass, tessler, etc. They got steved in '97 and replaced with an exceedingly talented designer who did not have a history of running user studies. And we got the "we know how you should do this" mentality.
If you want to do things the way apple wants you to do them, then great. You should do them that way. But thinking that other people want to do things the way you want to do them is... well... it's probably the Apple way... which is why I don't buy apple products.
Also... when was the last time someone stole an idea from apple?
Love Debian and Ubuntu and most Linux distros. When I'm spending my own money on a machine for personal use, I always err on the side of a PC with a Linux distro. My main reason for using a Mac is it's the closest to a Linux box that still has support for the software I have to use every day -- i.e. mainly the Adobe suite. I also (selfishly) recommend Macs to most people because they hardly ever need to come running to me for IT support.
I'm also not claiming Apple doesn't steal. They steal liberally. I am claiming, perhaps wrongly if you have good evidence, that people steal from Apple far more than anyone steals from Microsoft or any other tech company that I can think of. See the history of smartphones, tablets, and laptops for the past 20 years. From my perspective, it's been a history of Apple doing something different, and the industry blindly following them, even when it's not clear it's the right idea. (For example, I personally hate the now-ubiquitous camera notches on phones.)
At a minimum, you have to concede Apple's design ethos is heavily stolen by virtually everyone. So much so that I would struggle to find a laptop or phone that didn't look like an Apple knock-off.
As for the window manager, it works great for me. Doesn't work great for you. I think I can still maintain the assertion that they're simply different, with different priorities. Your priorities aren't wrong, but neither are those found in MacOS. They're just wrong for you.
The Apple Way is very much "We've figured this stuff out so you don't have to." Of course, no solution is perfect for 100% of people. But I think they've done a better job than most at coming up with something that works really well for most people. I've never run into an issue that made me wonder how I could multitask on a Mac.
I very productively multitask on my Mac and have for decades. I wouldn't personally want to go back to a Windows environment, but I'm not so arrogant as to claim multitasking isn't possible on Windows.
It's just a different platform and there's a learning curve whenever you have to get used to any new platform.
But I would argue that it's much easier for a Windows person to learn a Mac than the other way around. I may be biased, but it's my honest opinion.
PROTIP: If you don't want to shame people, try not shaming them.
But the author mentions coming from Windows instead of Leenooks, so my guess is they don't know the loveliness of i3. (Though I have to admit... i3 defaults aren't my favorites. And vi keybindings are foreign to my emacs trained fingers. Which is why I just have a script that moves my windows around a Gnome or LXDE desktop.)