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Comment by omeysalvi | Hacker News Reader

I hope Microsoft quickly finds a solution to move to RISC. I don't care about compatibility with older software. I want the battery life without having to move to MacOS and using it's awful window management.

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If window management is the only thing holding you back, look into the third party UI helper app scene. There have been lots of them—Rectangle for example. https://rectangleapp.com/

If by RISC you mean RISC-V, I think it will be quite some time away.

I suspect that most RISC-V designs that are supposed to compete with ARM apps processors don't actually have lower power consumption.

....yet.

If you mean SiFive's designs, they always target (and beat) some ARM one in PPA.

Remove 11 and install Windows 10 LTSC IOT edition until the equivalent for 11 drops.

Make Windows shut up for good with Tinywall (https://tinywall.pados.hu/) and whitelist applications as needed.

What is so bad about MacOS window management?

I haven't used Windows for a while, but back in the day, it did not provide any extra capabilities in this regard over MacOS. Now I use an extension to tile the desktop with windows, and it works great.

> What is so bad about MacOS window management?

MacOS is so intrusive and distracting that I can't imagine doing any meaningful work on it, feels like a toy OS.

Any specific example of this?

macOS window management is "application centric", while Windows and most Linux desktops are "window centric". Mac is my primary platform since a decade now, but I still find that particular aspect quite awkward, old time Mac users seem to like it though (it's not much of an issue for me since I don't use many UI apps anyway besides iTerm2, Chrome and VSCode).

Windows does have some more built-in window tools these days -- it lets you snap windows into various parts of the screen by dragging them up against the edges. You can replicate that on macOS with apps like Rectangle.

More-controversial is the different behavior of cmd-tab between Mac and Windows (app-level vs window-level). Once you learn that cmd-` also exists for switching between windows inside an app, I find it's a matter of personal preference and you can make arguments either way about which one is "better"...

> Once you learn that cmd-` also exists for switching between windows inside an app, I find it's a matter of personal preference and you can make arguments either way about which one is "better"...

Here is an example of how the app-centric model of task switching is problematic beyond personal preference: it causes focus stealing when opening GUI windows from the CLI. The apps themselves have to (partially, because that's the best they can do) work around the window manager's broken behavior.

The final answer from the initiated seems to be 'you're holding it wrong'. So here we have a Certified Unix™ where something as banal as setting your $EDITOR to a GUI program is broken by default and even when 'fixed' causes your window order to be shuffled around.

Examples:

https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/24033/when-returni...

https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/4460

https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/i5zqn5/focus_doesnt_re...

Using macOS is a barrage of papercuts like this for me, and the window manager is at the heart of many of them.

I highly doubt they ever will. Their insistance on baking in legacy support to modern Windows is their biggest downfall. Because of that every installation of Windows will always need to be backwards compatible and carry that burden.

Which is odd because I feel like they run a VM for older compatibilities anyway?

I think this could be handled more elegantly, as Apple has been able to make x86 compatibility better and more performant than quite a bit of actual x86 silicon… for MS, the backward compat of their software stack is rather important for enterprise customers.

Honestly tho, I find modern Windows infuriating to use without stripping it down quite a bit. Tiny11 is a lifesaver.

> I think this could be handled more elegantly, as Apple has been able to make x86 compatibility better and more performant than quite a bit of actual x86 silicon.

I wouldn’t count on this being the case going forward. Let’s not forget that some 4 years ago Apple decided to completely drop support for 32-bit apps. I wouldn’t be surprised if in 5-8 years time they decide to drop support for anything x86.

Apple hates supporting legacy crap. The exact moment when the vast majority of the recently updated Mac apps will have ARM builds, Apple will just set a release some years in the future that will kill native x86 support and that will be the end of it.

> I wouldn’t be surprised if in 5-8 years time they decide to drop support for anything x86.

I'd be pretty shocked if they didn't.

They've supported ARM since Windows 10, and there are multiple Surface models that have an ARM chip.

Supported is probably the wrong term. Tolerated might be better. Whilst Windows runs on it theres very little there beyond the usual Microsoft standard of "yep we did it, whats next" and ignoring the platform.

Making it work on ARM is one thing, making it work well, and supporting the platform are a far more important part of the puzzle.

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