Comment by trueismywork | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trueismywork | Hacker News Reader

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I just got a work Mac and I have spent around 20 years now on linux before it. I was making a list compared to KDE (not pros/cons just differences) It is still a work in progress since its only a couple of days since im using it.

1. No delete button. I know you can do Fn delete but It is more problematic. And I do use delete often.

2. System keeps important system stuff in Library directory in home. Do not do remove any directories.

4. Os x doesnt quit apps and then expects me to go through all apps in windows switcher.

5. The spaces dont wrap around.

6. Finder is always in your alt +tab? Causes issues with switching.

7. Corners are round. How to Disable it control the roundedness

8. Alt +Tab doesnt automatically restore minimized windows.

9. App store is quite weak compared to archlinux

10. There is no spaces pager (a small bar at top where I can immediately see which desktop im in)

11. It seems that I cannot have windows of same app in multiple spaces.

12. Same app has only one window. Apple mail for example. Cannot copy text from email to settings.

13. How to Disable HTML display in apple mail.

14. Kmail has much better interface for signing

Both for viewing rhe signed emails and for deciding which key to use

15. Opening a new windows from spotlight is not possible

16. Download multiple wallpapers at same time is not possible

17. All operations related to an app should be inside an app. Alt+w for tab and ctrl+tab for switching makes me move two fingers instead of one.

18. Spectacle is so much better than screen shot on MAC os

19. Ramdisk on mac os x

21. Threads view in emails isnot possible in apple mail

22. Application specific power optimization (for good battery life) on OS X

23. Better security and access on OSX for apps.

23. Switching between apps of same windows on OSX does not bring up a visual aid..

24. Long press leads to accents which is very cool but also I didn't use it.

25. Left-clicking in a window to raise it _sometimes_ performs actions in the app (e.g. clicking a button or scrolling the window) and _sometimes_ only raises the window. It seems to depend on the app.

26. No ability to use focus-follows-mouse.

27. Home/End keys send you to the top/bottom of the whole document instead of the start/end of a line. The latter is much more useful to me and I use it all the time. You can change this behavior with a terminal command followed by rebooting, but some programs still do whatever they want.

28. Automatic text replacements change the text you entered into the text that Apple thinks you mean. (Can also be disabled.)

29. Holding down an alphanumeric key brings up an accept/symbol selector, as on iPhone. This isn't compatible with many terminal applications like vim.

30. The dock has a tendency to move automatically to another display when there is a maximized window on that display. (I know how to move the dock by going bottom of the display and moving the mouse down, this isn't that.)

31. The camera notch can hide icons and you have no way to get to them without either connecting and external display or a workaround like https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden.

> The spaces dont wrap around.

Indeed. I would love it if I could name spaces too. Amazing how little details improve productivity.

> It seems that I cannot have windows of same app in multiple spaces.

Right-click app icon in dock.

For different app windows in the same app, appearing in different spaces: Options->Assign to Desktop->None.

For app windows appearing across all spaces: Options->Assign to Desktop->All Desktops.

("Desktop" here actually refers to spaces, for some reason. And it would be nice to be able to do "All Desktops" at the window level, but nay.)

Thanks.

I feel your pain here; I remember my transition from Debian to MacOS. I’ve used DOS, Windows, Linux, and MacOS — each full-time for more than a decade. The switching pain is real, and some things still feel wrong to me after I got to love them on a prior OS.

E.g., in Windows apps, menu items are keyboard-addressable by default. This is brilliant for accessibility, and for accustomed power users. MacOS has no _by default_ equivalent.

E.g., managing virtual desktops in Linux are exactly as flexible and powerful as you want them to be. MacOS does it One Way (more or less), and you’d better like it.

I still love MacOS the most. Some of the things you list are real misses (#1). Some of them, I believe, are things you haven’t found yet (#11, #15, #16). Some are MacOS-specific metaphors which I’ve come to love compared with the alternatives (#4). Some I don’t understand but would be happy to discuss with you (#17).

> E.g., in Windows apps, menu items are keyboard-addressable by default. This is brilliant for accessibility, and for accustomed power users. MacOS has no _by default_ equivalent.

Cmd-Shift-? (really, Cmd-?)

You can begin using arrow keys from there, or start typing to search the menu items of the foreground app

You can also assign arbitrary hotkeys to any application's menu items in the OS system preferences

Yeah, I know about this; it’s not the same. In Windows apps following the standard (which all good ones do) _every menu item_ is keyboard addressable. Something several submenus in is trivially accessible by muscle memory: ALT-I-R-C to resize an image without constraints, e.g.

MacOS allows easy navigation of the menu, but does not guarantee that each item is hotkey-addressable.

4 - in macOS apps != windows (some apps don't respect this)

8 - minimize in macOS is more like "get this window out of the way without closing it", and it is related to 4)

15 - because of 4

23 - wat

Personally, once I got used to cmd+tab and cmd+` for window management, I can't go back, but it needs a different mental model than the one on Windows/Linux.

> 19. Ramdisk on mac os x

It has ramdisks (`diskimagetool attach ram://`) and tmpfs.

To be fair a lot of these might be because OS X was unveiled in 2016 /s

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