Alan.app – Add a Border to macOS Active Window
tyler.io
tyler.io
Bizarre that this has not been fixed by Apple, it has been an annoyance well before Tahoe. Relying on the three dots in the top left corner to see which window is on top gets frustrating.
Not a script, not a configuration, but an actual app that occupies space and RAM and does just that? How had somebody come to this weird idea that everything is an APP?
People do not want to manage scripts and configurations in esoteric locations. They want to drag and drop app bundles into the trash from the apps folder.
This is trivially found out after 5 minutes with a user.
My guess is that kAXWindowMovedNotification, kAXWindowResizedNotification, kAXMainWindowChangedNotification etc. are being listened to on the currently focused window using the Accessibility framework, and there is a callback which gets the latest position of the tracked window whenever it is fired, and uses that position as a reference to update the border position
The border window itself is most likely an NSWindow, which is why the tracking of the border with the target window feels quite sluggish
Any reason to use this over JankyBorders? I'm using it alongside Aerospace right now and forget sometimes it isn't built-in. Kind of weird to me that after all this time this is such a sparsely implemented feature. But the combo with Aerospace works well. Only thing missing is support in Aerospace for a toggle to have a window expand to the size of it's container. Really liked that feature in Yabai, made working with multiple tiled terminals really nice
The implementation is probably different.
Different apps on macOS use different corner radii, so I’m wondering whether the apps can use any API to get the exact window bounds in order to draw the correct corner radius.
I'm not affiliated, but I love it and recommended it to friends.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-7-interface-design-...
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-apples-products-so-confus...
Apple had usability experts like Bill Atkinson (RIP), Larry Tesler (RIP), Bruce Tognazzini, and Don Norman. At one point, what differentiated Apple products from competitors was Apple’s focus on usability and consistency. However, it seems that sometime during Apple’s revival under Steve Jobs, there became a big focus on appealing design. Beige desktops and black laptops gave way to colorful desktops and metallic laptops, and the Platinum interface was replaced with Aqua. Nothing was wrong with this; in fact, this was peak Apple, IMO, with usability and visual appeal. But somewhere along the line, Apple lost the plot. Apple became less about usability and more about visual appeal, but with usability taking a hit.
To be fair, Apple makes world-class hardware, and I still prefer macOS to its competitors. The problem is that I prefer 2000s Mac OS X and even the 1990s classic Mac OS (from a UI perspective, not necessarily a UX perspective due to stability issues) to modern macOS.
I'm not sure what's going on in the design world. I mean, of course there's the influence of the web design spheres. The web didn't have the GUI standards that e.g. Macs were known for. In the beginning, they couldn't emulate the desktops. Toolkits like ExtJS tried, but you stated with the basic problem that you didn't know what desktop you wanted to emulate. Windows? Mac?
By the time the browser caught up, the damage already had been done, and the stop-gap solutions and styles more suitable for ads created a "web style". Flashy, flat, deserts of whitespace. The aesthetic stranglehold this had then not only persisted, but crossed over first into mobile (the somewhat standardized look & feel of early iOS quickly vanished), then the desktop.
And now nobody knows where they're going, despite having more people solely focused on "UX" than ever before. But you need to do something to justify your position/salary, and that's how we get the Microsoft/Apple designs of the last decade or so. And not having any ideas beyond type systems or init replacements, the open source world just emulates that.
Their background is in marketing/packaging/retail design, and they were at Kate Spade before Apple.
https://a-g-i.org/user/alaindye/
It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine why someone from that world would prioritize things looking good in promotional photos/videos, and not care too much about human factors and fundamentals of interaction design.
When you’re an exec in charge of a whole area, the buck stops with you and, to quote Steve Jobs - the reasons stop mattering.
As a user I don’t care about having “extraordinary insight into the development process”. All I know is you’re vice president of interface design and the interfaces are getting worse over time.
When I worked for someone else (now self-employed), some bugs were my fault. But with features and other intentional changes, the bosses had to sign off on them, and in some cases there were vigorous internal debates, but the bosses had the final say and could overrule objections.
The stockholders do not make design decisions but only elect the board of directors. The board of directors do not make design decisions but only elect the CEO. The former CEO Steve Jobs did make design decisions, but the current CEO Tim Cook appears not to make design decisions, delegating that to subordinates. Alan Dye is Vice President of Human Interface Design at Apple. He does make design decisions; indeed that's in his job title. Dye previously reported to Jeff Williams, COO, but Williams just retired, so it's unclear who Dye reports to now. In any case, Dye is likely the person at Apple who has the final say on design decisions.
No, he is saying that we should blame the person who has command responsibility. It is pretty well-established principle in jurisprudence actually.
There are tens of thousands of interface designers who would be able to make a better interface than what is Tahoe and iOS 26. One of them should have the job.
So if you hired a plumber to install a new faucet or whatever, and he totally fucks up (eg. floods your entire kitchen), you're saying we shouldn't blame him, we should blame... you, for hiring him in the first place?
>not the people who could have said no?
Going to the plumber example, you're saying that you should be hovering over him to catch any mistakes? Isn't the whole point of hiring a professional is that you don't have to worry about stuff like this? If you're able-bodied and are going to have to supervise the whole thing, why bother hiring someone?
If Mac as a whole is a disaster, then whoever is responsible of that needs to be fired.
If Mac hardware is a disaster, then whoever is responsible of that needs to be fired.
If Mac software is a disaster, then whoever is responsible of that needs to be fired.
If Mac software UI design is a disaster, then whoever is responsible of that needs to be fired.
And of course the people above are responsible as well. But in this case there's a very obvious project which has failed.
I cannot remember the number of times I quit the wrong app because of this or pasted something to the wrong window. I genuinely have to wait a second on every app switch.
It’s probably the highest crime within Apple to state some things are not useable
https://gist.github.com/cfe84/901411ee43450e7ee0e50e88cf029f...
Love the name!
Good reminder to make things accessible by default, for the vast majority that can benefit from it.
Tyler, I'd pay 5€ for this app btw.