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Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

Every system has its issues. It's really a question of which issues you can live with and which system ultimately fits your workflow best.

After I got used to working in windows instead of full screen all the time, I can't really go back. Even on Windows I find myself working the way I do on macOS. Full screening every app made more sense on a 1024x768 screen (or smaller). Once I moved to a widescreen display (which happened to coincide with getting my first mac) running full screen felt like the wrong move most of time.

Web pages would look something like this:

  |     <- whitespace ->     |  <- content ->  |     <- whitespace ->     |
  |                          | Lorem ipsum     |                          |
  |                          | dolor sit amet, |                          |
  |                          | consectetur     |                          |
  |                          | adipiscing      |                          |
  |                          | elit. Morbi     |                          |
  |                          | convallis ante  |                          |

Making the window smaller meant less wasted space and less blinding white space. Once I got used to that idea, it carried over to most other apps.

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> After I got used to working in windows instead of full screen all the time, I can't really go back.

Sorry if this comes across as disrespectful, but it smells like Stockholm Syndrome. You are choosing not to use the full extent of your screen estate, and that is your fine choice, but that is no excuse for making it hard. If you compound the whitespace, the thick borders and the generally oversized UI controls, not much of "productive space" remains available to get the work done. I am not interested in macOS as a content-consumption-first vehicle, though that's clearly where Apple is steering.

It is situational but I think on a modern wide screen(or screens) if it is a single text-like document(like a web page or a terminal) you want 2 or perhaps 3 side by side. if the app implements it's own window management(like blender) a single full screen is best. Overlapping windows are important to have, but almost never desirable, it usually happens because you ran out of room.

The problem I have with this is that I was using a 1600x1200 21" display in 2000, and got used to workflows for it back then.

I am currently running a 16" display at a similar fractional scaled resolution (because Apple stopped understanding DPI after shipping the first LaserWriter, apparently).

Over that time, my eyes have not gotten better to match display DPI, so I'd rather have web sites just adjust the font size so that there are a reasonable number of words per line instead of rendering whitespace.

Non-full-screen windows would make more sense if Apple supported tiling properly, like most Linux WMs and also modern Windows.

MacOS sort of supports tiling in a "program manager shipped it + got promoted" sort of way, but you have to hover over the window manager buttons, which is slower than just manually arranging stuff. If there are any keyboard shortcuts to invoke tiling, or a way to change the WM buttons to not suck, I have not found them.

1600x1200 is still a 4:3 aspect ratio, I think I agree that scaling that makes sense. Full screen really got problematic with 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratios. That's when the empty gutters in most apps, and especially websites, became really pronounced.

As for tiling in macOS...

You can use the mouse to drag windows into tiled positions. Grab a window and when your cursor hits the side, corner, or top edge of the screen, it will indicate the tiling position, much like AeroSnap on Windows from some years back. You can also hold the Option key while holding the window to get the tiling regions to show up without moving all the way to the edge.

Keyboard shortcuts exist as well. Go to Settings -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts... In the dialog that opens, go to Windows. There you can see all the options and customize them if you'd like. Or set shortcuts for things that might not have one yet.

If for some reason dragging the windows around doesn't work, go to Settings -> Desktop & Dock -> the Windows heading. There are toggles to enable or disable dragging to tile, and the Option key trick. You can also turn off the margins on tiled Windows, which you'd probably want to do.

I've never been a big fan of window tiling myself. There was a time when I needed a lot of different windows visible at all times, but that hasn't been the case in a long time. I find tiling makes things too big or small, it's never what I actually want. I drag the window up to the top of the screen to invoke Fill from time to time, but that's about it.

This is just that things are (poorly) designed now as mobile-only and not even mobile-first.

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