Hacker News Reader

Comment by yborg | Hacker News Reader

Can confirm, friend who moved to Mac after 30+ years on Win ecosystem and all of the discussions we have are basically "but on Windows..." They specifically have lamented the unavailability of Notepad++ because of a specific hanging indent behavior they are used to.

Most people do not have the cognitive flexibility to really adapt to a tool that is more or less domain equivalent but different in any way. These small differences create more friction than learning something that doesn't have any close mapping to what you knew before.

View on HN

wants to use something familiar => does not have cognitive flexibility

It's amazing how people find ways to flaunt their 'superiority'.

Cuts both ways too. I am finding Windoews harder due to using the mac as daily driver. Haven't got the hang of finder yet. I use CLI as much as possible making use rare enough not to master.

Goes for Linux too.

I have the flexibility to adjust to platforms other than macOS but I’d rather not have to. My setup works for me and having to change it is annoying and drags down productivity.

In my case it’s more intense than usual because I’m a visual person and my productivity suffers for things like my desktop environment, theme, etc not looking “right”. When using Linux for anything more “serious” than studying with Anki I get pulled down a bottomless rabbit hole of trying to “fix” everything, which is futile because many of the problems can’t be fixed without a huge number of project forks.

Recent editions of MacOS look so bad that Windows might actually be better designed (if it weren't for all the windows ads and spam).

Gnome is starting to become the nicest desktop environment lol.

I’ve not been a fan of the Liquid Glass changes, but it’s similar enough that I’ve been able to get used to it.

Fluent on Windows doesn’t look too bad but MS hasn’t made particularly great use of it and parts of the OS still don’t use it.

GNOME/Adwaita get some things right, and other things wrong (the padding everywhere is way too thick, its crusade against menu bars is odd). It’s also so minimal that it makes macOS look maximalist, and as such isn’t my cup of tea.

Gnome is the only linux DE that tries to be consistent (probably due to more centralised decision making). I think that makes it most likely to be most user friendly over time.

The consistency is one of the things it gets right, but it’s undermined by its sheer bare-bonesness, which brings people to try to augment it with extensions, but those constantly break due to functioning by way of monkeypatching GNOME internals.

I think the idea of a “blank slate” DE that you build up with extensions is actually great, but a highly capable stable extension API is non-optional for that to actually work. I can’t have half my customizations vanishing or breaking overnight due to a system update.

I've never seen the appeal of GNOME 3+, the design seems so user-hostile to anyone who has used computers for a while: hiding menus for no reason, having super limited menu options, etc.

I'd rather use LXDE, XFCE, or KDE.

It's great to have the choice but the context was pretty MacOS UIs. There the only competition is Gnome and i was arguing that it's slowly getting nicer than MacOS.

Nope. Not even close.

Yeah the Mac GUI has declined.

But it’s still far better than the incoherent mess of the last 15 ways MS were totally the future mashed together in random places.

Windows has had great points. 95 era was fantastic. 2000 too, and I liked XP though third party apps went nuts.

Modern Windows is none of those. I’ll keep my somewhat messed up Mac.

I thought that MS had a good thing going on with the refinements in Aero brought by Windows 7. It nicely balanced a modern theme with a traditional desktop model and it still respected the user while bringing some massive QoL improvements.

Had Windows 8 been further refinement into the Fluent design language along with unifying lingering Win9x style panels into the Vista/7 style, it would’ve been massively popular and more beloved by users than XP or 7. Instead, Microsoft decided to forget non-touch devices entirely and saddle the desktop with an ugly theme reminiscent of Windows 1.0/2.0 in a botched attempt to make it fit in with the flat Metro touch UI bits.

They might have. I moved to the Mac during XP. I never used Windows 7.

I have used the server version that’s designed to be a bit like 8. I may have used 8 too, I can’t remember for sure. I’ve definitely used 10+.

I have a PC at work that I use from time to time, plus I remote into various Windows machines. Between those two I’ve gotten a taste of the more modern versions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com