I’m gonna ask a dumb question here and hope for a not dumb answer. When the author says “I know UI consistency has been a dirty word ever since the web and then iOS rose to prominence”, what exactly are they referring to?
I’ve been forced to use windows for some propriety software during uni. I got a laptop from IT with higher specs than my old one and:
- It runs worse than my old shitty laptop
- It boots up slower than my old shitty laptop
- The battery icon was missing from the taskbar for some ungodly reason (I had to get IT to force an update)
- The internet it gets is way worse than my old shitty laptop. I do not know why
So yeah I’m not using Windows 11 ever again
I use windows 11 at work. I run solidworks, which is a 3D CAD/modeling program so my work computer is reasonably powerful with a decent chunk of RAM.
My laptop from 2020 uses mint. It’s faster, although I havent tried to use solidworks on it because I’d have no idea where to start on getting that to run.
For someone used to desktop Linux, where respect for the user, consistency, customisability, and performance are still held in high regard, Windows 11 feels like an endless string of punches in the face.
God I really hope someone figures out Wayland+Wacom. I cannot wait to escape Windows
I dread having to use my work laptop for this exact reason.
aww…he deeed
There’s a similar incentive to this Windows 11 one, but for macOS. Yikes.
Not sure why that warrants a yikes; macOS is far more usable than Windows 11. I’d go so far as to call it downright pleasant in comparison.
Maybe everyone has their biases, but MacOS is often terrible in comparison to Windows, at least in my experience. Hell simply things like snapping windows appropriately MacOS absolutely is trash at still.
Different workflow, macOS does not expect you to snap windows. I’m not 100% familiar with the macOS workflow, but I know it’s different.
Maybe it’s because I’m more used to windows but my experience any time I’ve had to use mac at work is I’d rather just be fired. At least with a bit of work you can set windows up to mostly fuck off but I’ve never figured out how to do that with mac so it aggressively gets in my way when coding and doing qa
In what ways does it aggressively get in your way?
I hate the multi desktop stuff.
Drag a window to top of screen and it doesn’t snap full screen fast enough or consistantly.
Doesn’t like to display 1 window across 2 screens.
Sometimes a window will shoot off to the side past the visible desktop for god knows what reason.
You can’t nativly set up the mouse scroll to work in reverse direction to the touch pad.
I’m still not sure how to uninstall things.
When my headphone cable is plugged in and I turn on the Mac it insists to make the boot sound though the speakers as an advertizment to the world that there is a Mac around.
If I click x on a browser or app, it doesnt actually shut the program, it just minimizes it.
I can’t easily see the size of hard drives/folders and how much space is left available.
Files are just scattered willy nilly in a folder instead of snapped to a grid unless I set that folders defaults…per folder?! Instead of across the whole OS
They are my personal top of mind gripes.
Longtime Mac user here. Most of this is valid, and some of these are my biggest gripes.
A couple tips:
I can’t easily see the size of hard drives/folders and how much space is left available.
In the Finder, go to View > Show Status Bar. That’ll show you free space easily. (This used to be on by default. I don’t remember when they changed it, probably with 10.7 Lion’s increased iOS-ification.)
Files are just scattered willy nilly in a folder instead of snapped to a grid unless I set that folders defaults…per folder?!
From a Finder window in icon view, go to View > Show View Options. Select Sort By > Snap to Grid, then click “Use as Defaults”. Then it will apply to all your folders that use the default view. Why is “Snap to grid” under “Sort” when it does not sort? WHO KNOWS?!
That said, icon view suuuuuucks. Learn to love list view and you will be happier for it. I gave up on icon view like 25 years ago, after migrating from Mac OS 9. Apple half-assedly ported the Mac OS 9 Finder, and then proceeded to neglect it for a decade or two. At least you can change the grid spacing now.
Doesn’t like to display 1 window across 2 screens.
I’m not totally sure how it works now, but I think this changes if you go to System Settings > Desktop and Dock and turn off the “Displays have Separate Spaces” box.
I’m still not sure how to uninstall things.
There’s no universal method. :(
Basic case: just drag the app to the trash. This will leave your user settings in place in ~/Library/Preferences.
Complex cases should have a vendor-supplied uninstaller. For manual cleanup, you have to hunt through your /Library and ~/Library folders to delete related junk from the vendor. Mostly this will be in the LaunchAgents and Application Support folders. But again, no universal method.
If I click x on a browser or app, it doesnt actually shut the program, it just minimizes it.
This is the one thing I strongly disagree about, although I totally understand how it feels wrong when you’ve spent years learning different behavior.
It’s one of the biggest fundamental differences between Mac and Windows UI design, going all the way back to the 80s: Windows is window-centric (I mean…hence the name, right?), while Mac OS is application-centric.
You can still interact with Mac applications with no windows open, via the menu bar. Closing a window and quitting an application are two entirely different concepts. This is not the same as “minimizing” the app. An app can be in the foreground with no open windows. There are plenty of times when I close the last window in an app with the intent to continue using the app (e.g. opening another file or creating a new one).
Fun fact: many years ago, Apple made a few of their apps behave this way by default, with an option to change it back to normal Mac behavior. TextEdit, Preview, and maybe QuickTime Player. Just those few. I guess they wanted to accommodate Windows users’ expectations, but it was so half-assed that all it did was ensure that everyone was confused at some point by the inconsistency. They only recently changed it back so we have consistency by default again, but now there’s no option at all. Go figure. I wouldn’t mind if they implemented an option in a whole-assed way, but I’d go absolutely batty if Windows-like behavior were forced on me.
The scroll thing is annoying. I like the “natural” scroll on a touchpad but not a mouse also.
The multi desktop is the same as on Windows and Linux… I don’t use it on any system. I like how MacOS handles fullscreen apps better than either of those.
You can disable the startup sound very easily: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102230
I have only used mirroring to external monitor and not extending a desktop, so I don’t know. As far as maximization I personally hate windows expanding when I move them to the top of the screen. It’s rarely what I want so I turn it off. If I want to maximize it, I hit the green button.
You uninstall Apps by dragging their folder from the Applications folder to the trash can.
Closing the window and leaving the application running is how MacOS has worked forever for some Steve Jobs reason. I am used to hitting Cmd-Q.
The folder stuff can be weird. The way the Desktop icons work is one of the worst aspects, thigh they kind of fixed that (using expanding smart folders or whatever used to be chaos if they had a lot of items in them).
You can check the usage of a Volume from right clicking it in Finder and choosing Get Info. Or just df -h
Coming from an IT background. I 100% agree with this assessment.
This is because a Mac is basically a giant iPad with a keyboard. Everything is abstracted away, so if you’re actually a computer person and try and take command of what’s going on, the giant iPad will say “no you can’t do that” constantly
It feels like trying to drive a car with no steering wheel or pedals, and you’re expected to vibe your way through it with an overly helpful touchscreen interface running interference. Like just please God just give me the steering wheel
These seem like mostly familiarity issues, where Windows issues are malicious in nature.
No, OS X aggressively resists customization or convenience. There’s the Apple way to do pretty much everything and the painful way which is anything but the Apple way. Windows is anti-consumer because they want to harvest your data and cram ads down your throat. OS X just doesn’t care what you want or what you would prefer and will actively punish you if you attempt to deviate from the way it thinks you should be doing things. If something doesn’t work the way you want tough, OS X makes you adapt to it rather than trying to adapt to you.
Oh, yes… to input specific characters or disable caps lock, one needs to hack the registry with hex codes…
Stunning Windows goes still as user-friendly.
Edit: If you were lacking a reason to try modern Linux user Interfaces, try GNOME desktop with PaperWM. It works great on my 40’ display…
Stunning Windows goes still as user-friendly.
I mean I get we are supposed to hate Windows here but highlighting a specific thing that very few people would even want to try and use that as a reason to doubt it’s user friendliness is just picking at straws. There’s tons of reasons that Windows can be interpreted as not user friendly already.
You can use PowerToys for Windows to (among other things) disable caps lock. I’m no fan of Microsoft, but they do provide PowerToys for free and there is a lot of useful stuff in it.
I love powertoys. It’s potentially (along with C#/.Net) the best thing Microsoft have made.
PowerToys is the sole reason I somewhat get along with binbows on my work laptop.
I linked to the top search result.
Matches my experiences between using Linux at home for decades, and being forced to deal with Windows at work. Luckily, I can drop all the shitty problems on IT…
Thanks! Lol
Windows has went to shit. But I have a soft spot for older versions.
Windows 7 was peak Windows, at least from a usability standpoint.
Coming from XP, 7 felt like an upgrade, but I wouldn’t say I was enamoured. Peak Windows for me was 2000, and while it probably lacks more useful modern features than I recall, I definitely still think it’s the best looking, and the visually most well put together version of Windows there has ever been.
I love Linux, and I love how it has managed to bring back, or even surpass, the enjoyment and the sense of wonder and possibilities, that I used to feel in regards to computer use, back then. And I love how it enables me to install, create and customise any graphical elements of the desktop environment to my liking. One of the first things I managed to do, after switching to Linux, was, in fact, to convert my desktop into a very convincing Windows 2000 look-alike - just looking at the desktop, I doubt many people would have been able to tell that it wasn’t actually the real McCoy. Nowadays, though, I wouldn’t want my desktop to look like Windows of any variety. I use a few different styles, depending on mood, that are all either replicas of other, real desktop environments from the 90’s, or they’re imaginary “fantasy desktops” from the 90’s of an alternate reality. I love that can just do that, not just because I love that particular aesthetic, but also because it is SO much more usable for me. The current trends in visual design, aren’t just off putting to me, it’s difficult and straining to parse too, what with the contrasts that are all out of whack, and lines and outlines all but seemingly banned, and with all the drop shadows and the transparency effects, and things fading and sliding around everywhere all the time, it’s just so much visual noise, and it makes my head hurt. The late 90’s is when GUIs and the graphical part of UX were at their peak, in terms of usability and readability, if you ask me. It’s sad to me that almost every type of design since has seemingly been a direct or indirect rejection of that period. I wonder how much better GUIs could be, if they had stuck with all the things that worked well from back then, and had then continued to build off of that.
Sorry I think I went off on a tangent there.
As for 7 being the peak in terms of usability, what with some of the features it had over earlier versions, you may be right. I think 7 was the first version that had indexed searches, or at least had them enabled by default, and I remember how good that felt, experiencing it for the first time. But wasn’t 10, on release, pretty equivalent to 7, really? IIRC, much of its dark patterns, ads, spyware and enshittification was only added gradually over its lifetime, wasn’t it? Going by memory, I think I even appreciated the minor facelift it got, as it seemed essentially like the same thing, but with the Vista-esque/Aero-style glassy, glossy, noisy stuff gone or heavily muted and toned down, which made it much less distracting.
I still think Win2K was the true peak. Everything since has been clown shoes and bloat.
… but I have to admit that my Mint Cinnamon customisation looks a whole lot more 7 than it does 2K.
Ah, yes! Light gray text on white background. Perfectly legible.
This guy never even attempted to give windows a real shot. He complains about not being able to install windows on a drive that already has an OS on it, without getting rid of the other OS, for crying out loud
I think he gave it a fair shot (including spending money on Microsoft apps!), although plenty of the complaints are from the perspective of a Linux user migrating to Windows. For example, the average Windows user won’t worry about dual booting.
Personally, I think the biggest mistake was to not try out FOSS versions of things like Firefox and Thunderbird, but I appreciated the insight into Edge for example.
It’s a feature most big Linux distros support, but Windows doesn’t.
Windows does support it tho. You just need to partition them separately on the same drive.
Because it’s something that shouldn’t be done.
Why not? It works perfectly fine if you install windows first and Linux afterwards. I’ve done it multiple times and the problems only arose during windows updates, occasionally. If windows wasn’t such a piece of shit, what would be wrong with this configuration?
Lose one drive you now have no OS’s where before you might have had 4. One OS per drive.
Multiboot was a common thing until Microsoft decided to make it difficult.
Having a different OS on a different drive is how it should be done.
And? Just because it’s a good practice doesn’t mean it’s okay for Windows to go and fuck up every other OS on the drive. There shouldn’t be any technical issues with having two OS on the same drive. What if you just want to test two different OS so you could decide which one to keep? Are you supposed to buy a new drive just because you’ll need it for a month?
What you’ve said is not an argument why Windows gets to fuck up every other OS that’s on the same drive.
is how it should be done
No it isn’t.
The whole point of partitions is so you can have multiple things on the same drive. Be them data, swap, or… yes, operating systems.
You shouldn’t be partitioning your OS drive and putting multiple OS’s on it. Terrible practice.
The best practice is to buy a separate PC for each system and while you are at it, try buying a new house to perfectly isolate both systems /s
According to whom? You?
No one who wants to boot into multiple OS’s should want to have them on the same physical drive. That’s complete idiocy. Zero redundancy, lose all of them if the drive dies.
New OS, new disk. Every time.
I’m glad that you have extra income to buy drive per OS to insert into your PC, but there are these things that are called laptops, and sometimes people have them, and sometimes they have quite old ones and non-extensible ones and you get where I’m going with this?
That’s cool that you do it that way. But why do you care how other people do it? And like… You seem really fucking emotional about it.
I know more than you.
If you knew anything about operating systems you wouldn’t be saying that.
And?
