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by idle_zealot
1777 days ago
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> Unify the kernels/userlands, keep the “Desktop Environments” distinct, but ship them both on iPads, with the macOS DE just waiting around for you to plug your device into a monitor. I want basically what you’re describing, but rather than having 2 distinct desktop environments I posit that the iPadOS environment, with a few refinements, would be better for desktop usage than macOS’ DE. Specifically, the refinements I’d want would include allowing more than 2 apps in a split view, and perhaps some reconsideration of that floating app-stack thing to make it less clunky. As a daily user of tiling window managers on a Linux desktop, floating desktop windows seem like a UI dead end that we’ve somehow been trapped in for decades. Growing existing “smartphone/tablet” UI to offer more power seems like a more realistic way to widespread adoption of a better desktop paradigm than removing “features” that most current desktop users have become familiar with. |
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iPadOS 15 has limited support for floating windows and more than three "windows" on screen at once. I'd posit that they are preparing the APIs for floating window support for external displays in a future version of iPadOS.
>As a daily user of tiling window managers on a Linux desktop, floating desktop windows seem like a UI dead end that we’ve somehow been trapped in for decades
As a Mac user, I agree. On my 13-inch notebook, I more or less always use applications in a full screen configuration. The notebook screen is too small to allow for effective uses of floating windows.
However, even on a 27-inch display, I still find myself using full screen applications more often than not.
In fact I'd be ecstatic if a future version of macOS stole some of the multitasking features from iPadOS. Managing fullscreen apps on the Mac is a lot clunkier than it is on the iPad.