[rvanmil]

I remember making fun of Microsoft trying to combine mouse and touch in a single UI.

And yet here we are, Apple doing the same thing to macOS, resulting in the same shit desktop/mouse experience that macOS has become.

I understand the reasons but it seems so incredibly un-Apple to sacrifice UX for this.

[linguae]

Exactly. I haven’t upgraded my Macs since Mojave, for this and other reasons. I’ve grown increasingly disillusioned with the direction of the Mac under Tim Cook. What happened to the Macintosh emphasis on building software for creators that was easy to use? Last year I moved on to Windows 10 on a Surface Pro and a dual boot Windows 10 and FreeBSD with KDE on a Ryzen 9 workstation. I still have my 2013 MacBook Air and Mac Pro whenever I need a Mac, but my Surface Pro and Ryzen 9 workstation fit my needs.

With that said, this is an interim solution; I’m actually working on my own desktop environment as a long-term solution, since I’m disillusioned with what modern personal computing has become, devices and software that promote consumption over creation, and environments that encourage walled gardens and large moats instead of interoperable, interchangeable components. What I want is essentially the classic Mac interface with Smalltalk- or Lisp machine-style underpinnings; the power to mold my environment to my taste, but with user applications that abide by the 1990s-era Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, when Apple had UI/UX heavyweights like Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini influencing the Mac’s direction.

[mietek]

I would love to use such a desktop environment. Do you have a link for your project?

[pram]

Some of the apps they replaced with 'iPad versions' were abysmal to begin with, so it's more of a lateral move.

[grishka]

Microsoft at least made a semblance of sense because some Windows laptops have touchscreens and some even can be turned inside out into tablets. They wanted to embrace those hardware capabilities but did so at the expense of the remaining 95% of their users.

There are no macs with touchscreens and no plans to release any from what I gather — that's what iPad is for, after all.

[Razengan]

As someone who literally abandoned Windows for the same reasons (during 8), macOS is still far far from sinking into those depths of depravity yet.

[Nextgrid]

My worry though is that when Windows fucked up, Mac OS was a viable alternative. Now that Mac fucks up, what's the alternative? Linux has its own challenges.

[Apocryphon]

FreeBSD, hopefully

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32492514

[Kwpolska]

The viable alternative is Windows, as pretty much all the tablet nonsense is gone in Windows 10 and 11.

[Nextgrid]

Windows is absolutely not an alternative. The UI degradation we're complaining about in the Mac has already happened in Windows - I mean they've now got 3 different UI paradigms for system settings and the newest one is this disgusting phone-style UI full of whitespace. Ads and "suggestions" everywhere don't help either.

[Apocryphon]

Eh, it's not that crazy unless they put a touchscreen on MacBooks.

[grishka]

Touchscreen laptops are an abomination and should have never been invented in the first place.

[jbverschoor]

Still crazy.. I want to use my keyboard. My shortcuts, and do proper bulk operations. It's just pure laziness from their devs. They don't know, they don't care..

[adrr]

iPad Pro is what they are targeting. Try to get more desktop apps.

[robertoandred]

Except nothing here has anything to do with touch.

[JasonFruit]

Maybe it's the year of Linux on the desktop!

[pjmlp]

It already is, running on top of Hyper V, VMWare, Crosvm.

[api]

I wonder if someone inside is still pushing desktop/mobile "convergence."