[ricardobayes]

I thought windows had bad UX until I tried macOS. Maybe my taste is different than others but I found macOS UX to be really confusing. I particularly disliked the iconset. Interestingly this is not true for iOS and iPadOS, those are magnificent.

[StuckDuck]

I'd say macOS actually is a lot more polished than Windows, but I agree with you that it is damn confusing. Try "closing" an app for example and you'll find that half the time it will not have closed properly, or maybe it did, who knows? It depends on the app. If it's vanilla you can bet it will have to be closed with CMD+Q

[cturtle]

That’s because “proper” macOS apps close windows not apps when you click the little red dot in the upper left. See some of the answers here https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/4618/why-mac-applic...

And I agree it’s different from all the other operating systems, once I understood why it made sense.

For example, I can copy an image to my clipboard, and open Preview. No window opens, but the top menu bar shows that Preview is open. From there I can choose the “new from clipboard” entry. It’s just a different model of interaction.

[Cthulhu_]

It makes sense if the initial startup of an app is expensive, memory is cheap, and creating new windows is fast.

[neurostimulant]

I think the convention is for apps where you can open multiple instances of it (document editors, web browsers, etc), closing window won't quit the app.

[kitsunesoba]

Exactly. In the scenario of closing all open documents and then creating a new one, it prevents the awkwardness of having to keep that last document open to keep the menubar available so you can select File > New and then close the last document. It also means you don’t have to invoke your app launcher again after closing all documents since the app is still open.

Conventions being different than what one is used to (in this case, Win9X) isn’t necessarily bad. Additionally, this particular convention has been on macOS for most of its existence, which means there’s longtime Mac users who find the Win9X way just as awkward.

[georgyo]

This is actually more confusing then windows.

The visual UI element to close does not close. Instead you must click File->Quit or CMD+q.

These are not intuitive and must be learned.

[StuckDuck]

Agree with it being weird but intuitive != commonly known. Just because windows does it a certain way doesn't mean it is intuitive. It's just widely known and assumed. If GNU developed to be the worldwide market leader then we'd all find the CDE drag and drop applet system 'intuitive'

[Cthulhu_]

And yet, with modern browsers - since firefox - cmd + W closes a tab, cmd + Q closes the browser. So even Windows users don't find it that strange.

[Wowfunhappy]

Did you ever try macOS (OS X) circa 2006–2014? It was really, really good and then they ruined it for the sake of having a (kind of) unified design language with iOS.

I'm typing this on OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

[aliqot]

Old Mac OS X was great. I hated the mouse and the iMacs were a little too 'cute' for a work tool, but wow they could run the doors off a Math Blaster CD.

[amelius]

I can never find the back button on iOS.

[ripe]

Is there a back button? Honest question. I thought iPhones didn't have one. When I pick up my wife's iPhone I always feel a little lost.

[kitsunesoba]

As someone who mostly uses iOS and occasionally Android, I’ve had difficulty integrating the Android back button into my usage. Because its behavior within apps is defined by devs, I feel like I never have a grip on what to expect when using it (sometimes it’ll close a sheet, sometimes it won’t, etc) and adding inter-app navigation muddles that further. Every time I try I end up enabling the iOS style gesture bar at the bottom.

[twodave]

Convention is to keep it in the top left. All the stock apps will use more or less the same navigation dock up top for back and other functions. Often apps will be rejected for not providing this kind of functionality predictability. This was the hardest thing for me to learn moving from Android to ios as well, but the smoothness of ios trumps all the hardship in my opinion.

[Too]

Except in Safari, where it is now in the bottom left corner, after the move of url bar to the bottom of the screen.

Though there you can also swipe whole screen left to go back.