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by philwelch 1289 days ago
> How do you live without a simple maximize button?

Classic Mac OS apps did not put the entire application UI in a single full screen window. Instead, it was typical for an application to contain multiple windows that could all be visible at once.

> To add to this, the "top" menu bar is lame.

This is related. In Windows, the entire UI of the app is contained in a single window, which you would typically maximize to fill the screen. In classic Mac OS, apps have multiple windows open at the same time, but the menu bar pertains to the application and not to the window.
1 comments
truetraveller 1289 days ago
I understand all of that. And that is precisely my point. Isolate everything concerning an app to its own window, and allow that to be maximized. If an app has multiple windows, contain them within the main app window. Don't pollute the "global" window space with app-specific windows.
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kccqzy 1288 days ago
> If an app has multiple windows, contain them within the main app window.

This advice is actually rarely followed by apps regardless of whether they are on Windows or Mac. Consider Microsoft Word; if you open two Word documents, does Microsoft Word open two windows or does it open one main app window and then contain both documents in a single window? Are you aware of this Microsoft concept called MDI?

It sounds like you were used to iOS where each app has but one window and you'd prefer that to be the case on desktop operating systems like Mac or Windows. There's nothing with preferring that, but it's against decades of desktop computing tradition.

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flenserboy 1288 days ago
That makes it really hard to use two (or more) applications side-by-side effectively. I am grateful for individual windows I can move exactly to where I need them without worrying about the application as a whole. I think it boils down to how people think — application-centered thinking makes it easy to have multiple windows from different applications playing nicely with each other, workspace-centered thinking hates what appears to be the messiness of applications having windows here and there.
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philwelch 1288 days ago
The tradeoff to that being the lack of UI consistency between applications.
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