The fact that this has existed for so long and is common enough to warrant a third party program devoted to resolving the issue is an embarrassment for Apple.
There are so many bugs and even more poor ergonomic choices that have been unfixed for years on Apple Devices. It's fascinating considering the whole cult regarding the company's so called attention to details.
It’s because despite those issues, depressingly macOS still delivers an experience that to most Mac users is preferable over that of Linux or especially Windows. Increasingly it’s not that macOS is incredible, but that the alternatives are that much worse.
And I say this as someone who uses Windows and Linux daily alongside macOS. Windows isn’t going to get any better so long as Microsoft’s betting on pushing services on users to make money and while desktop Linux is better than ever it still has a ways to go to make it unquestionably better across the board for more than a small subset of users.
It’s actually quite similar to why people buy MacBooks. Generic PC laptops nearly all involve one or more major tradeoffs in day to day use, with none being as good all-rounders as MacBooks even if individual specs don’t measure up.
I was an original Mac user (first computer ever bought) and was thinking this type of stuff too. My Windows experience was from schools, friends' computers or later client's computers.
Nowadays I had both but use a Windows PC quite a lot (was destined to be a hackintosh, but couldn't put up with the hassle later one) and the reason I use Windows more is precisely because I have found it to be more stable, less annoying and with less bugs usually.
I have a loaded Intel Mac Mini along and the audio bugs keeps happening on this system, I have particularly nasty crackling that is impossible to debug and particularly annoying for a machine of this price (and I can't swap the mobo like I could if it were a PC).
The Apple reputation is largely underserved nowadays and I find it frustrating because it is one of the reasons they use to justify their absurdly high pricing.
Considering those bugs are still not fixed in Apple Silicon Mac's, I am pretty sure this is a combination of bad software maintenance and poor hardware design, even though they pretend they know better.
Considering the price of their computers, it is unacceptable but to be honest it won't be my problem anymore because I'm not buying anything else from Apple for the foreseeable future.
MacOS is nice and had some cool stuff back in the days, but now Windows can offer an almost 1to1 alternative, at a much better price with much less hardware issues. If you put as much money into a PC than you do in a Mac, the warranty will outlast the Apple support for the equivalent Mac which is kind of funny considering the prices...
> Generic PC laptops nearly all involve one or more major tradeoffs in day to day use, with none being as good all-rounders as MacBooks even if individual specs don’t measure up.
This also applies to smartphones. No matter the aspect, some specialty Android is 10x as good as your iPhone. However, it'll have bizarre drawbacks. iPhones are popular because they have right default balance for the broad audience out of the box.
In my experience, people tend to say that macOS "looks good". I have not spoken with a mac user who said that macOS is more usable or the workflows are more productive. Also, Apple has convinced everyone that they always know what they are doing, so when something is wrong in the OS it's users who think they must be doing something wrong.
But with Microsoft turning Windows into a big advertising billboard, I can see it becoming a valid reason.
Apart from MS's obsessive Bing pushing, I'd say Windows is easily better than macOS. Explorer beats Finder, PWA/Chrome profile support is nicer, window manager is better, archives are handled natively, touchpad gestures for eg. virtual desktops on small laptops are competitive. With a normal mouse, middle click for eg. hold to drag just isn't supported. The natural scroll settings for mouse and trackpad are bound, when you'd usually want them to be the opposite of each other.
As far as I know, iCloud is less well-featured than OneDrive.
As a recent MBA owner, the only thing I think Apple nails is hardware. The battery life and low power use are amazing and there's something to be said for Apple's ability to force-move devs to ARM.
The rest, not really. The OS is aggressively mid, as the kids would say.
...okay. Apple still makes native apps. That counts for something.
A lot of that is subjective. For me for example, Explorer vs. Finder is mostly a wash with Finder edging out Explorer in a few ways (e.g. toggling hidden file visibility with the key shortcut ⌘⇧. instead of having to dive into settings), and Windows window management is grating to the point that I have to keep a hard low limit on the number of programs open to get anything done under it. Archives are handled natively on macOS too, and I install 7zip on Windows anyway because its multithreaded compression/decompression is way faster than stock. Cloud storage is moot because I barely use it.
Most of the time, I don’t. It sounds silly but macOS window management works best when you don’t micromanage and just let windows pile up at whichever size fits their content, kind of like papers on a desk. Instead I group windows by virtual desktop (space) on two monitors, switching out virtual desktops to mix and match sets of windows. Individual windows are rarely moved or resized.
On the odd occasion I need tiling (which isn’t often) I use Moom[0] because it’s extremely non-intrusive (no easily accidentally triggered animations like Aero Snap) and lets you specify to leave a gap of a few pixels between windows and screen edges which looks nice.
MacOS and Windows are, in my honest opinion, significantly less consistent experiences than Gnome. The list I have on MacOS UX annoyances, design inconsistencies and implementation bugs is in the hundreds.
GNOME is very consistent, but the downside is that it’s not great in terms of power user features and progressive disclosure thereof. In some ways it’s also more mobile-inclined, it’s basically what one would get if they took iPadOS and applied some adaptations for desktop usage.
Some of that consistency is also undone when it’s necessary to run Electron or Qt apps. Anki for example is a real pain if you’re using fractional scaling under Wayland, because GNOME’s refusal to implement server side decorations forces Anki to run with an ugly generic titlebar and no shadow. macOS is better here, with all programs getting the system default window treatment unless they request otherwise.
That "cult" and "attention to details" was a long time ago, when Steve Jobs was CEO. But even then there were many bugs, like the .DS_Store files, which never got fixed. It got much worse when Tim Cook took over. Now I only use macOS because the next best thing is still worse, and also the Mac hardware became really good with the switch to ARM (after a long long dark time with x86 where the hardware got worse and worse with each iteration).
it's not my computer that produces these files... but yes, perhaps MacOS should ship with .DS_Store in a global gitignore by default (though I don't even know if it ships with git at all...)
Apple is quite fine with their OS being an embarassment that needs 3rd party apps to fix, people will still hail it as the best thing ever.
For example, window management on macOS is trash, and the shortcuts are command+arrows which is fine if you have both hands on the keyboard. Not so much when you have a separate mouse. The OS is built expecting you are on a laptop or using a trackpad of some kind.
Apple isn't 'embarrassed' by bugs at all - only if those bugs result in widespread public attention.
Filing 100s of extremely detailed bug reports on their 'feedback assistant' will do less to change anything than one trending twitter post or news coverage.
Making bug reports extremely detailed doesn’t actually help; you don’t know which details are relevant and it could get it sent down the wrong paths from other people getting distracted by them.
Plus it gives you burnout. Rely on the system logs to have enough detail.