[martijn_himself]

I owned a M1 MacBook Air and I was similarly impressed by everything mentioned in this review.

MacOS coming from Windows, not so much. A menu bar 'orphaned' from the application window? A 'File Explorer' (Finder) lacking basic functionality. Dragging a file download onto the Applications folder to install software (what?). Plugging in a 2K monitor to find it is unable to display at native resolution without installing third party apps. MacOS feels like it is some relic from the past.

EDIT: judging from the comments here, I accept it may be part unfamiliarity. Maybe I should give it another go. What resources would you recommend for someone new to MacOS?

[postexitus]

Menu bar "orphaned" from application window is a feature - not a bug. It's intentionally in a fixed location on the screen so you can find it every time you look for it. (I am an original Amigan - Workbench had the same approach, but only visible when you right click - oh I miss my Amiga)

While Windows approach of attaching the menu bar to application window was popular for a while, I am now crying just looking at Chrome window and seeing no menu at all. I don't even mention Ribbon blasphemy.

[p_ing]

> It's intentionally in a fixed location on the screen so you can find it every time you look for it.

Which is a disadvantage when working with multiple applications as it forces an application switch before you can access the menu, rather than in windows where if you have your app windows staggered, you can immediately click into the other application's menu.

[WillAdams]

Isn't Windows click-to-focus?

AFAICT, it's not possible to directly access the menu, so it's still two steps:

- switch to the second app to bring it to the fore/make it active

- activate the menu

I find this faster on a Mac since the menu target is larger.

[p_ing]

No, it is not click to focus, or rather, the menu click is the focus action. You can overlay an Explorer and Notepad window, for example, and with Explorer in the foreground, click on the File menu in Notepad which brings Notepad forward as well as display the File menu items.

Plus, your mouse travel is far less to get from the app (since it's part of the app) to the menu.

[WillAdams]

This behaviour seems to be dependent on which toolkit an application was written in.

[seec]

You think it's a feature, but the moment you have multiple monitors or multiple instances of an app it becomes a liability. There is not that much benefit to the menu bar, expect maybe using less space than the windows taskbar (but then you need a dock and need more horizontal space because you can't stack text).

It's all right and it's not significantly a problem that needs to change but it's far from the best or ideal.

[bnastic]

Macintosh has always been application-centric, instead of window-centric desktop. Hence the top application menu that controls the 'application'. There is nothing inherently wrong with that approach.

And I'm not sure why anyone would complain that installing (most, not all) applications is just dragging an icon into applications folder.

[d3nj4l]

Apart from sub-Retina resolution monitors being unusable without BetterDisplay, these are all just Apple-isms. The inverse feels just as foreign when you go Mac to Windows, and as a long time Apple user I find the Windows ones strange.

[WillAdams]

An elegant OS for a more civilized age to paraphrase Obi-Wan.

The menu bar allows for an infinite size target when flinging the cursor at it using the mouse.

What functionality do you find missing? Usually a right/context-click or command click will get what one is not finding.

By way of contrast, the Sidebar will accept an arbitrary number of files/icons, and they stay put, and if one drags into a file dialog window, it updates where it is pointing rather than performing a file copy operation (what happens if one cancels?).

Anything else one wants can be handled via AppleScript.

Similarly, there is drag-drop into Terminal windows, and check out how the commands pbpaste and pbcopy interact w/ Unix pipes and so forth.

FWIW, I miss the (NeXT-derived) Miller-column Filebrowser on Windows, and the "Unix Expert" checkbox on Mac OS, and the right-click pop-up main menu which made some commands gestural on either.

Installing via drag-drop on a disk image into an Applications folder shortcut avoids the need for a special tool to manage app installation and makes uninstalling as simple as dragging into the trash.

The 2K monitor thing is a hardware/firmware/driver issue I'd imagine --- was it sold as supported by the Mac OS you are using it with?

[martijn_himself]

Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

I love the integration with iOS and so I should probably try again and expect a somewhat steep learning curve due to muscle memory coming from Windows.

TBH I expected the monitor to 'just work' so I was a bit surprised it didn't- but apparently monitors in a certain PPI range are less suitable and make text and interface elements look blurry.

[WillAdams]

For my part, I'm saddened that I can't put up w/ iOS and its limitations, so use Windows on a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 since the closest thing to a successor to the Axiotron Modbook is a MacBook paired w/ an iPad and I hate the Apple Pencil and Sidecar not being as good as Duet enrages me.

Maybe Apple doing a folding MacBook à la the Lenovo Yogabook 9i will finally get me back (bought a 128K Mac when I was younger, and still miss my NeXT Cube).

[z2]

I find it perplexing that Apple seemingly refuses at the OS level to support DisplayPort MST (multi-stream transport), which is such a common, standard, widely adopted protocol. The biggest impact is that non-Thunderbolt, non-DisplayLink docks can't use more than a single monitor. Back on Intel Macs, the hardware clearly supported this as MST worked great when running Windows.

[Closi]

Dragging downloads into the applications folder is 100% amazing imo!

It's because conceptually everything is supposed to be a standalone executable.

The windows alternative is random installers that put files all over your machine and then questionable uninstallers that still leave half the files discarded everywhere.

[sagacity]

Except a lot of applications aren't standalone executables, they leave a bunch of configuration data that doesn't get uninstalled.

[seec]

But they don't know that so they don't care. macOS is very appealing to authoritarian control freak because they have the impression of being "in control", ofc the reality is quite different.

One particularly dumb thing is that apps sometimes have various assets that will be modified or used as template/whatever in their App Bundle and this get copied to their Application Support folder, so there is no application install process per se, but it does get done at first launch, and now you are wasting hard drive space just to store files that got duplicated somewhere else. macOS/iOS App Bundles are extremely large for many cumulative reasons like that. I will note that Apple has no interest whatsoever in improving the situation considering how much they charge for storage...

[alpaca128]

The only real pain point for me is the slow one-second animation for switching workspaces. It also adds a second of delay to entering and leaving fullscreen, making the fastest computers feel sluggish. And not even accessibility settings can get rid of it. Animations are great for visual feedback but when they stand in your way it gets old fast.

Meanwhile the "eject drive" button in Finder has no animation or other immediate feedback at all when hovering or clicking.

> Dragging a file download onto the Applications folder to install software

I think that's quite intuitive. My problem with it is that seemingly app developers have to implement this correctly, but some don't and so the program just can't be installed that way. For example with openSCAD you just get an empty window without Applications folder.

[sgarland]

Don’t know why you’re being downvoted; those are legitimate complaints if you’re coming from Windows. I felt the same way years ago, when I switched (2014-ish).

What about Finder do you not like? It’s pretty customizable. Also, I use Spotlight (Command + Space) more than Finder, I think – it’s probably the number one killer day-to-day feature. Calculator, file search, metadata search, web search all rolled into one.

The other major thing I appreciate about MacOS is that it still exposes lower-level system and device settings if you need it to. Not to the extent of Linux, obviously, but I think they’ve struck a good balance between abstracting the magic and revealing what’s behind the curtain.

In contrast, I have a Windows 10 gaming desktop; that’s literally its only purpose in life, to launch Steam. Granted, at this point I’m very unfamiliar with Windows, having ceased major use of it after Windows 7, but I feel like it hides too much. For example, a few weeks ago I had a lengthy ISP outage, and so I wanted to use my iPhone’s hotspot to get connectivity. Everything I read online said it was as simple as plugging the phone in and accepting the connection, but that wasn’t my experience. Before you blame Apple, this isn’t the crux of the story. I eventually got it to work by disabling the network adapter on my PC. What became difficult was re-enabling it the next day, when my ISP had restored service. I’ve since learned that Device Manager still exists, but I swear I couldn’t find it on that day. The disabled adapter didn’t appear in any of the various Network-related options I looked through, and the only way I got it to work was by finding an option to reset networking settings. On a Mac, the disabled adapter would still be visible in the list, and could easily be re-enabled.

[martijn_himself]

From what I can remember I was expecting drag and drop of files with multiple windows each snapped to the side of the screen to work intuitively but I accept that I was probably thinking of a Windows way of doing this instead of finding the best way to do things on MacOS.

I should probably retry MacOS with this in mind. Thinking of it I suppose I expected MacOS to be as intuitive as iOS, which is a bit unfair.

Your experience with Windows hiding settings reflects mine- I think it's partly because of the mix of modern and classic menus and the latter being harder to find. Using things like Microsoft PowerToys and custom registry settings makes the Windows experience better but you could argue that this should be standard as well.

[sbuk]

> Thinking of it I suppose I expected MacOS to be as intuitive as iOS...

It is intuitive, but by the sounds of things you have several years, or decades of Windows muscle memory and experience. If you fight against the way the OS works by expecting to match your experience with a different one, you're in for a bad time.

Apple introduced window snapping in macOS 15. It works, but there are better apps that perform the task. I don't use any myself; I've been a Mac user for over 35 years and have never felt the need to have my document windows tiled.

The menu is a discoverability gift! Pro tip - type a command in the search box under the 'Help" menu in any native app, and it will show you where to find it and show the shortcut if one is assigned.

macOS user gestures extensively for navigation around the OS, so look in the 'Trackpad' settings, where it shows the gestures and allows a degree of customisation.

Edit: Regarding external monitors, Apple haven't sold a non-Retina display for quite a while now. Apple being Apple expect you to buy one of their monitors, or at least one that they've blessed, so 4K really is a minimum.

[nvgeele]

Interested to know what the basic features are which Finder is missing?

Using both Windows and macOS I feel that Windows has only recently started to catch up with Finder.

[subjectsigma]

I always see people hate on Finder and I never understood, I switched to macOS a few years ago for work and I strongly prefer Finder. What don’t you like about it?

EDIT: I thought about this a bit, it’s the tree view. Like 85% of the time I’m in Finder I am using the tree view, which Explorer doesn’t have

[p_ing]

Right click -> New

Lack of cut and paste without keyboard shortcut contortions

Folder move behavior sucks

Finder is unable to make a view consistent. It will never override where a view has been previously set, even if you choose to use a particular view 'as defaults'.

[martijn_himself]

Thanks for the suggestion- I must try this next time I use a Mac.

[seec]

I am an old macOS user and I agree. You are getting downvoted because Mac users are ideological zealots who cannot take any criticism about their choices.

I have been subjected to both for a very long time and I have also concluded that often the Windows approach is just superior, more scalable and more intuitive.

The monitor issue is a particular pet peeve of mine because I am absolutely certain Apple did this to drive sales of their monitors. There have been more monitors released recently that match the ideal PPI target that macOS require but otherwise it's a large pain in the ass to work with 3rd party monitors. And macOS itself has many weird issues with monitors that my PCs just don't have (wake up in particular, and their HDMI implementation is always fucked up for some reason).

macOS looks good and has some quite decent software from passionate people but those are less and less prevalent and subscription push has made many of it quite unappealing.