I recently switched my work laptop from a ThinkPad running Arch to a MacBook Air M2.
I was very efficient in my Arch environment that I have tweaked gradually for over a decade so I was quite reluctant to make the move.
Trying to keep an open mind, I told myself that at least I will get the pleasure of using the amazingly intuitive and beautiful UIs that Apple have been tweaking since before I was even born!
Imagine my disappointment. Simple things are slow and annoying. Difficult things are impossible.
Something so basic as moving a file between two directories. Can you Command-X, Command-V it? No. If both folders are open in Finder tabs you can drag the file to the tab, then wait for a blinking animation to complete before you are allowed to drop it into the target folder.
I guess you should open both folders as separate windows and then drag. But that creates even more windows, and window management in Macos is just impossible to tweak, so you are forced to use Apple's weird gesture-based paradigm. It might feel productive since you make so many animations happen but switching to the window you're thinking of should - and could - take fractions of a second and feel like an extension of your mind but in this new reality it's more like choreographing a bizarre window ballet even when you get used to it.
Things could be so much better. But hey, the hardware seems pretty good.
Different shortcuts from app to app. Back when I used Mac last time it frustrated me to no end that the simple system that works everywhere on Windows and Linux:
- home / end for start / end of line
- arrow left /right to move one character at at time
- ctrl to move one word at a time
- shift combines nicely with all these in case you need to select the text you move across
while on Mac of course home and end doesn't exist (bonus point for there being two keys there that could have been home and end or page up and page down, but that even the most dyed in the wool Mac users I know cannot explain what they are for) and while I think it is rather consistent now, back then it wasn't consistent that CMD - arrow worked like home or end.
There were different shortcuts from app to app and today I have learned that even the one shortcut I thought was consistent from app tp app on Mac, CMD-X, CMD-C and CMD-V aren't consistent as Finder isn't lacking CMD-x, they have just decided to do it differently so you use CMD-shift-V instead to paste by cutting (?), breaking to consistency even of that.
It is like the (effective, not written) building regulations in my area:
Just make sure your house doesn't look similar to any other house in the area and you should be good.
And yet I have asked for a Macbook for my new laptop. After 10 years I just had to try. The last one was fantastic, only the OS was rage inducing even after 3 years.
This time however I have done my homework. I have a Mac mini, I have checked that the fn and ctrl key can now be put in their correct positions and there now exist a way to fix CMD-tab so it does the only logical and sane thing: switches between the last windows.
If you want to drag a file and move it you hold down option to change the copy into a move; if you want to paste a file and move it, you also hold down option to change the copy into a move.
FWIW, I used Windows for a LONG time before begrudgingly having to use a Mac for my development work, as I was doing iOS development and no one else was putting up with my I-will-claim-perfectly-reasonable alternative Linux toolchain... and Mac's keyboard shortcuts are so much more consistent that when I went back to using Windows it was the one thing I seriously missed. Hell: Mac OS even has Emacs-style cursor commands available in pretty much all native controls... Linux doesn't even have that (I'm using Linux right now and am still sad it isn't like Mac, and I had also been using Linux since I was a kid).
> while on Mac of course home and end doesn't exist
They most certainly do.
On extended keyboards, Home and End are dedicated keys. Home scrolls to the start of the document; End scrolls to the end.
On laptops and other reduced keyboards, Fn-left arrow gets you the Home key, and Fn-right arrow gets you the End key.
I don't know when you last used Mac, but Cmd-left and Cmd-right have been consistent at least within apps that use Apple's guidelines for many years.
It's important to remember that your expectations for how these things should work are not based on some universal Platonic ideal, but rather on how Windows did things, so when Apple does them differently, that's not some objectively heinous violation, but rather a different decision based on different preferences.
Cmd+X is for cutting. You don't "cut" files. Cutting removes the original item, and puts it in a temporary location before pasting it in the new location. Moving files is not cutting. It's moving.
I get that that's intuitive for you but I think of these operations in text or image editors. If I copy and paste text it's now in two places. If I cut and paste it's moved from one place to the other.
> correct positions and there now exist a way to fix CMD-tab so it does the only logical and sane thing: switches between the last windows.
Hahahahah no. Even if you use Kaliber or remap keys natively, and somehow manage to get this to work, it won’t work all the time. And if you switch between external and internal keyboards (like, when you take your laptop to a coffee shop), forget it.
What are the equivalents for Ctrl+Home (Go to start of file) and Ctrl+End (Go to end of file?) Or Ctrl+Shift+Home / Ctrl+Shift+End to select from cursor to begin / end of file?
Cmd+X works in all text fields. Is stubbornly holding on to being different really worth the frustration for every newcomer as well as the inconsistency between files and text?
Even worse: There isn't even a clickable context menu entry for moving files instead of copying them, which further means the keyboard shortcut isn't displayed anywhere obvious either.
For each well thought-out detail Mac OS has at least one feature that just makes you scratch your head and ask yourself if this was really intentional.
Cmd+X removes the text, and puts it on the pasteboard. If you change your mind and copy something else before pasting the Cmd+X-ed text somewhere, the text is lost.
On the other hand, when you move a file, it stays in the original location right until you paste it in the new location. If you change your mind, and copy something else without pasting the first file, the file is not lost.
But there is no problem. This is how the macOS file manager have always been working. If you prefer how it worked on Windows, why did you switch to macOS? When you visit a foreign country, do you go around and tell people how they do things all wrong because it's different from your home country? Isn't that entitled a bit?
What I mean is Apple could add the Cmd-X shortcut and its behaviour with zero compromise for the existing functionality, making it consistent with all other desktop operating systems and in turn making Mac OS more beginner friendly. They could just add it and users like you wouldn't even notice.
> When you visit a foreign country, do you go around and tell people how they do things all wrong because it's different from your home country?
This is software, not a cultural tradition, and I claim that asking a corporation with 160k employees for a simple feature that exists everywhere else is not entitled.
File management in Finder uses the system-wide pasteboard APIs. If you place something on the pasteboard with Cmd+C, you can paste it in any app that supports file pasting, and get a context-dependent result. If you paste the file in Terminal, the file path is entered. If you paste it in Mail, the file is placed as an attachment. If you paste an image file in Photoshop, the image is placed as a new layer. It's a consistent system.
Now, what should happen if you "cut" a file with Cmd+X and you paste it into Mail? The file is deleted from the original location, but still somehow attached to the email?
There's no point in monkey-patching such a feature into macOS for the sake of appeasing recent Windows converts.
It's like complaining why Pascal doesn't support braces instead of begin/end. It's a different system. Feel free to not use it.
lol, I've been using Apple laptops for 15 years and had no idea this was a thing. All this time I've just copy+pasted and then gone back to the source folder to delete the original.
It sounds like the “blinking animation” you’re encountering is a feature known as Spring-Loaded Folders, which has been a part of macOS since the 90s.
It’s intended to make it easier to move files and folders around without first opening a window for the destination. If you hold the dragged file over a folder a moment longer, the target folder will open in a new window where you can either drop the file or navigate more deeply by repeating the process.
To avoid this behavior, drop dragged files in the destination folders before the spring loading triggers.
Finder is a special beast, I think. It doesn’t seem to follow the same UX rules, possibly for legacy reasons. That’s no excuse, since it’s obviously one of the most used interfaces on Mac, but you’re right the UI is unintuitive by today’s standards. One of my favorite examples: when navigating folders with arrow keys, the enter key will rename the folder, and it takes a chord cmd-o to enter it. That’s not the best choice anymore, if it ever was.
Today I discovered a new Finder oddity and I'm not sure what triggered it: when I open any folder on any external USB harddrive (but not SSD!) finder opens the folder in a new window that contains no UI other than the area showing the files & folders. Going five folders deep means five separate windows. I have no idea what's going on because I know it didn't always behave that way.
I think yabai is far better for someone tiling window manager on Linux inclined. Rectangle is more like grandma asked how to have two windows side by side.
I don't currently have a Mac, but when I did and if I did I would definitely install brew before whatever other essential - how else am I going to install the latter? (I'd reluctantly open Terminal and Safari to do so, and then to be honest Alacritty and Firefox would probably beat anything for window management. I used to have it all scripted, so it actually would've been just Terminal git clone and run.)
I am also one of those Linux desktop users who bought an M2 for power management and I don't understand how people can be satisfied with the out of the box window management experience. Every other environment supports hyper + arrow to move windows into a split view, windows, gnome, kde, whatever.
Ahhh that makes 100% sense, definitely especially if you were on Linux.
Not that I've ever stuck with one long enough. And I might have not done this at all with this latest Mac, I tried stage manager. But had gave up on that too last week.
As explained GP used a customized Linux desktop for years. Switching from that to Mac OS' limited window management features can definitely motivate someone to google possible solutions as one of the first steps. I know because it was the same for me as well. I don't need an insane set of keyboard shortcuts but I think matching e.g. Gnome's default experience isn't too much to ask for.
Sure, I'm not disputing that. I think that extrapolating it to assume (at least from my limited english) that every Mac user installs Rectangle and brew is a bit presumptuous.
I believe they are, but for a long time I did not know of the Move shortcut. I can see why they added it: better UX since less likely to be accidental whereas using Cmd-X may cut a file when you misclicked off cutting the name of the file.
You can move a file with shortcut keys but (very counter-intuitively) it's more paste while cutting rather than cut and paste. Hit Command+c like a copy but instead of Command+v hit Command+Option+v.
Add it to the long list on macOS and iOS of things Apple provides but are unintuitive and difficult/impossible to discover on your own.
Cutting removes the original content and puts it on the clipboard. If you could really cut a file, it would have to disappear until you pasted it somewhere.
In windows it just marks the file for cutting (transparent/greyed out state). If you cancel the cut (say by copying or cutting something else) it removes the mark.
Haha, I know what you mean. I grew up with several generations of macs through the nineties, and people still say that it's great.
I am still learning ways to make it better (thanks to all the replies) but I just don't think it's very good. Its supposed to be the best. It's neither beautiful nor intuitive (subjectively), but what really bothers me is that it's not an effective tool.
Who is it designed for? Beginners obviously find a lot of simple things difficult. My colleagues should be power users since they are developers using it for decades, but when we screenshare there's a big difference in efficiency - the most obvious one is all the time they spend on finding, moving, resizing, and reorganizing windows but there are so many other little things that add up as well.
Take comfort in the fact that I'm equally confused and disoriented whenever I have to use Windows or desktop Linux, utterly baffled at some of the interaction choices.
> Something so basic as moving a file between two directories. Can you Command-X, Command-V it?
try Command-C, Command-Option-V. works for me :)
also, if you're in need of a launcher, Raycast is nice. i don't use any of their fancy AI stuff and opted out of data tracking. i have several window management functions there that are indispensable.
i know it's separate from the thread, but i thought i'd share another nice macos utility app. i have some bots and personal CLI tools running somewhat around the clock. amphetamine helps keep your mac alive through sessions, so you can run jobs or even just play music while 'sleeping'.
Of course this always brings to mind Apple's "Get a Mac" commercial parodying Windows Vista. Many years later, Apple has now become the parody. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxOIebkmrqs
Difference is that Microsoft loosened the prompts. Apple will likely solve the problem by removing the capability to assign those permissions, at least through UI
I also often think of this when I’m allowing yet another app to do something that I clearly want it to do.
“I see you’ve clicked the documents folder via this apps open dialog. Do you want to give it permission to access that folder that you just clicked on to access” infuriating.
What’s so annoying is that these constant alerts make the system potentially less secure as you get notification blindness. Same with how often iOS pops up the password dialog, you get so used to entering your password that it takes conscious effort to not do it by default an actually make sure it’s a legit password box and not a phish.
I recently experienced something similar. My Macbook had its logic board replaced and, as part of that, the OS was wiped. I restored it from a Time Machine backup and spent too long digging through the settings to make sure the correct apps had accessibility permission or screen sharing permission or full disk permissions. It was annoying and the not the kind of polished experience you want from a premium product.
I'm in the process right now of moving from a M2 MacBook Air to a M3 MacBook Pro. I was going to use Migration Assistant but decided last minute against it and decided to "rebuild" from scratch. I'm three hours in on re-setting everything up the way I want it. Does it suck? Yes. But I know exactly what I installed and gives me the ability to purge things I no longer need.
Recently a relative decided to use Huawei's migration app for the new phone. It deleted all music files. At least now I know my paranoia with such magic features wasn't unfounded.
Weird - I thought some genius had come up with a way of combining all the permissions you have given in one ssh-key like colour grid.
I think of all these app permissions (I have similar thoughts looking at iphone settings) as being some sort of Marie Kondo epiphany - I don't need a better UI - I need less stuff.
You just don't get access to the resource in the app. Like if you deny the calendar app from reading all your contacts, it works as if you didn't have any contacts.
Interesting idea. I imagine they could go in some sort of permissions drawer/ list that has a badge letting you know an app is waiting. Any app that you’re currently interacting with and is up front could pop the dialog the same way it does now.
I prefer to maintain the security issues and look for a UX solution.
Okta reinvented the TLS wheel and put a single SAAS provider into the middle of the wheel to manage it for you. They also added identity and access control from the center.
Not all these dialogs are permissions. There's a 'this app is corrupted', and an app it self asking for where it's custom plugins are. One of the big windows in the background is an app splashscreen.
I'd say this is a bit disingenuous.
It's frustrating to see people complaining, but not offering any ideas for improvement, just 'this sucks, fix it'.
Some of these issues, like the corruption, is probably due to having 3rd party kernel extensions enabled. One of the pop ups shown even shows that explicitly. I had the same issue for a raid controller app. That needs to be updated on the new machine hardware by holding the power button and changing to reduced security to enable the kext loading.
If someone installed apps with kernel extensions, disabling enhanced security on the hardware, then Id argue they should be competent enough to understand the issue, so the article is a bit disingenuous on that front.
Additionally, things like Apple ID for iCloud login require re-logging with 2 factor, again because the hardware has updated.
So there’s probably a cleaner UI model here that could run the user through all of these side cases, but it’s not as simply as copying app permissions (all of the unix level file permissions remain intact already)
I guarantee most people who work in product or software are far more interested in hearing problems than half baked solutions. It’s actually quite frustrating when someone gives me their solution and I have to reverse engineer the actual issue.
I was very efficient in my Arch environment that I have tweaked gradually for over a decade so I was quite reluctant to make the move.
Trying to keep an open mind, I told myself that at least I will get the pleasure of using the amazingly intuitive and beautiful UIs that Apple have been tweaking since before I was even born!
Imagine my disappointment. Simple things are slow and annoying. Difficult things are impossible.
Something so basic as moving a file between two directories. Can you Command-X, Command-V it? No. If both folders are open in Finder tabs you can drag the file to the tab, then wait for a blinking animation to complete before you are allowed to drop it into the target folder.
I guess you should open both folders as separate windows and then drag. But that creates even more windows, and window management in Macos is just impossible to tweak, so you are forced to use Apple's weird gesture-based paradigm. It might feel productive since you make so many animations happen but switching to the window you're thinking of should - and could - take fractions of a second and feel like an extension of your mind but in this new reality it's more like choreographing a bizarre window ballet even when you get used to it.
Things could be so much better. But hey, the hardware seems pretty good.