| ▲ | Telaneo 8 hours ago |
| I'm stuck trying to figure out what new stuff they could add. Sidecar was neat, but I never need it. I'm very happy on Cinnamon on Linux, which is probably less featured than KDE (haven't daily driven it to confirm), which just confirms I don't actually need or want user-facing new features. I need stability. I think Apple realise this. There are no genuine new OS features to be added, so they just shuffle things around so that things are changing and thus seem fresh and hip. For anyone who cares about stability and doesn't want to relearn everything they shuffle around, this is nothing but a negative, but Apple et al. have no other levers to pull (well, there's the AI lever, but that's also generally not a positive in and of itself). Maybe there are new OS features that could be useful, but creating and integrating them in a way that's actually helpful is just such an ordeal that nobody will do it. |
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| ▲ | lambda_foo 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Early on with OSX I would update early because the new features in the OS were truely interesting (AFP, Dtrace, Spotlight, Early Siri, Messages sync with iPhone). Yes all very developer oriented, but I am a developer and that's primarily what I use my machines for. Releases like Snow Leopard and Tiger were full of novel features. Now I find most of the copy is dedicated to things I couldn't care less about like generative AI images or questionable redesigns of the UI. I would love a review of the new developer and OS level features for macOS releases. The WWDC content is close to unwatchable, it never goes into enough depth and the video only delivery is not the primary way I want to consume technical content. Give me the cool highlights of the virtualisation framework, what still works with Dtrace , explain the infernal code signing permissions system, etc. So far I've kept to Sequoia as the least annoying version, and avoided the Liquid Glass rounded corners mess. |
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| ▲ | ekun 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| A functioning window system would drastically enhance OSX productivity. |
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| ▲ | cosmic_cheese 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Window management (and indeed, desktop environments in general) are rather subjective I think. As someone who's been using Macs in some capacity since 1996 I'd be upset if macOS suddenly resembled a traditional Windows desktop or tiling WM thing, and the absence of Mac-like desktops on Linux (no, GNOME and elementary/Pantheon are not that) is one of the primary factors keeping me from switching. | | |
| ▲ | thefunnyman 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Window management got better in Mac os but only recently with the addition of window snapping. You could do it before, but you had to drag from the green stoplight button which was an annoying mouse target vs the entire top bar. Personally I do like the windows approach where there's a bar at the top with a few preselected zones you can use that shows up when dragging a window but the state of things on Mac os now is fine enough that things like that can reasonably be left up to extensions. What exactly do you miss about the Mac desktops when using gnome's? For me the only thing I've noticed is lack of independent desktops per monitor though Windows also suffers that deficiency. | | |
| ▲ | cosmic_cheese 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | > What exactly do you miss about the Mac desktops when using gnome's? For me the only thing I've noticed is lack of independent desktops per monitor though Windows also suffers that deficiency. No independent desktops is indeed a big one and irks me just as much under Windows (which somehow in 2026 still can't even set per-monitor desktop pictures without glueing images together in Paint). On a whole, GNOME is just too simplistic. Where the Mac Way™ (especially in the 2000s) is thoughtfully implemented progressive disclosure of advanced features, the GNOME Way™ is to check if they make the cut for the app's toolbar or "junk drawer" hamburger menu and if not, strip the feature entirely. It almost feels like they took a tablet OS and then adapted it somewhat to desktop use. That's the vibe I get from the DE itself as well as from the barebones (if pretty) apps that its community tends to produce. It's not as locked down as a tablet OS obviously — there's full fat Linux sitting underneath after all — but I'm always fighting it trying to turn it into a proper desktop experience with GNOME Tweaks and extensions (which constantly break). An easy way to see the difference in philosophies is to compare the number of settings surfaced in GNOME Settings to that of the settings app for any Mac OS made in the past 20 years. GNOME Settings offers relatively little to tweak where System (Preferences|Settings) has a list that's closer (though not as long) to that of the KDE Settings app. And of course, no global menubar. KDE lets users enable this but unfortunately many apps do not populate it. | | |
| ▲ | bigyabai 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | > It almost feels like they took a tablet OS and then adapted it somewhat to desktop use. GNOME is designed to be touch-agnostic, which makes better use of padded UIs than macOS 11+ does. With a rumored touchscreen Macbook still coming down the line, I think GTK and the GNOME developers skated to where the puck was headed. macOS and iPadOS are both constrained for touchscreen users. GNOME is kinda the perfect UI for where Apple sees hardware converging. I don't think GNOME can adopt any more macOS idiosyncrasies without being a worse holistic experience. The Overview/search accelerator on the Super key is faster than Spotlight search. The desktop switcher is a better-supported use of the menubar than forcing an unsupported global cluster. GNOME could try to cram these round pegs into their square hole, but they know it wouldn't improve things. | | |
| ▲ | cosmic_cheese 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | And that’s fair, GNOME doesn’t need to be a macOS-alike, but it’d be nice if something was! As an aside, I have yet to be convinced that touch on desktop operating systems makes any kind of sense and the MacBook Ultra or whatever it ends up being called is unlikely to change my opinion on that. I much prefer an old-style low-whitespace, data-dense, pointer-first UI like OS X used to have. I’m tired of the virtual real estate on my screens declining year after year for the sake of functionality I’ll never use. | | |
| ▲ | bigyabai 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think that data-dense paradigm died with Catalina, sadly. GTK/Libadwaita has a lot of room for improvement, but I've come around substantially on their direction. Touch UIs are an inevitability of HID, and most attempts at accommodating them (cough Windows 8 cough) go too far towards alienating desktop users. A compromise has to be made that supports tablets, phones and desktops in the same UI, or else GTK will have to reinvent the wheel for each platform it supports. The final product GNOME settled on wasn't one I liked at first, but it's admittedly super polished on my Magic Trackpad and touchscreen laptop. Apps like Tuba[0] and Resources[1] are high-quality apps in every aspect ratio and input method. It doesn't feel awkward to poke at or click on at all, despite the glut of padding. The future of desktop computing is probably going to be weird. I don't know how companies like Microsoft will manage to curb-cut their OS while also expanding to new UI/UX paradigms. Simplicity feels like a safe bet, and there's a lot of runway left to build the plane before the wheels go up. [0] https://flathub.org/en/apps/dev.geopjr.Tuba [1] https://flathub.org/en/apps/net.nokyan.Resources | | |
| ▲ | cosmic_cheese 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | That’s the beauty of Linux though, users can use the software that suits them best, at least in theory (said software needs to first exist). Even if it’s deemed a dead end by some, data-dense desktops of various flavors can continue to exist for the users who prefer them. GTK/Adwaita themselves aren’t terrible (particularly with CSS to tone down the acres of padding) but I still take issue with the quasi-mobile app direction in GNOME-oriented apps. |
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| ▲ | armadyl 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Same, I enjoy both the current macOS and iPadOS windowing systems. Everything else I tried on linux felt like an extreme downgrade. |
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| ▲ | elAhmo 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Someone who does need a window system can use many of the hundreds of tools available, or use something custom. Regular uses don't really care about window management systems. |
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| ▲ | noir_lord 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Cinnamon was what I used before KDE, I like KDE a great deal but I also liked Cinnamon a great deal, if I had to go back it wouldn't cause me any issues, I only switched for Wayland support. So if you are happy on Cinnamon stay there (and it's Wayland support has caught up a lot). They both do an excellent job of not causing me pain, working the way I want and respecting me as a user, that's what a DE should be, if I have to consider the DE more than in passing it's failing at been a DE. |
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| ▲ | dr_dshiv 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Something to improve my mess of ~22 active terminal windows comes to mind. |
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| ▲ | Telaneo 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Christ. On some level, this is probably something your terminal emulator should handle, just as your web browser should handle a mess of 22 tabs, but I don't think we've really come up with good solutions there either. It's hard to implement features nobody's though of. | | |
| ▲ | mijowi 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Terminal emulators have tabs and windows already, even macOS’ built in terminal, so what do you mean? | | |
| ▲ | Telaneo 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | That solutions like tabs should be the responsibility of the terminal emulator you're using, and not the greater OS. | | |
| ▲ | fragmede 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Should it? In terms of window management, what's ideal? Should every program have to implement tabs and then have its own tab manager, and bookmarks and favorites? If we take a step back and look at the bigger window management problem, what makes the most sense for most users? Monitors these days are relatively cheap, so the fight for screen real estate isn't the same problem as it once was. The onus is on the operating system to make it better for the user to arrange things how they want things to work. |
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| ▲ | dr_dshiv 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Terminal should be responsibility of OS. God knows it’s deep enough. It could be so much better—and it matters! I know expecting UX innovation from Apple is laughable, but there was a time… |
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| ▲ | airstrike 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | FWIW I use aerospace and break up those 22 windows into ~4-6 windows with ~3-5 tabs each, then move each window to a different virtual workspace that I switch to with option + hotkey like opt+1, opt+2, opt+3 or even opt+D and so on | |
| ▲ | reddit_clone 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Have you tried other 3rd party terminal applications? (Iterm, ghostel, CMux) They have many quality of life improvements over the basic terminal. | | |
| ▲ | dr_dshiv 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I use Ghostty. I’ve tried iterm and cmux. I think we can do better. It’s a hard problem, admittedly. But important. | | |
| ▲ | quesera 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm sure you've considered and rejected tmux, but is this only because it has a different UI than a native OS app? |
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| ▲ | FuckButtons 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Tmux |
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