> If I had to shift to MacOS now it would be far far more painful than the shift from Mac to Linux.
Wholeheartedly agree.
I've been slowly moving from Linux (mostly Ubuntu 14.04) to High Sierra, and there are a few things that make absolutely no sense about OSX:
- There's a difference, in almost every piece of software, between closing the last window and quitting. In a browser, just pressing the "close" button would lose all your tabs, whereas "quit" will preserve them. That makes no sense to someone coming from Linux or Windows; I'm sure OSX users have gotten used to this difference, but ... it's clunky.
- OSX puts one small dot next to an icon of the app that's open. Unity puts one dot for every open window the app has (but no more than 3 even if you more than 3), _and_ a marker that tells you which app has focus (and whether it is on the current workspace or on different one); also middle click on the icon universally opens a new windows. I never realized how convenient and informative this is, until I lost this feature with OSX.
- OSX litters all the (local) directories you visit with finder preview files. It does it for remote ones to, but at least that can be turned off - not so for local. There used to be 3rd party kexts to stop that, but not anymore. Gnome/unity keeps the previews in one directory; Windows is almost as bad as MACOS (except it can be turned off universally).
- Having used locally integrated menus for the past ~30 years or so, I find OSX' global menus uncomfortable. I've spent a while with Unity's global menus to try them out, and after two months of use gave up and went back to local menus. OSX doesn't give you that choice. (And yes, I know of Apple's studies that resulted in the global menu - I suspect the originals are no longer relevant -- due to higher resolution screens, larger number of open apps on average, and familiarity with window systems; Does anybody know if these studies were repeated any time in the last 5 years?)
- "apt install" (and many of its GUI frontends) are years ahead of Mac OS app installations, whether app store or DMG, both in ease of use and in breadth covered; "brew" comes close, but no cigar yet; Haven't tried Nix, Fink or MacPorts yet.
- A kernel update that requires restart is uncommon on either system; less than once a month. Yet, on the Mac it's 5-30 minutes of downtime to apply, depending on the update; on Linux I have my desktop back in less than 30 seconds.
- keyboard shortcuts. "End" goes to end of document, "Home" goes to beginning; Low frequency of use (for anyone I know). Beggining/end of line: Option+Left, Option+Right; high frequency of use. It's a "different strokes" thing, for sure, but even though the Mac is consistent, it is very weird compared to (everything else going back 50 years), and not optimized.
Yes, OSX looks more polished, and even small utility apps are really gorgeous. But so far it feels that functionality wise for a non-artist engineer like me, OSX is trailing.
Wholeheartedly agree.
I've been slowly moving from Linux (mostly Ubuntu 14.04) to High Sierra, and there are a few things that make absolutely no sense about OSX:
- There's a difference, in almost every piece of software, between closing the last window and quitting. In a browser, just pressing the "close" button would lose all your tabs, whereas "quit" will preserve them. That makes no sense to someone coming from Linux or Windows; I'm sure OSX users have gotten used to this difference, but ... it's clunky.
- OSX puts one small dot next to an icon of the app that's open. Unity puts one dot for every open window the app has (but no more than 3 even if you more than 3), _and_ a marker that tells you which app has focus (and whether it is on the current workspace or on different one); also middle click on the icon universally opens a new windows. I never realized how convenient and informative this is, until I lost this feature with OSX.
- OSX litters all the (local) directories you visit with finder preview files. It does it for remote ones to, but at least that can be turned off - not so for local. There used to be 3rd party kexts to stop that, but not anymore. Gnome/unity keeps the previews in one directory; Windows is almost as bad as MACOS (except it can be turned off universally).
- Having used locally integrated menus for the past ~30 years or so, I find OSX' global menus uncomfortable. I've spent a while with Unity's global menus to try them out, and after two months of use gave up and went back to local menus. OSX doesn't give you that choice. (And yes, I know of Apple's studies that resulted in the global menu - I suspect the originals are no longer relevant -- due to higher resolution screens, larger number of open apps on average, and familiarity with window systems; Does anybody know if these studies were repeated any time in the last 5 years?)
- "apt install" (and many of its GUI frontends) are years ahead of Mac OS app installations, whether app store or DMG, both in ease of use and in breadth covered; "brew" comes close, but no cigar yet; Haven't tried Nix, Fink or MacPorts yet.
- A kernel update that requires restart is uncommon on either system; less than once a month. Yet, on the Mac it's 5-30 minutes of downtime to apply, depending on the update; on Linux I have my desktop back in less than 30 seconds.
- keyboard shortcuts. "End" goes to end of document, "Home" goes to beginning; Low frequency of use (for anyone I know). Beggining/end of line: Option+Left, Option+Right; high frequency of use. It's a "different strokes" thing, for sure, but even though the Mac is consistent, it is very weird compared to (everything else going back 50 years), and not optimized.
Yes, OSX looks more polished, and even small utility apps are really gorgeous. But so far it feels that functionality wise for a non-artist engineer like me, OSX is trailing.