This post requires that users ignore the most prominent and longstanding discoverability feature of the Mac: the omnipresent top menubar.
1. Scrollable windows flash their scrollbars when focused. This bit of bad UI was imported from iOS. Unlike iOS, it can still be turned off: Click the Apple menu -> System Preferences -> General -> Show scroll bars.
2. File menu -> Quick Look.
3. Every action in that context menu is available in the File menu.
3a. Holding the Option key works in the File menu as well, but this change can also be made from File menu -> Get Info -> Open with.
4. This actually bad UI was, again, taken from iOS.
5. Go menu -> Enclosing Folder.
Nearly every example is solvable with single clicks in the always-visible, literally spelled-out menubar, as they have been for 30+ years. They are therefore eminently discoverable, contingent on a user giving a thought to trying in the first place to discover them. The one or two examples where this is not true are direct iOS tack-ons that do not respect the platform.
What this post is doing is mendaciously pretending that power-user shortcuts, some more or less discoverable than others, are the only way to perform these operations which can actually be accomplished by reading and clicking. The attempt to equate the Mac's discoverability with iOS fails once that is pointed out, since in the latter those mystery-meat gestures truly are the only way to execute them.
1. Scrollable windows flash their scrollbars when focused. This bit of bad UI was imported from iOS. Unlike iOS, it can still be turned off: Click the Apple menu -> System Preferences -> General -> Show scroll bars.
2. File menu -> Quick Look.
3. Every action in that context menu is available in the File menu.
3a. Holding the Option key works in the File menu as well, but this change can also be made from File menu -> Get Info -> Open with.
4. This actually bad UI was, again, taken from iOS.
5. Go menu -> Enclosing Folder.
Nearly every example is solvable with single clicks in the always-visible, literally spelled-out menubar, as they have been for 30+ years. They are therefore eminently discoverable, contingent on a user giving a thought to trying in the first place to discover them. The one or two examples where this is not true are direct iOS tack-ons that do not respect the platform.
What this post is doing is mendaciously pretending that power-user shortcuts, some more or less discoverable than others, are the only way to perform these operations which can actually be accomplished by reading and clicking. The attempt to equate the Mac's discoverability with iOS fails once that is pointed out, since in the latter those mystery-meat gestures truly are the only way to execute them.