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> You're shifting goalposts

Where?

> It was originally whether it can feel native

Yes, and feeling native includes behaviours, not just looks.

> and it can.

Except it doesn't. Still waiting on a single example of a proper Mac-feeling app written with Qt, looks and behaviour included.

> It's trivial to add them

If you're comparing to using a native toolkit, 'trivial' should mean 'for free' given that Qt already presents the developer with the option to use the native toolkit.

There's nothing trivial about integrating a proper Cocoa-provided NSToolbar into a Qt app. It's downright impossible to make a QToolBar both look and behave like NSToolbar.

> The original response was about whether Qt can provide modern looking and native looking apps

Yes, and then I mentioned that looking like a native app isn't the end of the story. The conversation moved on but, contrary to the assertion that the goalposts shifted (it didn't, the goalpost was always about the better UX of native toolkits), all I did was add detail as to what desktop UI toolkits provide that Qt doesn't.

Even then, AppKit is as old as Mac OS X. Hardly native. And in all that time, Qt never caught up.

> It's not as dire as you make it out to be

No, it actually is. So much of it just straight up doesn't work, things that AppKit provides for free without any effort at all. One would expect the native styling to be able to help with it but it simply doesn't.

> You've now shifted your goalpost from modern looking to being exactly what AppKit or SwiftUI does

Actually, I'll quote myself: "I'm still waiting for a single Qt-based app on macOS that feels like a macOS app" — no emphasis added, I even italicised 'feels' in my first reply.

Feeling native is more than just looks. It's behaviours. I'm repeating myself because even GP mentioned "better UX", not "better UI". The experience includes how things work.

Your assertion was "You can make Qt look however you want. The point is that it will give you native UI by default" — it was actually you who decided the discussion was all about looks, not about experience.

> Qt by default has basic accessibility support on macOS thce same way AppKit does

Not a single Qt app on my system supports Large Text. Simply doesn't do anything when I hold Cmd and move my pointer over things.

> It's not always perfect

Agreed that no accessibility system ever is, particularly if developers don't test it, but…

> but it's not as dire as you make it out to be.

Spoken like somebody who doesn't rely on accessibility features. Not just use, rely.

> Qt6 also supports theme changes fine.

My computer would say no to that, with random bits of the UI not changing colour at all when I change the system light/dark mode.

It was such a problem that one of the most-used cross-platform apps written with Qt, OBS Studio, completely disabled the native theme for its theming inconsistencies.

> But none of this is the premise of the original argument I was replying to.

Okay, so that just means you're having a new discussion with me, then. Besides which, GP's premise to which you replied was "Qt feels too locked in to old decisions that were the right choice at the time".

I don't see that I'm contradicting that. With late-90s to early-2000s design decisions (like toolbars that tear off with drag handles, like Office 2001/2003 and Visual Studio) the cornerstone of what each widget is designed to do and how its appearance should be, how it should behave, and how these things interconnect with other aspects of the UI system, those "old decisions" really do get in the way of the "better UX" that GP described.

Like I said, Qt apps feel like they're wearing a Mac skin over the bones of a Windows 95 program (okay, maybe more like 2000 or XP, but that's still almost 30 years old). Mac OS X has been out and supported all the things I've talked about in Cocoa and Carbon for as long and yet Qt still remains a poor facsimile on the Mac all this time later.

The experience is just as GP said, a clash of old and new. Probably less noticeable on Windows and Linux but sticks out like a sore thumb.

I continue to await any suggestion of a proper native-like app written in Qt that looks AND behaves like a modern Mac app.

And look, I don't mean for this to be an argument. It's got the shape of one but I really do enjoy discussing this with you. I guess, at the end of the day, that the idea that something might look acceptable on a system is sufficient to say that its toolkit is up to the job is not one that leads to the best user experience.

> But it's a far cry from being a Windows 95 UI with an aqua skin

Ah, but that's the problem, macOS UI isn't skin deep. Behind the looks, there are behaviours like:

- supporting the system-wide default Cocoa menus and menu-modifying behaviours like changing the shortcuts via System Settings rather than some in-app settings window

- support the Services menu in every single right-click menu, the one that's populated by AppleScripts, Automator services, and Shortcuts provided by the system, installed apps, and the user

- heck, even without the Services menu, supporting system-wide speech, spell-checking, and translation built into every native Cocoa text field

- for those of us who like it, Siri AI suggestions in text fields

- supporting macOS' accessibility settings like Dynamic Type, Large Type, proper support for VoiceOver in all widgets, etc. which come automatically to Cocoa widgets but require extra effort that's never really seen in Qt apps on the Mac

- supporting transitioning between light and dark mode when the system setting changes and not leaving random artefacts behind after the change

There's way more than just these examples but this is the point: looking like macOS isn't enough. It's feeling like macOS that's the trick and Qt apps always stand out as just a little foreign.

So people who make apps with Qt don't design for the Mac interface because it's far too much hassle to build all of that stuff in, if they even know that they have to.

——————————

I'm not convinced by a comparison with the Pro apps, either. Those, on both sides, are custom-designed UI. Yes, Apple's Pro apps use the system toolkit but they aren't your typical Mac app; anything that looks like them has to go out of its way to look like them. It's not like Qt gives "Pro app" look for free.

(And even if it did, that still doesn't mean the app would get all those behaviours I talked about before)

But even in the first image of the Musescore interface, I spot something foreign to Mac: a toolbar with a drag handle. Mac apps don't have that. Mac apps have NSToolbar, where the items are customisable in a standard way that every app adopts.

I'm still waiting for a single Qt-based app on macOS that feels like a macOS app. They look more like some Windows 95-era app wearing the Aqua skin peeled off the carcass of some slightly older-and-definitely-not-current version of macOS.

Don't confuse UI and UX. You can make Qt have the right UI, you can't make it have the right UX.

Because if we were talking about a real world object, nobody in their right mind would say it is the responsibility of the customer to fix a broken object rather than the manufacturer or the vendor.

> This costs you... 10 minutes with AI help?

So it should cost an organisation that charges for enterprise-level support no time at all.

One never knows where to go if one doesn't know where we've been. So many mistakes in tech can be avoided by realising somebody had made that mistake before you.

I'm a computer science teacher at the high school and part of what I do is make my students use old operating systems (via InfiniteMac.org and others) and ask them to identify what's the same on those older OS, what's better, and what's worse, and why.

My hope is that they don't just waste time by keeping on reinventing the wheel, getting burnt by the most easily avoided mistakes, or reviving something we've made the mistake of leaving behind.

They're using a literary device for a better title. Everybody understands that it's not actually a Power Mac. No need to point it out, nobody is confused about this.

> You're starting on personal attacks

and then

> and sounding more like a bot

Pot, kettle, etc.

Per HN guidelines: "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes."

> I just cant have a rational discussion with apple folks. Not here, not anywhere else. Its emotions and double values all way down.

Your post doesn't sound any different, what with the tarring a group of people with the same brush.

You've decided that your feelings about a type of company trump anybody else's opinions about a particular company. With a fairly derisive tone, at that.

In a few days? How far are these birds flying? :D

Comment from every dang year.

The more recent complaints have been about Github being ruined by Microsoft. And this is why MS gets away with EEE, because people have short memories and say to themselves "nah, it won't happen again this time".

Then it happens. Again. And again.

    Embrace.

    Extend.     <-- You are here.

    Extinguish.

We may never actually reach Extinguish. That won't be by Microsoft's choice, though.

> Everyone connecting these TVs to the internet has access to the internet to tell them not to do that.

> I just am baffled how so many still fall for this.

Because you're assuming everybody else is you, cares about the same things as you, does the same things as you, and has the same priorities as you.

You're astonished the world isn't you, and that is a vastly more astonishing take than people-just-wanna-watch-Netflix.

> So most consumers are willing to knowingly

"Knowingly". No, they don't know. You seem to think that because you know, then so must everybody else.

I have no words for how depressing that way of thinking is.

> But surely you know

No? It's hardly written in the advertising copy for the TV, is it.

This is a technical website with technical users. You are failing to put yourself in the shoes of non-technical, ordinary users who just want to watch Netflix.

> All avoidable

If you know that you should avoid it but people don't.