Linux Fanboy Reviews macOS: Feels OLD.

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00:00 Intro
00:38 Sponsor: OnlyOffice, the awesome open source Office Suite for Linux
01:32 What I used to test MacOS
02:11 MacOS Desktop Features: it holds up
06:52 Window Management: it's bad
10:58 App Management: it's good, if it's in the Store
15:31 Good or Bad?
18:28 Sponsor: Get a laptop or desktop with Linux preinstalled from Tuxedo
19:38 Support the channel

You get a top bar and a bottom dock, a layout that's now really common, and easily replicated on any Linux desktop. Mac OS goes for the global menu, which I like.

The dock itself just hosts open application, and open windows for apps that aren't in the dock, plus it has the trashcan, recent applications, and a few nice features.

It also has one very annoying limitation: you can't minimize an app by clicking on its icon, which is very, very frustrating.

The desktop holds icons, by default, only your disk drives, but you can store anything you want there, with a nice feature: the ability to automatically stack files by file type.

In terms of options and look and feel, you find a light or dark mode, with an auto switch depending on the time of day, and accent colors.

Finally, to run applications, you either launch them from the dock, or you have a full screen app grid with search, that works pretty much like the GNOME app grid.

You get the excellent Spotlight, which lets you search for virtually anything;: files, apps, settings, webpages, you name it.

Window management on mac is a nightmare. You get the close button, the maximize button, and the minimize button.

The close button doesn't close the app, it closes the window.

If you minimize the the app's icon, and you have multiple windows minimized, clicking on the app's icon will only bring back the last window you minimized. Subsequent clicks don't do anything.

Then there's the maximize button, which doesn't only maximize, but takes the window full screen. If you press the ALT key and then click on the green button, then your window will not maximize, or go full screen, it will just expand to fit as much of the content as it can.

Then there's the tiling. You can't just drag a window to an edge of the screen to tile it. You have to long press the green button to access a small submenu that lets you pick an edge to tile the window.

Now there's a good part, still, the Multitasking view, called Mission control. You can access it with an icon on the dock, a hot corner, or a keyboard shortcut.
Again, good idea, mediocre implementation. the GNOME activities view beats that without breaking a sweat.

On to application updates and installing them. Here, your default option is the mac app store. It's a beautiful face on a not so well stocked app selection.

We could learn a thing or two about how they present apps. They have editorial content presenting stuff users might need, by type of activity, they present the most used and downloaded apps first, something we still don't do.

If you can't find what you're loking for on the Store, then you can still resort to the "hunt online for a downloadable app" solution.

What you get in the process is a DMG file, which is a disk image. TO install your app, you have to open the DMG file, and then drag the application to your Applications folder. Sounds simple on paper, and most DMG files have some kind of visual explanation to let users know they need to drag the app into the folder.

The issue here, is that I've met a number of people who never understood that. They open the app from the DMG image.

[dansanger]

I wouldn't say "even Windows" does window management better than macOS. Windows actually does window management pretty well. It's one of its strong points.

[EmblemParade]

Mac apps are actually not single files, they are directories with a special extension (.app) and internal structure, which is shown by the OS as just the icon of the app. It's actually quite nice to be able install/remove apps just by copying/deleting files. It's a paradigm users already understand. But ... a few apps also require a custom installer, and then you get the typical Windows experience, in which you also need a custom uninstaller to remove it. This confuses many Mac users, because they are not very used to it and struggle to remove these apps.

[igorzkoppt]

Another gripe I have is how they seem obsessed to hide anything that is considered as "advanced" - even for simply access to "Save as" when saving something, you need a specific shortcut. And the finder which hides the actual filesystem folder hierarchy, more "special shortcuts" for simple things like deleting a file, etc. Manipulating large numbers of files is a serious PITA in general.

[TheCalcaholic]

I love this. It's like a glimpse into a parallel universe where Linux is the predominant Desktop OS. :D

[sangeloo]

You can actually double-click on a blank spot on the top of the window, the one the traffic lights are in, to maximize. You can also set it to minimize (but that is just straight up annoying). I really don't like the behavior of the green traffic light as well, but at least maximizing works.

[ahjuice]

Yes, window management has been a pain on macOS for a long time and has only gotten marginally better over the years. One small correction though: you don't need to exit Mission Control to move a window from an inactive Desktop to another. You can use a three-finger swipe left or right, or use a keyboard shortcut (by default Control + Left/Right Arrow) to switch Desktops without leaving Mission Control.

[rumble]

Some of this is painful to watch as a macos user :D
But yeah, window management is much better on Windows and Linux. To be effective you have to learn the keyboard shortcuts and gestures.

[brad]

These days, you really have to use a trackpad to take full advantage of all the window management stuff. When you are in mission control, you can also use the three-finger swipe to move between desktops, which imo makes it easy to move windows around between them. I also don't understand why they don't enable App Exposé by default. If you set it to three-finger swipe down, it will show all windows from the current app, including those that are minimized. I would say in general, the most deficient aspect of Mac OS is the Finder. It's missing many things that should have been added in the past 20 years, and it's buggy enough that you can never really trust it if you are trying to do anything with a large number of files.

Anyway, I'm glad Linux exists for you and Mac OS exists for me, because we each seem to like and prefer the conventions of each. Not everything has to be the same because people have different preferences.

[KeithBoehler]

To me the biggest problem is Apple itself. Their hostile take on right to repair and difficulties of not being fully in their eco-system turn me off the most. Like no DE is perfect and you just have to pick your poison, but theirs comes with several extra stuff.

[ElijahCiali]

Alright so a few notes that I'll sprinkle as I watch the video (as an avid macOS user that prefers it over Windows and all flavors of Linux– I've tried pretty much them all)

2:38 The best part about this "global OS menu" is that it's really easy to script and search. Just clicking on "Help" gives you a search bar that lets you search the menus a la Microsoft office. You can also easily script these to automate tasks for apps that have zero scripting functionality with AppleScript.
3:14 This is just one of the pitfalls of Apple's multi-instance ideology. Until OS X came up with this concept it wasn't common to have multiple documents for one app open. They designed the dock around the idea that an application can host multiple windows but the window isn't the app, so closing the window wouldn't close the app. They offer a "kind of" solution in that you can click Hide to hide all windows of the app, however. You could really go either way, and Apple chose the way more consistent with OS principles. Completely valid criticism though.
5:33 Honestly, I prefer this sometimes. Sure, it's fun to customize the crap out of your desktop but sometimes it's really nice where you can go to your coworkers computer and not have to figure out how their desktop environment works. We used to have themes but those went away in favor of the consistency (that app devs love too). I work in a development company and I had to do a presentation on my coworkers computer, which had a tiling window manager that I didn't know how to use. You can imagine how that went.
5:53 Most macOS users use Spotlight to open apps since it's much faster than finding your app's icon, but I presume an application-specific menu would be useful to those who want it.
6:40 Honestly my favorite part of Spotlight is the built-in calculator and the ability to run commands. Super handy.
6:58 Completely agree. For pretty much all Mac power users one of the first things we install is a window tiler. Apple tried to fix this but their implementation is terrible and they deserve all criticism for it.
7:58 It used to actually be a maximize button in OS X Lion, where the full screen button was on the right side. They merged them in Yosemite and now the shortcut for maximize is to double click the top bar, which is definitely easier but is less intuitive.
8:21 This really depends on the app. Maximize events are handled by the developer, so a maximize in Adobe software maximizes the whole screen while Safari only fits the content, something I assume is to aid responsive design (?) not really sure.
10:58 I honestly can't think of a single macOS user that actually thinks the App Store is the intended way to install Mac apps. It's an absolute joke, to the point where most of Apple's official apps have versions that you can just download instead of using the App Store.
11:10 There are a variety of reasons between the sandboxing of apps, invasive update policies, app store guidelines so strict that most open source apps could only have about 75% of their functionality, but perhaps the biggest reason is the fee to get into the App Store. It's $99 a year, which compared to the alternative (downloading a .dmg) is an unnecessary cost that makes updating and releasing harder.
12:46 The only time I've experienced this was with an old version of iPhoto, and that's it. Most Mac apps retain compatibility between versions, the only time this wasn't true was when they dropped support for 32bit apps with Catalina.
13:43 You didn't criticize this but I feel like some people might be helped by this explanation, it's a DMG file since macOS app files are technically just folders that house the resources and the binaries. That's why you can't just download a ".app" file. Some apps use .zip but DMG is still the common practice.
14:10 Even in this case, 90% of apps I've encountered will have a little popup offering to move themselves to the applications folder or outright not running at all until done so. DMG isn't an official app distribution format, it's just a disk image format and that's why it doesn't have it's own "application install" methods. It's literally just a folder and it's up to the developer to tell the user.
15:06 There's a little-known workaround for this, right clicking and clicking "open" will let you avoid going into System Preferences.

Honestly, this video does highlight the main problem with macOS. Apple makes it "intuitive" but the way they do that is by sweeping most desktop management features under the rug. All of the intuitiveness is lost once you try to do power user things and most of it is kind of a "if you know you know" thing. I find Snazzy Lab's Mac Tips series really helpful and I wish Apple would be more obvious with what seems like pretty expected features.

[carlod]

11:27 Apple doesn't allow free software to be in their store. They don't like GPL license

[Gest_]

Overall, I prefer macOS since I'm most familiar with it, but I feel like macOS excludes mouse users so much and its one of my biggest complaints I have about macOS. The fact that I have to install an app to disable mouse acceleration is just stupid. 

And yes, you can double click on the empty part of window to maximize it but in my experience, there's like 50/50 chance of actually working and that really frustrates me every single time.

Also I really miss cover flow on finder.

[ronaldbos]

When I owned a MacBook a few years back, I always got the feeling Apple didn't want me to be productive. However, I erroneously assumed that by now they would have fixed those issues, but your video pretty much made it clear that they haven't.

[jonnyso]

I honestly didn't expect it to be so bad. Also now I finally understand why every mac user I see use apps as a small square in the middle of the screen instead of just maximazing it.

[oackgourmandi]

for windows management I use Rectangle, the window interface in Mac OS is really outdated... with rectangle I even have keyboard shortcut that makes the desktop a joy. I found more easy to organize the windows in Mac OS nine than modern Mac OS

[mat_max]

This will sound weird, but... I personally don't like monochrome tray icons. color helps me a lot at finding the application icon I'm looking for. When they're monochrome they sort of blend together to me and it takes me more time to find stuff.

[SriHarshaChilakapati]

Apple has a mandatory 3 week review for apps in the app store, and hence most third party developers distribute apps using disk images and not through the app store. Also, I agree on the default window manager too. That is why I install Rectangle which is a better window manager. And to install apps, I install homebrew, which is a command line package manager.

[paweosmolski]

There are 2 apps that completely smoothen macos experience. Rectangle for window management (for God's sake don't buy Magnet - it's worse and costs money) and Homebrew for package management. With them installed macos is the best system I've ever used (it's like linux but with apps)

[RussellHampton]

Was Mac since the late 1980's and still have an original MacIntosh! However, once Apple started leaving my expensive MacBook pro behind, I discovered Linux and Fedora just blows Mac OS away! Your video just confirmed that this was the best move I ever made!... Thanks!

[noahcain]

I really recommend using Rectangle for the window manager, MacOS has awful tiling supposedly because Microsoft patented the whole "drag to tile" thing.