Thread

1. fedeb95 · 1790088079 · focus · HN ↗

   I have been a long time Android fan because of the tinkering you could do more easily than Apple. Then I started appreciating some of the design decisions behind especially iPhone, and it's been almost 7 years of iPhone usage.

   Recently I am starting to question some of the design decisions. Most native apps are bloated with functionalities, most of the time useless. Ads pop up everywhere, even before persistence; iCloud and backups are clearly designed to make you pay, the free space is useless.

   I am not that sure my next phone will be an iPhone.

   I have tried a recent Mac, and the system isn't intuitive at all. The first time I used GNOME, it was a breeze. Not the same with the MacBook system.

   1. boxed · 1790088227 · focus · HN ↗

      > I have tried a recent Mac, and the system isn't intuitive at all.

      You mean it's not the same as Windows. I personally find Windows infuriating after having been a mac user for decades even though I started out on windows way back in the win3.1->win2k era. It's just different.

      1. delecti · 1790090107 · focus · HN ↗

         The keyboard shortcuts are way more inconsistent on Mac. On Windows and KDE (and I presume Gnome though my experience is very out of date), Ctrl shortcuts pretty consistently relate to the window that currently has focus, and Meta/Windows shortcuts relate to manipulating and navigating windows as entities. No such rule of thumb exists in Mac.

         The simplest example of that to me is Cmd+T to open a new tab, Ctrl+Tab/PgUp/Dn to cycle through tabs, whereas it's Ctrl for all of them on KDE or Windows. There simply is not a way to deterministically switch to a specific other program/window, where in Windows/KDE you can do Win+1 to move to the first program on the taskbar (and so on with other numbers). And the behavior of Home/End is very inconsistent between programs, with seemingly no consistent way to move the cursor to the beginning of the current line.

         1. eigencoder · 1790092924 · focus · HN ↗

            Does ctrl+a not work for you? ctrl+a and ctrl+e work for me across every app I use on my Mac.

            1. delecti · 1790093319 · focus · HN ↗

               It seems it does. Thank you.

               That is a very strange keyboard shortcut when the home and end keys exist though.

               Edit: It seems that Ctrl+A actually moves back to just after the most recent newline. That is not the same thing as moving back to the start of the line.

               1. eigencoder · 1790097708 · focus · HN ↗

                  These keyboard shortcuts are also used in emacs; I'm not sure if that's the source of their inclusion in MacOS or if they have a common ancestor between them.

                  What's the difference between "just after the most recent newline" and the start of the line?

                  1. delecti · 1790100476 · focus · HN ↗

                     The difference is when the current paragraph of text has line wrapped. Home on Windows goes back to the start of the current line, Ctrl+A on Mac goes back to the start of the current paragraph.

                     1. eigencoder · 1790111830 · focus · HN ↗

                        Oh, yeah I get what you mean. I think I've seen the one you want, it might be CMD+arrow key.
         2. someguyiguess · 1790094040 · focus · HN ↗

            Keyboard shortcuts on Mac are a lot more consistent than windows and Linux actually. On a Mac command + C / V is copy / paste. In Linux sometimes it’s control + c, sometimes it’s control + shift + c.

            1. delecti · 1790094246 · focus · HN ↗

               I guess what I mean to say is that there's no consistent paradigm for keyboard shortcuts. It's a lot more memorization and less real pattern to what keyboard shortcut will do what action.

               And the only time I've encountered where it's not Ctrl+C in Linux is in the terminal. That feels like a reasonable exception to be grandfathered in, given it predates desktop environments. I will definitely grant that being able to Cmd+C/V in terminals is pleasant though.

               1. asdff · 1790097148 · focus · HN ↗

                  You can set shortcuts to whatever you like on mac though

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