I have a modern Dell supported 4K display supporting USB-C to USB-C connection. macOS shows black screen for a few seconds before being able to show anything. Also using the 4K monitor with an actual 4K resolution makes everything very slow, so I just use it with lower resolutions :|. Never saw such issues on even entry level Windows laptops.
Is it macOS or the monitor not being responsive?
Also, if it's slow your laptop might be too old to properly support 4K or you might have misconfigured something.
At least Dell supports their hardware: have you tried updating the monitor firmware or submitting a report?
It's the built-in mac display that goes blank along with the external monitor. On my Intel 2019 MBP it was very slow (many seconds), on this new M3 it's much shorter but still more than a decent Windows laptop which is almost instant.
I discovered them when running stable diffusion which maxes out my m1max and audio started to stutter a lot despite everything else running fine. I was even thinking to myself how nice it is to be able to tax the machine and this be able to use it.
I experience this a lot (even up to complete freezes, even of the touchpad feedback, leading to crashes) and am confident that it is at least related to swapping due to memory pressure / RAM usage.
Why they'd let the system become unstable rather than killing some apps that are too much goes beyond my understanding.
Completely agree. Have been using a MBP for almost three years now at work (after using Windows machines for a couple of decades), and I can see how laughable many of the design decisions in macOS are (though I highly doubt they were deliberate 'decisions' at all), and I still fail to understand why people use them over Windows or Linux (sure, great hardware, mostly). It's probably fine as a consumer device, but for developers/power users the UI/UX is just bad. Finder, the built-in File Manager is an abomination of a software. It's like someone paid them to deliberately write a bad quality application.
Finder has always been like that. There have been some updates, but the core features of the UI have barely changed since 10.1.
I'm finding this with software everywhere. Products keep doing the same old stupid shit they did when they were first released. "Refinements" are poorly-designed cruft.
Is there anyone in charge of the OS X experience? There seems to be a lot of resume development - features that can be illustrated with smiling people in a video but don't really work all that well - and not so much interest in the core UX.
I still find it better than Windows, but the gap between what it could be and what it is keeps growing.
Enter to rename rather than open is one of the dumbest UX decisions ever made in a file manager. And then doubling down by not allowing any key remaps at all so you're stuck with it.
Oh, then you were probably not pissed enough to search more thoroughly. :) Fortunately, there's a godsend man who wrote a utility called 'PresButan' - https://briankendall.net/presButan/index.htm . Doesn't always auto launch with the OS start for some reason, but works great when it's running and fixes this madness.
Oh ... Where to begin. I can write an essay on it, but just to name a few:
1. There's a button on my M3 Mac keyboard that says 'delete'. It deletes stuff everywhere else, but welcome to Finder, this simple button doesn't delete a file or a folder. They thought giving it a two/three keys combination was a better idea.
2. Similarly, they thought you rename file/folders more often in a day than you open them. Why else would they make you press two keys to open one, and the most common single button in the world to open files (Enter/return) to rename one instead?
3. No 'Cut' (I know the alternatives). One might find it surprising but there are fans that defend even this move - they say it's because this is more "intuitive". You only copy everything first and only at the time of pasting you decide whether you want to move it or copy it. I say, if that's really the case, why does every other app and Editor (including the ones made by Apple) have a Cut option? Why don't we always follow this more intuitive method of "copying" first and then pressing the Option button while pasting. Let's remove Cut from everything and see how intuitive people find it.
4. By default, the Finder doesn't even tell you where you are. That's a basic requirement from a File Manager. Sure, fiddle with the settings and at some place you'll find an option to kind of enable that.
5. No option to quickly create a text/other file in a given folder. If you've struggled enough and enabled the view where you're able to see where you are at the moment, there's a _chance_ you'd also see that from that view you can actually go to Terminal directly in that folder. Go there, and type `touch <filename>` to create a file in that folder.
6. You got a full path to go to somewhere on the disk. You quickly open Finder. Oh, the default view doesn't even have a place to paste it and hit Enter. Who could have thought to hide it? Same problem with the native 'File Open' dialog that's used by all the other apps on the system. Even if you have the full file path, unless you go to settings you won't find a way to go to that file directly.
7. No easy (if at all) way to persistently map a network drive that automatically remaps when the network drive is available. You have to keep connecting to the SMB server again and again.
8. Side bar folder shortcuts get removed when the folder is deleted and recreated for any reason. You have to recreate them. Not sure who made all these decisions or if they were even thought about.
9. No straight way to even 'Refresh' the files in a folder. Try going out and in, closing and reopening Finder and just 'hope' that it will update and show the newly created files or changed file properties outside. Many times it just doesn't.
10. 'Get Info' allows you to also 'Set' (a lot of) Info. This is UX 101. They could have just named it `Properties` instead.
11. Hell, you can't even maximize this app window by double clicking on the Title bar, unlike for example another Apple made app 'App Store'. No consistency.
12. In List view there's no padding, I can't even find a place where I can right click and paste a previously copied file in the 'current folder', without it hitting a subfolder and pasting the files into that instead (assuming the folder has many folders inside). I'm surprised no one found it in internal user testing.
These are just off top of my head, I'm sure I can find more if I spend some time. There might be involved solutions to these, but there's no way we can call this an 'intuitive' interface. And this is just one application in the whole Operation System.
> There's a button on my M3 Mac keyboard that says 'delete'. It deletes stuff everywhere else, but welcome to Finder, this simple button doesn't delete a file or a folder. They thought giving it a two/three keys combination was a better idea.
It would be pretty darn annoying if an accidental key press could just delete a file!
> No 'Cut' (I know the alternatives). One might find it surprising but there are fans that defend even this move - they say it's because this is more "intuitive". You only copy everything first and only at the time of pasting you decide whether you want to move it or copy it. I say, if that's really the case, why does every other app and Editor (including the ones made by Apple) have a Cut option? Why don't we always follow this more intuitive method of "copying" first and then pressing the Option button while pasting. Let's remove Cut from everything and see how intuitive people find it.
The problem is, where does a file go in between the time you cut and you paste? If you accidentally copy something else to your clipboard, do you loose the entire file? Does the file appear in the Trash or is it deleted permanently?
You could argue that the same problem exists for non-file content (like text) which Apple allows you to cut. I think files and folders are a bigger deal, though. There's a practical limit to how much you can highlight. A folder might contain your entire life's work. (Yes, hopefully you have backups, but better to not reach that point.)
> By default, the Finder doesn't even tell you where you are. That's a basic requirement from a File Manager. Sure, fiddle with the settings and at some place you'll find an option to kind of enable that.
`View` → `Show Path Bar`? I agree it should be enabled by default but it's so easy to change! You can also right click the folder icon at the top of the window, but Apple made this much more difficult beginning in macOS 11.
> You got a full path to go to somewhere on the disk.
I don't think non-developers ever end up in this situation. Those who do can use `Go` → `Go to Folder...`. I realize it's not in the toolbar but it's right in the menu bar.
> In List view there's no padding, I can't even find a place where I can right click and paste a previously copied file in the 'current folder', without it hitting a subfolder and pasting the files into that instead (assuming the folder has many folders inside).
Click the gear in the toolbar → `paste`.
---
I think your other points are valid, and I think the Mac's UX has declined a ton ever since OS X 10.9 in 2013. But I feel quite strongly the above complaints are merely different from other operating systems (and thus what you are used to), not actually worse.
> It would be pretty darn annoying if an accidental key press could just delete a file! :
- Isn't the 'Bin' made exactly for that purpose? And also, just like any other accidental delete, Undo is always there. Very easy!
> The problem is, where does a file go in between the time you cut and you paste? :
- It doesn't have to go anywhere, it's just "marked for" 'cut', just like a file marked for copying doesn't go anywhere until you paste it. All other Operating Systems have got it exactly right for eons. If you accidentally copy something else, that mark is removed, and the file is still happily sitting where it was. (Windows even shows it visually in their File Explorer). No safety hazard. I don't understand your other point - be it my entire life's work, it's always at one place or the other. It can't go to a third place, and in any case Undo and Bin are always there. At least in Windows moved files go back to their previous places on Undo. This is a much more intuitive default, making sure a recovery option is always there for exceptions.
> `View` → `Show Path Bar` :
Yes, that's what I had done, but imagine having a proper address bar which both tells you where you are, and is editable so can be used to paste a new address to go to. That will be much more intuitive, and that's what other OSs have done.
> Click the gear in the toolbar → `paste`. :
I don't see a gear icon, but sure, I can also do it using Cmd+V and also from the Edit Menu. But a 'Paste Item' is still there in the Context menu that is unusable in a lot of situations. Wasn't Steve Jobs really particular about pixel perfectness? I don't see that here.
I didn't even talk about my other problems with this OS especially when you use non-Apple hardware. I just want to point out that unlike what a lot of people believe, Windows (and even modern Linux) UI is much more intuitive and arguably causes less repetitive strain injury to our hands with more frequent OS operations made easier. The only thing I had found great in Mac's UI was Spotlight (though even that leaves a lot to be desired), but Windows now offers that too under their new PowerToys fleet of applications (less capable in some places but it should only get better) and I think people should give it a try.
That one irks me too... When I built an auth/rbac app previously I did make Max length configurable and it would display a night if set. I set a hidden hard limit to 1k only to reduce attack surfaces that would only display and error if exceeded.
Default was a min-length of 15 as the only requirement with the default hint of "try using a short sentence"
I also had optional use of zxcvbn and haveibeenpwned checks during new passphrase creation.
I really wanted to open source the application but couldn't get approval to do so.
It was a pretty nice little simple auth application that issued RSA signed JWT to configured applications. It was interested into a few internal apps as well as for clients that didn't have something like azure ad, okta, etc. where we wrote bridge apps for auth.
If I had my configuration doc, I'd probably recreate it exactly, but with a Rust backend with HTMX instead of C#+react.
The date store used SQLite as a KV store, with simple methods for access that allowed an exception later for the values. Also wrote support for PostgreSQL and MS-SQL so they could be used where available.
Spent a lot of time on same defaults, hashing and encryption along with required configuration options for a few clients.
Aside: more devs really need to better understand public/private key generation and usage... Like not using the same keys for different environments.
Even worse, when the password has an arbitrary length requirement of 20, but the site doesn't tell you and just cuts of any trailing characters exceeding the requirement during account creation.
You have no idea how long it took me to figure that one out.
Slightly easier to figure out but no less annoying is when the maxLength attributes on the password fields for the two forms (create account and login) are different.
Even worse, some will simply arbitrarily silently truncate the password. But not everywhere! The sign up page might silently truncate and then the actual login page might not.
What happened to me once is that a long-time password of mine got truncated as the website lowered it's maximum password length, and the login page didn't truncate, so my full correct password suddenly stopped working. The pain.
Several comments mention passwords getting silently truncated by input maxlength. FWIW my extension provides a visible warning when this occurs: https://underpassapp.com/StopTheMadness/
I would always do that on my previous (slower) Android phones, but it's NOT because they added to the usability, just that they slowed down the interaction significantly when the GPU etc. were not capable enough. On my latest Pixel, I don't do that anymore and just enjoy the animations because they don't slow down my daily interactions anymore. So your point does not actually convey that Animations are useless. They just have a toll on performance, yes. They always will. (I work in an industry where we spend a lot of time perfecting 3D geometry animations, because our users prefer it).
Wow. 1.95 euros a day for the non-ad version? In India (where I live) I pay less than 3 euros a month for a 1.5GB everyday 5G connection and unlimited nationwide calls. So it's definitely not a "fair local rate" as they claim.
"Fair local rate" is indeed a bit ridiculous compared to actual local rates in some countries, but compared to roaming these rates are quite good. If I want to use my NL plan in India, my provider charges me €20 for a 2GB bundle or €2,50 per MB (yes, MB, not GB!). If I would only be there for a week or so, I would probably not bother with the trouble of getting a local SIM (and in some countries that is not even possible if you are not a resident).
Those data rates look outrageous! When I visited countries like USA/France, I got international roaming enabled on my phone and it was still close to effectively 1 USD per day, though data was limited to total 5 GB for a month's plan or 1 GB for 10 days. It was fine however as most hotels have Wi-Fi anyway.
Even though it's really spelled out in big letters on the webpage, I've made the same mistake. Just wasn't expecting mobile plans to have prices per day.
Was wondering how it can be that cheap, literally too good to be true sadly.
It will be available in India and most other countries by the end of March according to their own website, and I don't think they're going to change their rates in a month's time.
I don't know because I've never taken a one day prepaid card, but had I been visiting India as a foreigner I'd just buy a local prepaid card for a month considering it's so cheap.
Tried Zed some time back, the performance was pretty good as compared to VS Code, though gave up when they chose to implement other fancy / collaborative features before implementing the most basic requirement from an 'editor' - Search and Replace. Contacted them but there was no response. Looks like they have replace now, so worth trying again (still hard to give up all the features of Sublime Text yet).
But then again, everyone says Google is evil to have made their own browser, but most of the world is using it - one would guess they must have done some good things with it (so taking humanity forward in some capacity etc.). Some are even criticizing Google from its own browser - I hate the fact that it made Firefox lose their market share, but I also understand it can't all be because the big corp brainwashed everyone (sure it would be a significant part though).
IE6 was the browser "most of the world used" too. But really, surely, there was absolutely nothing done well in it. The only reason it was the most used browser was monopoly abuse.
And while we can discuss the exact terminology of "a monopoly" and whether the Ie6 hegemony fit in there theoretically, that it came with the most used OS, really was the only reason it was popular.
With Chrome it is different. But at least a large part of its popularity comes from abused monopolies enforcing this software on people. Less than IE6 i'd say, but still a large part.
While I understand your argument about IE6 which was shipped with Windows, Chrome didn't have that advantage for a long time - it's only now that Android phones and Chromebooks are shipped with it, but I don't know of a single person who does not download Chrome on their Windows Desktop too - even now when Edge is based on Chromium! Firefox has always been my primary browser (it still is, I'm typing this in Firefox), but say what you may, Chrome has taken the internet forward in many aspects. I work on an in-browser CAD tool, and I can see how vastly better Graphics performance is in Chrome when compared to Firefox for example (and it's just one example).
That’s not true. When IE6 launched it was definitely the fastest of its contemporary competitors. The problem with IE6 was not that it was bad at launch, but that it wasn’t touched for five years after launch, and didn’t properly disappear until 2016 or so.
Yes. And in that sense it's also similar to Chrome.
IE6 might have been the best competitor at first. But it certainly did not grow into the 9x% usage and staid there by being the best competitor. It only grew popular once MSFT started using its monopoly to push it.
It really sucked by then, compared to its competition.
Maybe they’ve achieved this position for Chrome leveraging Google’s strength, not because Chrome’s quality? I can name a few reasons, like an aggressive marketing campaign for Chrome circa 2012 (promotion on Google search, bundling Chrome with popular apps) and sabotaging Google web apps in rivals, specially Firefox, that makes Chrome look better for Google’s users (basically everyone online).
I'm not sure anyone is calling them evil simply for making a browser. Tactics like forcing it to be pre-installed and unable to be removed on Android are somewhat evil, especially if they're part of an anti-competitive strategy.
This always surprises me. While as an Indian I'm ashamed of the level of corruption we have in every government system of ours, at least it's still called corruption (and is illegal) what US calls lobbying (and is legal).
Sadly, electoral bonds make this less true. All the benefits of lobbying for businesses with none of the transparency that political donations have in the US.
