Agreed, here are some more things I’ve noticed weird about macOS:
* When a Macbook is plugged into an external monitor, if you close its lid, it will only stay awake if the power cord is plugged in (otherwise it goes to sleep). There is no notification that tells the user this, you’re just supposed to know it I guess.
* On the Displays page of System Preferences, the only way to get it to re-scan for connected monitors is to hold down Alt, which makes a hidden button appear called “Detect Displays”. Again you’re just supposed to know this.
* The green “traffic light” button in the title bar makes the current window fullscreen instead of maximizing it. I never see people use full screen in real life, they always maximize everything
* When in the fullscreen mode mentioned previously, the Cmd ` shortcut to switch between windows of the same program doesn’t work
* When connected to a monitor, there is no way to turn of the laptop's screen, without plugging in and closing the lid. This will overheat your laptop if you are doing anything slightly intensive.
* Sometimes you will lose windows when you disconnect the external monitor.
* Touchpad and mouse scrolling direction is linked. So at least one of them will feel bad to use.
* Macos will randomly choose wallpapers for each new desktop you create, there is no setting for this behavior.
* Due to the unnecessary Cmd button, shortcuts are very difficult to remember. In VS code, to search : Cmd+F. To go to line : Ctrl+G. Drives me insane.
Honestly, I hate Macos. Windows is 10x better. I don't understand what people like about this system.
> Touchpad and mouse scrolling direction is linked. So at least one of them will feel bad to use.
I get that this goes against your preference but to Apple it's either "your finger moves the content" or "your finger moves the viewport", and that translates to both your finger on the touchpad and on the mousewheel. Remember that Apple sells the Magic Mouse that doesn't even have a mousewheel -- the whole top of the mouse behaves like a touchpad. That's why the settings are linked.
> unnecessary Cmd button
On Apple computers the button has been used for keyboard shortcuts for the last 40 years.
> In VS code, to search : Cmd+F. To go to line : Ctrl+G. Drives me insane.
That's VS's problem, not ours and certainly not Apple's. Apple software and native macOS apps always use the Cmd key as the primary modifier, only adding others for more complicated shortcuts.
I agree that Windows is 10x better than macOS -- at being Windows. You WILL be dissapointed if you expect macOS to be like Windows with a different skin.
This is not just my preference. This is how mouse scroll wheels have always worked. The settings for scroll wheel and track pad scrolling are shown separately too, in apples own software. You'd never know looking at it that they are linked internally. If it is a single setting, it should be a single setting!
> Apple software and native macOS apps always use the Cmd key as the primary modifier, only adding others for more complicated shortcuts.
Is switching to next tab in safari also a "complicated shortcut"? Because that uses Ctrl too.
> This is how mouse scroll wheels have always worked.
Yes, and touch based devices reminded us that maybe the way mouse scroll wheels had always worked was not the best way after all. Apple's defaults since Lion have been "finger moves content" on all their input methods: iDevice touch screens, touchpads, the Magic Mouse and 3rd party mouse scroll wheels. Again, you may not like it, but it's consistent. I do agree that it could be a single less-confusing setting, but the Mouse and Trackpad screens are unfortunately separate.
> switching to next tab in safari ... uses Ctrl too.
It's switching to next tab in everything, not only Safari. And the choice isn't even that weird, obviously Cmd + Tab is taken and Ctrl pairs nicely with Shift to reverse, so why not? They key is there and AFAIK Ctrl + Tab doesn't override anything important, unlike, well, Ctrl + C.
> It's switching to next tab in everything, not only Safari.
So where's the consistency? I thought all shortcuts were supposed to use Cmd as the modifier and Ctrl was only for complicated shortcuts. But switching tabs in a browser is one of the most common shortcut. So why is it Ctrl?
You can't say because "everything" else uses Ctrl in this context. Because then they should fix the mouse issue also. The crux of my problem is that shortcuts randomly use Ctrl or Cmd, there is no predictability or consistency.
But I do recognise that keyboard shortcuts rely on familiarity and tradition more than consistency and logic, so this isn't a major deal for me.
The bigger issues are the other stuff. External monitor support is as good as broken. Full screen apps are as good as unusable. OS updates regularly break critical features like Settings and Fingerprinter. And on and on. I really never had these sorts of bugs in my entire life using Windows.
> I thought all shortcuts were supposed to use Cmd as the modifier and Ctrl was only for complicated shortcuts. But switching tabs in a browser is one of the most common shortcut. So why is it Ctrl?
macOS apps and 3rd party apps that are not ports from other platforms use Cmd as the primary modifier, i.e. the overwhelming majority of shortcuts are Cmd + something. If your apps use Ctrl a lot, they're probably Linux or Windows ports that don't respect the macOS way. There's plenty of those.
They could've used Cmd + G to go to the next tab and Cmd + H to go back (for example), but in this case it's pretty clear why they went with ctrl + tab, isn' t it? It's convenient, makes sense and it's quite close to the close-window Cmd + W and you can easily add a Shift there to go back.
> Full screen apps are as good as unusable.
I use fullscreen apps all the time (on the laptop screen or smaller monitors) and they're perfectly fine. Some people don't like the paradigm, but that's just personal preference again.
> Some people don't like the paradigm, but that's just personal preference again.
No, I love the paradigm. It's just that random stuff is broken. For example, if you have 2 chrome windows, and at least one of them is full-screen, there is no keyboard shortcut to switch between them. Cmd+` is broken.
Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab both work, but I think the original shortcuts were: Cmd-{ and Cmd-} for switching tabs ( Cmd-[ and Cmd-] are back and forward too ). Both of these still work, and are what I've used for 13 years now.
You can do 1 by setting boot-args to a certain value [1]. But even then it's not the cleanest experience since you have to start in clamshell mode and then open the screen. And if the computer goes to sleep the effect is lost.
> When a Macbook is plugged into an external monitor, if you close its lid, it will only stay awake if the power cord is plugged in (otherwise it goes to sleep).
If it allowed you to run in clamshell on battery power, you'd be able to, for example, switch your monitor to show a different input, forget about the (closed, silent) MacBook and run the battery down to zero with no indication.
> The green “traffic light” button in the title bar makes the current window fullscreen instead of maximizing it.
That's because "maximize" is a Windows thing and you're not on Windows. The green button feature is called Zoom (I believe) in macOS and it's basically "resize to content". The fullscreen thingy used to be a separate button (Mavericks), which IMO was a bit better.
> When in the fullscreen mode mentioned previously, the Cmd ` shortcut to switch between windows of the same program doesn’t work.
The shortcut switches between windows that are on the same Space (so that it switches between your different casual-browsing and work-related windows inside their respective spaces if you're the kind of person who keeps different spaces for different situations/projects).
A fullscreen app doesn't cover other apps, like on Windows, but instead goes to its own space. That's why the shortcut can't do anything.
* When a Macbook is plugged into an external monitor, if you close its lid, it will only stay awake if the power cord is plugged in (otherwise it goes to sleep). There is no notification that tells the user this, you’re just supposed to know it I guess.
* On the Displays page of System Preferences, the only way to get it to re-scan for connected monitors is to hold down Alt, which makes a hidden button appear called “Detect Displays”. Again you’re just supposed to know this.
* The green “traffic light” button in the title bar makes the current window fullscreen instead of maximizing it. I never see people use full screen in real life, they always maximize everything
* When in the fullscreen mode mentioned previously, the Cmd ` shortcut to switch between windows of the same program doesn’t work