Cherry picking bits and pieces of what I mentioned rather than addressing the entirety of the argument does not a good counter-argument make. And no, neither does linking some dictionary entry as if it actually proves you understand what that dictionary entry is saying. No comment on the Touch Bar being disabled with external keyboards plugged in? Or needing to disconnect USB-C devices to login? Or password prompts being broken in System Preferences? These are bugs that actively hinder usability and pretty clearly contradict the notion of "just works". It is not a strawman - at all - to suggest that these bugs and others directly challenge the notion that something "just works".
You know what is a strawman? Cherry picking only some minor weaker points you want to attack while entirely ignoring the ones that you don't, and then trying to pass that off as a substitute for addressing all points in their entirety. If you actually understood what a "strawman" is, you would recognize immediately that your behavior in this discussion is much closer than mine to that definition you cited, and then you'd kindly refrain, thanks.
> You just want it to work differently - I.e. you just don’t like it.
I "just don't like it" specifically because it does not "just work". It is tolerable usability-wise only after extensive fiddling and tweaking and troubleshooting, and that's only on good days when those aforementioned bugs ain't actively preventing me from using basic OS functionality.
And that's fine - I do enjoy fiddling with things on my Linux and OpenBSD desktops - but those Linux and OpenBSD desktops don't advertise themselves as "you shouldn't ever need to fiddle with things because everything just works" the way macOS does, and therefore I'm a lot less frustrated with that fiddling because those systems are designed for it and encourage it and make it easy and friendly and fun. Nothing about customizing macOS is easy or friendly or fun; it is not designed for it, and it does not encourage it. It is Apple's way or the highway - and given the evolution of Apple's way lately, the highway doesn't look so bad after all.
> and leverages Fitt’s law because you don’t have to be accurate in the vertical dimension
Right, let's watch users spend multiple seconds dragging a cursor to a window toward the bottom-right, clicking, and then dragging that cursor all the way back to the top-left just to save fractions of a second on vertical positioning in a specific spot.
Fitt's law is hardly useful here. If the window ain't maximized, then you need some degree of vertical precision to select the window in order to make its menu visible anyway. And if it is maximized, then it literally doesn't matter what owns the menu 'cause it'll be in approximately the same place either way.
That is:
> There are good UX reasons for this.
There were good UX reasons for this, back in the days of m68k Macs where mice were some newfangled invention and displays were tiny. In those days that unintuitive disconnection was a fair tradeoff to make if it meant conserving that tiny amount of vertical real estate and helping people figure out those newfangled rodents.
Now? It's been, what, 40 years? People know how to use mice (or, if not, can figure it out with a bit of practice - Microsoft understood this and opted to encourage that practice with games like Minesweeper and Solitaire instead of paternalistically assuming users will remain permanently inept), and even the absolute lowest screen resolution Apple sells on a Macbook has multiple times the amount of vertical and horizontal screen space. That tradeoff is far less useful now.
> Cherry picking bits and pieces of what I mentioned rather than addressing the entirety of the argument does not a good counter-argument make.
Here’s where I addressed the entirety of your argument:
> Really your comment has nothing to do with whether MacOS *just works(, you have articulated a list of preferences and desires for it to work more like other things you have more familiarity with.
You just want it to work differently - I.e. you just don’t like it.
I increasingly don’t like it either for various reasons, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t just work.
As for cherry picking. I don’t need to refute every point you made - they all fall under this umbrella.
> And no, neither does linking some dictionary entry as if it actually proves you understand what that dictionary entry is saying.
It does. If it didn’t you’d have addressed it, but you didn’t.
Your entire argument boils down to “Mac OS doesn’t work like linux”.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t just work. It means it isn’t a good choice for you.
> It is tolerable usability-wise only after extensive fiddling and tweaking and troubleshooting,
Almost nobody does this. Most people find it very usable as is. As I said - this is just about your preferences and nothing more.
> and that's only on good days when those aforementioned bugs ain't actively preventing me from using basic OS functionality.ugh
This is also something almost nobody experiences.
Perhaps your attempts to make MacOS work differently from how it was designed are causing you these problems.
What is odd to me is that you continue to use an operating system that is so ill suited to your preferences.
> Here’s where I addressed the entirety of your argument:
...except for the usability-hindering bugs. Hardly meaningful to reduce those to "user preference"; like, no shit I'd prefer it if basic devices like keyboards and mice worked on boot without extra fiddling.
> This is also something almost nobody experiences.
The Big Sur upgrade breaking the password prompt in System Preferences, as one especially annoying example, is pretty well documented online - and was documented for Catalina upgrades, too. It's exactly where I got the troubleshooting step of "reset SMC". I'm far from alone there.
> Perhaps your attempts to make MacOS work differently from how it was designed are causing you these problems.
Most of them were an issue long before I felt the need to tweak things. And all of them are far outside the scope of said tweaks.
> What is odd to me is that you continue to use an operating system that is so ill suited to your preferences.
It's a work machine. My own computers all run Linux or OpenBSD (with a few exceptions, like the old laptop running Haiku).
You know what is a strawman? Cherry picking only some minor weaker points you want to attack while entirely ignoring the ones that you don't, and then trying to pass that off as a substitute for addressing all points in their entirety. If you actually understood what a "strawman" is, you would recognize immediately that your behavior in this discussion is much closer than mine to that definition you cited, and then you'd kindly refrain, thanks.
> You just want it to work differently - I.e. you just don’t like it.
I "just don't like it" specifically because it does not "just work". It is tolerable usability-wise only after extensive fiddling and tweaking and troubleshooting, and that's only on good days when those aforementioned bugs ain't actively preventing me from using basic OS functionality.
And that's fine - I do enjoy fiddling with things on my Linux and OpenBSD desktops - but those Linux and OpenBSD desktops don't advertise themselves as "you shouldn't ever need to fiddle with things because everything just works" the way macOS does, and therefore I'm a lot less frustrated with that fiddling because those systems are designed for it and encourage it and make it easy and friendly and fun. Nothing about customizing macOS is easy or friendly or fun; it is not designed for it, and it does not encourage it. It is Apple's way or the highway - and given the evolution of Apple's way lately, the highway doesn't look so bad after all.
> and leverages Fitt’s law because you don’t have to be accurate in the vertical dimension
Right, let's watch users spend multiple seconds dragging a cursor to a window toward the bottom-right, clicking, and then dragging that cursor all the way back to the top-left just to save fractions of a second on vertical positioning in a specific spot.
Fitt's law is hardly useful here. If the window ain't maximized, then you need some degree of vertical precision to select the window in order to make its menu visible anyway. And if it is maximized, then it literally doesn't matter what owns the menu 'cause it'll be in approximately the same place either way.
That is:
> There are good UX reasons for this.
There were good UX reasons for this, back in the days of m68k Macs where mice were some newfangled invention and displays were tiny. In those days that unintuitive disconnection was a fair tradeoff to make if it meant conserving that tiny amount of vertical real estate and helping people figure out those newfangled rodents.
Now? It's been, what, 40 years? People know how to use mice (or, if not, can figure it out with a bit of practice - Microsoft understood this and opted to encourage that practice with games like Minesweeper and Solitaire instead of paternalistically assuming users will remain permanently inept), and even the absolute lowest screen resolution Apple sells on a Macbook has multiple times the amount of vertical and horizontal screen space. That tradeoff is far less useful now.