"the reality that in 2024 their software kind of sucks, and that their customers only use it because they don't have alternative"
That's an extremely hot take. When devices are mostly just slabs of glass and the interface and what is done, is entirely the software, customers are choosing the device based on the Apple software, not in spite of it.
I don't know if I'm the exception, but I also think Apple's software absolutely sucks.
UX is complete and utter trash.
But the M1 and onwards hardware is so good, I put up with it.
Just off the top of my head:
- Never had a $2000+ laptop that couldn't connect with more than 2 monitors without an expensive DisplayLink dock and drivers. And even then, it's janky AF
- Rendering on non-Apple external monitors sucks; night and day difference when I connect a Windows laptop to my Dell monitors
- Terrible with system font scaling
- Inconsistent usage of button sizes in their native dialogs
This drives me absolutely NUTS and I thought it was a me problem. Where the hell do things go when they're minimized on macos!!? There's all these questions asking about cmd+tabbing to minimized windows and the answer is to hold option while you hold cmd after selecting the minimized window and then let go of cmd.. but if there's 2 Chrome windows and one is minimized this doesn't work at all.
I agree. I've had people tell me "That's not the Mac way; use another desktop". Oh, OK; but it sure would be handy if I could somehow access my minimized windows easily with my keyboard can we have that, too?
> Never had a $2000+ laptop that couldn't connect with more than 2 monitors without an expensive DisplayLink dock and drivers
Hardware limitations that were told at launch.
> Rendering on non-Apple external monitors sucks;
It works fine with my old Dell FHD and my current 4k LG.
> Terrible with system font scaling
Apple does not do system font scaling, it applies scaling to the whole UI, not separate elements.
> Can't tab cycle through minimized windows
Different windows management model. You tab cycle through applications, and you backquote cycle through open windows. Minimized windows go to the dock.
> Windowing system sucks compared to Windows
Again above. Windows sizing is a specific concept in Mac OS interface model and there's rules that you can apply to it. I understand the OS not wanting to interfere much with that.
> I ship a PWA for one of my apps and by far Safari is the one that has the most issues with updating
I've not seen your code so I can't say much. But most people who complain about Safari really want Chrome's non-standard API to exists in Safari too.
Sure, but still silly that even an 8 year old Dell can drive 3 monitors without issue. And clearly, the hardware CAN do it since attaching it to a DisplayLink dock and adding a driver works. Fundamentally, the GPU is capable of doing it.
> It works fine with my old Dell FHD and my current 4k LG.
Oh it definitely works, but using Chrome on Windows, everything is super crisp on the same exact monitor whereas there is a noticeable softness on macOS
> Different windows management model. You tab cycle through applications, and you backquote cycle through open windows. Minimized windows go to the dock.
Yeah, an inferior one. The minimized windows go to the dock and are inaccessible by keyboard. This is clearly a flaw.
> I understand the OS not wanting to interfere much with that.
I'd argue that, you know, the purpose of the graphical user interface system in an OS in the context of UX at a very fundamental level is managing windowing.
> I've not seen your code so I can't say much. But most people who complain about Safari really want Chrome's non-standard API to exists in Safari too.
Works fine in Firefox and it's just using Vite PWA; really basic, standard PWA templates. Nothing special.
"UX is complete and utter trash" is a bit hyperbolic — you listed a handful of nits that don't affect 99.9% of their users. On the other hand, iOS is undoubtedly more efficient, smoother, and more stable than Android. I have a Pixel phone where the Google camera app crashes about 10% of the time when I tap the shutter button. The cellular connection often gets stuck in a disconnected state, without telling me. The "Always on Display" stopped working entirely. Along the core dimensions where Apple invests their energy, their software can be pretty good.
Just my opinion -- I'm a daily MacBook Pro user; I really struggle to find one thing that Apple is doing better than Microsoft from a UX perspective. Less options for customization; tiny buttons all over the place (very abundant in the system dialogs); the notch causing some apps to disappear from top bar on the right; the spatial distance between the window and the top bar as opposed to Microsoft where the app bar is attached to the window; the poor window snapping options for organizing desktops; the childish default animations; lots of issues with Finder versus Explorer; the seemingly random organization, sizing, and placement of windows in Mission Control; the weird behavior when you CLOSE all of your windows like Chrome and then CTRL+N creates a new Chrome window -- no, you need to quit the app, too.
I don't think there's anything macOS is doing better than Windows in so far as UX goes. Put it another way: I use macOS every day and I never think "Wow, I wish Windows had this feature, too" but every day I wish I had some UX element from Windows -- just basic window management feels so clunky on macOS unless you fullscreen everything.
It's just different. Like KDE/Gnome/i3/Windows is different from each other. MacOS applications are more like services, while windows let you perform the current task you have. As an example Preview.app allows you to open PDFs and picture files. But you need to open a file to do anything to it, and when you do so, it creates a window allowing you to interact with the file. When you're done, you close the file by closing the window (which is why it duplicates the window when you chose "Save As"). The window has a 1:1 relationship with the files. The menu bar is part of the application, but the currently focused window can interact with it.
When you're close all Chrome windows, that just means you're done with the webpages, not that you're done with Chrome. Chrome dev team can set Chrome to terminate when all windows close, but they've not chosen to do so. It's there when you want to create a new window when you want to interact with a new webpage. And again it's up to the developer to choose to tie the application lifecyle to its windows.
That's all well and good, but when I've closed the interfaces with which I'm interacting with the Chrome "service", isn't it pretty clear that the intent is that "I'm done with the service"? "Chrome team chose to build it like that" -- I guess the question here is "why is this even an option at the OS level?" and "shouldn't we expect window and application behavior to be consistent?". Davinci Resolve on macOS, for example, exits when I close its window while Chrome does not. Do you not think that even having this option to create an inconsistent application interaction seems like bad design? Sometimes the app exits when I close all windows, sometimes it doesn't.
My issue with the menu bar is purely from an ergonomics and usability perspective, especially with high resolution monitors. If I have a window at the bottom right corner of the monitor, I need to move my mouse all the ways to the top left of the monitor to interact with the menu bar. If you always full screen everything, it makes total sense. But I would make the case that macOS has done a very poor job of adapting to changes in monitor resolutions. Consider ultra-wide screen monitors where I have apps side-by-side or I have 4 windows tiled. The accessibility of the menu bar becomes quite low for three out of the 4 windows.
The key stroke to access the menu bar is (do you know it?) CTRL+F2. Try that stroke yourself and see how it feels. It's not at all obvious that this allows you to access the menu bar with the keyboard.
By attaching the menu bar to the application window, the spatial locality increases usability, especially for modern ultra-wide monitors don't you agree?
I do agree that you have a point. But it’s an interaction model that works for many people and there are customization options to alleviate some of the pain points from keyboard shortcut (administrated at OS level) to 3rd parties software. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a complete reworking of the interface.
I use Windows all day and it’s garbage as well. Perhaps they are both garbage? I’m talking the latest release of Windows 10. Or maybe it’s 11. Whatever it is it sucks too
Yeah this stuff usually ends up "I don't like the interface" when you press people. Which is fine. However my macbooks have been perfectly serviceable and still ticking while my former asus and dell laptops died after a few years right before I switched over to mac laptops and one is 7 years old and still ticking with not too bad battery life. That said I find apple has probably overstepped their social contract as a corporation and it's likely time for a little audit
>Yeah this stuff usually ends up "I don't like the interface" when you press people.
In Apple Books, you can't decide which books you want to keep on your device. In iOS Storage, you cannot see the largest pictures/videos (you used to be able to do that, they removed it to make people subscribe to iCloud). The iOS keyboard/autocorrect is so terrible it's almost unusable. You can't even set a vibrating alarm on iPhone without enabling vibration everywhere, come on.
Did it occur to you that Apple deliberately designed iMessages in such a way as to take advantage of the inevitable tribalism to further increase adoption of their own products?
Peer pressure is one of the strongest forces in sales.
Yes, but how much software does something similar? if you are going to penalize Apple for this you will have to penalize a huge amount of companies, it's a very slippery slope, as what do you define as being anti-competitive and what do you define also being a genuine need to highlight the difference?
What are you saying Apple should have done/be made to do? Make all the messages the same colour? This causes issues for the user not being able to tell what features are available in messaging that person and then it can be even more confusing to them, you are going to have to mark it some way which is turn is going to have somewhat of the same affect. A lot of these measures from governments don't actually end up helping users, they end up just making the end user experience worse.
For Apple, this was likely a win-win, they need to show the difference and it has such knock on affect, but I think this is the problem, Apple has a way of looking at things and way of doing certain things, a lot of the things that people are upset about in this lawsuit and beyond area consequence of that, but isn't nessecery the sole purpose of why Apple is doing things this way in the first place, those people that get angry at Apple seem to miss those points or disagree with that way of doing it.
It really depends. With MacBooks, for example, many people who buy them these days do so because of things like battery life and quality of the trackpad, while quietly hating on macOS.
Windows is horrible, it's messy, overly cluttered and bloated. MacOS is so much cleaner and nicer, that with nice hardware is why people buy Apple devices, at least that is the same with everyone I know.
I'm in this camp. I find some of the UX to be really, really questionable. The default animations and sounds feel so unbefitting for a machine in a professional context. The stupid notch; when I use a screen recording app, it uses a slot on the right to stop recording once I start using the app but if there are just enough icons, that icon disappears under the notch......
If it weren't for the battery life and speed, I would not use it.
That's an extremely hot take. When devices are mostly just slabs of glass and the interface and what is done, is entirely the software, customers are choosing the device based on the Apple software, not in spite of it.