The Third User or Why Apple Keeps Doing Foolish Things (2013) | Hacker News Reader

The Third User or Why Apple Keeps Doing Foolish Things (2013)

asktog.com

32 pointslykahb28 comments

Using a Mac for work but not play, I’m struck all the time not only by things like disappearing scroll bars (sometimes too quickly) but also by a general lack of attention to Fitt’s Law and high density of secret handshakes. (How do you see hidden files in Finder? As a default? How do you copy-paste file or folder paths between terminal and Finder? Anyone?) For daily usefulness, at least the Windows UI gets usefulness and discovery generally right. I know this’ll garner a lot of downvotes, but a single gesture to get to the top or bottom of a doc or page is extremely handy instead of finding the scroll bar and holding down the button as the window pages, or just mashing the down-arrow.

Apple wins the Pepsi Challenge for the same reasons, sweet and fizzy in your first taste. Some like the full drink, many don’t.

>How do you see hidden files in Finder?
Command-Shift-Period

>As a default?*

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles true; killall Finder

>How do you copy-paste file or folder paths between terminal and Finder?

Drag and drop the icon into a Terminal window.

And regarding gestures or shortcuts, if you put in the same effort that you did for Windows, you can find everything you need on the Mac.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236

I’m also a big fan of right-click + option, which gives you the ability to copy the path name of the highlighted file/folder in Finder.

FYI Regular copy (Command-C) of the file from Finder already uses the path representation upon paste into Terminal.

Also, pbpaste, pbcopy CLI commands, equivalent of Linux xclip, and “open .” Opens a finder window at the folder, or “open filename” to open with a preferred application, equivalent to linux’s xdg-open.

> but a single gesture to get to the top or bottom of a doc or page is extremely handy instead of finding the scroll bar and holding down the button as the window pages, or just mashing the down-arrow.

Home/End on macOS typically jump to the start and end of a document - which annoys me as I prefer Home/End to jump to the beginning and end of the current line - I just don’t like Ctrl+ArrowKeys, and the Cmd-key tires my pinky. At least macOS let’s you remap Cmd/Ctrl/Alt - I wish Windows would do the same.

Ctrl-a and ctrl-e will go to the beginning and end of a line respectively in most places on Mac. There are many of the “standard” Linux/unix keybinds available for most apps.

Having some emacs-like text editing key bindings (^{a,e,b,f,n,p,v,y,k...}) is one of my favorite NeXTSTEP leftovers in macOS.

I believe that they can be customized and extended as well.

System Preference / Keyboard / Shortcuts lets you change most of them.

I'm reading this on a M1 Air right now and see keys across the bottom of my keyboard labeled "fn," "control," "option," and "command." So I ask, in all sincerity, which keys are home and end?

I believe on a Mac laptop keyboard, home/end are fn-left/fn-right or cmd-up/cmd-down.

Terminal is a bit different for me since they keyboard can be customized; with my configuration, fn-left/fn-right are sent to the terminal session while cmd-up/cmd-down affect the scroll bars for the window.

Ah, sorry - I those keys aren't present on Apple's laptop keyboards: only their full-size keyboards.

> How do you copy-paste file or folder paths between terminal and Finder?

Cmd-C the file in Finder and Cmd-V in Terminal pastes the escaped path. You can also drag and drop the file. To go the other way I used the `open` command (which acts like clicking something in Finder). For example, `open .` or Cmd-Shift-G (Go -> Go to Folder...)

On laptops, Fn-Left Arrow (Home) scrolls to the top and Fn-Right Arrow scrolls to the bottom (End). I agree it's not obvious, but it's more ergonomic than moving your hand to where the Home/End traditionally are on a keyboard. It's also exactly the same as on a 'LG 17" gram Laptop'--the second image result when I searched for "laptop."

I don't slight people who prefer Windows and won't argue macOS gets things right, either, but I find the Windows UI frustrating especially in tandem with a terminal. I used Windows exclusively from 1 or 3-whatever until XP, dropped it, then took a job when 10 was first being released and tried to give it an honest try. I'm sure it's just my familiarity and preference, but I greatly prefer macOS and almost any Linux GUI to Windows.

I am so thankful to members of the HN community for stepping and and lending a helping hand with info.

Re line start and line end, those key combos rarely work (ctrl-a and ctrl-e are more common, but guess what? ctrl-a and ctrl-e behave like Win Ctrl-Home and Ctrl-End while composing this reply in Chrome, while fn-left moves to the start of the line and fn-right does nothing at all. Go figure.) It was document start and document end (or, even a standard PgUp/PgDn) that seemed missing.

Open doesn't handle file paths, only directories, and doesn't work if I've got the File Open dialog going.

These (and the need to research and review commands, instead of any GUI support) was what I meant by secret handshakes. The original UI concepts included the idea of making settings and functions discoverable via UI as well.

No love for cmd32 here, mind you. A real shell would help that world out quite a bit. Wonder if the preferences would go the opposite way if I'd started differently.

> Open doesn't handle file paths, only directories, and doesn't work if I've got the File Open dialog going.

It opens as if you had clicked it in Finder. Are you wanting something like `open $(dirname ${file})`? File Open dialogs are oddballs on macOS, Linux, and Windows. I remember some Linux apps tried unifying them, but it was immediately obvious why they're different. FWIW drag d&d and Cmd-Shift-G work.

> These (and the need to research and review commands, instead of any GUI support) was what I meant by secret handshakes.

I don't think that dream applies to much outside of the core WIMP on any platform. Especially, when interacting with a command line. I feel like macOS does a better job by showing shortcut keys in more places, highlighting when they're triggered, and having Help > Search. It's unfortunate that gesture-based interfaces are way worse.

> while composing this reply in Chrome

Non-native apps are particularly annoying. Firefox notoriously had a bug open for 20+ years for adding native macOS context menus. Text shortcuts still don't work.

> How do you copy-paste file or folder paths between terminal and Finder? Anyone?

Drag the file or folder from Finder to your terminal to copy the path.

To open a file or folder in Finder from your terminal simply run `open <path>`.

The open command also works with any url whose protocol has a registered handler, like slack:// or https://. With a path the file:// protocol is assumed, and Finder is its handler. Moreover since this is a unix system with good documentation, `man open` will help you with more advanced usage.

Was hoping not to need to take my hands off the keyboard and use a click-drag gesture? Unfriendly to force switching. Note that these are special gestures for terminal and Finder (which I did specially request). A generalized copy and paste would be even friendlier.

Thank you for the open command mention. Suppose it's a path I'm trying to bring to a File Open or File Close dialog?

Perhaps I am unsophisticated, but as a regular user of both Windows and Mac - Mac for work - I find Macs to have exceptional UX. I do not feel the pain that is regularly elaborated in blog posts such as this.

Among the best parts that Windows cannot come close to matching:

* I can use it precisely as just another unix machine, with Terminal (zsh is default!)

* Terminal integrates well with GUI tools

* GUI discoverability is straightforward, and Spotlight search almost always knows what I want

* Preferences are unburdened by crufted abstractions built atop one another (Control Panel and descendants)

* apps are clearly files, are easy to interact with using just the filesystem, are well-controlled by TCC, and poorly built installers are the exception, not the rule

* system notifications are respectful, controllable, and not a morass of spam

* the keychain is both secure and easy to interact with for non-technical users

* support.apple.com documentation is correct and easy to find

* "Help" menu item for a system utility never opens bing and searches $utility_name, which is Windows' latest laziness

* Wiping and reinstalling is not an ordeal

* iCloud backup just works

On the whole macOS pleases me immensely in comparison to Windows or Ubuntu+Gnome. The scrollbars are my most salient complaint, but merely launch regedit.exe to see how a GUI might be truly unusable.

Systems Preferences / General does let you control scroll bar behaviour.

I've long found Apple machines and devices to be difficult and unintuitive to use (and it seems getting more so as time goes on). It's a "death by a thousand cuts" sort of thing rather than a big showstopper. This article provides a very plausible explanation as to why.

Really, 80% of my problem with Apple devices is that their user interfaces lack discoverability by hiding things so if you don't already know they're there, too bad for you. Windows seems to be following the same path, starting around Win 8, I think.

+1. Nearly all of what Tog set out as guidelines has been carelessly tossed aside. And for what? Some vain reductionist UX? Just stop already and let the users get work done without changing the look ever other version.

> What do most buyers not want? They don’t want to see all kinds of scary-looking controls surrounding a media player. They don’t want to see a whole bunch of buttons they don’t understand.

Funny. When I first switched from iPhone to Android, I downloaded a podcast player app one day. It has about 9000 knobs, levers and other controls to customize everything you could possibly imagine. Years later, I still have no idea what most of them do. But a few of them have been incredibly useful over the years. Advanced, complicated options that I had to Google or read Reddit threads to understand. Things that I could have survived without, are probably not used by very many people, but for those that do use those features, life is better with them.

Anyway, as soon as I had a cursory glance around the app, I immediately purchased the paid/pro version, not yet even knowing if I'd ever use the app again (at the time I didn't know when I'd even have time to listen to podcasts). These were my people.

There's a very simple, prosaic, explanation of the "foolish things": Apple employees need to make changes to justify their jobs.

That's it. No changes, no job. If they can't demonstrate the usefulness of their current assignment, they might be instead tasked to work on the clusterfuck that is iTunes, err Music.

Here's a simple pet peeve, it can best be explained as change for the sake of change: Open System Preferences. Why did the location of all the icons get shuffled around between macOS versions?

It's no better now than before. But, hey, at least it kept the programmers from being forced to work on iTunes.

The large blue scrollbars and the aqua design language is something that I miss the most. It would make me love the windows and have a sense of the computer being a proper tool. Now nothing feels sturdy or built to last cause it can suddenly hide itself and be deprecated next release. Honestly the windows 10 ux at least is more keyboard friendly.

I spend much more time as a user of my computers than I do a potential user/buyer of them.

Design your UI for the long game. Make the years of quotidian slog I have to spend on your machine as friction-free as possible.

Or expect me, at a minimum, to scrape off your OS and replace it with something else.

(2013)

Quite so, yet unchanged.

What's the problem with the Dock?

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