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Comment by sys_64738 | Hacker News Reader

Some of the Windows choices are horrendous. Alt-tab to switch apps actually switches between browser tabs in Edge. It's really confusing. There's a litany of other problems too like virtual desktops move all screens instead of just the screen with the cursor, so it's unusable. There's also a case where certain actions with the mouse cause all the windows to vanish. I mean, what was that. Then there's that window history thing which is baffling to use.

macOS has its demons but Windows just plain is confusing.

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Alt-tab to switch between browser tabs in Edge is new, a setting that you can turn off, and in some cases, it's actually very useful, since you can limit the number of tabs. It lets me treat recent tabs the same way as I would treat recent applications, which many websites effectively are. But anyways, that choice is made available to you.

I don't currently use multiple monitors, but I do use virtual desktops, and... that's exactly how I would expect virtual desktops to behave? If it only changed a single monitor, does that mean you'd have to go to each monitor to change to a different virtual desktop? Do you see virtual desktop configurations specific to each screen, or any screen? What happens if your screens are different resolutions. I think that Windows again has the superior implementation here.

Aero shake was pretty terrible, no arguments here.

The window history thing, Timeline, is something that I have disabed, but honestly sounds like an even better version of Recent Files, which is something many people use and might like something more full featured.

I want all these turned off by default and not need to stumble through trying to figure out how to disable them. Windows now feels like using Android where you need to google first to figure out how to modify something. In terms of virtual desktops, having independent control per monitor is so elementary that it makes the feature pretty useless otherwise.

I want it all, I want it now.

But these are new features that Microsoft decided would be an improvement for most people, and many people happily use them. For those of us stuck in our ways, yes we have to do a little tweaking, but that's the cost we pay. At least we have the option available to us.

The virtual desktop implementation in macOS is called Spaces. The first time it appeared in the OS, it would always span all screens, so when switching they would all switch together.

Presently the default is for each display to have their own collection of spaces. You can have one display with a single space and another one with 10, or 50 on each. They behave independently and are switched independently.

There is a toggle to restore the old behaviour but I find the new one far superior.

I don't understand the question about different resolutions. Why would they be a concern?

I regularly use my MacBook's display in conjunction with a 1600p ultrawide external display. Different resolutions are not a problem, and never have been.

> but I do use virtual desktops, and... that's exactly how I would expect virtual desktops to behave? If it only changed a single monitor, does that mean you'd have to go to each monitor to change to a different virtual desktop?

Different strokes for different folks. In my setup yes, each of the three monitors has their own set of virtual desktops. When working on a project for example, I might have my center display configured with the IDE, and a second monitor configured with one virtual desktop per group of related reference materials. So I can switch between API docs, language docs, database query and reference etc on one monitor, while keeping the IDE front and center. The other monitor might contain a space with "office" apps (slack, email etc) and then another with a set of tiled terminal windows for using CLI utilities. If I switch that screen to look at emails, I don't need or want the other screens to change to something else.

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