this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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To quote a designer friend of mine 'Apple is the king of average'. :-P Most people I see using apple don't even understand how shitty the UI is if your workflow is keyboard driven (snap windows w/o 3rd party programs for example.)
I’m not sure if my experience is any kind interesting or not, but here goes. This is coming from the perspective of a software engineer.
After using Windows for a few years, I switched to macOS for several years before needing to use some Windows-only software and switching back.
I always hated using iPadOS, and for a long time, I assumed this was primarily due to the lack of windowed applications (as well as the lack of software that was truly competitive with Windows/macOS offerings, at least at the time).
On the other hand, my experience with macOS is just the opposite. As soon as the feature was introduced, I started using applications exclusively in fullscreen whenever possible. This is partially the fault of macOS’s vanilla window system being unhelpful in several regards, but that doesn’t explain why I now miss it on Windows.
Yes, I know Windows now implements comparable multitouch gestures, but in my experience, it is terrible to use. The scroll speed is far too fast and cannot be changed independently, AFAIK. And maximized applications still have to choose between a persistent window border and a borderless mode that comes with its own pitfalls. I really don’t like it, but I still use alt+tab 99% of the time, just like I did on XP and 7.
I think the root of the problem is that you can only physically look at one thing at a time, but fullscreen applications work best in multitasking when the time spent switching windows (including the time spent consciously thinking about it) is minimized. iPadOS sometimes takes longer and the gesture is uncomfortable to perform on a tablet. Windows gets it wrong in how much you have to keep an eye on it. macOS, in my opinion, gets it just right.