Having used the very first Mac, it made sense on that tiny screen. One application per time was almost more than it could accommodate. The monitor got bigger after a few years and the menu on top and the full screen interface started not to make sense compared to the Windows PC next desk.
Nah, I’ll defend the top menubar to the death. Infinite height and top-speed cursor speed makes working with it from the top versus from the window much more efficient for me, and it wastes less pixels (the purpose of high res monitors for me is to use all of the pixels) and gives me a working area on its right side for various utility apps I don’t want taking up space in the Dock (which has enough problems even with a relatively small working app set).
What also helps though is that an under-appreciated aspect of a typical set of Macintosh apps is how good the context menu has gotten. Typically I’m using the context menu and hotkeys much more than the menu bar because it is rare there is an option I want that is unavailable in the context menu.
Additionally, when the menubar is a global system widget, UI designers in pursuit of minimalism can’t take it away. They’ll be there whether the designer likes it or not, acting as a searchable index of the app’s functionality.
While I do appreciate those benifits the confusion caused as soon as there are multiple windows on the screen doesn't seem worth it. I have enough trouble managing keyboard focus I don't need to add another layer (which somehow seems even harder for me to comprehend)
It’s just one of those things that if you want to, you can get used to it, but if you resist it you won’t. Like learning Vi or Emacs or BBEdit. There are tools you already learned to use, the Macintosh user interface is just another.
The alternative is what? Apple changes something millions of people are already used to, their existing customer base, to satisfy switchers specifically when most can easily adapt? Or you just don’t use a Macintosh. Now what Apple does need to do is bring proper contrast back and stop wasting everyone’s time with this minimalist nonsense; even the option in the Accessibility options is utter garbage.
I didn't resist. Although if that was an option I may have considered. And after a year of daily use are work it was still tripping me up.
It's possible for an interface to be widely used and still have sharp edges. I consider this one of macOS's. It doesn't need to change, it may well not be worth it. But at least some people will end up in the menu of the wrong application.
It's easy to run into this situation if you regularly have two windows side-by-side, and switch back-and-forth between them so that the focus could be in either window at any given moment. If you only have windows maximized (as I suspect GP does) it's not something you'll ever run into.
Nah. Many windows, from many apps, but typically two or three at the front side by side. I’ll leave Full Screen videos open as a kind of running queue in Mission Control but that’s about the extent of it.
There’s no secret, I just don’t lose track of which window I’m focused on in software because that’s the one I’m immediately focused on.
