I'm as long time as there is and I have wanted it for years. I also want hair like Federighi but the only way I can get that upgrade is with $4K hair transplant.
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macOS Sequoia: How Window Tiling and Snapping Currently Works
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I'm as long time as there is and I have wanted it for years. I also want hair like Federighi but the only way I can get that upgrade is with $4K hair transplant.
It's that internal beta version of AI starting to kick in.
They're more so referring to a more fundamental difference in the way the windowing systems behave. Windows has always been a tile and full screen GUI, while the Mac has been more like an arrangement of card on a desk, that you can move around and look behind. This makes Windows feel more static, and the Mac more dynamic.
On my Mac, I want to see most of what's going on, but a few slight emphasis in the foreground, but with a speak of what's happening I the background. Tiling doesn't do that for me, it's very restrictive. Space + Expose is much better and feels more free.
Also note: I have the beta, the window snapping when you try to move windows around, specially when trying to drag between space, gets really annoying. macOS is basically not sure if you want to snap/tile, move the window, or drag to another space, so it tries (poorly) to give you all 3 at once. Setting it to only snap when upholding the Option key is how I see it used the best.
Come to think of it, this option was available in Crunchbang Linux that ended life in 2013, in Openbox WM, one of the oldest window managers, started in 2002. You could use any key combination you liked with the arrow keys, for example Ctrl + Arrow. The Openbox WM was created in 2002 by Dana Jensens, a Canadian computer scientist.
Yeah, some older Mac users will still like this, hence, "many or most", but not all. I'm glad they added it for the people who want it, but setting it to the Option key only is the way to go for me.
I think Federighi's hair is an alien lifeforms that attached itself after he fell off a wave while surfing.
The dragging is jerky sometimes in the current build.
The options under the green window widget run perfect.
Command+Shift and the Left/Right arrow keys would be the quickest way to tile left and right.
This was one of the best features of Windows over Mac. Too bad MS screwed up and got rid of cascading windows. Apple should implement that.
I bet there's a hidden Terminal command in Sequoia that enables keyboard shortcuts for tiling. In the past there were Terminal commands people would uncover for features that were still in development.
I've ben using Tiles app for this and I can remove that from my system if this works as well. one thing that I wish it will add is that, like Windows 11, it will let you pick which app goes to each area. I like that Windows lets me pick which tiles go on top or bottom instead of the OS picking for me.
For me Windows has always felt more multi-task/Multi-App focused and Apple has always felt very SINGLE task/app focused. It's always been massively easier for me to work in many things at the same time on Windows but Mac has been great at letting me focus on just the single task at hand.
Yeah, I'm hoping it's just a beta issue, but I can no longer trust that Apple will fix fundamental issues, as there's still massive bugs and problems in the system since Sonoma was first release. They haven't been fixed in Sonoma, and I still see them in Sequoia. Apple needs to take a year off for bug fixes.
Great point. Time to start looking through the plist files lol.
With all of their resources Apple still managed to make a much-needed feature worst than what third-party developers offer.
Tiling was in Windows 1.0 (1985), but it actually predates both the OS Windows and referring to the GUI element as a window.
Xerox Star had it in 1981.
Emacs had tiling before that in the 70s (although Emacs is just a single program, not a whole OS.)
Anyways, thanks for finally bringing this feature to us Apple, approximately 50 years after it was first invented.
I use it rarely but when I lose a window it is handy.
Insane to think this has been a feature of Windows since 7 and we are now finally getting it macOS. This is one area Macs have been sorely lacking. Hoping it gets refined to a level where it can replace third party apps like Magnet and Better Snap Tool.
I can understand, and as a hobbyist dev myself, this is one of the things that scare me the most : Apple including my app features for free in a new OS, killing my project at the same time.
Some companies do find ways to survive though. I thought RevenueCat would die after StoreKit 2 and those StoreKit SwiftUI APIs but here it is in 2024 and it's not going away. I still use it. It really solves problems Apple should have solved themselves from the very beginning.
The best implementation would be for the OS to pop up a dialogue box every time every time the user changes screen(s) to ensure the best experience. What works at 24” doesn’t work very well at 13”.
I use these window snap features on Windows, particularly on the large monitors at work. But I’ve personally never really felt the need for them on macOS because of features like Exposé making window management a lot more convenient on Macs (well, that, and the fact that I’ve never worked on a particularly large display on a Mac before). Basically, I only ever really use it 1) if I need two windows side by side and will suffer them being painfully small or 2) I have more available space than I can reasonably use and large full screen windows are just a waste of space. Actually, the thought just occurred to me that the most likely situation where I’d use this feature on a Mac is on visionOS 2.0’s ultra widescreen Mac display sharing.
With classic Macintosh, one could push a window mostly out of frame. The default on Windows is to align it to an edge. And I rarely use Windows because after v7, it’s sucked. Its neither Windows nor Macintosh nor Android but a mish-mash of clutter.
This version of tiling you’re talking about is actually more primitive than the Mac’s GUI environment was back in Finder 1.0. The Mac from day 1 could do overlapping windows, while Windows 1.0, early versions of X10/X11 window managers, GEM, and so on could not do overlapping windows. You literally had to resize windows (or the window manager would do it for you), but they only drew to one window and the other windows were regions of that one window. That style of tiling window manager is considered more primitive than a Mac OS Classic style overlapping window manager or a modern compositing window manager where each window is an object in an object oriented environment and can be displayed in multiple views (such as Quartz Composer on macOS or even iOS or watchOS, believe it or not*). Aero in Windows 7 was when Microsoft finally caught up to the Mac (introduced in 10.0) and Linux (Compiz was the first significant one, released in 2006) in introducing a compositing window manager (and the most popular feature for using it on Windows was to make it emulate a primitive tiling window manager, typical Windows users
).* They definitely have a compositing window manager, look at the task switching view (which is clearly compositing the full screen app view into the task switcher view).
I think Expose is a better version of Cascade in most (not all) use cases, since you can see what's in each window. As far as I'm concerned, Expose is the best feature in Mac OS. The fluidity of swiping in different directions to get what you want between Spaces, Mission Control, and Expose, is unparalleled in any other computer platform. I've tried to setup Windows and Linux to run the same way, but it's just not the same, then I feel like I'm too restricted. I think if Linux could better copy the functionality, I'd use it daily.
I use Spaces / Mission Control / Expose so much, that I replaced my 10 button mouse for a Magic Trackpad a few years back.