Ming-Chi Kuo: Apple's Biggest Challenge to Innovation in Recent Years Has Been Software

[0924487]

How do you explain Siri?

 

[rawweb]

I strongly disagree. Apple's biggest challenge is it's inability to update its Mac hardware line. Selling 4-5 year old Mini's and Pro's is ridiculous. Their "innovation" of MacPro was a thermal disaster. iMac Pro continues a design trend first developed in 2009...hardware IMHO, is what is struggling more than my FCPX updates.

 

[69650]

I strongly disagree. Apple's biggest challenge is it's inability to update its Mac hardware line. Selling 4-5 year old Mini's and Pro's is ridiculous. Their "innovation" of MacPro was a thermal disaster. iMac Pro continues a design trend first developed in 2009...hardware IMHO, is what is struggling more than my FCPX updates.

If you look across the Mac hardware range, the MBP is the only product that gets serious updates.

 

[star-affinity]

It's impossible to use the OS properly without gestures. Window management is terrible compared to Windows (Spectacles helps, but should be native feature). iOS 6 style widgets still present in modern OS X. Ugly 90s style context menus for pinning (or removing) an app to the dock. The whole dock is weird. No way to mute notifications except using Do Not Disturb (that will re-enable itself every day). And have you ever tried to switch a user account? Be prepared for a very weird ugly rotating cube animation that does not resemble anything else in macOS.

These were my findings after using macOS for a few hours. A big part of macOS is pretty good ofcourse, but Windows 10 somehow feels more modern to me. Also, I love Linux Subsystem for Windows, which is a lot better than the terminal in macOS (full Linux compatibility).

What do you mean by ”it's impossible to use the OS properly without gestures”?

Window management is better in Windows, I agree on that. But I think there are a lot of often used things (at least for me) that's better in macOS. The app switcher (cmd tab) that's only listing big icons of running apps (instead of every single open window) makes it much quicker to navigate to the app i want when having a lot of apps running. Using the software SteerMouse I have the app switcher mapped the scroll-wheel button of my mouse – really helpful on a daily basis – one press on the scroll-wheel button and the bar of running apps pops up underneath the mouse cursor (mostly) and then one click in the app I want to switch to. Also like the ability to quit or hide a running app from the app switcher (while apps witcher is active, keep holding cmd and press Q on a marked app to quit it or H to hide).

Being able to show only the windows of the active app in Mission Control and the ability to group all windows by application also makes things more fathomable when a lot of apps are running and many windows are open.

I also like the more coherent user interface in macOS, for example that the Preferences for an app almost always is in the same place (application menu) and has the same keyboard shortcut (cmd ,). Like I mentioned before I find many Windows apps has a too scattered feel to them, both when it comes to the user interface and the graphical looks of the apps. Windows 10 is also calling my desktop computer a ”device” and has a user interface mix up that goes in too many directions at times. I also find the dialog buttons too small and can't seem to find a way to make them bigger (maybe I'm missing something?).

Why isn't there a recent apps and documents area in Windows 10 (or are there?)?
You complain about the Dock menus (don't see what's ”90s style” about them) but I find it pretty cool that you can put folders in that you can navigate directly in Dock.

Why isn't the search text I just typed in Widows 10 (after pressing the Windows key) cleared every time – not so if I enable and exit Spotligh in macOS.

Good point about the widgets – something should be done there (or maybe they're on the way out being replaced by the widgets in the Notification menu?). Not that I think they are too iOS 6 looking, but many of the third party ones are of course using an older GUI.

Mute notifications by alt-clicking the notification menu (upper right corner).

Agree on the spinning cube when switching users – I guess it's a legacy animation from before. But again, complaining about legacy stuff in macOS is a bit strange to me when there's so much more of this stuff in Windows 10, if you just dig a little.

Agree that it's nice with the Linux subsystem that has been added to Windows 10.

I guess we all see different things in the two operating systems depending on what we used them for and how we use them.

 

[Merkie]

What do you mean by ”it's impossible to use the OS properly without gestures”?

Window management is better in Windows, I agree on that. But I think there are a lot of often used things (at least for me) that's better in macOS. The app switcher (cmd tab) that's only listing big icons of running apps (instead of every single open window) makes it much quicker to navigate to the app i want when having a lot of apps running. Using the software SteerMouse I have the app switcher mapped the scroll-wheel button of my mouse – really helpful on a daily basis – one press on the scroll-wheel button and the bar of running apps pops up underneath the mouse cursor (mostly) and then one click in the app I want to switch to. Also like the ability to quit or hide a running app from the app switcher (while apps witcher is active, keep holding cmd and press Q on a marked app to quit it or H to hide).

Being able to show only the windows of the active app in Mission Control and the ability to group all windows by application also makes things more fathomable when a lot of apps are running and many windows are open.

I also like the more coherent user interface in macOS, for example that the Preferences for an app almost always is in the same place (application menu) and has the same keyboard shortcut (cmd ,). Like I mentioned before I find many Windows apps has a too scattered feel to them, both when it comes to the user interface and the graphical looks of the apps. Windows 10 is also calling my desktop computer a ”device” and has a user interface mix up that goes in too many directions at times. I also find the dialog buttons too small and can't seem to find a way to make them bigger (maybe I'm missing something?).

Why isn't there a recent apps and documents area in Windows 10 (or are there?)?
You complain about the Dock menus (don't see what's ”90s style” about them) but I find it pretty cool that you can put folders in that you can navigate directly in Dock.

Why isn't the search text I just typed in Widows 10 (after pressing the Windows key) cleared every time – not so if I enable and exit Spotligh in macOS.

Good point about the widgets – something should be done there (or maybe they're on the way out being replaced by the widgets in the Notification menu?). Not that I think they are too iOS 6 looking, but many of the third party ones are of course using an older GUI.

Mute notifications by alt-clicking the notification menu (upper right corner).

Agree on the spinning cube when switching users – I guess it's a legacy animation from before. But again, complaining about legacy stuff in macOS is a bit strange to me when there's so much more of this stuff in Windows 10, if you just dig a little.

Agree that it's nice with the Linux subsystem that has been added to Windows 10.

I guess we all see different things in the two operating systems depending on what we used them for and how we use them.

All of what you're saying is probably true. It's just these little things that I noticed that left me unimpressed compared to Windows. Especially the dock can be very confusing compared to the Windows 10 taskbar.