this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
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Not sure why that warrants a yikes; macOS is far more usable than Windows 11. I’d go so far as to call it downright pleasant in comparison.
On average, yeah, but when it's worse, it's the most bafflingly bad.
Like why is the only way to be able to open files in a hidden folder to remember a keyboard shortcut? There's no icon, and you can't type a subfolder name.
Windows’ weird UX of having that temporary view setting in the context menu makes no sense, but at least I don't have to Google how to do it every time.
Maybe it's because I'm more used to windows but my experience any time I've had to use mac at work is I'd rather just be fired. At least with a bit of work you can set windows up to mostly fuck off but I've never figured out how to do that with mac so it aggressively gets in my way when coding and doing qa
In what ways does it aggressively get in your way?
I hate the multi desktop stuff.
Drag a window to top of screen and it doesn't snap full screen fast enough or consistantly.
Doesn't like to display 1 window across 2 screens.
Sometimes a window will shoot off to the side past the visible desktop for god knows what reason.
You can't nativly set up the mouse scroll to work in reverse direction to the touch pad.
I'm still not sure how to uninstall things.
When my headphone cable is plugged in and I turn on the Mac it insists to make the boot sound though the speakers as an advertizment to the world that there is a Mac around.
If I click x on a browser or app, it doesnt actually shut the program, it just minimizes it.
I can't easily see the size of hard drives/folders and how much space is left available.
Files are just scattered willy nilly in a folder instead of snapped to a grid unless I set that folders defaults...per folder?! Instead of across the whole OS
They are my personal top of mind gripes.
Longtime Mac user here. Most of this is valid, and some of these are my biggest gripes.
A couple tips:
In the Finder, go to View > Show Status Bar. That'll show you free space easily. (This used to be on by default. I don't remember when they changed it, probably with 10.7 Lion's increased iOS-ification.)
From a Finder window in icon view, go to View > Show View Options. Select Sort By > Snap to Grid, then click "Use as Defaults". Then it will apply to all your folders that use the default view. Why is "Snap to grid" under "Sort" when it does not sort? WHO KNOWS?!
That said, icon view suuuuuucks. Learn to love list view and you will be happier for it. I gave up on icon view like 25 years ago, after migrating from Mac OS 9. Apple half-assedly ported the Mac OS 9 Finder, and then proceeded to neglect it for a decade or two. At least you can change the grid spacing now.
I'm not totally sure how it works now, but I think this changes if you go to System Settings > Desktop and Dock and turn off the "Displays have Separate Spaces" box.
There's no universal method. :(
Basic case: just drag the app to the trash. This will leave your user settings in place in ~/Library/Preferences.
Complex cases should have a vendor-supplied uninstaller. For manual cleanup, you have to hunt through your /Library and ~/Library folders to delete related junk from the vendor. Mostly this will be in the LaunchAgents and Application Support folders. But again, no universal method.
This is the one thing I strongly disagree about, although I totally understand how it feels wrong when you've spent years learning different behavior.
It's one of the biggest fundamental differences between Mac and Windows UI design, going all the way back to the 80s: Windows is window-centric (I mean...hence the name, right?), while Mac OS is application-centric.
You can still interact with Mac applications with no windows open, via the menu bar. Closing a window and quitting an application are two entirely different concepts. This is not the same as "minimizing" the app. An app can be in the foreground with no open windows. There are plenty of times when I close the last window in an app with the intent to continue using the app (e.g. opening another file or creating a new one).
Fun fact: many years ago, Apple made a few of their apps behave this way by default, with an option to change it back to normal Mac behavior. TextEdit, Preview, and maybe QuickTime Player. Just those few. I guess they wanted to accommodate Windows users' expectations, but it was so half-assed that all it did was ensure that everyone was confused at some point by the inconsistency. They only recently changed it back so we have consistency by default again, but now there's no option at all. Go figure. I wouldn't mind if they implemented an option in a whole-assed way, but I'd go absolutely batty if Windows-like behavior were forced on me.
Thanks I'll have a fiddle when I get back to work.
I get frustrated with the track pads. Sometimes they click, sometimes they drag, sometimes they right click. I know its number of fingers and pressure/speed of clicking? I'm sure it's great if you learn it, but nobody else has adopted it.
Oh, and 2 programs side by side and you have to jump between menus of both of them for whatever reason. The whole "1 menu per desktop" is frustrating
Turn off the force click option and it’s WAY easier. Force click makes it so pressing “soft” and “hard” are two different actions. If you aren’t used to it, and even sometimes when you are used to it, it does some unexpected things.
On the other hand spending a week using Mac track pad’s full features and you might start to like spaces and scrolling and dragging with them, something I’ve never been able to do in Linux or windows laptops (even new high end stuff that tried to be Mac-like-ish AMD Ryzen and a Lenovo something I forget).
Coming from an IT background. I 100% agree with this assessment.
The scroll thing is annoying. I like the “natural” scroll on a touchpad but not a mouse also.
The multi desktop is the same as on Windows and Linux… I don’t use it on any system. I like how MacOS handles fullscreen apps better than either of those.
You can disable the startup sound very easily: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102230
I have only used mirroring to external monitor and not extending a desktop, so I don’t know. As far as maximization I personally hate windows expanding when I move them to the top of the screen. It’s rarely what I want so I turn it off. If I want to maximize it, I hit the green button.
You uninstall Apps by dragging their folder from the Applications folder to the trash can.
Closing the window and leaving the application running is how MacOS has worked forever for some Steve Jobs reason. I am used to hitting Cmd-Q.
The folder stuff can be weird. The way the Desktop icons work is one of the worst aspects, thigh they kind of fixed that (using expanding smart folders or whatever used to be chaos if they had a lot of items in them).
You can check the usage of a Volume from right clicking it in Finder and choosing Get Info. Or just df -h
There’s an app called scroll reverser, can change scroll direction for trackpad and mouse separately. I’m the same as you and want “natural” for trackpad and “normal” for mouse.
These seem like mostly familiarity issues, where Windows issues are malicious in nature.
No, OS X aggressively resists customization or convenience. There's the Apple way to do pretty much everything and the painful way which is anything but the Apple way. Windows is anti-consumer because they want to harvest your data and cram ads down your throat. OS X just doesn't care what you want or what you would prefer and will actively punish you if you attempt to deviate from the way it thinks you should be doing things. If something doesn't work the way you want tough, OS X makes you adapt to it rather than trying to adapt to you.
I spent about a decade and a half using solely Linux, and one thing I really appreciate is that if a particular distro or upgrade had some behavior I didn’t like, I could just switch to a different desktop or window manager. I went back and forth between gnome, windowmaker, KDE, LXDE and so on many times.
Most annoying thing for me was their file explorer thing. It's as if I'm on a phone. It's not a real file explorer.
I think real mac users have to buy third party software so they can have an actual file explorer..
I feel this one. The Finder and file-picking dialogs are genuinely awful.
Finder? I don’t really have a problem with it. I feel like it’s just as full featured as what you get on Lennox or windows.
In my experience, Finder can't even do what it's named (find anything) and it feels dumbed down like it doesn't want me to find certain things (part of that may be MacOS's design though too) ;(
Windows file explorer was alright, until they botched it in Windows 11 (like how the botched everything in that "update"). Last time I used it at work, they still hadn't got tabs working without it being a buggy, slow mess.
Dolphin file explorer (for linux) is hands-down the best. It has every feature and integration I have ever wanted and it does what it says on the tin without being buggy. Truly the power users' file explorer.
Not tryna refute your experiences though. These are just mine.
I wouldn't say so. PowerToys and WSL are absolutely incredible tools for advanced users.
I understand the powertoys love but what does wsl give you that you don't have with zsh & MacOS?
I run powershell on my Mac because I think pwsh is the bomb but I don't get how wsl gives you anything that isn't there on the Mac already, unless it's a specific Linux wsl distro you greatly prefer.
Not the OP but I agree WSL doesn’t offer much over Mac unless you care about GNU vs BSD.
Maybe everyone has their biases, but MacOS is often terrible in comparison to Windows, at least in my experience. Hell simply things like snapping windows appropriately MacOS absolutely is trash at still.
Yeah mac os is the best middle ground. It is a lot more like Linux than Windows will ever be