Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by Cthulhu_ on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @10:10AM (#23391167)

Once there's a terminal emulator for Windows that works as seamlessly as iterm and there's no more weird hacks required like Cygwin / minTTY (I believe the windows subsystem for linux does that) I might start to consider moving; most software I use for development is cross-platform anyway (vs code, intellij, nodejs, go).

But for now my 2017 macbook works well enough. I do think it's overpaid though; outside of the occasional nyan cat gimmick, I've NEVER used the touch pad. At the moment it's closed and to the side while I work on my external screens and the pretty decent Apple keyboard + mouse.

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by efficax on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @10:16AM (#23391232)

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by yardie on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @11:25AM (#23391998)

Windows Terminal is really good. I'm still a dedicated Mac user but the Microsoft team has advanced exponentially in their support of common, very good ideas.

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by mehrdadn on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @11:29AM (#23392054)

Could you explain what's so good about the Windows Terminal? I've tried it multiple times and been disgusted every time. The grayscale smoothing looks ugly as hell, the font is large as if I'm elderly, you can't even right-click to get a menu in the window, and opening Settings fires up Visual Studio of all things with GUIDs that I have no idea what to do with. All I see is it has tabs which I've lived without in every single terminal. What exactly are people loving so much about it? What brilliance am I missing?

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by philliphaydon on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @11:44AM (#23392273)

> the font is large as if I'm elderly

It's probably the easiest to configure terminal ever...

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToMakeAPrettyPromptInWindo...

> and opening Settings fires up Visual Studio of all things

Settings opens what ever editor is your default for .json files.

> with GUIDs that I have no idea what to do with

1 guid to identify each option?

I guess Windows Terminal was designed for developers and not users.

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by mehrdadn on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @11:53AM (#23392391)

It seems to have been specifically designed for developers who enjoy a difficult UX because anything not up to that standard that is childish to them, which in my experience is the same thing Linux tools optimize for. I guess Windows has been very much trying to cater to that sector, so maybe now I can understand its appeal.

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by modernerd on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @12:41PM (#23393006)

The main advantages of config as JSON for me as a developer are:

- Settings become more portable.

- Settings become more shareable.

That said, VS Code started with JSONC-based configs and now presents a UI by default (still editable directly as JSONC for those who prefer). It seems possible JSONC could be used to bootstrap a UI for Windows Terminal too if there's demand.

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by mehrdadn on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @08:04PM (#23398043)

The fact that it's JSON rather than a nice little window isn't the main issue. That's not great UI, but it's not the biggest pain point of the UX. For comparison, Sublime uses JSON settings too, but it doesn't require a PhD in Sublime Text to figure out what you can actually configure in that file. I seem to recall VSCode had JSON at some point for some things too (though not sure where it is now, I don't see it). It wasn't exactly fantastic, which I assume is why they've provided a better UI for the settings now, but it was usable. They actually described the options available to you right there. And of course they have their own benefits with regards to portability and shareability like you said. Those are all fine. The problem is Windows Terminal on the other hand seems to go out of its way to make your life hard for no reason, in a manner I have never seen another terminal emulator do. For the life of me I don't get what people like about it. It seems terrible on every axis I can measure on.

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by a_e_k on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @12:43PM (#23393024)

My reading had been that they plan to build a nice configuration UI on top of the JSON eventually, but the focus right now is on the core functionality (and letting the settings stabilize first).

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by derefr on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @12:55PM (#23393182)

>> and opening Settings fires up Visual Studio of all things

> Settings opens what ever editor is your default for .json files.

And one can also point out that macOS opens XCode for (even XML-based) .plist files.

It's getting to be a standard convention, now that IDEs are almost "ships with the OS" kind of software, that the OS thinks configuration files should be opened in the IDE, rather than the system GUI text editor (Notepad; TextEdit.) Because, I guess, the system text editors were never really made to edit code, and make no guarantee that they won't break the formatting of code, while IDEs do make that guarantee.

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by nnoitra on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @11:35AM (#23392140)

Laughable, to run nix commands one has to install the Ubuntu subsystem and run into a plethora of other problems.

OS ranking is pretty much: MacOS > Windows > *nix garbage

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by modernerd on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @10:41AM (#23391514)

Windows Terminal is great. https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

Just missing a Quake mode for me (summon from a screen edge with a keyboard shortcut), but that's being talked about for v2. https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/653

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by EForEndeavour on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @03:24PM (#23395106)

The Magic Keyboard 2 is great, but their mouse has given me nothing but wrist pain and infuriating muscle-memory issues. I still believe its flaw was being designed for appearance first and ergonomics/usability second, but no doubt I didn't give it enough time. Do you recall how long it took you to get used to it?

(For about 10 years, I've been using a bog-standard, symmetrical, 2-button scroll-wheel mouse by Logitech, and am looking to transition to a finger-operated trackball to save desk space, and just to see what the fuss is about.)

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by glotgizmo on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @11:19AM (#23391928)

https://conemu.github.io/

Very powerful.

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