- I work in multiple OSes simultaneously and MacOS makes this a huge pain as it has substantially different keyboard shortcuts compared to Windows/Linux. You can kinda change this in the System Preferences but it isn't perfect.
  - Depending on your distro, installing and updating software on Linux can be much easier compared to MacOS.
  - MacOS updates tend to break things
  - Automating things on Linux is easy as I have the CLI. Automating things on Windows is kind-of easy as I have AutoHotkey. Automating things on MacOS is hard because there simply isn't a comparable all-in-one tool.
  - Docker on MacOS is pain.
  - Virtual machines on MacOS is pain.
  - Advanced networking on MacOS is pain (when I need complicated VPN setups or just to connect all my VMs together).

I know many of my pain points don't apply to lots of people because my desktop setup is pretty complicated but my main pain point is still keyboard shortcuts. MacOS keyboard shortcuts are just completely different from any other OS and MacOS makes customizing them difficult without 3rd party tools.

I would understand how MacOS may be easier to use if you work with a lot of audio or just use it for web/office stuff though.

> it has substantially different keyboard shortcuts compared to Windows/Linux

Not just different, substantially better, in my opinion. The addition of the command key is a 2x+ increase in modifier-space (2C1 + 2C2 vs. 3C1 + 3C2 + 3C3).

> Automating things on Linux is easy as I have the CLI. Automating things on Windows is kind-of easy as I have AutoHotkey. Automating things on MacOS is hard because there simply isn't a comparable all-in-one tool.

Mac has Keyboard Maestro, AppleScript, and a terminal.

> Not just different, substantially better, in my opinion. The addition of the command key is a 2x+ increase in modifier-space (2C1 + 2C2 vs. 3C1 + 3C2 + 3C3).

Right, but MacOS doesn't live in a vacuum. It's like the whole XKCD about competing standards again: https://xkcd.com/927/. In my eyes it's not worth being different from everyone else simply because you think you are a tiny bit better.

> Mac has Keyboard Maestro, AppleScript, and a terminal.

MacOS does have a terminal but it doesn't feel like integration is as tight with it as on Linux. On Linux I can do crazy things with desktop programs through dbus and systemd is easier to use for me compared to launchd (although this is heavily debated).

Admittingly the automation ecosystem on MacOS may be better than I'm aware as I didn't look very deep into it.

Yeah, if you move around OSs I'm sure the nonconformity is annoying. I'm in the camp that HCI is better when it's personalized rather than globally standardized, so I heavily rebind and use non-standard keyboards anyways.

It’s not a “tiny” bit better imho. It’s leaps and bounds.

Cutting/pasting into a terminal is effortlessly the same as everything else, instead of some extra modifier to Ctrl-c that I always have to look up in the menu. And find awkward to do as well...

I work pretty much constantly in the terminal on macOS ‘open <file>.pdf’, or .jpg or .png or .(whatever) then I ssh to a Linux box and want to run qtcreator on the .pro file and have to figure out what the damn app was called again...

Etc.

Just like your experience and disappointment with macOS, I expect mine (the opposite of yours) comes down to what I’m most familiar with...

A bit late, but xdg-open might be the command you're looking for on Linux?

Many of us consider it better, though, and don’t need to deal with other OS’s. Hence why the keys are that way.

Why should macOS curtail to what the rest do?

Not the GP, but I absolutely cannot live without focus follows mouse and love being able to type and interact with a window without raising it. For example I can overlay a small terminal in front of a web browser and use both at the same time.

Using a floating window manager that doesn't support this is wasting a gross amount of screen real estate.

It's not a perfect replacement for mouse-focus, but most Mac apps can be interacted with without bringing them to the foreground by holding down command before clicking on the inactive window's controls. Also, right-clicking usually won't surface windows. Won't allow you to type but it's good enough for pasting bits in terminal windows, toggling settings, etc without changing which app or window is frontmost.