Re:How Intuitive Are Macs Really?
by derefr on Monday May 24, 2021 @01:38PM
(#27267330)
> From a UI perspective, it's 90% identical to windows.
That's convergent evolution. The UIs started off very different. MacOS's current set of UI abstractions was mostly enshrined in an era when its competitor was Windows 3.1.
> Why is it that when I click Finder, nothing actually opens?
I was going to give a few justifications for this, but I just tested it, and clicking on the Finder icon in the Dock does open a new Finder window for me. (In Big Sur. This definitely wasn't always the case; I'm not certain when it changed.)
But those justifications, for the long period where it didn't, are still kind of interesting/relevant:
1. the Desktop is a Finder window. IIRC, on some versions of macOS, using a switcher to focus the Finder would — if you don't have any open Finder windows — focus the desktop (insofar as keyboard navigation goes.)
2. You can do useful things with the Finder without any windows open. IIRC, Apple's HIG only recommends creating a new window in response to a click on the app's icon (and or having a Cmd-0 accelerator), if the app is useless without having a window open. But the Finder has a bunch of menu-items in the "Go" menu (with keyboard accelerators) to open windows showing specific locations, or to open dialogs for connecting to networks, etc. It'd be annoying if you wanted to open one of these, but focusing the Finder always opened a default window you had to get rid of first. I personally often focus the Finder and then press Cmd+K to mount an SMB share on my NAS, then immediately close the resulting window, because the point was to get it mounted for command-line use.
That's convergent evolution. The UIs started off very different. MacOS's current set of UI abstractions was mostly enshrined in an era when its competitor was Windows 3.1.
> Why is it that when I click Finder, nothing actually opens?
I was going to give a few justifications for this, but I just tested it, and clicking on the Finder icon in the Dock does open a new Finder window for me. (In Big Sur. This definitely wasn't always the case; I'm not certain when it changed.)
But those justifications, for the long period where it didn't, are still kind of interesting/relevant:
1. the Desktop is a Finder window. IIRC, on some versions of macOS, using a switcher to focus the Finder would — if you don't have any open Finder windows — focus the desktop (insofar as keyboard navigation goes.)
2. You can do useful things with the Finder without any windows open. IIRC, Apple's HIG only recommends creating a new window in response to a click on the app's icon (and or having a Cmd-0 accelerator), if the app is useless without having a window open. But the Finder has a bunch of menu-items in the "Go" menu (with keyboard accelerators) to open windows showing specific locations, or to open dialogs for connecting to networks, etc. It'd be annoying if you wanted to open one of these, but focusing the Finder always opened a default window you had to get rid of first. I personally often focus the Finder and then press Cmd+K to mount an SMB share on my NAS, then immediately close the resulting window, because the point was to get it mounted for command-line use.