Your comparison of Mac vs PC user experience reminds me of a criticism I read of Java's cross-platform GUI implementation. The critic compared Java GUIs to an episode of Star Trek where aliens had created a facsimile of a room and table of food, but when the Enterprise crew tried to eat the food they gagged on it. It turned out the aliens, working off of visual TV broadcasts, hadn't realized the food was supposed to taste like anything.
Re:Burn My Windows
by philovivero on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @10:01PM
(#29804491)
Are you sure you're not talking about the feast scene from Galaxy Quest?
Re:Burn My Windows
by DonHopkins on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @04:26PM
(#29800776)
>...SGI's window manager whose name I forgot
4Sight!
https://wiki.preterhuman.net/4Sight_Window_System
http://www.vintagecomputers.info/pitechrep.html
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/iris4d/007-2001-030_4Sight_...
4Sight Programmer's Guide: GL/DGL Interfaces. NeWS. Window Manager.
Re:Burn My Windows
by ISV_Damocles on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @03:27PM
(#29799943)
If you use KDE wobbly windows are built in to its KWin compositor. :) I forget the exact details of how to get to it since I don't use KDE anymore (long-ish story), but even most of the silly things Compiz did are a configuration checkbox away in KDE.
Yeah, but it just doesn't quite manage to Compiz/Beryl feel. It is difficult to put a finger on but whoever did Compiz wobbly windows had an eye for it that the KDE devs don't.
Using both, I can't imagine getting excited by KDE wobbly windows in the same way that Compiz could get a "wow!" by demoing wobbly windows -> desktop cube.
It was a short, beautiful peak of Linux on the Desktop where a high was reached and then desktops just fell away from it.
Re:Burn My Windows
by JasonFruit on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @04:13PM
(#29800596)
It's under Desktop Effects.
Re:Burn My Windows
by howinteresting on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @08:47PM
(#29803889)
It is incredibly ironic that Mac support for high refresh rates is worse than Windows or Linux today. It isn't possible to run an Intel Mac at 4k 144Hz any more, and this is a software issue not a hardware one.
https://wayfire.org — you're welcome :)
It reminds me of discussions around Mac vs PC in the early days. The experience of using a Mac was more "fluid" than Windows. The Mac would draw windows faster, move the mouse faster (as in more refreshes of the cursor position per second) and that made it more comfortable to use. At the same time I also used Sun and SGI boxes regularly and the stark difference between the jerky mouse movement of the Sun and the fluid, Mac-like, movement of the SGI made the former an inferior experience (even though I liked OpenWindows over SGI's window manager whose name I forgot).
I'd love to have wobbly windows back.