> Containers/Docker are a great technology, but even on my M1 mac where literally everything else is super speedy, they're really slow.

Either you're using Docker for Mac which itself is slow on IO mostly due to the macos-linux file share syncing every single fseventsd<->inotify or you end up running intel images on aarch64, which uses non-virtualizing qemu to emulate the foreign CPU (see github.com/tonistigii/binfmt)

I'm using Docker in a Fusion instance, sharing /Users through vmhgfs (which in my tests performs better than DfM shares) and it's plenty fast as long as I stick to native images (intel on intel, aarch64 on arm64) and don't outrageously reach out to the shared dirs (notably DfM shares /tmp by default which is ridiculous)

Container tech on Darwin would bring little in most cases since it would containerize a darwin userland, which, while cool, is probably not what most people want. There's no shortcut from running a Linux kernel in a VM to run a Linux userland on Darwin.

> Either you're using Docker for Mac which itself is slow on IO mostly due to the macos-linux file share syncing every single fseventsd<->inotify

If you haven't tried the new VirtioFS accelerated directory sharing in Docker for Mac, it makes a _huge_ difference to I/O performance of mounted volumes.

Admittedly I didn't, not the least because I expect it to be at best equal in speed to my current setup, plus my current setup gives me better control on the virtualised OS + memory ballooning of the VM (... and that there are other things with DfM that rub me the wrong way).

Nonetheless, I salute the years-long effort from the Docker team on that one.

I'm using Docker for Mac on an M1 Pro and it's stupidly fast, to the point that my dev environment runs faster than the Intel production servers on some things.

How well does it handle a large amount of writes to small files (say 1000 files, each about 8KB)?

Edit: the static blog generator I wrote [1] takes 11 seconds inside a Ubuntu virtual machine with the directory shared with MacOS on an Mac mini late 2014. Docker, on the same machine, takes 1m13 seconds using gRPC FUSE for file sharing. 1866 HTML files are being generated.

[1] https://github.com/john-bokma/tumblelog

I have no idea I'm afraid, I don't work on anything that would ever do something like that. As a real world benchmark, the project I'm working on at the moment (Python / Django) runs the test suite in ~10.2 seconds on my Mac inside Docker, on GitHub CI it takes 35 seconds.

I'd be interested to know how quickly that runs natively on your mac.

Or they could do what windows did. Support windows docker for whatever use case that supports (never used it) and creating WSL which has Linux roots deep in the OS. I find WSL docker works great for development. Certainly wouldn’t use it in production.

WSL2 doesn't have Linux roots deep within Windows anymore, it's literally running a Linux VM with a full kernel under the HyperV hypervisor, so it's exactly like DfM (IIRC save for the fact that Windows then also runs under HyperV with the hypervisor sitting on top, Xen-like, and as is achieved on Xbox, and Linux running side by side instead of being handled by an OS process underneath the main OS)

In my experience it's anything but great. It's so slow and such a huge resource hog might as well run a full on Windows VM.

> No way to fullscreen a window without moving it into a separate workspace.

One of the reasons why I almost never use the full screen feature. You can click on the full screen button on the too left-hand corner of each window whilst holding Option, I think that’s the closest you can do out-of-the box. You can assign a keyboard shortcut for this very easily (seriously, the way we can define keyboard shortcuts for almost anything and have them work in almost any app is amazing; nothing comes even close on the Linux side).

Otherwise, you can use something like Magnet or Rectangle, which enable exactly what you want.

I do use magnet. But something I do want something to be truly fullscreen (no menubar or anything else visible), but without being on another workspace. I think the most common use case for this is with videos. I often want to fullscreen a video, but still be able to quickly switch between windows so that I can for example reply to a message.

Note that with any non-fullscreen window I can continue to see live updates to the window in the mission control view. So I could for example continue to watch a video (albeit smaller) while watching chat messages arrive in another window as my friend sends them. But with a macOS fullscreen window I can't do that. If I open mission control then I can only see the fullscreen window (because it's the only window in the workspace), and if I switch to another workspace to the see the contents of those windows I can no longer see the fullscreen window. Infuriating!

Try exiting full-screen in the video player (green button) back to windowed mode and then double clicking the title bar. It’s not full, full-screen, but it’s the largest window you can get.

I’m still not sure why you can’t switch between applications even if they aren’t on the same workspace though. Cmd tab, Cmd tab takes me from a full-screen video to the last app on a separate workspace, and right back to the video.

And if you want to see other apps at the same time as the video, no wonder full-screen gets in the way.

The problem is if it isn't a dedicated video app. Say for example a video embedded in a webpage. Then you can maximise the browser window, but the video itself still takes up a small part of the screen.

> And if you want to see other apps at the same time as the video, no wonder full-screen gets in the way.

You say that, but is doesn't on windows or linux. And it didn't used to on macOS either until they changed things around a few years ago.

What keyboard shortcuts are you missing in Linux? At least with KDE, I can go the entire day without touching the rodent. And on the rare occasions that I do use the mouse, I'm mostly touching it only for webpages that don't work with Tridactyl, or for highlight-middle-click copy-paste.

I miss the ability to set arbitrary shortcuts and bind them to arbitrary menu items. Also, shortcuts are not very consistent across Linux applications, compared to macOS, which is much more homogenous and less surprising. OTOH, that's not a deal breaker and I keep using both Linux and macOS daily.

macOS is frustrating to use without a mouse. On one side the shortcuts are consistent, work everywhere, and are very deeply customisable. Really much better than anything I have tried on other platforms. All the menus are very easy to use without a mouse once you know the shortcuts (which, granted, are not obvious if you don't know they exist). Emacs-like shortcuts in all text fields are absolutely fantastic. The fact that Command is used throughout the GUI leaves Control available for things like terminals, which is awesome (e.g. there is no conflict between Control-C to kill a process and Command-C to copy some text). But at the same time there are things like window management that pretty much require a mouse, but really should not.

  > I miss the ability to set arbitrary shortcuts and bind them to arbitrary menu items.

In each application? Interesting that the OS provides that.

  > macOS is frustrating to use without a mouse.

My experience confirms this as well. I was really expecting an ergonomic, well-polished experience but I found that the Mac is polished like shark skin. It's nice and smooth if you do things - or can force yourself to do things - like the engineer in California does things. But if you like to keep your hands on the keyboard, or organize your applications (not just windows but applications), or anything else then you are going against the grain and that smoothness turns into obstacles and pain points.

You can also fullscreen within the workspace by double clicking the window's title bar (or the window's toolbar if it doesn't have a title)

IIRC that’s something to activate in the system preferences and the default behaviour is to minimise the window to the Dock instead.

Interesting. I recently started using an M1 Mac and found the fullscreen workspaces a bit weird (coming from i3), but kinda grew to like it? I got the external trackpad and use gestures a lot (before it was Control + arrows) to navigate the workspaces.

My main issue is that all the different "Terminals" have subsets I like on them, but none have all the features I like lol. It's not a big deal though. FWIW I'm trying out the Warp term now (used wezterm on linux) and it's been mostly enjoyable so far.

For me, those gestures are next to useless because the animation is just waaay too slow. It's literally a whole second (exactly; I just timed it) of waiting for window focus to switch.

The animation is shorter when you're on a model without a 120Hz screen, so it gets a little more bearable there.

In system preferences, under accessibility, there’s an option to “reduce motion” or something that removes that annoying animation. It’s great!

While this gets rid of the animation itself, the transition to the workspace takes the same amount of time.

When using gestures, the animations kind of match the gesture, which makes them slow because you can physically cancel them.

But some of these may help. There may be more (or less), it's been a while.

    defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool false
    defaults write -g NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.003
    defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.15
    defaults write com.apple.Mail DisableReplyAnimations -bool true
    defaults write com.apple.Mail DisableSendAnimations -bool true

Also, try to use keyboard shortcuts: the animation is muuuuch faster than with gestures. In Keyboard prefpane, Shortcuts, Keyboard, Mission Control (make sure to have many desktops created). I have desktops set to ^1..^0 and left/right to ^left and ^right (which is sadly the only way to move to fullscreen apps), and disable MRU automatic space reordering in Mission Control prefpane.

It's got nothing to do with gestures, the key combo has the same switch delay as a quick gesture swipe (Which seems to have the same delay as mission control selection) when switching workspaces.

I've spent more time than I'd like to admit trying to get rid of this workspace switch delay. The tipping point for me on it was switching to a 16" Pro with a 120 Hz screen and finding out that means it now takes longer to switch.

Got it. In my experience switching with shortcuts takes half a second (which I understand can be annoying, being an i3wm user myself) and is visibly faster than evn quick gestures, which have a slower ease-out for me (but that may be due to how I swipe)

I don't mind the animation, I actually really like the animations in macOS. I just don't want it to take a full second to switch the active window. "Reduce motion" keeps the full-second delay but replaces the nice animation with a less nice fade animation, which is kind of the opposite of what I want.

I'd be interested to know what features iTerm2 doesn't have. It's a big plus for macOS for me!

Yes, iTerm2 is one of the best macOS apps. It's the first thing we have new developers install if they're new to macOS.

On the 120Hz MacBook Pros, there's an advanced iTerm2 setting that lets you change the maximum frame rate to 120 or above (adaptive frame rate also needs to be disabled).

For monitors with a high refresh rate, it's worth checking out. You can see the difference by running:

  $ cat /dev/random | hexdump

I used it for a long time but switched back to regular Terminal for the lower latency, because I realized I couldn't even name an iTerm2 feature I used that Terminal didn't have. I'd just been using it because it was so widely discussed.

That's completely fair. For me the killer feature is it's multi-pane support. Being able to have several terminal panes side-by-side on screen at once without having to fiddle about with something like tmux is wonderful.

iTerm2 is pretty sluggish, has some memory leaks that I hit every now and then, and doesn't emulate some escape sequences correctly (bold, reset).

But it has Cmd+Shift+E, which I wish some other emulators I like would just wholesale copy that feature.

Honestly, it's one of the better emulators out there; it's my recommendation if you're otherwise stuck on macOS.

Try Kitty!

Good suggestion! IMHO Kitty is seriously underused terminal. Very fast, customizable, scriptable…

For full screen on same workspace: option+maximize button or double click on title bar (works with some applications)

This is not full screen, it is "maximize". The macos bar is still there, the window is just using all space for the windows.

Neither this nor clicking it without option are actually fullscreen. MacOS doesn't have fullscreen, it only has two types of maximization.

Hold Option and double-click the window corner. This will probably do what you want (fill all of the available space). You can also do this with the sides of the window and have it grow only horizontally or vertically.

I would also recommend trying out if BetterTouchTool can't change the behaviour of the green (+) button as it's pretty powerful.

For those who don't mind "full screen" still including the top bar, I find https://www.hammerspoon.org/ to be a good compromise. I set up option+shift+f to full screen my window instantly.

+1 for this. Hammerspoon is a godsend. I have keyboard shortcuts to switch to my desired apps instantly (around 10 or so, hyper+I is IntelliJ, hyper+A is Atom, hyper+F is Firefox etc.)

If the top bar is still there, is this different to the built in "double click title bar" maximise?

The '+' button and double-clicking the title-bar doesn't maximize windows—it zooms them in Apple's terminology. It should just make the window big enough to display its contents, although some apps don't cooperate (Chrome). Hammerspoon can be configured to maximize windows, i.e. make them fill the screen.

Holding Option when you click the green window button will maximise the window - rather than make it full screen - for most, but but not all, applications. For some reason Safari only maximises vertically when you do this.

macOS has never had full-screen maximisation. It maximises "for the content". Which means some windows will never be full screen because they don't have more to show.

What you get when you hold Option is the way that was the previous "maximisation" option, before they added the full screen mode which I also abhor.

Which is annoying for some applications which don't maximise, because the content isn't there but could be. I can't think off what does this off the top of my head since I installed Amethyst, but I think I remember Excel used to do this back in the day.

I hate the thought behind this. Often I don't maximize to see more content, but to hide everything else. Why does Safari decide for me that the window can't be any wider? That doesn't make any sense at all.

Note that this concept predates the concept of maximisation, and comes from an era when single apps would be implemented in multiple windows. E.g. the content area the toolbar in photoshop were separate windows. Back then it made a lot of sense. But I agree it's just annoying now.

If you want such maximisation (and not fullscreen as was described), you can use apps like Moom or Magnet.

That this functionality is not builtin is the most baffling MacOS design choice I have ever seen.

We can split hairs and hold our breath til we're blue discussing design decisions we don't control.

I'm just trying to be helpful, possibly barely pointing out that things claimed to be impossible are not (and not argumentatively, only because folks may stop at that and have to endure something when there are solutions that would fit their use case)

> No way to fullscreen a window without moving it into a separate workspace. All

When you hold ALT while clicking the maximize button it should work. There used to be a setting for this when they introduced it.

alt click doesn’t work. Try it. It does not work. Maybe occasionally it does, but mostly it just enlarges the screen a bit, in a random manner.

Yes the enlarge is a thing which unnerves me as well because some apps insist on keeping a specific aspect ratio and so on. I still use Better touch tool which has support for screen zone snapping. And I have a custom key binding to maximize windows setup via better touch tool.

Thanks for that! Option key words perfectly.

View -> Enter full screen?

Or simply the third button on the top left of nearly every window?

No, that hides the menu bar.

You can stop it hiding the menu bar in full screen. System Preferences -> Dock and Menu Bar -> Automatically Hide and Show Menu Bar in Full Screen (at the bottom of the window).