I know some people like it, but I find the top menu bar on a mac extremely non ergonomic.
The argument goes that it's an easy spot to hit: Just move your mouse to the top.
But they forget that in order to use the menu bar you have to activate the app!
In other OS's, if you want to pick an item from an inactive app, just click - it will activate the app, and pick the item from the menu bar at the same time.
Not so with a mac. If you click on an active area of an inactive window on a mac, the click is eaten, and you have to click a second time to actually do what you are trying to do. Same with the menu bar, first you have to activate the app, then you can click a second time on the menu bar.
People like the menu bar because of the global menu - no more hunting and pecking for a print or save option, with every application using disparate or bespoke UI kits having those aforementioned options be different places both visually, physically and logically.
MacBooks are absurdly overpowered as a layman’s computer, but the global menu means they only need to learn the OS once.
It also means that app devs can’t just eschew menus altogether in favor of junk drawer hamburger menus, like is so common on Windows/Linux. Even Electron apps that don’t have menubars under Windows/Linux usually do under macOS because it’d be silly to not populate the menubar when it’s always there anyway.
The omnipresence of the menubar also makes it an excellent hook point for UI enhancement utilities (e.g. a keyboard-driven HUD app) and automation, since it provides a universal interface that covers most of an app’s functions, which is truly rare these days.
I haven't found any apps on macOS the past 15 years where the "print" option wasn't where it's expected to be, would like an example just for the fun of it.
It matters. The menu location (and the keyboard shortcut) for Print has been in the Apple Human Interface Guidelines since the 1980s, and all Mac apps adhere to this convention.
You might be able find an exception -- there is no approval process for HIG in Mac apps. But you will not find an exception (v1.0.1 or later) in an app that has any meaningful user population, or is of any meaningful quality.
Ignoring HIG without good justification is a strong garbage signal. It was a surefire indicator of a crap Windows port back in the 1990s, but I don't think that's even a thing any more.
The Mac app ecosystem considers HIG failures to be serious bugs, and they do not survive. So yes, for all meaningful definitions, "all Mac apps adhere".
You do not appear to know what you're talking about here, and I don't know why you're bothering to argue. Show me an example of an even semi-popular Mac app which uses a different convention for Print, and we might have a conversation.
Your excerpted quotes are misleading, but I'll respond to one point:
> most of these defaults are poorly (unergonomically) engineered based on design ignorance from the 80s
You just invented that problem. Show me a more ergonomic design for Print. A large part of design/usability success is consistency and predictability.
I have yet to see how the defaults of windows are more ergonomic. I am also not aware that humans have significantly changed as a species since the 80s, so all the the ergonomic considerations are the same.
Besides, it completely misses the point - ergonomics are often about convenience and knowing what to expect. A zoo of frameworks and UI paradigms is a most terrible outcome with any kind of HIG. Microsoft is not able to keep a consistent UI paradigm for their own software - what a shining beacon of chaos they are.
I have yet to see how I stated that Windows defaults are more ergonomic. And your limited awarenes ignores the fact that ergonomic considerations were not properly taken into account in the design in the 80s just like now there are still plenty of ergonomic issues
Given that the convention seems more often followed on macOS can't it be a property of the environment of macOS developers usually following the conventions better than on Windows?
Even if not an inherent property of the system it's an emergent one, something causes it if it's not restricted by the system itself but is still a property that apps developed for macOS are much more homogeneous in their menus UI implementation than the others.
If you shroud this basic misunderstanding in so much emergent mystery, sure, but otherwise no, and the real reason is simple enough - that's just one of the defaults in some "UI kits", which macOS devs can also use, including "disparate or bespoke" ones, and could've been just as consistent without it being positioned at the single top spot
Can we agree that it could be a 2nd or 3rd order effect of a design choice such as putting the menu system as part of the system's UI nudging developers to follow conventions instead of inventing their own menu UI because it resides inside a window which they can control completely, hence giving the thought of "I can do the menu however I want" a bit more probable?
It's hard to analyse and quantify this ergonomics objectively so I'm just spitballing a potential way that the menus in Mac apps follow much more the convention than Windows apps. I think Apple is also much better at keeping their UIs consistent than what the Windows team is, could also be another nudge to developers to follow them. And no, I'm not saying they're perfect, I hate all their UIs like the App Store, new System Settings (it's frankly stupid, also in responsiveness), Apple Music, etc.
Design choices are nudges, Apple's ecosystem has nudged developers much better into keeping some consistency across the system, it's much more jarring on macOS when an app doesn't follow conventions than on Windows.
> just an unenforced convention that you can adhere to on Windows as well
And yet on Windows I often have to do a Where’s Waldo for certain options or even submenus. On macOS it has been crystal clear where to find these options for almost 25 years if we count from Mac OS X, and you can trace some the lineage back all the way to Mac OS 1 which was launched 40 years (!) ago.
The thing that has finally started to chip away at this steely adherence to UI conventions is nothing other than poorly made Electron applications, which ironically Linux can actually get nice menu options for via Dbus trickery :)
Apple publishes UI guidance in terms of how/where common features are meant to be. If you drift from this, you will likely be told about it. Unlike Windows, where guidance has shifted over time, and even then, many would just ignore UI/UX standards altogether.
Linux, I find to be in the middle.. applications meant for a given DE will usually come together relatively well, others less so.
True. On the other hand I like that the menu is on top on the screen so I can just throw the pointer up (I use a trackball) and it will end up on the menu, no precise targeting required.
100% agree. Not having those menu buttons visible until you focus means an extra click (and you can't even see what the menu headings are for that app until you click, so it also delays your thought process).
Ok so you get more screen space I guess, but IMO it's not worth the trade off.
having one menu bar at the top of the screen made sense when macs had nine-inch screens. it saved some screen real estate, which was at a premium at the time. but the bigger the screens get, the less sense this makes.
apple should have switched to menu bars in each app when they introduced mac os x. we were all forced to make so many changes at the time, one more wouldn’t have been a big deal.
The argument goes that it's an easy spot to hit: Just move your mouse to the top.
But they forget that in order to use the menu bar you have to activate the app!
In other OS's, if you want to pick an item from an inactive app, just click - it will activate the app, and pick the item from the menu bar at the same time.
Not so with a mac. If you click on an active area of an inactive window on a mac, the click is eaten, and you have to click a second time to actually do what you are trying to do. Same with the menu bar, first you have to activate the app, then you can click a second time on the menu bar.
I do not like it.