MacOS 26 highlights were... and this was _Apple's_ opening modal...
"Icons that look like shit!"
and
"Notification summaries that may not be correct!"
In general I feel as if Apple's software feels buggier and less solid lately across my iPhone and my computers. Won't be upgrading the personal computer for as long as possible
I finally talked my company into letting me swap out my MacBook pro for some little Dell. After the last year of updates, my Mac has stopped resuming from sleep reliably, everything is ugly, they took the already barely usable (imo) finder and system settings and found exciting new ways to make them worse. Sadly corporate security means os updates were not optional.
I've never really liked macOS but it feels like someone at Apple was hired just to make it even less likable for me personally lol
been using a Mac for years, and to this day I don't know how it's possible to navigate directories using Finder. It only has shortcuts for a few folders by default (photos, documents...) and doesn't have a button to navigate to the parent folder. I have literally no idea how to get to my home directory, I need to use the CLI
> doesn't have a button to navigate to the parent folder.
Command + Up Arrow, which is also visible if you click on the "Go" menu. There is also a toolbar button that shows the entire set of enclosing directories; offhand I can't remember whether this is visible by default. There is also "View -> Show Path Bar" which shows all this information at the bottom of the window.
> I have literally no idea how to get to my home directory
Go -> Home, which shows a shortcut key for this, Command-Shift-H.
I've grown increase hate towards Finder to the point that I avoid using at all costs. I've been migrating to the terminal, using fzf to find files and directories and yazi for a more graphical experience.
How can it be called FINDER, if it can't FIND things? cmd+shift+g should be a fuzzy search, but it returns nothing 80% of the time. cmd+f often can't see files that are in first level folders inside my home folder.
Meanwhile, hitting Esc+C in the terminal (via fzf) it's totally effective.
I’ve said many times before that I think Finder is the worst default file manager of any popular desktop environment.
I get it’s supposed to be easy to use but so much functionality is hidden behind non-obvious shortcuts. The end result is you either need to memorise a dozen secret handshakes just to perform basic operations, or you give up and revert to 70s technology in the command line.
My go to example would be long lasting issues with SMB support in Finder. All operations are very slow, the search is almost unusably so. The operations that are instant on every non-Apple device take ages on a Mac. I first ran into these issues 7 years ago when I set up my NAS, and they present to this day. I tried all random suggestions and terminal commands, but eventually gave up on trying to make it perform as it does on Linux.
With Apple's focus on cloud services, fixing the bugs that prevent the user from working with their local network storage runs contrary to their financial incentives.
Is it actually though? It’s cool to criticise Nautilus but, at worst, it’s just equally as bad as Finder. Which shouldn’t be surprising given how much it’s styled to look like Finder.
However in my personal opinion Nautilus’s breadcrumb picker does edge it against Finder.
So I stand by my comment that Finder is the worst.
Nautilus opens a new window for every folder you enter. Finder does not.
That used to be a preference, and last I used it, it was not. It is forced on because that’s how the GNOME developers thought you should use it… “Our way or the highway!” — GNOME devs.
Finder wins based on that alone. Finder wins so completely because of that one single thing that I’ll never voluntarily use GNOME again.
You can add shortcuts to the sidebar by dragging. You can right click the folder name in the top bar to get a list of parents. You can also View > Show Path Bar and see the the full clickable bread crumbs. Not sure why this is so confusing if you bother to try.
Even after decades of using macOS I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that Finder has no single button shortcut for opening a file - the most common operation a file manager should do. It’s Cmd+O, and it cannot be changed to anything sane like Enter key.
Why on Earth is this a requirement? When you're navigating through Finder using keyboard, it's very inconvenient to use two keypresses to perform a very basic operation. Using Enter to open a file is how every file manager on every operating system works except Finder. Why would Enter key be hardcoded to a file rename operation instead?
It is a typical Apple behaviour of doing things differently from the rest of the world just for the sake of it, even when it's detrimental to the user experience.
Actually I just checked and it's not, technically you can create key equivalents without modifiers as well [1]. For Finder this doesn't work though, because enter seems to be specifically handled before menu-level key equivalent processing. (Note that it's not guaranteed to work on other apps either, based on [2] seems key equivalents are only dispatched if modifier keys exists. But that might be out of date since it worked for the people in the SE post.)
Option+Enter is the next closest thing.
I agree that their implementation here is not good. In fact there's already a "Rename" menu item, which isn't actually wired to the enter hotkey (this is very un mac like because it means there is no easy way to discover it). The "rename" menu item is actually a fairly recent addition to mac (I think maybe 10.11) while Finder itself is ancient (it was one of the last few apps to be migrated to Cocoa and even today still has lots of legacy warts), and possibly no one bothered cleaning things up.
I got a new Apple Watch and just getting it set up was a pain. For some reason the passcode input would fail to register key prompts and I had to spam the buttons until something clicked. Then I gave my old Apple Watch to my mom and the setup failed like three times before we managed to get it done. Did make me wonder if anyone at Apple actually tests setting up these devices.
What I love is how their own features don't even play well together anymore...
For instance you can "hide your e-mail" by using Apple's relay, but if you do so... your payments using Apple Pay will fail unless you fill all the information in manually because the e-mail addresses don't match
It's ridiculous how poorly tested everything is, and that combined with their newly entered foray into the world of politics has nearly destroyed three decades of steady Apple use for me. I'll be actively considering other options, not upgrading, and looking elsewhere for products in spaces they're in
"Icons that look like shit!"
and
"Notification summaries that may not be correct!"
In general I feel as if Apple's software feels buggier and less solid lately across my iPhone and my computers. Won't be upgrading the personal computer for as long as possible