Best example is still the Settings/Control Panel mess in Windows 10. It's always a fun game guessing where the setting I need is, especially considering the useless Start menu search.

That being said, I have high hopes considering their latest efforts, the new terminal looks cool, powershell is useful and WSL2 looks to bridge the gap. I'm a die hard macOS user that requires Windows for a variety of work tasks, i'm glad to see the effort and competition.

Of course, electron is bringing this great fragmented ui experience to macOS

Electron is a browser. So a huge chunk of things are native: keyboard support, inputs, dropdowns, context menus, menus, preference panes, popups, window chrome etc.

And all this is available to developers out of the box. Very few "cross-platform UI toolkits" can come even close.

That said, a fully native app would be a better option, but Electron apps are ok (unless devs go out of their way to make them bad)

The problem is that the controls generally are made by web developers rather than just using the underlying platform’s widgets so, list views look wrong, input handling is slightly off, etc. All the normal issues with applications made with web technologies.

Additionally, browsers are one of the most out-of-place feeling applications because the look and feel is controlled by the website, not by your operating system.

> So a huge chunk of things are native: keyboard support, inputs, dropdowns, context menus, menus, preference panes, popups, window chrome etc.

Note that Chromium (and hence Electron) reimplements many of these things.

I'm curious which applications made you come to this conclusion. I've heard a lot of Electron criticism, and most of it is very valid, but I think Slack, Spotify, and Atom very much fit into the macOS UI environment.

I have command-shift-u bound to “open selected url” this reliably works in cocoa apps and often doesn’t work in electron apps.

EDIT: VS Code is the main place I run into this

A ui is more than its appearance: the interaction model of electron apps is always slightly off from cocoa apps.

>The UI is totally schizoid

Kinda like how iTunes was brushed metal forever while the Finder was Aqua and some apps roll their own UI to mimic Aqua? It's not like either Apple or Microsoft produce consistent applications, let alone the lack of control they have over third party developers. There is also Carbon vs. Cocoa, where different programs get different services "for free" from the operating system (e.g. spell check). Apple is just as guilty as Microsoft.

Giving a couple of decade-old examples doesn’t show that Apple is “just as guilty.” Apple has two toolkits: Carbon, a legacy framework for transitioning from MacOS classic, and Cocoa. Microsoft has releases a new toolkit/look-and-feel basically every other year. (Win32, WPF, Metro, UWP, etc.) And unlike Carbon, which is depreciated, Win32 is in active use by new apps and keeps getting new features.

Win32: 1995 WPF: 2006 Metro (design language): ~2011 UWP: 2015

Win32 and WPF are both more than "decade-old," so really you're down to two. I'm not sure that 3 toolkits in 24 years is "every other year."

There are a lot of different versions of Win32 and WPF based on the Windows and .NET version they’re targeted to, respectively.

Cocoa is more like targeting an evergreen browser. Just target the version that is just old enough to support enough users and you’re good (and users are happy). Unlike evergreen browsers, though, you do hit hard cutoffs once every few years, but I suspect navigating those means updating the compilation/signing process more than rewriting anything (correct me if I’m wrong).

I thought they'd more than deprecated it, and that Carbon apps won't run anymore on Mojave. They declined to do a 32-64 port all the way back in Mountain Lion.

The original discussion was about desktop operating systems but if you toss in iOS, how many look-and-feel changes does that add? Given the state of Marzipan apps that Apple thought were fine to ship, it may be ever more relevant. Apple didn't even replace the "slot machine" date picker from iOS which is horrible to use with a mouse.

Microsoft is the same as its always been but acting like Apple has a clear, unified, and sane design doesn't reflect the evidence.

Microsofts worst enemy, IMO, is their OEMs who are allowed to put all kinds of custom side-hustle garbage into the OS and it takes alot of work to remove it. Essentially, you have to pay a premium to a manufacturer to signal you're a "serious" user instead of "consumer" user, or you have to spend time removing spam... I mean "custom" apps that the OEM got paid to put onto your machine. At least, Apple only hustles their own ecosystem apps and let you safely hide or remove most of them.

Spoken like someone who does not know Windows. If you buy a machine that comes with windows, and just use it off the shelf it, is a total mess as you say. (As well as probably loaded with crapware) If you know Windows youre gonna install LTSC on that machine and have a nice productive time. I am curious, do you buy a mac and just use it for work without any setup, off the shelf? If so that is a point in its favour I guess.

Also as someone who only knows Linux and Windows and is not familiar with Mac OS, anytime I have to use it, it is a baffling experience, common things are done with gestures and keyboard shortcuts that one would never be able to intuit or discover. I find some random completely new Linux windows manager that Ive never seen before much easier to get to grips with than Mac OS.

Funny you say that, because I wiped whatever was on my X1 Carbon and installed LTSC. Then I had to install the Lenovo touchpad driver because two finger scrolling didn’t work. But that installed a “synaptic touchpad enhancement” background task that was a marked battery hog. The touchpad driver would restart the service if it was killed, so I had to delete the executable. (It led to no apparent change in functionality and notably improved battery life.) at this point, we are solidly in “total crap” territory. I’ve had half a dozen Macs, and never do anything to it besides install the apps I use. I sometimes change the wallpaper, but not even necessarily that. Everything is perfect out of box.

Thats fair enough. Laptops can be very finicky for drivers.

I've been using LTSC on my work / gaming desktop for about 6 months and its been the best OS experience ive had since DOS. Everything works perfectly, and otherwise it just stays out of my way.

You're right that the off-the-shelf experience with Windows can be very dodgy depending on what your OEM is and what crap they decided to put into the core OS.

I'm conflicted about all this myself because I have a good experience with Win10 once I get all the extra nonsense removed, the settings changed, and my shell setup working. I feel like Windows rewards people who are willing to put the time into it now, but its not as easy as dealing with Mac OS where you basically just clear off the toolbar, put the shell and whatever dev apps onto it, and maybe tweak a few settings and you're okay to go.