MacOS vs Kaze

You might need a little bit of context on this one. I am a Linux user. I've been one since I left college back in 2013. I use Linux on my personal computers, I used Linux as my operating system at work too. And I'm not talking about using it as a server OS (I do that too), but as a developer workstation. One thing that never changed, is the desktop environment I'm using. On Linux, you can decide how your user interface behave and look. Most popular desktops on Linux are KDE, Gnome and probably XFCE. I like to try them all, I like the snappy reaction time of XFCE, I enjoy KDE with its default Windows look and feel but no matter how much I try, I always end up on Gnome. It's the one that feels and behave how I expect it to. It's the one I fight the less with. In Early 2025, I decided move my career to somewhere else, and with it came a change of computer. I was handed an Apple MacBook Pro with the M1Pro chip.

This is my experience with Mac OS coming from Gnome and all the frustrations I built up over the months.

Intrusive app updates

The first one I encountered was a puzzling experience. I was working reviewing code in my web browser and then a popup appeared! Visual Studio Code wanted to install a system helper. What? How come that a software that I wasn't actively using interrupt me in my focus period. Not only that, but since I VS Code was not on the foreground, having this update request felt like a phishing attempt. How can I really know that it comes with VS Code? The language used in the popup is also a bit cryptic to my opinion, installing a system helper? Why an update needs to mess with system helpers every time? At some point those popups are so frequent, so similar from one another, and always appear randomly (as long as the application is running, background or not), that it creates a desensitization, a reflex to accept without looking. This could be very dangerous as a malicious actor could leverage this situation by sneaking a similar-looking prompt, only to install malware.

Full screen applications

This one is a pet peeve of mine since Mac OS X Lion. On Windows and Linux, most desktops implement the three-button window control, minimize, maximize and close. On both platform, those three buttons act in a similar fashion. Minimize "hide" the window in the main application launcher, maximize will tell your application to stretch its window across the whole screen and close will obviously destroy the application window. But Mac OS always made things differently. Prior to Mac OS X Lion, the maximize button acted more like a toggle between two geometry. It could be set as taking the whole screen, but this was a per-application preset, and you had to memorize which application were set this way. With OS X 10.7, Apple a new way of managing windows, full-screen applications. Those applications are moved to their own space, similar to virtual desktops on Linux. At first, it was another button in the window control, but newer version of the OS combined this function with the maximize button. Seems like a good idea for focussing on one thing at first, but I always end up wanting to drag a window on those spaces and I end up "blocked" by the OS from doing so. This is a me problem, but I don't like it.

Ghost applications

On Mac OS, you can have an application running that does not have any windows. It's not something that I specially enjoy, but it's a design choice. What I don't really get and consider as a bug, is that when you perform an Alt-Tab, you can hit those running application. So, imagine you opens Safari, you browse the web and you click on the X button to close the window. Safari is still running, noted by the small dot under its icon in the dock. Now when you do Alt-tab to change the focused application, you'll see the Safari icon. If you select it, you expect a Safari window to open... You wait, you wait but no. Safari won't open. Either hide icons that have no windows, or make it so that when you select it, a new window will open!

The less-than-ideal overlay

I come from the Gnome 3 desktop environment. In Gnome, the overlay let you do many things. You can search for apps and documents, you can view windows opened on a per-desktop fashion, you can move windows from one virtual desktop to another or you can even close applications. In Mac OS, the overlay is less powerful. You can move applications from one space to another, or set an application as its own space, but you cannot search for things, and more importantly, you cannot close applications. The overlay (on both Mac OS and Gnome), is the only place where you can see all your running applications in a glance, so if you notice an application that is running that you no longer need, well you cannot close it, which doesn't make much sense.

Also, when in overlay mode on Mac OS, the right click on your mouse is disabled. I discovered that when I was trying to start a new instance of something (let say Safari) by right-clicking the icon. Nothing happens.

Notification mess

Apparently, there's two types of notification in Mac OS, banners and notifications. What is the justification to have the two? It's unclear really, both appear in the same corner of the screen, both are accessible in the notification shade, but only when you try to dismiss them you are being told of the distinction. I just want less notification, I don't really care how they are called, please. Help me being organized! Oh and when you only have one kind (notifications for example), clicking on "Clear all" will show a submenu to ask you which type of notification to clear. THERE'S ONLY ONE TYPE MACOS! Why ask me! Anyway, it feels like a half-baked feature and Linux (Gnome and KDE) does better in this regard.

Slow dock

I don't understand this one. I set the dock to disappear when a window wants the space (so far so good). The issue is when I drag my mouse to the bottom of the screen to access the said hidden dock. It takes a couple of seconds to appear! And it feels really inconsistent! Sometimes it is really quick, some other times it takes multiple seconds. It seems to be more pronounced when the dock appears on the wrong screen. It's like if it took time for MacOS to move the dock to the proper screen, then it displays it.

Silver lining

After talking to my manager, it is possible that I exchange my MacBook for a Thinkpad with Linux. I'll be back to familiar territory once again. Until then, I'll continue using Mac OS but dreaming of a more ergonomic desktop, one that is more designed the way my brain works.