Answer: Because modern-day Apple has subscribed to a particular brand of mitigation for the "noobs will always click 'Allow' especially if you ask them to first" problem. The mitigation is that Apple just dumps you on step 2 of a little 4-5 step mini sysadmin adventure where you prove, every time, that you're sophisticated enough to deserve an exception to the padded-cell walled garden mode they've sealed off 'for your safety.'
As a complete nerd, you'd think maybe I'd like that I can prove my skills like this, but it comes off as deeply disrespectful to me as the user that I can't disable this.
What's my solution to prevent grandma or a 10-year-old from clicking "Allow full filesystem access and keylogging" to an executable she downloaded from facebook-security-center-and-password-verification-cgi-bin-ab383 dot xyz? IDK, that's their problem, but they should offer a way for those of us who aren't clueless to turn whatever it is off.
You seem to have understood the problem. But then you didn't follow. If there was a way to disable this, first thing that the grandma would do is watch a video how to disable that and lose security from then on.
Of course it is not perfect, but their approach here is really decent. And also, if you find yourself needing to go through that often I think that's not a good sign security-wise.
It's gone so far that even tech people now think that having root access to a mobile device is somehow scary. Well guess what that root access is still there for the manufacturer. It needs it for stuff like updates. It just shields you from having any kind of input or visibility on what is going on.
And once you've given up your admin control to the mega corporation, your government is going to be next. They'll be demanding backdoors and regulatory bullshit like age verification and snooping backdoors. Even today the EU launched yet another chatcontrol proposal. Eventually they'll manage to get it through when they've paid off enough representatives.
Keeping full control is the only way to prevent this.
My grandma absolutely would not watch and follow a video on how to e.g. disable Gatekeeper, nor do I think she’d be able to if she tried.
Your grandma sounds substantially more tech savvy than my grandma. Good for her, she seems to know what she wants. Grown adults should be allowed to knowingly opt into an additional level of risk.
On the flip side, many websites ask if I want to allow notifications. I almost never do. I was looking at settings recently and surprised how often I’d clicked yes by accident (maybe about 5% false click rate?)
One of the first things I disable on any new Firefox setup. I want zero notifications from websites (or in general, one of the objective improvements of Windows 10 over Windows 7 is that you can just disable notifications entirely, while disabling balloon alerts in Windows 7 was a huge battle that never fully worked)
It’s used for writing keyloggers.
That’s it. It’s the permission that lets you write a keylogger. It SHOULD NOT be just a click away. It should require some extra song and dance, because this is an especially dangerous permission, and the extra friction is justified.
Apple should throw this whole thing out and replace it with first-launch lists of permissions, with toggles for each. This app 'Zoom' wants "Record the screen, microphone, camera." Then you're done and you don't have to keep searching for it in little lists and relaunching it.
Tried some little throwaway app and realized you don't need it? Sucks for you. It added itself to your login items and it'll start up in the background every single time you turn on your computer. And it won't even tell you. Thought you deleted the app from your Applications folder? If you didn't check your login items, there's probably some little script that deeply installed itself and it'll reinstall it in the background during your next startup.
Adobe is the fucking worst with this. Their Creative Cloud spyware keeps enabling itself and reinstalling itself so long as you use photoshop. And it'll constantly find ways to turn itself back on. Steam also adds itself to login items, which is fucking annoying because you'll reboot and be hit in the face with game ads. At least it respects your decision when you turn it off, but login items should be opt in, never opt out.
$ brew uninstall --zap aerospace
For previews, Apple could provide an API for this very common task. The OS can provide the images, and they could be sampled at refresh rate that makes it unusable for arbitrary recording.
For key chords, they could repurpose the emoji key, which is currently not available for external binding, to effectively allow capture only following that magic sequence. The OS should manage this centrally, allowing a program to define its commands and then delivering only the command without the specific associated keys presses. We get the benefit of centralized management with deconfliction, too, which is a real pain on macos as it stands.
I don't know if these solve every problem, but they solve some. There are probably better ways. Apple has plenty of smart programmers. The product team needs to let them solve the problems that they surely know bother their professional users.
There might be some way to design a system from the ground up to avoid this problem (some kind of declarative, capability-based security?), but retrofitting that onto an existing behemoth of a system does not really work.
But it is funny to see the daily barrage of permission prompts fly through when macOS made an entire ad ridiculing Vista for half the popups and permissions macOS requires these days.
As nerds, do we have a higher capacity to fix a mess than a grandma? Sure, probably, but that doesn't mean that we don't make messes.
But do that and the very next thing that happens when you try to open a browser or a link in an email?
"Your browser has been changed from Safari to Chrome. Would you like to use Safari or keep using Chrome?" and for a little salt, the default is "Use Safari".
I'm not sure if it's what you're asking for, but you can disable SIP:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/disabling...
At some point Apple realized the "power user" market was too small, and they were better off treating all of their users like idiots. And that's when I left.
Even though a bunch of the responses are "well you don't want a keylogger" when the first solutions I can think of are also (potential) keyloggers. :)
As a self proclaimed complete nerd I expect you to be insufferable about this—lo and behold...
Let’s not pretend these security practices have no use, please. This “I’m such a greybeard, screw modernity” playacting is so tiresome it’s not even quaint any longer.
csrutil disable
nvram boot-args="amfi_get_out_of_my_way=0x1"
I really wouldn't recommend doing either, but you do you.
The grid is good, but even better is the instant virtual display switching.
Nowhere is the death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts annoyance of modern macOS worse than having to hit Ctrl→→→→→→→ and suffer those repeated animations, over and over.
I freaking don't. One time was plenty. I don't want any animation. And the "reduce animation" feature's implementation is a slap in the face: all the delay -- that part is non-negotiable apparently -- but with blurry crossfades instead.
How does a company with infinite resources and talented designers come up with shit like that??
I've been using Instant Space Switcher (which got a small callout in tfa) as a targeted fix for this, and it's lifechanging
Here's the link if anyone is curious: https://github.com/jurplel/InstantSpaceSwitcher
Personally, I only open one app per desktop and just use Command-Tab. If you hold Command after Command-Tab, you can select an app with having to cycle through all of them.
So what benefit do you get from multiple desktops?
Multitasking and context switching has been increasing for years, instant messaging boosted them again, and agent-based workflows are only going to push further in that direction. The OS needs to support that, and it's not an app-level concern: I use the same apps in each of my tasks.
IDEs can help with this of course: they tend to have workspace/project primitives and can restore code and terminal contexts from those. But there's always a bunch of other connected stuff that can't be linked: web pages (some IDEs are starting to manage those too), agents which don't reside in the IDE, relevant chats with colleagues, project management apps and so on.
This is clearly an OS-level concern, not an app-level concern.
Some of the iPad experiments with alternative window organisation looked kind of promising, but they’re just not powerful or intuitive enough IMO.
¹https://blogs.kde.org/2026/01/17/streamline-plasma-with-acti...
While linear window management is clearly not to everyone's taste, I still think it's a valid idea! It was heartening to see this launch and its reception, as I'm actually working on something in the same area right now...
I spent an hour today trying to get it working the way I’d expect and it still does odd things, like after disabling automatic reordering based on usage the order is different when 3 finger swiping previews as opposed to actual windows. The visual order is as expected but the swipe order is not linear.
In Spaces' case, the problem is a combination of an overly rigid model (only two full-height windows per space) and high friction to management (the process of moving full-height windows from one space to another requires multiple steps). Traditional free-form windows are a little better, but it's easy to lose track of them because the overview itself requires two steps to access (open Mission Control, hover the top bar to expand thumbnails). These could have been gradually improved over the past 14 years, but Apple has somewhat frustratingly left these core workspace features to wither on the vine.
I hate that design and what it has done to Gnome.
A grid was so much better.
Some third-party software pretends to restore this functionality, but they do it by repositioning the mouse to simulate a hover, which introduces a delay and doesn't integrate correctly with the animation. Someone wrote a patch that works by disabling SIP and injecting code (https://github.com/briankendall/forceFullDesktopBar), but eventually stopped maintaining it.
A decade later, I doubt anyone at Apple remembers that this bit of user interface used to be good.
Wouldn't it be great to have them named "Design", "Dev", "Productivity", "Games". Or whatever makes sense given your needs, instead of simply desktop #.
I never noticed that behaviour because I only use mission control in full-screen mode. If you swipe up with three (or four) fingers from a full-screen window the previews are visible immediately. I have no idea why we need a different preview for desktop vs full screen however.
The part of this UX that annoys me is the spaces get re-ordered for no apparent reason. I usually have a few IDE windows open and it's tiring to have to double-check the window hasn't moved.
Previews are also visible immediately if you set Mission Control as a hot-corner action. In never see the title-only spaces — i forgot it even did that until this discussion.
I also wish I could name the Spaces. "Desktop N" is pretty useless.
That paired with multiple desktops does the trick for me! Highly reccommend (not sure if it's okay to share URLs? sorry in case it's not):
Two decades ago was 2006. I have the same desktop experience today as I had two decades ago (Fvwm2) and have had the grid virtual desktop layout this author misses so much for the entire time via the Fvwm2 (and Fvwm before that) virtual desktops feature. One of the reasons I switched to Fvwm (I no longer remember when, but sometime in the mid to late 1990's) was the grid virtual desktops feature. So I've had gridded virtual desktops for longer than twenty years. Fvwm2's configuration has been tweaked and adjusted slightly along the way, but at no time did a corporate designer decide that I no longer should have a feature I had previously been using.
Proprietary software does not have your interests at heart, it has its stock price or next quarters sales numbers at heart, nothing more.
You never ever had a single software change its workflow?
The great Gnome 3 rollout did this for me... to be fair I guess that was a decision of the distributions, but it was in concert with the developers who decided to make a hard changeover, EOL the gnome 2 line there and then, and (deliberately?) scupper the possibility of installing both 2 and 3 on the same system.
Either way it sucked and that pushed me to Xfce, which I still use on linux. But it goes to show it can happen in FOSS.
Ironically, I think the reason they took it away was to help with fullscreen macOS apps, which are a garbage anti-feature it doesn’t seem like anybody uses. Long live the grid!
Also, everything has excessive padding now. Modern Windows control panel UIs often feel like a multicolumn wall of text with lots of empty space and a few switches dropped in, and to fit the same amount if options as the older UI they had to either hide some toggles because "known needs them anymore" or introduce extra intermediary navigation steps. As a result the new Control Panel feels bloated and less useful.
There's a lot of lip service paid to each, but not a lot of real consideration for them, because that's not what will win in a portfolio at interview or in a deck for your leadership. We end up strongly self-selecting against those things.
My current "WM workflow"/window management keyboard shortcuts is:
neovim → tmux → Ghostty → Rectangle → OS
so moving to the left window/pane is (depending on the "nesting level"):
ctrl+h, ctrl+a + {number}, cmd + [, option-ctrl-left, ??
A global fzf / rectangle / alfred shortcut for all "windows and panes" would be great.
Unfortunately, at this stage, my overthinking/poor ux induced psychosis reached the point where I control Claude using voice and a Playdate console with a crank and I'm day dreaming about just looking at the pane I need and making a click sound with my mouth to select it (like Neddy in Adventure time).
God this is so recognizable, it's truly at my lowest moments that I decide I need a new terminal emulator and spend 6 hours in a brew install rabbit hole. The worst thing is that I'm still using Warp of all things
alttab.app recently went paid, but it'll do that
Just checked their site, but I don't see "jump to a tmux pane / browser tab" in the features there...
It’s not the same, per se, but it’s just … mature. It’s mature because it’s a nice mix of « it’s old and boring » + they took inspiration from everything that worked on macOS and Windows and stole it. They never removed features for any bullshit marketing reasons.
It’s not perfect : there are things that I like better on macOS (but they tend to be very rare tbh) or even Gnome or whatever I’m trying nowadays (it’s Niri!)… but I do think KDE is the best overall when it comes to respecting its user, giving him nice and clean defaults while giving them enough options to work however they like to.
And yes, that includes virtual desktops arranged in a custom grid. It’s not the default but the option is right there waiting for you to enable it if you want it.
Something like quickshell-overview feels so smooth and delicious compared to the painful use of virtual desktops on Windows/MacOS.
The next CEO of Apple is someone that cares about quality. (As evidenced by how good the hardware is)
I think it's important "what quality" they care about. Tim Cook cared about supply chain quality, and honestly he did an amazing job, but he didn't care much about software, vision of Apple, etc.
[1] to be clear, I stipulate Cook is indeed the world champion of Number Go Up. Nobody Number Goed Up more than Cook did. For Ternus to do Number Go Up to the same multiplier Cook did, I think he'd have to acquire all the other companies in the world.
- Each monitor has own grid?
- The VD 'spans' the pair of monitors?
- VDs only on one monitor?
- The monitors form a fixed 'window' into the grid?
- Something else?
It works well for me, but as you can see from the comments everyone is different :)
Sadly wm in MacOS is like notifications on iOS: with enough time you get used to the unproductive mess they are, but you'll be missing out on better solutions. And since probably all MacOS devs are using Mac, they won't see/understand other (better) approaches.
With the app "AltTab" I can at least switch between my apps without using the mouse and with raycast I can position windows, but it is painful how much slower switching and positioning things in MacOS is, than in any tiling window manager.
It's too bad we can't mix and match parts of releases as desired. If I could have OS X 10.9 Mavericks (last Aqua release) with 10.6 Spaces and modern macOS integration features (Continuity, etc) I'd be in heaven.
The issue for me is how buggy the modern features are. Continuity with the clipboard: sometimes I copy text on my phone, and it just never pastes on my Mac. Why? No idea. It's not even like text is a complex format. It just... never pastes.
Or this morning I spent ages trying to connect to my phone's personal hotspot. It was a foot away on the table. It kept saying it could not connect. Turn things off, turn them on again, turn off, on again... I eventually moved to where I have wifi. It's a nice day today and I wanted to be outside. Annoying.
And repeated grinding failures like this form a slow, slow, growth of real frustration and annoyance with Apple. I know I don't hold the same attitude to them these days that I used to, and I think it's the whole set of changes since they dropped Aqua. It's not a good OS any more.
The real issue is how the ORDER of the desktops changes all the time which messes with that spatial memory and kills a lot of the productivity improvements. A consistent straight line would still be worse than a grid, but still MUCH better than the current situation.
I remember the 2x2 grid in Ubuntu 12 being the best desktop UI I had ever used.
The current Gnome workspaces with a single row are a huge step backwards in terms of productivity. It must be easier for beginners, but it frustrates me every single day.
This is depressing. I've been out of the field since Covid (after decade_s of work) and basically have to get back to work since kitty is gone, but this is definitely what I signed up for when I started on this career in software engineering.
If I'm gonna be reviewing all day, I'd rather manage humans rather than LLMs. How is it affecting managing engineering teams?
I think the point is:
Pre-LLM: 1. think, 2. write code & check, 3. review.
LLM: 1. think, 2. write prompt, <LLM writes code quickly>, 3. review.
If the thing that you enjoy about programming is writing code, you can have the LLM write code in the style you like. If you enjoyed getting to explore and understand a system, an LLM can help you do that quicker, too.
"Use LLM without thinking" won't get you substantially useful results.
Like what competitive player uses scroll wheel weapon switching in Quakelike games? Nobody
If you can, switch to Linux, choose the distro you like, and help make it better, in UI and whatnot.
But this has been pretty nice for me.
It’s also open source if you want to customize it for your own preferences (pinned apps, custom keybinds, etc)
Using that app, if I cmd+tab from one space to another, will I see 0 (and I mean zero) animation whatsoever? The exact same behaviour as if I were switching between two apps on the same space? Because that's what I need to go anywhere near Spaces, and that's what seems impossible.
Also this is basically a replacement for the zombie TotalSpaces 3
The joke, of course, is that I imagine a good 75% of the reviews would be "it's shit."
Honestly, people have been complaining about Apple's decision on every semi-Apple-related forum forever. Still didn't prevent them from rolling out Liquid Glass. Not sure another one would do the job
Hooo damn TextMate snippets, that brings back memories. Hard to convey how hyped I was to use these. That is also what drove me to Mac at that time. I remember writing hundreds of those snippets for every possible C++ construct, and <tab> to fill in variable name, type, loop counters and so on.
One major issue is that the Dock cannot filter apps between Spaces, so I built boringBar[0] for this. It frees up real estate taken up by the Dock and makes it much easier to figure out what goes where.
I do understand the need for an app switcher on the Mac, though. It has the same problem I faced: it is very app-centric rather than window-centric. Switching between windows is nigh impossible on a Mac without third-party apps, unless you like using the three-finger swipe up gesture. I have never been able to switch quickly between windows using Mission Control.
What would be most helpful for my workflow is something slightly different. I need to be able to launch specific browser profiles/windows in these workspaces. One space with all of the tabs for project X, another space with all of the tabs for project Y, and then another with all of the tabs for project Z. These might be in different browser profiles.
I don't see how I can achieve this under the common per-app paradigm of macOS space organizers unless macOS has some notion of Windows/Linux style shortcuts whereby command line arguments can specify the exact things that need to be in the browser window.
I've used Lemon Squeezy a couple years back, but after the acquisition I feel they've gone downhill. It's been a month since I submitted my product for review and I'm still waiting.
Stripe also has a MoR service now, I was able to set it up and ready to sell in a few hours
Many parts of the LLM care about UX, and you unlock it with your feedback loop, which is a good way to unlock it but one of many ways.
One way to show that LLMs care about UX is to have one tutor you about UX. If they weren't trained to care about it, they couldn't do a decent job. But I've asked dozens of questions about UX to LLMs and they have a great deal of insight.
Anyway to see what all the fuss is about I've installed Gridlion but… how can I move an app to another space?
I was expecting to be able use to a keystroke to "flick" an app up/down/left/right onto another space.
This is a M1 macbook air. I really want to try this.
Not the same as full spaces, but it gives the same vibe of always having a particular app on a particular hotkey.
I try to limit my multi-tasking though, so I can imagine where full spaces would be useful.
A list ordering is the most primitive and least memorable layout because lists sort arbitrarily and alphabetical listing of capabilities are not intuitive.
But the weirdness only grows from here:
For example, Photos shows library recents bottom to top, but pick-photo from library shows recents top to bottom
Portrait orientation puts "Done" on one end, landscape puts it on the other.
"Done" can be implied by a return tap or involve a "done" tap.
Some controls tap, some slide and some do both.
Release to release, the formats move around.
Format varies between apps & modes.
Mystery meat abounds
Holding the device a certain way causes spastic mode changes, which vary release to release.
Almost any way you touch the device instigates an action or mode change and some controls have 3+ levels of function:
WTF does the "power" button do?
- stand-by - camera shutter - emergency SOS vs shutdown - arbitrary mode change depending on accessibility setting
Bugs and features overlap.
The UI is never baked, ever more modal...
exhausting
Plus the wharfs were cool, imo.
The ones who do want this flexibility is also close to zero (I’m in the demographic, so not zero). Kill “Mission Control” / “Spaces”, “Stage Manager”, free up system resources and unfreeze some APIs. Win-win, Mr Turnis.
I never had to think about where things were, I didn't feel constrained on my tiny screen with no external monitoring, things were good. And now it's been over a decade and while I've "replaced" spaces with multiple external monitors I still think about it from time to time.
I watch people use (fight) the current "spaces" and I just shake my head thinking of what we lost and how Fisher-Price the new version is. Spaces used to be a power tool, now it's a shadow of its former self IMHO.
[0] Single row spaces is a joke, I won't use it
GridLion is an excellent name
60 workspaces, in a 12x5 grid. You'll never catch me driving an Apple!