Recently, I changed jobs. More over, I changed the technologies. Even more - I went to the dark side - I started using MacOS! :)

I can’t say I love the MacOS, but there are things that are just better. What first comes to mind is that the sleep feature works and it works great! You just close the lid and take the MacBook, when you open it - everything is as you left it. I can’t really say I have such good experience with Windows, some apps didn’t start, others - crashed. That may be just my experience, but every notebook I had, didn’t really stood up to the “challenge”.

What I don’t like about the MacBook Pro is the touchbar. It’s not really that bad, but it shouldn’t be a replacement for the Escape key and all the F-buttons. If they fitted the touchbar on top of the top layer of keys - it would be awesome, but currently, you practically you don’t have an Escape key on the notebook keyboard.

Another cool feature is how the windows are handled when you connect external monitor in addition to the internal display - the windows are moved to the screen accordingly (that is to their previous monitor). I don’t think Windows have this feature, but I must admit I haven’t used my Windows notebooks with external monitors. Also, as I stated before, the sleep feature isn’t Windows most well-functioning feature… so it may be that too.

I think the window management is better in MacOS, you can easily snap one window to another. Also, because the title bar is on the top of the screen (not on top of the window as in Windows), you get a more consistent feel for each application. You can easily see all the app’s windows from the Window menu and easily switch (and restore if minimized) between them. You don’t get any nice keyboard shortcuts out-of-the-box, but you can install Spectacle.

Things I don’t really like are the shortcuts in the MacOS, but I think I am getting used to them. The thing that most bug me was the Ctrl key, more specifically - you don’t copy/paste with Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V (I am developer, I do this thing twice a minute… at least!). It may be related with the interrupt command in command-line environments, so Apple decided to use the Cmd+C instead. Another bugger is the Enter key, it doesn’t actually opens a file/directory, but it just renames them.

Finder:

  • Cmd+Up Arrow - Go to the parent directory.
  • Cmd+Down Arrow - Open a directory in Finder.
  • Cmd+Shift+. - Show/hide dot files (e.g. .gitconfig, .ssh).
  • Space - Preview a file, this works for “known” files, but you can install quick look plugins for Finder. If you want to cycle through 10 images, select them and then press space.
  • Cmd+C - Copy a file.
  • Cmd+V - Paste a file.
  • Cmd+Option+V - Paste a file and remove it from source. Yes, you don’t have a cut command, but you can change the operation from copy -> cut when pasting the file in the target directory.
  • Cmd+Delete - Delete a file.

MacOS:

  • Cmd+` - Cycle through non-minimized windows of the current app.
  • Command+Shift+4 - Take a screenshot and save it to a file (you can press Space and select an active app).
  • Command+Ctrl+Shift+4 - Take a screenshot and copy it to clipboard.
  • Delete - Backspace in Windows.
  • Fn+Delete - Delete in Windows.
  • Cmd+, - Open the current app preferences (works for most of the apps).
  • Option-Left Arrow - go to the beginning of a word.
  • Option-Right Arrow - go to the end of a word.
  • Cmd-Left Arrow - go to the beginning of a line (aka Home button in Windows).
  • Cmd-Right Arrow - go the the end of a line (aka End button in Windows).

I am still getting used to the MacOS, but I think there is SOME method to Apple’s madness. I can get the job done, but sometimes I am trying to figure something out that I miss from Windows and I end up losing the 1-2 hours researching (e.g. switching languages with Ctrl+Shift, but that would be another post).