> Using MacOS on it feels like I have a ferrari with square wheels.
Indeed macOS is the weakest part when working on Apple Silicon.
Sure it’s quite pretty but it stumbles over itself with terrible quality of life features. macOS looks modern but feels around ten years behind other desktops now.
Apple love to talk about how professionals and power users can get so much work done with the amazing Apple Silicon but ignore the fact window management is garbage. The UI still frequently stutters/judders when just resizing a window. There is no true virtual desktop management. Etc.
I do love macOS but Windows and Linux desktop environments are evolving much faster with excellent quality of life and productivity improvements that macOS badly needs but Apple ignore or worse over engineer other “solutions” such as Stage Manager.
Honestly who at Apple signed off on Stage Manager before basic window snapping?!
Does nobody at Apple have an ultrawide monitor? macOS is painful to work with on anything not 16:9 (or :10).
It's funny, I love Stage Manager. I was worried about what I'd do after the Ventura upgrade because TotalSpaces is on life support, and so there was a chance it might stop working and I'd have to go back to 1-dimensional spaces after relying on two-dimensional spaces, and various 2D window manager workspace things, for many years.
But Stage Manager is what I actually wanted all along: let me group windows together, and then when I switch to one of them, bring the others along.
For my typical workday I have my "slack, mail, mastodon" stage, a stage with a couple of browser windows, a stage with VScode and a couple of terminal windows, a stage with Obsidian and Omnifocus, and then ad-hoc stages as I need them. I add a terminal window to stages as I need.
I end up with the same benefits of two-dimensional TotalSpaces spaces, without having to care about the spaces' relative positions anymore! When I cmd-tab to VScode, I get my VScode "stuff", and when I cmd-tab to slack or mail, I get that "stuff", and so on. I wish I could make the transition faster, but with "Reduce Motion" turned on to skip the animation, it's not so bad.
I am glad you find it useful. You may not have heard of the app rcmd before but it works nicely with Stage Manager. Might be worth checking out as I found it make Stage Manager a lot more functional. https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd/
It really is awful isn't it. Why anyone thought a second dock on the side of the screen would make multitasking easier I have no idea. I think they did it just to be different.
I believe the reason they don't bring window snapping and better overall window management to macOS is because it is something Windows and every Linux DE does and has done for years so they will be seen as copying and being "late".
One of the good things about the changes in Windows 11 is the new snap assistant that pops out at the top of the screen when you move a window. It's simple and clear how to use it and makes sense visible only when appropriate.
All I can say is that I'm flabbergasted by this statement. Expose was lightyears ahead of Windows window management at the time (10.4!), and it took Microsoft until Windows 10 to include it in Windows (same for virtual desktop functionality).
> no true virtual desktop management
Not sure what you consider "true" virtual desktops; OS X 10.5 had classic workspaces with Spaces; Mission control later localized workspaces to monitors. Both approaches have their pros and cons.
What exactly is it that has Windows 10 years ahead of MacOS in window management?
> before basic window snapping
I can snap two windows side by side in a fullscreen split (the most common use case for snapping). I would certainly call that "basic window snapping".
> Does nobody at Apple have an ultrawide monitor? macOS is painful to work with on anything not 16:9 (or :10).
I don't know. They don't sell any, right? Apple designs their user experience for their own hardware. It's just table stakes with them.
tl;dr -- these are your opinions. They differ from those of others. That's how Apple can ignore the fact that their window management is "garbage" --- they likely don't see it that way.
Exactly, you need a third-party tool for better management via snapping and sensible hotkeys.
Windows, Gnome, KDE, etc. have all these things for years. Perhaps even over a decade by now?
Microsoft even go one further with Fancy Zones in their PowerToys pack which is fantastic on very large/wide monitors.
I wish Apple would add the functionality of apps like Rectangle/Magnet/Fancy Zones with some additional options such as layouts. That would be far more useful than whatever they were trying to achieve with Stage Manager on macOS.
Indeed macOS is the weakest part when working on Apple Silicon.
Sure it’s quite pretty but it stumbles over itself with terrible quality of life features. macOS looks modern but feels around ten years behind other desktops now.
Apple love to talk about how professionals and power users can get so much work done with the amazing Apple Silicon but ignore the fact window management is garbage. The UI still frequently stutters/judders when just resizing a window. There is no true virtual desktop management. Etc.
I do love macOS but Windows and Linux desktop environments are evolving much faster with excellent quality of life and productivity improvements that macOS badly needs but Apple ignore or worse over engineer other “solutions” such as Stage Manager.
Honestly who at Apple signed off on Stage Manager before basic window snapping?!
Does nobody at Apple have an ultrawide monitor? macOS is painful to work with on anything not 16:9 (or :10).