For the past few days, for the first time, I’ve seriously tried MacOS and I became distinctly aware that anyone who calls Gnome similar to MacOS has never used MacOS.
If you’re just looking at screenshots, Gnome and MacOS do bear a resemblance. Gnome’s Dash looks similar to the Dock; Gnome’s app launcher looks similar to Launchpad; Gnome’s top panel looks similar to the menu bar.
But actually using each desktop, the UX, design philosophy, idealogy, and feel is miles apart. I think the four biggest differences are
- No menu bar
- Minimizing distractions, so no dock
- Interacting with windows is closer to Windows and KDE (fullscreening windows keeps them in same workspace, can interact with a window’s content without first clicking to focus it)
- Managing open apps is closer to Windows and KDE (apps actually close when you hit “x”, with few exceptions, only open apps and favorited apps are in the dash)
There are people that literally can’t tell the difference of any of these, and will struggle to use them confusedly while not realizing the os is entirely different, so it doesn’t seem that weird to me. Back when I worked the self checkouts in a store, I even saw five different people try to put their items in to the screen. At least a couple of levels below thinking the web browser is the operating system.