Comment by basisword 6 hours ago
The biggest surprise to me from this whole beta period is that a significant number of people used Launchpad. I have absolutely zero idea why when Spotlight has existed for more than 20 years. Why would you ever want to click and page through a giant iPhone screen on a desktop/laptop computer?
If you have multiple ways to do something on a computer/phone, some relatively large percentage of people will fumble around until they figure out a way to do it - and then do it that way forever.
So if someone accidentally triggered Launchpad and realized they could see their apps, they might use that forever (not knowing you can put your Applications folder in your Dock and use it as a start menu lol).
Exactly this. Most of the time I use spotlight like everyone else.
Launchpad is an easy gesture with the trackpad (pinch with thumb and three fingers), then type to filter and return to launch. I got used to it for stuff I don't keep in the dock (which is a lot, since I have the dock on the side and only a few things in it).
I suppose Spotlight is OK as a substitute: COMMAND-SPACE, then type to filter and return to launch. It's a little more clunky (as the search results take a few milliseconds to be assembled) but it'll work.
What feels breaking there is when you pinch to open launchpad you are not on home row, so typing to filter is inferior to swiping and clicking large targets.
Cmd+space to open spotlight already worked and typing was the best option for that use case.
I do like the new spotlight experience but this feels like losing a gesture, and it does not spark joy scrolling through the app list.
What if you forgot the name of the app?
What if you rely on groupings to remember what you have installed for a given activity?
What if you want a quick visual overview of what is available to you?
What if you like or even prefer launchpad?
What if you install tons of tiny little apps that have a specific, if infrequently used, purpose?
What if you enjoy a little app gardening?
What if you don't like command-prompt style interactions?
What if you see value in having more than one way to do something?
What if you have 20+ years of muscle memory established?
What if the only thing you know prior is how to use your iphone?
And on another note, what is it with tech people lacking the ability to see how other types of people may want to use the hardware they paid for with their hard earned dollars? I am so sick of this awful perspective of, "everybody in the world must be exactly like me"
> click and page through a giant iPhone screen
1. Launchpad filters based on what you type. You don't have to page through things 2. As soon as you type anything, the first hit is selected and the return key launches it 3. Launchpad shows nothing but apps. As an app launcher, it's fantastic.
If Launchpad is gone I'm going to be sad.
Launchpad is not actually gone: it's now a sub-unit of Spotlight.
I still have an M1 Macbook Pro with touch strip, and my Launchpad touch strip button still works, bringing up Spotlight but with a predicate that makes it search only ./Applications and ~/Applications.
the app doesn't appear in spotlight until it's indexed.
also spotlight hogs resources indexing stuff all the time, completely pointless when you just want a list of apps
It's not the mode so much as the comparative efficiency. In a handful of keystrokes you can launch a commonly used app in under a second. Any type of visual browsing mode is going to take an order of magnitude more time/effort.
For people who never work with things like terminals, sure. For fellow devs, it's an unusual choice unless they routinely cycle through irregularly used apps w/ hard to remember names.
As a fellow dev, command line shit is a pain in the ass sometimes. I grew up as a Windows kid, visual browsing for stuff is sometimes the only way to fly. I absolutely loathe the amount of brute-force memorization that is required to operate a command-line efficiently. It took YEARS to memorize simple linux shit
Everyone talks about how CLI is supposedly way more efficient. It is way more efficient to THEM. And now we are stuck in a hell where a good deal of functionality is only accessible if you want and are able to memorize the arcane nonsense that are command names, or the design-by-committee naming choices of moronic PMs who can't stop lapping up whatever bullshit marketing tells them to
I click one icon, then another. It takes say 2s. Typing two letters and pressing enter would take 10x faster, so 0.2s. Given that I delegated work to AI agents, that’s 1.8s less of waiting :))
I don't use Launchpad but I can say, for me, Spotlight sucks! It decides at random times not to complete. I have it set to show apps only. I don't want it to find other things. But quite often I'll press Cmd-Space and type something and it won't find it. For example I just tried "pho" and it did not show Photoshop (which is on my system) but did show stuff completely unrelated to apps and I double checked, I only have apps selected in the Spotlight Search Results section in settings.