I get the impression that MacOS is kind of like Gnome in that they aren't really designed with multitasking in mind. On MacOS, the green button in the corner of the window expands the app to fullscreen. Opening an app in Gnome likewise goes fullscreen.
There are some workflows where that would be OK, but to do my job I have to be in and out of multiple windows constantly. I gave up on Gnome when I was trying to find one of 5 different terminal windows in the exploded window view and it was clear that they'd rather I cycled through them all one at a time instead of what I do on XFCE which is scroll up on the terminal icon in my dock, which quickly cycles through them and brings them to focus.
Personal preference for finesse will always differ so I tend to focus more on the usability aspect of it and accept any finesse that comes along for the ride as a kind of luxury experience lol
It’s designed to multitask, just not in the Win9X-ish style that most people are accustomed to at this point. There are plenty of Mac users who juggle tasks users all day long without issue.
It’s designed around letting windows that are sized to fit content overlap and be at least partially visible if they’re relevant in any way. If there gets to be too many windows to manage (which happens in other desktop environments too; the usability of Windows alt-tab for instance scales incredibly badly as the number of open windows increases), that’s when you start tossing windows into another virtual desktop (“space” in Mac nomenclature), perhaps organizing windows into desktops based on task.
To opt out of fullscreen on the green button, hold down Option/Alt before clicking it. The behavior of the button in that situation is defined by the developer of the program you’re using though so YMMV. Maximizing windows is possible by double-clicking their titlebars, except in Electron apps that have replaced the system titlebar with a fake one that’s missing functionality.
As for GNOME, I’d say it compares to iPadOS much more closely than macOS due to missing or oversimplified functionality. It feels like it’s more oriented towards tablets and small laptops than desktops or even midsize-to-large laptops.
Thanks for the tips :) I believe you pout into words the reason I don't like GNOME - it fell victim to "let's make it touchscreen friendly" at the expense of the way people have been using computers for a long time. Again, it has uses (iPads are perfectly functional and easy to use) but you feel the limitations a lot more when you try to do more advanced things.
My opinion that MacOS wasn't "designed" for multitasking is heavily biased by how I multitask (as you mentioned it's the Win9x style, stemming from using Windows for my formative computing years) so I am not trying to discount MacOS at all - I use it for my music production because Core Audio is rock solid. But then, that's a relatively singular task and as a result I treat it as though its only job is running Ableton at the time.
Multitasking is also different now, since so much of what we do is in the browser anyway.
There are some workflows where that would be OK, but to do my job I have to be in and out of multiple windows constantly. I gave up on Gnome when I was trying to find one of 5 different terminal windows in the exploded window view and it was clear that they'd rather I cycled through them all one at a time instead of what I do on XFCE which is scroll up on the terminal icon in my dock, which quickly cycles through them and brings them to focus.
Personal preference for finesse will always differ so I tend to focus more on the usability aspect of it and accept any finesse that comes along for the ride as a kind of luxury experience lol