Do multiple displays work properly in ML?

[KnightWRX]

interesting findings. i haven't tested either, but i thought i might have read somewhere that either aperture or final cut X used the second monitor for a full screen preview of whatever you're working on in full screen mode. so there are certainly times when it could be helpful, but i'd still love to see an overhaul someday of desktops on a per monitor basis. there's probably downsides i'm not thinking of, but i'd be curious to try a mockup to see how it feels. do any other OS's treat secondary monitor desktops totally independently from primary monitor desktops?

Don't know about that, Windows doesn't really have a "virtual desktop" implementation (since they scrapped the one they had for Windows XP, which never shipped with the OS anyhow) and Linux' Xinerama stuff has always seemed pretty broken to me anyhow. So about the only other thing I've used was KDE 3.x + nVidia's multi-monitor support in their proprietary driver on SuSE (around back in 2003) and since there wasn't anything akin to Lion style "full screen apps" in KDE, well, I couldn't say what it does.

 

[pmz]

I greatly dislike Lion's handling of Full Screen + Multiple Monitors....but I honestly can't say what a better implementation would be....

Assuming Apple figures this out, what would they do different? In Full Screen mode, both Displays would be a full screen app? swiping would bring whats on the left screen to the right, and whats next on to the left? until you reach the desktop...in which case bringing that all the way right puts dashboard on the left?

That wouldn't be terrible, but it wouldn't be great either.

 

[Blipp]

I greatly dislike Lion's handling of Full Screen + Multiple Monitors....but I honestly can't say what a better implementation would be....

Assuming Apple figures this out, what would they do different? In Full Screen mode, both Displays would be a full screen app? swiping would bring whats on the left screen to the right, and whats next on to the left? until you reach the desktop...in which case bringing that all the way right puts dashboard on the left?

That wouldn't be terrible, but it wouldn't be great either.

I think the best solution is one that's filled with options. Give the user the option to choose how they would like their full-screen apps to behave. If you want to leave the second display usable as your desktop, make it a second fullscreen app, choose how you would like to swipe between the apps, and so on. Options are king, the setup they have now is just all together too limiting.

 

[pmz]

I think the best solution is one that's filled with options. Give the user the option to choose how they would like their full-screen apps to behave. If you want to leave the second display usable as your desktop, make it a second fullscreen app, choose how you would like to swipe between the apps, and so on. Options are king, the setup they have now is just all together too limiting.

Options are not king. Apple has never pushed successful stuff loaded with options.

Apple does better with coming up with THE solution, and making it the only option. This tells people, "This is how it works, this is how it looks, and its great."

Windows does a great job of saying to customers, "Here's our terrible defaults, but you can change whatever you want."

Most people won't change anything, nor have any desire too. This is part of what Apple means by "it just works". They have the best solution, and its the default.

 

[Newfiebill]

Anyone know what update is needed to get 10.8 to Airplay?

I'm guessing I need to get some developer update for AppleTV?

Yes you need to update the ATV to 5.1 Beta....

 

[Blipp]

Options are not king. Apple has never pushed successful stuff loaded with options.

Apple does better with coming up with THE solution, and making it the only option. This tells people, "This is how it works, this is how it looks, and its great."

Windows does a great job of saying to customers, "Here's our terrible defaults, but you can change whatever you want."

Most people won't change anything, nor have any desire too. This is part of what Apple means by "it just works". They have the best solution, and its the default.

I don't really disagree with anything you've said I guess. Apple does leave some limited scope for options such as with Gesture controls but they are certainly limited in your choices. I just think there are a lot of very useful and powerful things that could be done with multi-display support and fullscreen apps that are totally being squandered. They sold fullscreen apps as a selling point of Lion but it feels unfinished. Disabling the second display is not an "it just works" solution.

 

[newagemac]

Options are not king. Apple has never pushed successful stuff loaded with options.

Apple does better with coming up with THE solution, and making it the only option. This tells people, "This is how it works, this is how it looks, and its great."

Windows does a great job of saying to customers, "Here's our terrible defaults, but you can change whatever you want."

Most people won't change anything, nor have any desire too. This is part of what Apple means by "it just works". They have the best solution, and its the default.

This is an extremely important distinction and can't be stated enough. The real benefit is that once a UI solution is clearly defined, Apple and developers can target that particular solution within their applications. And this even extends to hardware choices for users.

It just may be that the new paradigm means having one huge monitor is better than having 2 smaller monitors. I sort of came to that conclusion recently that one large monitor is better for my workflow anyway. Before, I was big believer in dual monitors. But that was before Adobe introduced the "Application Frame" UI concept on the Mac throughout CS4. Since you could now have tabs side by side within the app and with panels all self contained, it made more sense to use a single large monitor.

I ended up spending less time arranging and organizing stuff. And everything I was working on was always directly in my line of sight. No more constant looking back and forth from one monitor to the other. It also helped tremendously that I switched from using Photoshop and Illustrator for design to using Adobe's Fireworks that integrate both bitmap and vector into one application. Besides the fact that Fireworks is more suited for web design, this also reduced the need to switch back and forth to multiple applications on different monitors.

Maybe it's time more developers integrate commonly used tools directly into their apps. For instance, writing apps should integrate a webkit browser directly into the app side by side with the writing interface so that your research and writing are within one app.

I can see things moving this way. We're not there yet though.

 

[TheGdog]

I greatly dislike Lion's handling of Full Screen + Multiple Monitors....but I honestly can't say what a better implementation would be....

Assuming Apple figures this out, what would they do different? In Full Screen mode, both Displays would be a full screen app? swiping would bring whats on the left screen to the right, and whats next on to the left? until you reach the desktop...in which case bringing that all the way right puts dashboard on the left?

That wouldn't be terrible, but it wouldn't be great either.

The problem with that is the orientation of the monitors. You can position monitors on top of each other, not just side by side. You would have to do away with that option. IMO, apple is moving away from the multiple monitor approach. I personally don't mind since I use a laptop. I would really like the ability to use a full screen application on an external monitor however.

Bottom line, if you have an dual monitor setup the screens are probably big enough that you don't need to make things full screen. Dual monitor support is not broken in lion/ML, it works the same as always. Just don't use fullscreen.

 

[pmz]

I don't really disagree with anything you've said I guess. Apple does leave some limited scope for options such as with Gesture controls but they are certainly limited in your choices. I just think there are a lot of very useful and powerful things that could be done with multi-display support and fullscreen apps that are totally being squandered. They sold fullscreen apps as a selling point of Lion but it feels unfinished. Disabling the second display is not an "it just works" solution.

It's a choice they made for one reason or another. I'm positive that at least a few people on the software development team took a look at dual screens/full screen apps, saw the implementation, and said, "that looks f&$@$&g stupid"

While others said, "yes, but we don't care so much dual screen support to build a whole new mode/framework for full screen apps....at least not today."

Apple figures most people with external monitors are hooking up small 13" notebooks to large 20-30" monitors, and probably closing the lid. You can't switch back and forth between those size displays without greatly hurting your eyes.

They also prolly figure if you have a 27" iMac and a 27" Tb display...you probably don't need the extra inch gained from going full screen...even though that's hardly the point.

 

[unixperience]

does anyone know how clamshell works? is it the same as lion? SO

-if you are in clamshell and open the notebook, the notebook display immediately turns on? (in 10.6 you had to do detect display first, which is nice because then you can still use the mouse and keyboard of the notebook, even with the internal screen off)

-if you close the screen while a second monitor is plugged in, it automatically enters clamshell mode?

 

[Gemütlichkeit]

Seems like such an easy thing to incorporate.

Full screen apps prioritize to 2nd monitor and so on.

 

[haravikk]

Actually, on this topic I'm curious to know what kind of options are available with Notification Centre. Specifically, can I choose to place it on a different monitor?

If so, and it's placed on a different screen, does it still appear when using a fullscreen app? i.e - does it appear over the paper-textured "blank" surface?

 

[TheGdog]

Actually, on this topic I'm curious to know what kind of options are available with Notification Centre. Specifically, can I choose to place it on a different monitor?

If so, and it's placed on a different screen, does it still appear when using a fullscreen app? i.e - does it appear over the paper-textured "blank" surface?

My guess is that it will only show up on the primary screen, because the button for it is on the menu bar.

 

[Blipp]

My guess is that it will only show up on the primary screen, because the button for it is on the menu bar.

This is correct. It appears to be locked to the menubar and will appear on whichever display you have set as the primary regardless of whether you are fullscreening an app or not.

 

[DeckMan]

does anyone know how clamshell works? is it the same as lion?

If you're referring to the possibility (before Lion) to run the MacBook in clamshell mode, apparently that's still possible if you find the open/closed sensor and put a fridge magnet on it.

I'm sure there's a precise description somewhere on Google, or maybe even in this forum.

 

[yojitani]

I really hope they change this behavior in Lion before Mountain Lion comes out. Full screen is beneficial for all sorts of reasons. The functionality is broken with this single monitor implementation if you consider the function of fullscreen mode to be to increase document visibility and decrease visual clutter. For example, showing a pdf on a projector in fullscreen mode greatly increases the visible area of the pdf - excellent for your audience, but terrible for you if you have notes on the computer that the audience doesn't need to see. I use fullscreen mode a lot for wordprocessing, but often need another source open (a pdf, an image, an Arsenal game ) on a separate screen - well, I need it open if I want fullscreen to work in the way it should (or the way I understand it should. Thankfully, MS Word has not yet implemented Lion fullscreen. I complained about the lack of an update until I realized this benefit!

 

[Crzyrio]

I really hope they change this behavior in Lion before Mountain Lion comes out. Full screen is beneficial for all sorts of reasons. The functionality is broken with this single monitor implementation if you consider the function of fullscreen mode to be to increase document visibility and decrease visual clutter. For example, showing a pdf on a projector in fullscreen mode greatly increases the visible area of the pdf - excellent for your audience, but terrible for you if you have notes on the computer that the audience doesn't need to see. I use fullscreen mode a lot for wordprocessing, but often need another source open (a pdf, an image, an Arsenal game ) on a separate screen - well, I need it open if I want fullscreen to work in the way it should (or the way I understand it should. Thankfully, MS Word has not yet implemented Lion fullscreen. I complained about the lack of an update until I realized this benefit!

This is actually unto developers to implement. And it was a huge let down that Apple did the bare minimum on their part with their Applications.

I believe a developer is able to make use of the 2nd screen when the Application is in full screen. Example :A word processor can be created such that while in full screen all the control panels would show up on the 2nd screen.


EDIT :

And really, if Application developers don't make use of the 2nd monitor, how is it Apple's fault ? I just threw together a full screen apps that can use 2 monitors, as evidenced by these screen shot in about 5 minutes in XCode.

First monitor (main monitor) is the full screen window :

View attachment 325255

Second monitor is showing my HUD Panel :

View attachment 325256

So what's the big deal really ?

 

[yojitani]

This is actually unto developers to implement. And it was a huge let down that Apple did the bare minimum on their part with their Applications.

I believe a developer is able to make use of the 2nd screen when the Application is in full screen. Example :A word processor can be created such that while in full screen all the control panels would show up on the 2nd screen.


EDIT :

But even in the version you are showing, it's not possible to run a second application in that space. It should be possible to designate a separate "desktop" to a separate screen. Why would developers want to spend time writing for a second screen? Sorry, but this just demonstrates to me that Apple got this wrong. It actually worked - i.e. it was not broken - in Spaces.

 

[Blipp]

But even in the version you are showing, it's not possible to run a second application in that space. It should be possible to designate a separate "desktop" to a separate screen. Why would developers want to spend time writing for a second screen? Sorry, but this just demonstrates to me that Apple got this wrong. It actually worked - i.e. it was not broken - in Spaces.

Agreed. I don't understand why the assumed behavior would be that every app wants/needs to use that second display as its own. Sure some apps like FCPX should take over that second monitor when you full screen them but I don't see any reason why I couldn't have Mail full screened on one monitor and an open desktop on the other or even a second full screened app. It just makes so much more sense then designating that second display to just the linen wallpaper.

 

[TheGdog]

Agreed. I don't understand why the assumed behavior would be that every app wants/needs to use that second display as its own. Sure some apps like FCPX should take over that second monitor when you full screen them but I don't see any reason why I couldn't have Mail full screened on one monitor and an open desktop on the other or even a second full screened app. It just makes so much more sense then designating that second display to just the linen wallpaper.

But how would they implement this, especially in mission control?

 

[Blipp]

But how would they implement this, especially in mission control?

I'm not seeing what would be so difficult about it really. Mission Control clearly needs some reworking as well so I'm sure proper support for multiple displays could be built back into it.

I'd be very curious to see what percentage of users work with more than one display. I'd be willing to bet it's a fairly high percentage of MBP owners.

 

[CyBeRino]

It's still as useful as it was in Snow Leopard and before. It's just not "more useful" in Lion. You want to spin it negatively, I just want to put in a reality check. It's the same it always has been.

It's useful until you want to use full-screen on one screen and something else on another.

Which is a very common scenario for media players. And Quicktime Player X is just broken in this regard: you can't put it full-screen on a secondary monitor at all anymore, let alone full-screen while being able to use the second screen for something else.

Also, full-screen being a separate space now means you can't have something small overlaid while still able to watch your media. For instance, cmd-tabbing to your terminal for a short moment to see if something is done compiling or whatever. That now involves moving spaces which means the movie goes out of sight.

Long story short: this behaviour is crap and I should be able to disable it.

 

[Crzyrio]

But even in the version you are showing, it's not possible to run a second application in that space. It should be possible to designate a separate "desktop" to a separate screen. Why would developers want to spend time writing for a second screen? Sorry, but this just demonstrates to me that Apple got this wrong. It actually worked - i.e. it was not broken - in Spaces.

The point of full screen apps is to put everything else behind it and focus on the one app.

If you want to use multiple applications at the same time, just don't full screen it. It isn't that hard. No idea why your complaining about something you don't have to use.

I feel like the introduction of full screen apps is just a stepping stone, and it will be very helpful with applications such as photoshop, pages, word etc, applications that have large number of different editing toolbars.

 

[cosmicjoke]

I greatly dislike Lion's handling of Full Screen + Multiple Monitors....but I honestly can't say what a better implementation would be....

Assuming Apple figures this out, what would they do different? In Full Screen mode, both Displays would be a full screen app? swiping would bring whats on the left screen to the right, and whats next on to the left? until you reach the desktop...in which case bringing that all the way right puts dashboard on the left?

That wouldn't be terrible, but it wouldn't be great either.

here's a simple enough solution for me with dual monitors...with the primary monitor, the desktop would always be drawn w/ dock, menubar, etc.. and fullscreen apps would default to new spaces on the second monitor... i don't really need side by side fullscreen apps, but it would be nice to have one monitor with a fullscreen app and one w/ desktop....

 

[yojitani]

If you want to use multiple applications at the same time, just don't full screen it. It isn't that hard. No idea why your complaining about something you don't have to use.

I find this statement to be rather baffling. Functionality isn't about whether one has to use a feature, it is about making a feature both useable and attractive to use. Full screen is incredibly useful! For workflow, being able to have, say, a document open in full screen in one display and an image that I am writing about in another is not only elegant, it makes my task easier. Of course, I could have the document open on one side of the display and the image on the other, but that defeats the utility of full screen. The way Apple has configured the full screen feature in Lion is incredibly, and uncharacteristically, lacking in functionality.

Full screen can help to improve focus and, hence, productivity, but for many tasks it is necessary to have an additional window or more available. Working on one screen, one can move back and forth from one screen to another, but it is rather inconvenient. It's akin to working on a physical desktop, but having to move your notepad off of your desk so you can refer to a book and then moving the book off of the desk so you can go back to the notepad.

And as I've mentioned, full screen is useful for so many other situations too, but is severely limited by the single screen usability.