Expose is Back in Mountain Lion!

[ixodes]

It's encouraging to watch Apple work to make mountain Lion a better product than Lion. Having stayed with SL as I've watched and waited, I'm so glad I took this approach.

After ML is released I'll wait for a few revs while they work out the bugs. Perhaps by 10.8.4 is it'll be ready for prime time.

I've never hesitated to upgrade in the past, but this time I'm so glad I'm waiting. I'll let others be Apple unpaid beta testers. The time I've saved by waiting is priceless.

 

[astrorider]

Is anyone using "Show Dashboard as a Space"? That's another stupid feature I think. I mean, what if you're on Desktop 6, and you have to swipe your way left about 6 times? That's freaking stupid! Is it me or did Apple just want to ruin everything that was good about OS X? I mean, there's an option for it, which is great, but I wish we could just revert to the Leopard way of things, exactly...

Maybe swipe up then select the dashboard space instead?

 

[wikus]

Apple still needs to allow disabling of the thumbnails of spaces being shown when Mission Control is activated. I, like many others, don't use spaces. The thumbnails are redundant at that point. And when there are no thumbnails needed, theres really no point in having the grey textured borded appear with the wallpaper shrink down in size.

 

[kap91]

Just stumbled across this and this news has made me extremely happy. Especially since I haven't yet upgraded to Lion I might never have to lose normal expose. Now lets just hope they don't yank it back out before release.

 

[baryon]

Maybe swipe up then select the dashboard space instead?

How is that (gesture + mouse point/click) better or faster than pressing a single button on the keyboard? Plus, when I want to convert units from a website, I generally want to see the website and the unit converter at the same time, which is why the old Dashboard is great.

 

[astrorider]

How is that (gesture + mouse point/click) better or faster than pressing a single button on the keyboard? Plus, when I want to convert units from a website, I generally want to see the website and the unit converter at the same time, which is why the old Dashboard is great.

I agree, which is why I don't have "show dashboard as a space" checked and why I'm glad apple left this as an option. However, I can understand why you might also like to use dashboard as a space for consistency with Mission Control or if you primarily use just one desktop and want to use a quick swipe left to get to the dashboard.

My point was just that if you did have dashboard set as a space, and you had several desktops, there's never a reason why you have to "swipe 6 times to get to dashboard" as swipe up and select would be much quicker.

In fact, I generally keep my desktops pretty consistently organized so I have my prefs set to go to a particular desktop by using control and the desktop number. If it wasn't for the fact that when dashboard is set as a space it doesn't have a desktop number so you can't control-number to it, I'd probably have it set that way, but since it doesn't I stick with using the dashboard Fkey.

 

[3282868]

I just had the chance in booting into my ML drive, updated but am not seeing that option in "Mission Control" settings.

I was so excited to have this option, why am I not seeing it?

Update: After updating from 12A178q it still lists 12A178q as the OS. Odd. Tried rechecking, states OS is up to date. Guess it's time to file another bug report. Boo! I really wanted to debug/test the latest release.

Anyone know if you can delete the install receipts/history and force it to recheck?

 

[xgman]

I try not to violate the NDA too often but I'll say the functionality is back and at least on my test machine is glitchy as all get out. I'm excited but it's by no means ready for prime time yet.

DO NOT take Expose's return as the excuse you've been waiting for to use Mountain Lion as your primary OS. This is still very much a beta...

How does a feature that was developed a couple years ago become glitchy? I don't get how they take one step forward and two steps backwards on this sort of thing. You'd think would be child's play by now.

 

[haravikk]

Scroll up using the mouse (pressing the spacebar triggers a different thing).

Ugh, so the feature's been there the entire time, but in a completely unintuitive way? To whom does scrolling up constitute "expand grouped windows"? Cycle through them maybe, but that just makes no sense. Clicking the group would be much easier.

 

[MrAppleseed]

Ugh, so the feature's been there the entire time, but in a completely unintuitive way? To whom does scrolling up constitute "expand grouped windows"? Cycle through them maybe, but that just makes no sense. Clicking the group would be much easier.

It’s horribly implemented, though. Sometimes you even see less than before scrolling.

 

[motorazr]

THANK GOD THIS IS COMING BACK!!!!!

....I feel like this was a common sense thing for Apple that someone failed with until now

 

[Eric5h5]

Exactly. It was a bad idea to make them all the same size in SL's Exposé. Apple got it right on their first try, when they introduced Exposé with Panther (where minimized windows didn't show either, by the way).

So true. I'm running 10.6.8 with a dock hack to make Exposé work properly (i.e., pre-10.6), rather than 10.7.anything, partially because of this.

--Eric

 

[reallynotnick]

So true. I'm running 10.6.8 with a dock hack to make Exposé work properly (i.e., pre-10.6), rather than 10.7.anything, partially because of this.

--Eric

Yeah I was really upset even with SL's implementation, I tried the dock hack a few months ago but I just got so used to the way it is in SL that I didn't feel like relearning it again if it was never going to be supported again. I had wished I found out about that dock hack a long time ago would have got rid of any SL pains.

 

[Millah]

I agree. I feel like the ideas of Mission Control (and some other features of 10.7) were half-baked and engineers didn't think of them all the way through. I feel like 10.7 was sort of a 'Beta' and they sorted out the bugs.

Agreed. I feel like a lot of things in Lion just didn't have the refinement and polish of previous OSX releases. Unfortunately, I think a large part of it is the absence of Bertrand Serlet . Federighi is no doubt a great engineer, but I don't feel is on the same level of Serlet (or Forstall when it comes to UI). A lot of little things aren't as refined. Like a lot of the new animations and transitions are not nearly as smooth and polished as Leopard. Even the iTunes artwork screensaver that they changed in Lion...the animation for flipping the album artwork is not as good as Tigers. It's hard to explain. On Tiger, when the album flips, the animation starts out quicker but subtly slows down as it reaches the end of the animation. On Lion the animation is the same "speed" through the entire animation.

Maybe I'm the only one who notices these minor things, but I really pay attention to the details. Which is why I like Apple products so much

 

[boilingpoint]

I agree. I feel like the ideas of Mission Control (and some other features of 10.7) were half-baked and engineers didn't think of them all the way through. I feel like 10.7 was sort of a 'Beta' and they sorted out the bugs.

Apple is selling this beta-level product and many their fanboys are saying they do not have any problematic issue. Evil and Stupid fanboys!

 

[hamis92]

Just noticed this. This is super-awesome news, I've hated the grouping feature in MC since day one.

 

[InuNacho]

How is that (gesture + mouse point/click) better or faster than pressing a single button on the keyboard?

It isn't

A gesture or mouse click is completely pointless as I thought the point of Expose is to easily "expose" everything thats under everything else, like when I have a dog treat hidden under my hand and I expose it by moving it by moving my hand. Using an extra click is like having the dog treat under my right hand, quickly moving it to be under my left and THEN showing it to the dog.

 

[Mumford]

This change, above all others, makes me happiest. I wish I could run ML right now because of this.

 

[3282868]

This change, above all others, makes me happiest. I wish I could run ML right now because of this.

I never use developer builds as my main OS, but the latest M.L. update was so much more stable than 10.7.4 (and w/ the ungrouping of M.C. windows as an "All Windows" Exposé option), I decided on replacing Lion with it.

Having been disappointed with 10.7 as a long time OS X user, I wasn't too optimistic with 10.8. However, it seems Apple engineers are finally listening to developer and consumer feedback by implementing choice into their system. So far, I'm looking forward to 10.8. I just hope Apple gives the iOS integration a break, seems rushed at the moment.

 

[dba415]

From a Snow Leopard user who downgraded from Lion solely because of this, I will definitely install Mountain Lion when it comes out.

Thanks Apple for getting the people what they want.

 

[JacaByte]

This is how I feel right now: (Earrape warning!)

I will definitely upgrade to ML from Snow Leopard on day 1 now that expose is back.

 

[newagemac]

Ugh, so the feature's been there the entire time, but in a completely unintuitive way? To whom does scrolling up constitute "expand grouped windows"? Cycle through them maybe, but that just makes no sense. Clicking the group would be much easier.

Lion is intended to be used with a multitouch input like the macbook trackpads, Magic Trackpad, or Magic Mouse. For those input methods, a quick swipe up is very intuitive. If your mouse doesn't support multitouch, then scrolling up of course doesn't feel intuitive.

By the way, if you hit the spacebar each window fully expands. And if you assign the fn key (by itself) to App Exposé, Mission Control is killer. Works much better than Snow Leopard's exposé in my opinion. I imagine power users and people that have a ton of windows and apps open at once will continue using Mission Control and Lion's way of doing it. People who don't have many windows open at once or don't multitask much will prefer Snow Leopard's way of doing it by ungrouping since with so few windows open there isn't as much clutter or need for organization through grouping.

Lion's Mission Control (through grouping) solved the problem of having so many windows open at once that you can't find the particular window you want to use while in Expose´.

 

[tkermit]

Lion's Mission Control (through grouping) solved the problem of having so many windows open at once that you can't find the particular window you want to use while in Expose´.

Well...yes and no. Is it easier to find the one Xcode window among the 21 Safari windows you "see" open here? Yes. Is it also easier to pick out a specific Safari window? Most definitely not.

You could of course argue that that is what Application Exposé is for, which, for better or worse, Lion pretty much forces you to take advantage of much more often than under SL, but App Exposé has the potential disadvantage that it requires you to first think about what specific application the window you're looking for belongs to.

 

[ObeseSquirrel]

Lion's Mission Control (through grouping) solved the problem of having so many windows open at once that you can't find the particular window you want to use while in Expose´.

I mostly agree with this (grouping apps together). However, when you scroll up, the windows really don't spread out very well, and unlike App Expose, you can't see the titles for the windows. If they make scrolling up over the applications more like App Expose, Mission Control would be perfect.

 

[dba415]

does anyone have a video or screenshot of this new feature in mountain lion?