Exposé / Mission Control / Spaces

[baryon]

I have seen very mixed reactions about liking / disliking Mission Control. Some people say the Snow Leopard way was better, some even say Leopard was even better, some say Spaces was better as a grid and others like Mission Control as it is.

However, it seems that Apple isn't likely to change Mission Control if they find that most people like it, and they probably believe that even those who don't like it will learn to like it later.

So please use the poll to express which one you prefer:

• Leopard Exposé
• Snow Leopard Exposé
• Mission Control as it is (but without the obvious bugs)
• Mission Control but with old grid Spaces

 

[emonifi]

Order

1. Snow leopard
2. Mission control with old spaces
3. Leopard

 

[dethmaShine]

Expose + Spaces was BRILLIANT in Snow Leopard. It was just simply great.

If Mission Control is gonna come in like this, it better have a disable option to get back to Expose + Spaces as in SL. Simple, that's all I ask.

 

[hamis92]

I'm a huge fan of the Panther-Tiger-Leopard Exposé and I prefer that over anything.

Although I dislike the same-sized-windows-in-a-grid that's used in Snow Leopard (has made Exposé way less useful for me), I find that the way windows overlap each other in Lion's Mission Control is a step backwards even from that.

I like Spaces as a grid, but I can see myself adapting to the linear implementation.

To sum it up: give me Mission Control with Leopard-style Exposé and I'm happy.


EDIT: Just wanted to add that this is a great poll and I'm interested to see how the results develop

 

[baryon]

EDIT: Just wanted to add that this is a great poll and I'm interested to see how the results develop

Thanks!

I'm a bit surprised that Apple couldn't come up with anything more elegant than Mission Control. I find it to be something Microsoft would have done while copying Apple.

I still think that seeing ALL your open windows at ONCE is important, something you can't do with Mission Control. In Snow Leopard, you just zoom out of Spaces and do an Exposé to see everything. Of course, that's 2 steps, so not very elegant, but why doesn't Apple then figure out a more elegant way to do it? Instead of removing the possibility alltogether.

This is Exposé and Spaces combined in a good way:


Left/Right swipe for Spaces is great, I think it's faster as you're sometimes mousing around and you don't want to reach for the keyboard to change Spaces. Separate Spaces for Full Screen apps makes sense. What doesn't make sense is seeing tiny previews of each Space at the top, instead of bigger ones where you can actually tell what's inside.

I get that Apple wants to combine Exposé and Spaces, but you can't beat the above screenshot in simplicity and space effectiveness.

 

[MikhailT]

To answer this poll honestly, we need screenshots or videos of Expose/Space/Mission Control on Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and Mission Control.

After that, we can see how it all works out. I think there are a lot of people who started with Leopard or Snow Leopard that never got experience what Space/Expose was like on Tiger/Leopard and they don't understand why people who started out earlier than Tiger or with Tiger likes Tiger's Expose/Space much better.

I honestly can't remember what it was like on Tiger or Leopard, so I can't vote on this.

 

[GoKyu]

I honestly don't use regular Exposé very much (but with Snow Leopard, have been using Dock Exposé quite a bit), and I absolutely LIVE in the current incarnation of Spaces.

Apple has completely destroyed what made Spaces flexible and great (I've had the chance to try Lion recently), and I really hope there's a terminal command in Lion to revert to the old Spaces for those who want it.

Mission Control as a whole seems like just another layer of stuff to go through for power users. It may be great for novices and those who aren't in any hurry to go from one program to another.

+1 to dethmaShine's comment:

Expose + Spaces was BRILLIANT in Snow Leopard. It was just simply great.

If Mission Control is gonna come in like this, it better have a disable option to get back to Expose + Spaces as in SL. Simple, that's all I ask.

 

[baryon]

To answer this poll honestly, we need screenshots or videos of Expose/Space/Mission Control on Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and Mission Control.

True, here are screenshots of each:

Leopard Exposé:

• Windows move as little as possible to fit
• Smaller windows stay smaller and bigger windows stay bigger
• Less gap between windows

Snow Leopard Exposé:

• Windows forced into a neater grid arrangement
• All windows same size regardless of original size
• Window order is random
• Huge gaps between windows

Snow Leopard Exposé, while in Spaces overview mode:
(You could do the same thing with Leopard as well, I just don't have a screen shot. You can probably imagine that it looked the same just with the same tighter window arrangement as you can see in the first screen shot)

• This way you see ALL your windows, yet you still know what space they're in
• The contents of each space is clearly visible and takes up as much space as it can (as opposed to Mission Control where you see tiny icons, and a large preview only of the current space)

Mission Control in Lion:

• Windows from the same app are in front of each other
• Spaces at the top with small thumbnails
• Windows have lots of wasted space between them compared to the Leopard exposé and even the Snow Leopard one

(There are of course other differences:

• In Snow Leopard and Lion (I'm pretty sure) you can see a large preview of each window by pressing space while your mouse is over it
• In Leopard, windows turned blue when you moused over them, and the window title only appeared at that time, in the middle of the window
• In Snow Leopard, the window title always appears at the bottom of the window, and mousing over them only makes a blue frame appear around them
• Same thing in Lion, but you also see the app's icon in addition to the title

However, please don't take these differences into consideration when answering the poll, as these are necessary results of the evolution of software. I'm sure that if Apple would magically decide to go back to how things were in Leopard, you would still be able to zoom in with the space bar, you would still see the icons and names of all windows, etc...)

 

[hamis92]

I get that Apple wants to combine Exposé and Spaces, but you can't beat the above screenshot in simplicity and space effectiveness.

I agree. Instead of reinventing the wheel and calling it Mission Control they should've not killed Exposé as a stand-alone feature but made the view in the screenshot easier to access for novices. Most may never find out it even exists.

 

[sniffies]

Wouldn't it be awesome if there were an option in System Preferences in Lion to go back to Snow Leopard, Leopard, Tiger, Panther!

 

[Thunderbird]

Yeah, Mission Control looks like a mess.

In Win 7, you just glance at the taskbar and all apps and windows are there - no clicking, swiping, gesturing or keystroking; every app or window is just one-click away to switch. It's way more efficient. However, it's not visual, and this can make it less efficient if you need to see the app or window you were working in or if you are working in more than a dozen windows. Aero Peek is fine for peeking at a few windows, but becomes less efficient the more windows there are.

OS X is slightly more elegant, but just needs to make windows management more efficient, by cutting way down on the number of steps it takes to view all apps and windows as well as switch to them. All the keystroking, swiping and gesturing creates more repetitive strain if you do a lot of switching between a lot of different apps and windows (as I do).

Hope developers of Lion are giving Apple feedback about Mission Control/Spaces/Expose.

 

[baryon]

Wouldn't it be awesome if there were an option in System Preferences in Lion to go back to Snow Leopard, Leopard, Tiger, Panther!

I'm not saying we should go back to previous versions, or that progress is bad. I'm just saying that I find it strange for Apple to change Spaces and Exposé into something like Mission control. If many people still find the classic Spaces and Exposé better than Mission Control, isn't that a sign that Apple should either not change it, or change it in a way that preserves the usefulness of those features? I'm not Apple so I can't imagine what other possible solutions there are to the window management problem, but I'm sure Mission Control isn't the only other way of doing it. I'm fine with Spaces and Exposé changing, but not just for the sake of change.

I usually love what Apple does to their OS. I love everything about Leopard, and I love almost everything about Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard is much better in 95% of things, however, I feel that it was stupid to change Exposé. I have never gotten used to windows just flying across the screen and taking random positions and sizes. I really miss how it was perfect and intuitive in Leopard!

Now with Mission Control, although I have not had the chance to get used to it yet, I feel that I might never like it.

When I go back to Windows today, I feel like being closed up in a box with my hands tied, because I can't spread my windows across multiple spaces and see them all at once at a glance. I keep having to minimize windows and remember their icons to find them. It's like going back 10 years.

With Mission Control, I feel similar, which worries me, since Apple gets this stuff right most of the time.

This will not keep me from upgrading to Lion, as it has much more good features that outweigh my dislike of Mission Control. But what if Mission Control were much better too, then I would have the 100% perfect OS!

When you're this close to a utopian OS, you feel like even the small details annoy you as they keep you from having perfect bliss. And you feel like you can actually achieve perfect bliss, it's right in front of you, but it's ruined by just an arbitrary decision, not a technical limitation.

 

[roadbloc]

I hate to say it but... I like it.

 

[hamis92]

I usually love what Apple does to their OS. I love everything about Leopard, and I love almost everything about Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard is much better in 95% of things, however, I feel that it was stupid to change Exposé. I have never gotten used to windows just flying across the screen and taking random positions and sizes. I really miss how it was perfect and intuitive in Leopard!

Now with Mission Control, although I have not had the chance to get used to it yet, I feel that I might never like it.

Exactly what I was thinking.

-----

Here's a screenshot of how Exposé in Spaces looks like in Leopard (it is actually Snow Leopard with 10.5 Exposé):



A couple of notes specific to 10.5 (and earlier) I'd like to add to baryon's already comprehensive list of details:

• You can see the titles of all windows simultaneously by holding down the Option key.
• Hitting Space bar while mousing over a window activates it (in contrast to previewing it like in 10.6).

 

[8CoreWhore]

I love it under Lion.

 

[MikhailT]

In Lion, if you use a gesture to zoom in (two finger up) on the group of windows, they expand to show you more details but not enough to show it Leopard style (full view of the window next to each other). Like in previous versions, space will show a full preview shot of it.

I think the reason they're doing Mission Control is to basically make it easier to use with gestures than with keyboard. Instead of pressing anything on the keyboard (f9/f10/f11), you can do everything from one window and use gestures to manage it. I'm thinking that they'll add pinch to it to make it easy to see full preview of the windows as well.

Please note that, you can still see app expose by doing the three finger-down gesture. Three finger-up does Mission Control.

I think there are still more things to do to optimize Mission Control and I think Apple can make it really good if they take the time to do the gestures right and make it more powerful.

When doing three-finger up gesture, if I see an app with multiple windows, I pinch out on that app and I want to see Leopard's style expose. Same with pinching out on the expose windows on top.

 

[mrblack927]

The differences in Expose don't bother me as much (though I do believe that 10.5 > 10.6 > 10.7), it's really the bastardization of Spaces that gets me. I've been using Spaces to get things done super efficiently for years now (since day 1 when Leopard came out). It's maybe one of my favorite advantages of OSX over Windows. But with Lion... it's practically useless now. I see no more advantage over windows and a huge step backwards.

 

[jackeill]

Expose in Leopard was the best (still never upgraded to 10.6 mainly because of the Expose!). Spaces like a small thumbnails in a row is a mistake. Wasting the screen space firstly in Snow Leopard, then even more in Lion's Expose... erm Mission Control is sad. Makes me less productive.

 

[Starfox]

My major problem with Mission Control is that there's no way to show minimized windows, and I always minimize windows to dock icons to keep the dock target locations constant so I don't have to think when I'm after an app.

Also I'd love to have a "Show dock in Launchpad only" option.

 

[baryon]

My major problem with Mission Control is that there's no way to show minimized windows, and I always minimize windows to dock icons to keep the dock target locations constant so I don't have to think when I'm after an app.

Also I'd love to have a "Show dock in Launchpad only" option.

Yeah, and you minimize an app into its dock icon, and there's nothing keeping you from forgetting that it's there. If you have 2 Safari windows open, one minimized, you may as well forget about the minimized one forever, as there is absolutely no indication about its presence.

 

[paolo-]

Not liking mission control. I haven't used it yet so I don't really know. I don't use spaces that much, mainly because I don't have enough ram to keep tons of stuff open. But exposé+spaces is great. I think the spaces in the mission control are too small to quickly swap stuff around. I also preferred exposé in leopard than in snow leopard, the relative size and placement of the windows made it easy to know what was what when you had lots of apps open.

I don't see how mission control will truly help my in my workflow. Mission control exist mainly for the sake of full screen apps. But I don't see the point of full screen apps. I personally use a hiding dock so the space gain would be negligible. Actually, I really don't understand people that use a huge dock at the bottom of their widescreens, you have a screen that's almost twice as wide than high, you smack a useless thing at the bottom and most of the stuff you do is vertical (reading, typing, web, most lists...).

Not liking the direction Apple is going with Lion. Dumbing down stuff and making look like an iPad. Mainly looks like they want to make something new and shiny, not something useful. They were the first to say it took a lot of design effort to come up with a GUI that would work well in the iPhone since it was touch based. You don't have to be a genius to know that the contrary is also true, a GUI that looks like it could be used with your fingers is retarded on a PC.

 

[Starfox]

yeah, and you minimize an app into its dock icon, and there's nothing keeping you from forgetting that it's there. If you have 2 safari windows open, one minimized, you may as well forget about the minimized one forever, as there is absolutely no indication about its presence.

exactly.

 

[wikus]

So is there a way to go back to Expose like it was in Leopard (10.5) ?

 

[hehe299792458]

So is there a way to go back to Expose like it was in Leopard (10.5) ?

10.5 would be the best. But I would even settle for 10.6 Expose. Mission Control is just impossible for me to use.

 

[Typswif2fingers]

I voted for the Mission control with spaces option (grid) (#4).


I have to say, I believe great opportunity was missed when it comes to the desktop management with what is provided by Lion.

Apple could've for example made the Spaces being accessed via gestures. Imagine going in all 9 directions instead of just linear (i.e. left and right) (desktop cubes also come to mind).

Having the active window take so much space and the desktops so little (in Mission control) is very disappointing. In addition providing magnification only when more than a certain number of desktops are used. Why not be able to magnify the desktop when cursor is on it?

Not being able to move apps from one desktop (when in Mission control) to the other is also very disappointing.

Etc.. etc.

I have already sent the feedback to Apple (was very polite too ).

I hope there will be a critical mass reached to get them to do something about it.

If not, I have developers access now (which I bought to get the GM seed ) so there could be a money maker to develop a "Mission Control, the way it should be app"

I have been running the Lion all day, and been very happy with it.. But, to be honest, the Mission control is a bloody disappointment. An option to have (as a minimum) some desktop management features from previous OSs would be very welcome.