Exposé / Spaces in Mountain Lion

[klaxamazoo]

I'm too OCD to have more than 1 app for a kind of content. I like organization and discipline on my computer. Code ? Xcode. Image manipulation ? Gimp. HTML ? Chrome. Everything works by app. So be it using Mouse 4 or 4 fingers up or CMD-TAB, I switch to the app for the content I need and then use Button 5 or 4 fingers down to get app expose and find the actual content I want.

So really, just popping up a bunch of Windows of different apps to me was complete lunacy. I never used Expose prior to Lion, everytime I did I would cry a little inside to the big mess that would pop up.

See, that is why people like me in an uproar over Mission Control. We had something that, for us, was pure beauty. It was why I switched to OS X. To have that replaced with something that makes me "cry a little" is so tragic (for me, wonderful for you).

It would be great if Apple figured out a method that made everyone feel that little tinge of joy when something "just works" they way that they do.

For me, MC would work well enough if the two finger up to spread actually spread the windows enough such that they didn't overlap.

It would work even better if it could show more than one Space at at time because, for me, Applications like Preview are usually open on every Space because different content is mixed together. i.e. I'll have Preview windows of images that I'm bringing into InDesign for the next figure all together on one Space, and then Preview will have pdf's of Papers I'm citing on another Space combined with "Papers2" by Mekentosj, Bookends and Bibdesk, while a third Space might have static .pdf's of papers I've already written along with .doc versions of my current paper to make sure that what I'm writing is both consistent and different enough to avoid self-plagiarism.

It is a different workflow and everybody works different. I really hope that Apple or someone else can bring the 10.5 visual experience to 10.7/10.8 (without sacrificing the MC workflow that works for others) because Apple added a lot of nice features that are nice but not worth living with the current version of MC for me.

 

[JohnDoe98]

I'm too OCD to have more than 1 app for a kind of content. I like organization and discipline on my computer. Code ? Xcode. Image manipulation ? Gimp. HTML ? Chrome. Everything works by app. So be it using Mouse 4 or 4 fingers up or CMD-TAB, I switch to the app for the content I need and then use Button 5 or 4 fingers down to get app expose and find the actual content I want.

Exactly. And it's not just about "preferences", having order and discipline actually saves substantial amounts of time in the long run (making it more productive). So to avoid clutter, I just have one desktop for each of those apps. Now, some apps I really like in full-screen, others not, so I do wish I could set a strict order in MC that never moves, from most used app/desktop/screen far left, to the least used one on the far right. But MC won't let that happen. You either let it rearrange things for you, in which case a few bugs can make it do weird tricks from time to time, or you can deselect auto-arrange, but then all the desktops are before the full screen apps, which can be annoying. Small complaint on MC. By and large though, it's pretty nice and have greatly optimized the way I work. Much faster than expose/spaces. Wasn't spaces limited in the number of them you could have? If I remember I'd have to have a bunch of apps all congested within a single desktop. It was a mess.

So really, just popping up a bunch of Windows of different apps to me was complete lunacy. I never used Expose prior to Lion, everytime I did I would cry a little inside to the big mess that would pop up.

I always had to, and still always feel the need to, actively resist from trying to optimize other people's workflows. It seems so simple to me. Invest a little time now, get huge returns in time saved over prolonged periods. Who wouldn't want that? Unless your idea of a break is scanning a cluster f*&ck of a desktop/computing environment. But as klaxa said, perhaps that is simplifying things.

I do think though, there is a technique, skill, art, to working efficiently.

 

[philxor]

From what I keep seeing in all these mission control sucks threads it is a vocal few that are touting the benefits of spaces/expose rather than the majority. I do think you have to start realising that you're now an edge case, and Apple don't really do edge cases.

Some of the arguments put forward for spaces/expose have been quite compelling and if those people haven't already then I would suggest sending that constructive feedback directly to Apple. It's possible that if enough people provide intelligent discourse then Apple might have an incentive to add the functionality back in (as they have done in the past).

Beyond that, there's nothing stopping any of you from learning how to program and creating your own version of spaces/expose. Or see if someone in the open source community feels the same way as you and is willing to commit time to creating it. Apple aren't the only ones who can provide this functionality you know.

It isn't really a vocal few, there are quite a few people who would rather have Expose/Spaces back the way it was as opposed to using MC. From MacRumors to plenty of blog comments and even some tech blogs themselves. I have sent feedback to Apple which was constructive and outlined my workflow which MC eliminated.

The biggest issue for me is the multiple monitor support, there is just no way to duplicate the previous functionality in any way. Previously I could do one motion and move a window from any desktop on any other screen to a desktop on any other screen. Now I have to switch monitors, move stuff around between the same desktop on two monitors, then move things around between desktops...

 

[NZPilgrim]

It isn't really a vocal few, there are quite a few people who would rather have Expose/Spaces back the way it was as opposed to using MC. From MacRumors to plenty of blog comments and even some tech blogs themselves. I have sent feedback to Apple which was constructive and outlined my workflow which MC eliminated.

The biggest issue for me is the multiple monitor support, there is just no way to duplicate the previous functionality in any way. Previously I could do one motion and move a window from any desktop on any other screen to a desktop on any other screen. Now I have to switch monitors, move stuff around between the same desktop on two monitors, then move things around between desktops...

I understand where you are coming from but you need to look at this as a percentages game. If you look at the sales figures Apple keep releasing the number of Macs being purchased have increased every year for the past number of years. That's a whole lot of new people in the eco-system who for the most part are probably pretty happy with the direction of things (or who just don't care either way).

In the past techies and professionals made up a larger percentage of Mac users but these days we are in the minority. Even if every single one of us agreed that spaces/expose was the right way to do things (and we don't all agree) what percentage of total Mac users would we be? Even if thousands of tech bloggers complained they're still a minority.

You only have to read Job's biography to note that Apple generally does it's own thing and only reverses course when it faces significant resistance. If you all believe so passionately in spaces/expose then get that groundswell of support, engage with Apple and make them see that providing an option to switch between the old and new is something a lot of people want.

Ultimately, while debating things on Mac Rumors is fun, it's not really going to advance your cause.

 

[Jagardn]

So really, just popping up a bunch of Windows of different apps to me was complete lunacy. I never used Expose prior to Lion, everytime I did I would cry a little inside to the big mess that would pop up.

My thoughts exactly, Mission Control has made it much better in my opinion. I must fall in computer illiterate group as well. I guess being a developer and graphic designer takes me out of the "Power User" group.

 

[NZPilgrim]

My thoughts exactly, Mission Control has made it much better in my opinion. I must fall in computer illiterate group as well. I guess being a developer and graphic designer takes me out of the "Power User" group.

Never thought I'd see the day when us developers were removed from the power user group

Forgot to mention in my previous reply to philxor that I fully agree on the multi-monitor issue. While I don't currently use multiple monitors in my Mac setup I spent the better part of the last decade with dual monitors in the Windows world and so far everything I've read about Lions multi-monitor support seems a bit brain dead. Definitely something to keep an eye on as further developer releases of Mountain Lion are dropped.

 

[JohnDoe98]

Ultimately, while debating things on Mac Rumors is fun, it's not really going to advance your cause.

I disagree, I bet many very intelligent people at Apple carefully thought this change through, so to have a marginal amount of complaints sent their way isn't going to cause them to reconsider their position. However, if after arguing with a bunch of us here as to what needs to be improved in MC, you are capable of formulating a very well thought out response to Apple's change of course, then, and only then, they might just listen, should you have enough support behind that proposal.

Hashing things out here, so far as I can see, would help ameliorate what needs to be changed, or can be changed, provided of course that the way we argue about things here doesn't result in hurling "fanboy, computer newbie, etc." at each other.

 

[Krazy Bill]

Hashing things out here, so far as I can see, would help ameliorate what needs to be changed,

Pissin' in the wind iffen you ask me.

Apple already answered the volley of complaints to show how much they didn't listen. Their reply simply ML. All is still well inside that distortion field it seems.

I'm actually kind of glad they showed their hand this early. Give some of us time to decide if OS X is really the platform we want.

 

[KnightWRX]

I'm actually kind of glad they showed their hand this early. Give some of us time to decide if OS X is really the platform we want.

Yeah, there's so many other choices out there with "All Windows Expose" over every "Spaces".

 

[baryon]

Consider Spaces:

… and Mission Control:



In the first screenshot, I can see ALL open windows, in all spaces, at once, in the largest possible size they can fit. Pressing Space over each one will make that one even bigger.

In the second screenshot, try to quickly tell which is the current desktop (tip: it's the one with the white border around the thumbnail). Moreover, try to quickly preview other windows, on other desktops. You can't. You have to swipe to those desktops one by one, linearly. THEN you really lose track of which desktop you're on now.

Another issue is this: no, I don't instinctively know what app the window I'm looking for is in. Sometimes I have a PDF open in Safari, and another PDF in Preview. All I know is that I want to get to a certain PDF, I don't remember which was the one in Preview and which was in Safari. What if I have 4 Pages documents open on 4 different desktops, clicking "Pages" in the dock will only show me one of the documents. If I want to use App Exposé, I need to first click Pages in the dock, which will yank me to another desktop, and THEN activate App Exposé, and then choose the window I want, which will probably also yank me to yet another desktop.

The only thing I like about Mission Control are the gestures. But why couldn't Apple just implement gestures to control Spaces? 3-finger swipe up/down/left/right to navigate between spaces, 4-fingers-up to enter Spaces Overview Mode (like top screenshot), and 4-fingers down to enter Exposé without entering Spaces. Why not?

I think that in Mission Control, it's extremely confusing that the top thumbnails are a different size than the large "current desktop" in the middle, which, in case you're in a full screen app, isn't even your current desktop, but rather Desktop 1 for some baffling reason.

Basically, in Mission Control, there is absolutely no way to see all your open windows at once if you have more than one desktop, while in Snow Leopard there is. To me, that makes Snow Leopard's window management better, no matter what.

 

[KnightWRX]

Basically, in Mission Control, there is absolutely no way to see all your open windows at once if you have more than one desktop, while in Snow Leopard there is. To me, that makes Snow Leopard's window management better, no matter what.

They're all there at the top.

I suggest you use different wallpapers (which you now can) if you can't see that the middle one is the one you wanted. I didn't even need to click your thumbnail to recognize it.

 

[klaxamazoo]

They're all there at the top.

I suggest you use different wallpapers (which you now can) if you can't see that the middle one is the one you wanted. I didn't even need to click your thumbnail to recognize it.

They aren't there at the top. The Spaces at the top show the current State of that Space i.e. if you have a five windows open and with a large excel sheet, then you only see the Excel sheet.

Here is a good example. Somewhere in this Setup is 14 images that I am currently analyzing. Can you find it with just two mouse moves as 10.5 Expose/Spaces could?


Guess what, you can't see it. I have to flick through six different Spaces to find it. Or go through what baryon described. What a pain in the ass compared to 10.5 Expose/Spaces where everything was laid out, easy to find, and easy to move around. None of this Hide-and-Seek junk.


KnightWRX, it is great that you categorize and organize by content. That makes Mission Control easy for you to use and better than 10.5 Expose/Spaces, which, as you said, was too unorganized.

But there are a lot of people like me that are Visually oriented. Content is content, and exists solely as an image in my head and all I need is that content laid out with proportional scaling and I can find it is less time than it takes Mission Control to go through its animation. Visual pattern recognition dominates as an organization scheme for people like me. Mission Control requires that Content be associated with both an App and a Space. 10.5 Expose/Spaces just requires that you know what you content looks like, seems like a lot less work.

Can Mission Control still get the job done? Sure, but I cry a little each time I invoke it. Just like I could drive to work, but I die inside a little each time I do so I moved close to the University in an area with a decent bike path.

The MC process is a bad experience for me, and it leaves me wanting for something else. This feeling was the same reason I left Windows XP for OSX 10.3. Windows XP has sub-par Content Management as compared to OSX 10.3. For 10.7/10.8, if a Developer doesn't fill the Expose/Spaces void I leave OSX once I need new hardware. Expose and Spaces clones exist for Windows and now Papers2 will be on Windows, so all the major things I need already exist. Hopefully a Developer will make a good OSX 10.5 Expose/Spaces replacement in the next couple years before it is time to upgrade my system again.

 

[daniel-b]

Consider Spaces:

What if I have 4 Pages documents open on 4 different desktops, clicking "Pages" in the dock will only show me one of the documents. If I want to use App Exposé, I need to first click Pages in the dock, which will yank me to another desktop, and THEN activate App Exposé, and then choose the window I want, which will probably also yank me to yet another desktop.

Hi all,

This is my first ever post to this forum. I have a 2011 Mac Mini which is my first Mac since 1999 and my first experience with Mac OSX ( I used to be an administrator of a big Mac network in the 90s and I owned a blue iBook). I mostly use it for music (Live and Logic + Lemur and some other stuff on my iPad. I am quite blown away by the ease of configuring wireless Midi and other esoteric stuff) but since I am also a closet Linux geek, I am getting to know the the more hardcore Unix side of Mac OSX too.

Anyway, to the point. I have never seen this mentioned anywhere on the forum, but if you do cmd-tab to switch between apps, and then press up- or down-arrow while switching, it will take you into expose for the selected app, and allow you to select any window, regardless of which desktop it's on. This should at least solve the above-mentioned issue. If you continue to press cmd-tab in expose, it will take you from app to app, showing all windows for each one.

Daniel

[Edit: I just realized this is the Mountain Lion forum. I was talking about how it works in Lion. No idea if this is still valid in ML]

 

[Jagardn]

For me, MC would work well enough if the two finger up to spread actually spread the windows enough such that they didn't overlap.

I could agree with that, or the same three finger down swipe for App Expose when your mouse pointer is over the windows.

 

[DeckMan]

For me, MC would work well enough if the two finger up to spread actually spread the windows enough such that they didn't overlap.

+1. That is my single gripe with Mission Control, and the one I posted as feedback, because it's nigh impossible now to find the right window if an app has three or more on one desktop. (unless I switch to App Exposé, of course)

 

[Krazy Bill]

Yeah, there's so many other choices out there with "All Windows Expose" over every "Spaces".

Ironically, there are tons of 'em available for Windows. (rolling eyes back at you).

I'm using one right now... just a "flick" to a screen hot corner and viola... all my windows appear side-by-side and not stacked.

Apple should come out with something like this.

 

[DeckMan]

Ironically, there are tons of 'em available for Windows. (rolling eyes back at you).

...over every "Spaces"?

 

[KnightWRX]

Ironically, there are tons of 'em available for Windows. (rolling eyes back at you).

I see nothing of the sort on Microsoft's site.

 

[klaxamazoo]

I see nothing of the sort on Microsoft's site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposé_clone
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openexpose/

Doesn't matter if Microsoft makes it. I couldn't care less who built Expose for Windows, all that matter is that it is available for Windows, and there are a lot of Expose Clones available.

 

[Montys]

Apple will have to "fix" Spaces and Expose eventually if they want customers to upgrade. Otherwise things might keep looking like this:

Despite the fact that Lion was released 6 months ago, people are still holding on to 10.6 and I doubt this will change with 10.8. I think 10.8 brings a number of great features but I think, as it has been pointed out, that Apple did not really think things through when they released 10.7.

Statistics from: netmarketshare.com

 

[xgman]

Apple simply wants you to do things their way, and not the easy way. I've given up on hoping for an expose comeback and just use Hyperdock and Mission Control to navigate.

 

[BaldiMac]

Apple will have to "fix" Spaces and Expose eventually if they want customers to upgrade. Otherwise things might keep looking like this:

Image

Despite the fact that Lion was released 6 months ago, people are still holding on to 10.6 and I doubt this will change with 10.8. I think 10.8 brings a number of great features but I think, as it has been pointed out, that Apple did not really think things through when they released 10.7.

Statistics from: netmarketshare.com

Goes to show that you can prove anything when you take statistics out of context.

http://gigaom.com/apple/snow-leopar...hs-why-are-so-many-of-us-still-using-leopard/

Adoption of Snow Leopard after 6 months was only slightly higher (around 38%. And that's ignoring 10.3 and earlier, so the real number is actually lower.)

 

[baryon]

I think that 90% of people just don't care how windows are managed: they store all their icons on the desktop, all of their apps are constantly running (they just close windows, they don't quit the apps) and when a window is hidden behind another, they think the window doesn't exist so they click on the app icon to open the app, which brings the already-open window to the front. It works perfectly well for most people, even though it makes me cringe when I see it.

And no, it's not just grannies and parents that do this: young, intelligent people often do this too.

These kind of people really need the OS to do everything for them, since they can't care about organizing their workspace. But either way, they don't care much, so they won't complain.

For people who really care about how their workspace is organized, it's extremely frustrating to see yet another level of control taken away from them.


The reason Apple uses linear desktops instead of a grid is because of full screen apps. Full screen apps act like new desktops, and are created/removed on the fly, which means there is often an odd number of "desktops", which wouldn't work with Spaces in a grid. However, I hate full screen apps and I don't ever use them, so for me, this would not be an issue.

I think that since Apple introduced so many new strange things into Lion such as AutoSave, Versions, Resume and Mission Control, things got a hell of a lot more confusing. Sure, you can turn some off, but for example, if you open an image in Preview, then quit Preview, and then open another image 2 weeks later, you'll have your old image reappear and you won't even know why it's there. If you open a new text document in Pages and then close it, it won't ask you to Save or not, it will just reopen it next time. I often start typing then decide to scrap the document, in which case I never want to see it again, so I don't save it. This option isn't even offered when I quit.

These things all seem to take control out of the user's hand, as if Apple was saying "Oh don't bother with that, you're too stupid to understand how that works. Here, let us organize things for you."

Edit: One last thing I hate about Mission Control: Say you're on Desktop 6, and you click iTunes in the dock, which happens to be on Desktop 1. Your desktop slides ONCE to the right, revealing iTunes directly on the left, as if iTunes was right next to Desktop 6. It feels like there's nothing in between, but when you swipe right, you'll notice that you're not back on Desktop 6, but rather Desktop 2, then 3, and 4, 5, and finally 6. It's super confusing for me. With Spaces, when you activated an app that was a few desktops away, you actually saw the contents fly through in between, making you feel the "distance travelled", helping you know where you are, in addition to the little HUD display that mapped it for you too.

 

[newagemac]

I'm too OCD to have more than 1 app for a kind of content. I like organization and discipline on my computer. Code ? Xcode. Image manipulation ? Gimp. HTML ? Chrome. Everything works by app. So be it using Mouse 4 or 4 fingers up or CMD-TAB, I switch to the app for the content I need and then use Button 5 or 4 fingers down to get app expose and find the actual content I want.

So really, just popping up a bunch of Windows of different apps to me was complete lunacy. I never used Expose prior to Lion, everytime I did I would cry a little inside to the big mess that would pop up.

Yep, this is exactly how I work. Snow Leopard's Expose just wasn't very useful in my opinion but Lion/Mountain Lion's MC was a godsend. Look folks, the difference is clear. If you are app centric like KnightWRX explained above, then Mission Control is awesome. Best productivity enhancer for an OS I've seen in a long time.

However, if you use a bunch of different apps to open the exact same content you might prefer the old Exposé way. But I never understood why people do this anyway. Seems pretty disorganized and requiring more apps to be opened and closed, therefore more messy and more RAM and CPU resources used, more organization needed, and more apps to learn. Doesn't seem very productive overall to me in comparison in the long run.

And that model is going to be more difficult as time goes on because it seems Apple is moving more to the app centric model rather than the document centered one in more places. iCloud for example is app centric. You have a presentation to work on, you switch to Keynote and open your presentation from there. And what's cool about the newer way is that you don't even have to remember what file you were working on because it should be right there in front of you after opening or switching to the Keynote app.... even if you just rebooted.

Same thing for other apps. Working on HTML code for example, the idea is to just switch to the app first rather than the document first. The document should then be there waiting for you and if there are a bunch of them, App Exposé in Lion makes it really easy to find the one you want rather than Snow Leopard's Exposé which would instead throw up ALL windows which doesn't make sense when you are already on the desktop/app you're going to be working with. And again this works best if you have already decided that Coda or Dreamweaver or whatever is your HTML editor of choice as then you always know which app to switch to for that particular kind of document and that particular type of document isn't spread across different App desktops.

In other words, Lion and Mountain Lion's desktops are more App centric with their related documents neatly organized along with them. Which is how iCloud is also set up to work. Over time, most apps will have moved to accommodate this workflow by integrating Lion's new features. And if you aren't adapting, you will miss out even more on the productivity gains we're already experiencing.

Of course you can stay with Snow Leopard and the old way of doing things but others will be passing you in productivity and efficiency as time goes on and they adapt to the more efficient workflows. For now, experience and muscle memory might serve you well but that never lasts in the grand scheme of things. Just ask those who didn't want to learn a new workflow when Leopard/SL was released.

 

[newagemac]

Apple will have to "fix" Spaces and Expose eventually if they want customers to upgrade. Otherwise things might keep looking like this:

Image

Despite the fact that Lion was released 6 months ago, people are still holding on to 10.6 and I doubt this will change with 10.8. I think 10.8 brings a number of great features but I think, as it has been pointed out, that Apple did not really think things through when they released 10.7.

Statistics from: netmarketshare.com

That graphic says the exact opposite of what you are attempting to prove.

I just did a quick search and this article came up:

http://gigaom.com/apple/snow-leopar...hs-why-are-so-many-of-us-still-using-leopard/

So after six months, Leopard still had 2.2% global share while Snow Leopard had 1.8% share. Someone might be able to find numbers that only compare between Apple's OS but Apple has already stated it was the fastest adoption they have ever had. Which is pretty significant seeing that unlike Snow Leopard, Lion dropped support for a large number of Macs that could use the previous OS.