Full screen mode - a step backwards with big displays?

[CalMin]

For years now, I have been evangelizing the fact that the green maximize button does not make the app go full screen in OS X. It 'right sizes' the window to the contents. I like this a lot vs. Windows convention of boosting the app to full screen. Especially with a hi-res display.

Back in the day when we were running 800 x 600 displays, full screen maximize made sense, but with a 27" LED display, why on earth do I want to run my productivity apps in full screen? Heck most of the web would be filled with blank space, and my word processor would look plain silly!

Anyone else feel this way?

 

[Branskins]

The green + does not trigger full screen as far as I can tell. There is a separate button for going full screen in the top right corner of the window. So the + button still behaves like it use to.

Also, full screen is really useful on the MBPs. It's great on my 13"!

 

[jeznav]

It really depends on the kind of program your are using. I use Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Aperture and a bunch of 2D/3D software packages which makes sense to have them running in fullscreen. I understand it wouldn't make sense to have wordprocessing programs on a 27".

I use a program called Cinch which aligns and resizes any application to fill only half of your screen so you can use two applications side-by-side just like in Windows 7 Snap feature.

 

[tourada]

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Cinch works great. It works in lion so far too. And I agree, on a MacBook full screen is great. I love the new feature and ability to have multiple fullscreen apps open to switch to with gestures

 

[ovrlrd]

I disagree with people who say word processing programs don't need to be full screen on a 27 inch display. You would be surprised at how much easier it is to write when you don't have any distractions. When you are full screen there is no chance for any windows to get in your way or even something simple like the clock reminding you what time it is.

Seriously try it sometime when you are writing, go into Pages and use the full screen mode function. It puts a black border on the parts of the screen that are unused (which can be adjusted if you desire) and displays nothing but the essentials.

In any case I think the idea is that even if you don't always use full screen on larger display, having the option is a good thing, especially for the people who do use it. It is better than not having the option, and it is not like you are forced to use it. So it's not a "step backwards" in any way. It's more of an optional "step forward" and of course it is an even greater "step forward" for smaller displays.

 

[mrblack927]

I don't know about big displays, but it's definitely a problem for multiple displays. The way apple designed it, full-screen apps have their own desktop, or "space". Anyone who's ever used Spaces with multiple monitors knows that changing spaces affects all screens. So what happens when you have a full screen app on display 1? Well, all other displays have that dark textured backdrop. They are essentially useless. You cannot have one display show one "space" and another display show another "space". So unless an app is designed to go in full screen mode and use multiple screens, you're basically disabling your other screens.

That being said, this is one feature I'm not too worried about because I'm almost sure that Apple will change it before the final build. Maybe full screen apps will change drastically before then, who knows. If they don't however, then I'm basically never going to use full screen apps on Lion, I'll just upgrade for the other features.