Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
New space/window animations too fluid?
- Thread starter drgraff
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I agree. it seems OSX is more about the iPad "glitter" these days and I find the animations nauseating after a while. I'd prefer my switching windows to simply show without all the silly fanfare.
I don't have ML, but in Lion it's definitely too slow for me. I prefer how it was in Snow Leopard. I also don't like how you can't start typing into a window until the animation has completely finished. Is this still the case in ML?
What's the difference between the Lion and the ML animation?
What's the difference between the Lion and the ML animation?
The problem with some animations is that they are fully blocking. As soon as the animation starts, you have no way of cancelling it or changing something.
Worse yet, you wait until the animation is almost done to perform the next action, but if you accidentally perform it just a millisecond before the animation is done, your keypress/touchpad gesture goes into the void. You have to realize that nothing's happening and repeat it.
I really wish they'd work on improving these aspects.
Animations are nice because they look neat and it makes the system more easily understandable. No animations is good because it allows best user performance. There should be a way of combing the best of both, with less compromises.
Worse yet, you wait until the animation is almost done to perform the next action, but if you accidentally perform it just a millisecond before the animation is done, your keypress/touchpad gesture goes into the void. You have to realize that nothing's happening and repeat it.
I really wish they'd work on improving these aspects.
Animations are nice because they look neat and it makes the system more easily understandable. No animations is good because it allows best user performance. There should be a way of combing the best of both, with less compromises.
I can tell the animation has gotten slower. Probably because there have been people complaining about suffering from motion sickness when switching between spaces.
Why can't it work like in Snow Leopard? There, the background stays in place and only the windows are moving when switching between spaces. But in Lion, the whole thing is moving.
It can be, should Apple decide to make it that way again. You'd have to somehow change the background image in case two spaces have different backgrounds.
Yeah I loved that, it made a lot of sense. I hate how the menu bar, the desktop picture, and the desktop icons all move away, and then magically reappear. We're NOT changing the menu bar and the desktop icons, so why are they moving? We're only swapping out windows, nothing else, so only the windows should be moving.
Tip: In Lion, if you swipe really fast, the animation happens faster. It's a bit hard to do but if you get used to it, it can be as fast as Snow Leopard.
This doesn't work when you're using an external keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Left/Right Arrow) instead of the touchpad.
Unless this has changed in Lion, you can cancel out a desktop animation with the trackpad. Also, the animation speed is dependent on your trackpad speed.
Solution: Get a trackpad.
(Keyboard speed is a little slow, though.)
The trackpad interruption works only when you're doing the same type of gesture.
It fails equally bad when, for example, you do a four-finger swipe to the left to switch to a different space and then immediately do a pinch 4 fingers gesture to launch Launchpad. Your second gesture goes to void if you do it even a millisecond before the space changing animation comes to a complete stop.
I totally agree. On an iPhone or an iPad, with their smaller displays, it makes total sense to have everything on the screen move when you swipe. However, on a Desktop computer, where many of us have 27" and larger monitors, or even multiple ones, it doesn't work as well. Instead, it can cause motion sickness and makes us have to wait unnecessary for them to complete. I would love it if Apple could just give us an option to turn all animations off.
In Snow Leopard, I use a terminal command to turn off the space switching animations completely. So when going from Space 1 to space 9 fro example, using CMD+9, is instant. Very efficient and no motion sickness. Unfortunately this command does not work in Lion.
Another drawback of the new way that Mission Control works when switching spaces in Lion and ML, is that static windows, like an EyeTV window, will have to close and reopen in the new space. In Snow Leopard, a window like that (if assigned to all Spaces) stays open during the switch. This is obviously a much more elegant solution.
----------
This doesn't work when you're using an external keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Left/Right Arrow) instead of the touchpad.
If you use the CMD-number keys instead, the animations will be the quicker.
You can at least change speed of Expose/Spaces with this command:
To revert:
Code:
$ defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.1
$ killall DockTo revert:
Code:
$ defaults delete com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration
$ killlall DockThis solution has been going around, but is useless in regard to the issue that I originally referred to. It makes the Expose animation faster (and quite jerky, I must say), but not the Space-switching one.
Some of you said that this fluidity of animations are nauseating. I'm usually not one to suffer from motion sickness, but this gets even to me. I wish Apple would reconsider this piece of code.
Can we perhaps rise this issue with them? What is the mechanism nowadays?
I've been told by Apple reps that the best place for feedback is http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
I've left feedback myself regarding this very issue, and so have many of my friends. The more complaints/suggestions Apple get, the better chance we have of getting this fixed.
This doesn't work when you're using an external keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Left/Right Arrow) instead of the touchpad.
Ctrl + number keys work too...instant jump from space to space.
this is ridiculous. This is what you have to complain about? motion sickness of animations? #ihateappleusers
Huh? Some people DO experience motion sickness. Just because you and I don't doesn't mean others don't.
You can turn off animation in Lion if you're using Totalspaces. Still, I prefer the SL animation over no animation. And of course I prefer built-in over third-party add-on...
What does being an apple user have to do with it? This issue is just like any other product dissatisfaction, and one which can potentially be fixed. For me, it's not so much motion sickness, as frustration during heavy multitasking, which leads to increased fatigue and decreasing productivity. Tangible stuff.
I had never thought about the animations causing people motion sickness! I personally don't mind the animations, they do look nice. But an option to turn them off would make sense.