Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Spaces - Page 2

This series of articles is very informative but not without prejudice when it comes to Windows:


Yes, but it doesn't matter if it is an app or not because in Windows every window represents a task.


Really? It's clear that Mac OS and Windows deliver different concepts here but I wouldn't say, that one is really that much better than the other. The fact, that the Taskbar always shows every task (even hidden windows) is really powerful IMO. The difference between both concepts is, that Apple tries to create a very realistic paper-less office experience (like in the early days at PARC) and Microsoft tries to implement an abstract task-oriented concept.

I prefer the abstract way because you doesn't need a hand full of features (app switching, Dock, Exposé, now Spaces) that compete against each other sometimes, but this is just my opinion.

Is this currently the case with spaces? Or is it a wish? If it is currently the case (which i imagine it is), can you also switch spaces by pinning your mouse alone to the edge of the screen?

By your statement, Mac OS X does not have a Finder. This is evidenced by all the "Fix The Fucking Finder" complaints from even dedicated Mac users. So Mac users get to complain about inaccurate statements from Windows users. But it's perfectly OK for Mac users to make up inaccurate statements about Windows. Why don't you just take it a step further and say that Windows XP does not have multiple monitor support either? Of course, you will probably call me a Microsoft lover, even though I am far from it, and tell me to go buy a PC.

This is quite different.

The point the article was making is that Windows doesn't do this with all applications. What you had was a situation where the system was specifically designed to do that.

From what I remember, using MS's solution, didn't work with many, or possibly, most programs. Programs would freeze, crash, bring the entire machine down, etc. It seemed as though Windows programs are linked to the "normal" screen. moving to more than one screen caused problems.

Jeremy Brown asked:
"can you also switch spaces by pinning your mouse alone to the edge of the screen?"

Already in Tiger, dragging your mouse to the desktop edges already has meanings. Start your screen saver, Unhide your dock, and probably some others. Spaces can add to these shortcuts without disrupting these functions because you're dragging a window when you hit the edges. So, while anything can change before the end of October, just moving the mouse to the edges doesn't activate a spaces feature.

Yes, you're right. Mac OS X did not have a Finder...until 10.5. This makes my earlier comment very valid. You're not a MS lover...I'm not a MS hater. I'm just telling it like it is. If no line was drawn, MS and Apple could declare everything as a feature even with the absolute minimum support. And they sometimes do. It's not right and you have to look beyond their words and judge whether said feature is really there or if it's some ridiculous hack put in to make it sound like the feature is all there.

How would you feel if Apple had left Quartz 2D Extreme in the state that it was in when Tiger was released but Apple declared it as a feature? I dunno about you but if someone said to me that his OS had Quartz 2D Extreme-like abilities and I replied back "well Mac OS X has that too, it's called Quartz 2D Extreme", I'd feel pretty stupid 'cuz it's not true. It doesn't work.

Granted everyone has a different threshold. Some people can take on a lot of bullshit before calling it bullshit. Nothing is white or black in life.

"Rrrrarr"



is the word of the day (again) for iLeopard, the unofficial voice of The Mac OS X Leopard system. he is a big proponent of Spaces and can't take being caged from the public for too much longer.

Find out more about Leopard and Spaces tomorrow at iLeopard.

[QUOTE=Jeremy Brown;1155762]Good old computers.

This was my first computer: an Amiga. I always thought it was called an Amiga 64, but apparently that is not the case.



You doubtless had Commodore 64 (there was also a Commodore 128) in mind.

I have an Amiga 500 and three Amiga 4000s (one is towered, one can emulate classic Macintosh up to OS 7.5). All are working except the 500 which has a dead HD.

Might be confusing it with the Commodore 64, which preceded the Amiga. The picture you showed is the Commodore Amiga 500. The following is a list of all Commodore Amiga models that were produced (not including clones & not in order of production).

Amiga 500
Amiga 500+
Amiga 600
Amiga 1000
Amiga 1200
Amiga 1500
Amiga 2000
Amiga 2500
Amiga 3000
Amiga 3000T
Amiga 4000
Amiga 4000T
Amiga CD32
CDTV

How is "A couple years before Switcher Ellen Feiss was even born" relevant besides the word "switcher?"

Using that kind of clause in the wrong context is something gradeschool kids are taught not to do, when sorting sentences within a paragraph and removing extraneous information.

-=|Mgkwho

it was a quip. I enjoyed it.

That's a bummer. I'd want a space for law school, and a couple spaces for different home stuff, and I'd want them each to have a dock of distinctly different composition.

Surely there must be some level of Dock customization though, but maybe only as far as minimized windows go.

I just wrote this to the author, but figured it might be helpful to discuss here. I love my QuickSilver and have grown accustomed to switching apps that way, and having main App windows Maximized as much as possible. anyone know an easier way to do this on Mac OS? thanks!

--

hey Prince,

nice article on Spaces...a big help in explaining how this feature will actually be implemented. thanks! I was wondering, however, if you know whether Apple has plans to make Maximizing in OS X more like Windows XP.

I'm a longtime Mac user and prefer most things about the Mac, but I also generally prefer to live in one app at a time and Maximize it to take up the full screen (helps a lot when writing in WriteRoom or making music in Ableton Live, for example). then I can Command-Tab around, or use QuickSilver to get to a specific app faster. it's great!

in FireFox on XP at work, I'm good. but in Safari or Mail or any other random program on the Mac, Maximizing involves a lot of work: 1) trying to see if the Zoom button will do it, 2) since Zoom usually fails at this, manually placing each program's window at the top left of the screen (trying to get it just...pixel...right), 3) dragging the bottom right of the window to the bottom right of the screen. ugh! by then I'm usually not focused on the work/play I was about to do.

since Apple is moving more of their programs towards single-window mode (iPhoto and iTunes were already there, as well as Logic and Final Cut...now iMovie too...and Safari has tabs and tab controls so it can be used in a single window) and getting rid of drawers in favor of sidebars so each app COULD live better in its own window, it seems like a logical step for them to address better Zooming/Maximizing, unless some third party developer has already nailed this?

what do you think? is there a way?

best,
Jake

Well, if your going to put it THAT way... you're right. Ya know, I never really understood the point of "mirroring" video from the iMac. It's not like you carry one around with you and hook it up to a projector. Having never owned one of any model, I can't say what you'd do with it, unless it supported much higher resolutions than the integral screen, perhaps allowing you to use the investment in a 15" or 17" iMac computer while viewing it on an expanded external monitor, say a 19" or larger BUT at a higher resolution for more desktop area.

And I've got a damn Verizon Razr with the locked out BlueTooth AND the stupid ring volume control right where you grab it to pick it up. But since AT&T doesn't work in my home, I'm stuck till Apple buys the telco giant and forces them into consumer-care compliance.

I still think whacking at Windoze is okay, though, as long as you do it gently.

i've had a go on an earlier leopard beta and spaces was one of the more accomplished features in terms of performance on a single cpu 1.8ghz g5.

i didn't play with it long enough to see what impact on my workflow it will have. I currently have 2 monitors at work and i'd recommend that to anyone doing any sort of production work (esp as u can pick up 2 19-20" monitors at ridiculous prices compared to even 2 years ago.) I'm curious how spaces will behave on across two monitors.

i reckon i might be assigning a space to my most used apps and one for all the others. It will also benefit peeps switching over from windows who r used to maximised apps.


regarding the amiga - definitely the best hardware / os combo ever. Way ahead of its time, great gaming and video machine in its day. I have many a fond memory playing SWOS etc. but also EA's deluxe paint and apps such as photogenics and imagine. I had a video monitor which whilst excellent for games was too lo-res for the gfx sw so i'd run them in hi res interlaced mode on another (virtual) screen. The flickering was counteracted by wearing really dark sunglasses.

i recall the amigaguide help system which was very much akin to html prior to the explosion of the web. Recall creating my 1st hypertext document. For me the Amiga then was what the mac is now - innovative, productive and creative. The biggest diff? the games! The amiga in europe rivaled sega and nintendo as a games machine for the late 80s early 90s. Then came the pc gaming wiht wing commander and doom whilst commodeore went belly up. </end rant>

Exactly what I was thinking -- the end of this article is a huge and surprising disappointment if true. Is that REALLY the one and only way Spaces handles multiple monitors? If I have a MacBook Pro connected to a cinema display, I want different spaces for each monitor, with their own menu bars.

Can anyone who's used Leopard shed any more light on this?

The article is accurate about how multiple monitors work. You cannot swap one screen for another. However, I have use a MacBook Pro with a Cinema Display and there is a way you can sort of do what I think you are talking about.

I use my cinema display as my main "work" monitor. When I am coding, working in Photoshop, etc., that is in front. On my laptop monitor (sitting on a Griffin laptop stand to the left) I have stuff like transmit, iTerm, iChat, iTunes, etc. I use the things over there as my ongoing or diagnostics monitor.

So, what I've done is set those ongoing "monitoring" apps to be visible on every space. My main monitor has a space for Photoshop, a space for TextMate, a space for CSS Edit, etc. So, when I change from one space to another, the main monitor changes and the diagnostic monitor does not.

The one thing I would REALLY love to see is having an option for apps to appear on multiple but not all screens. For example, I might want Firefox to appear on 3 of the 4 spaces or whatever. To me, that would be ideal, but all in good time.

Feels like I'm reading an essay by Daniel Eran Dilger on RoughlyDrafted.com That's a good thing!

Sometimes, though, Daniel goes overboard, and isn't always right.

Very good tips -- thank you.

One thing the review did not mention is that you can move the spaces themselves around.

When are you in the zoomed out level viewing all spaces you can grab them by the top of the space and rearrange them. So, if you'd like to change or move priority of the various spaces you can even do that with no problems.

So, would something like Smackbook be possible with Spaces? I'm assuming so, but has anyone been working on it...?

Is there anything new in Display preferences, then, or are we still stuck with just mirroring or an extended desktop? Is there any way to choose which monitor is considered the "primary"?


Yeah but there's still the issue of the menubar and Dock. Unless Leopard has changed something, those two critical UI elements will only show up on the primary display. That's mildly annoying if the displays are right next to each other, as you'll constantly have to go back and forth between displays even if you're only using the menubar, windows and Dock icon for a single application. It's far more irritating if your displays are far apart....

I've been pretty happy with Desktop Manager for OSX, and Virtual Dimension for Windows 2k and XP. Not as slick as Spaces (of course), and neither is maintained anymore, but it's saved my sanity after having to leave X Windows years ago.

http://desktopmanager.berlios.de/

http://virt-dimension.sourceforge.net/

If I understand what you're asking, you can set the "primary" monitor by dragging the menu bar to that monitor in the Arrangement section of the Displays preference panel.

It would be chaotic to have two docks and two menubars. I understand that you want your second monitor to act as a space but even space only displays a single instance of the Dock and menubar.

That's the perils of having more than one monitor though. The OS could have been built differently and allow two monitors to act as though you were running two different accounts but it wasn't. I've always wished for multiple cursor and keyboard support so that my girlfriend and I could work on the same computer but on different screens but it didn't happen and won't anytime soon.

What were you thinking when you bought a second display? You should have known how OS X handled multiple monitors. And like I said, if you treat the second monitor like a different space and not an extension of the first then you've just spent a whole lot of money for nothing. Virtual desktops perform the exact same thing for much cheaper.

In my case, I'd love to have a second monitor...but this is because there is often 2 sets of eyes on the computer...one set (family member) is watching TV in El Gato's eyeTV app and the other set (mine) is happily typing away a message in AI.

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking for. Is it like having one screen (with it's own dock and menubar) stay completely static, while having a second monitor (with it's own menubar and dock and desktop picture) swap between different applications like a Rolodex? That's valid, but when you're talking duplicate menus and docks, that's getting into virtual machines rather than just virtual desktops. Today, you can do that with screen sharing apps (VNC, Timbuktu, Apple Remote Access) and I think one of those even has some kind of rapid swap gallery of all the machines you can pull up (Joe running MYOB, Jane running Quark, Julie running Photoshop). But to have that kind of swapping on one physical machine, probably won't take off until there's more work done on Virtual Machines. It doesn't appear to be the problem Spaces is focused on solving though.



If Photoshop is assigned to Space 2, and you're in Space 1 when you double-click a Photoshop document, the Space switches to space 2 and shows your Document. There's nothing to stop you from then moving the Photoshop document back to space 1 if you want to. My guess is that in older Carbon apps that don't use standard toolbox routines to draw modal dialogs, this could be a problem. What if you were working with a document in a different space from the one the app was "assigned" and the app brings up a dialog ("Pay your shareware fee!") If it doesn't use sheets or standard toolbox calls, that dialog may be displaying in a different space and the window you're working with just appears to get unresponsive. I bet Cocoa apps and well-behaved Carbon apps will have no problem though. Unless you really have to, I'd leave the "assigning" feature as a very rare option.


If it's not something you are focusing on now, minimize it to the dock. The dock stays the same in all spaces and you can get your iTunes window from the dock whenever you need it. (Even better is getting developers to display useful info while minimized in the dock).



Numbers are the keyboard shortcuts for jumping straight to a particular space, but aren't shown otherwise. Names attached to spaces would be kind of useless since they wouldn't be shown and wouldn't otherwise do anything. Nice sentiment (like comments in code) but not very useful.



I strongly agree with the digs being childish (no matter which side started them); the past is the past.

As for the external display on the iMac, I think it was a compromise. I bet the designers didn't want ANY external display since it would make the experience unbalanced ("Two different displays with a keyboard in the crack between them? Horrors!") But I bet Service & Support threw a fit when they faced the prospect of having to open up each of these at the Genius Bar whenever someone was reporting a bad display. My guess is that the external iMac port was for service use, but made to work in mirroring mode so no one would be tempted to use it for day to day work on the desktop that way. No way to know though.

Trust me you will not be doing that. Crtl arrows are so much more faster than moving a mouse to the edge of a screen to switch.

Forget what you think about virtual desktops as you are accustomed to in Unix etc.. Spaces is way better.

Different strokes for different folks. Dragging the window to the edge is a one handed operation (no modifiers needed). Some will like that; some will prefer the immediacy of the keyboard modifiers.

No, it would not be chaotic. And what are the perils?


Tiger wasn't. We are not discussing "the OS" that's currently in production, we're discussing an OS that hasn't even been released yet, and which the vast majority of us have access to only through rumor and screenshots. It has not been clear how Leopard would deal with this issue except to those lucky enough to have Developer builds.


Multiple inputs are a whole 'nother thing. I'm only talking about having Spaces assigned to different displays. They already have mirroring and extended desktop; Spaces support would have been the third option. I'd point out that some form of integration between Spaces and multiple monitors was promised early on -- and this is far from that. This is more like Parallels' "support" for multiple monitors, which is really nothing more than tricking Windows into thinking its display is extra wide.


Wow..so many unnecessary, obnoxious and presumptuous comments in a single paragraph! Firstly -- I did not buy a second display; I have considered buying an MBP and Cinema Display, but will now have to change my plans because Leopard evidently won't live up to the hype. At work, I have a Mac Pro with multiple displays, and I'm disappointed to hear the "primary"/"secondary" distinction is still mandatory. Less reason to upgrade. Though there, my only real beef is the menubar issue.

Secondly: "you should have known how OS X handled.." Uh, again, I know how TIGER handled them, not Leopard, and it was suggested early on that this would change with Spaces.

Thirdly: who are you to say how virtual desktops and multiple monitors 'should' be used? Having two desktop monitors side by side is one particular type of multi-monitor setup, but it's not the only one. When you have a laptop that sometimes is connected to an external monitor and sometimes isn't, it would be useful to be able to customize what's going on in either screen and have that be automatically remembered when the configuration changes, just as you can customize how a computer connects to the internet at different locations or in different networks, or customize energy saving settings depending on whether you're on battery power or not.. Virtual Desktops do not "perform the exact same thing". Spaces gets it half right by letting you decide which apps and app windows go where, but it doesn't follow through with displays.

Huh? You guys are really overthinking this. This is entirely intuitive; it's got nothing to do with virtual machines. It's really quite simple -- we want the menu bar and Dock available on more than one display. Even without Spaces, that would be a welcome addition to how the OS handles multiple monitors. Duplicate menus means nothing more than having identical GUIs pointing to the same behaviors. Duplicate clocks means the OS is sending GUI updates to multiple UI components rather than one. The only things being duplicated are the UI elements themselves. This is pretty basic stuff, and not really all that different than having the desktop picture duplicated on a second screen, or how the OS launches separate "Displays" System Preferences windows for each monitor.

You're right. I am over-thinking it. I really thought what you want (mirroring of the menubar and dock) was already an option in Universal Access or something. It's to help those who had trouble mousing long distances. Maybe that was a third party add on though since I can't seem to recall where I remember seeing it. If it's not there and you want it added to OS X, try campaigning for it as a universal access feature since Apple seems to want to make OS X a great platform for differently abled users.

I do like the idea of a virtual machine interface. Running Mac OS X on one monitor and VMWare on another is a neat thing now (using a Virtual Machine). I'd like that same functionality in Mac OS with just OS X apps one day. The technology is there, but there are a lot of problems with the interface metaphors breaking down (clipboard sharing, wrong aspect ratios for display, knowing which menubar is the master, etc).

But right now, Spaces addresses issues of having virtual desktops not virtual machines. And your pet issue (menu & dock mirroring) won't be solved by Spaces, but I hope it comes soon as a univeral access option if it's not already there.

I'm wondering if it's possible to get floating pallettes from applications to display in a different space. In particular, I'm thinking of the ActionScript panel in Flash 9, which is huge; working in Flash is quite the pain in the butt on a MacBook Pro because of it.

Any insight?

You had me at F8.

I love Expose, this seems like a 'superset' of Expose in a very good way, so will be very easy to incorporate into my general usage.

Great article too, thanks!

I checked Universal Access just now to see if I'd been missing something all along, but it's not there as far as I can see. Bummer. But you're right, it would make a lot of sense for the disabled in addition to folks like me (the lazy).


I'm not sure I understand the VM thing (I understand VMs, just not what you're after in this instance). Why would a VM be needed if all the apps are OS X? Are you talking about virtualizing another instance of the entire operating system for some reason? I'm not sure how this relates to Spaces exactly, or to the issue of multiple monitor support. Why would anything need to be virtualized at all?


Well we now know won't be solved by Spaces, but when it was claimed early on that Spaces would offer multiple monitor support, it seemed logical to suppose that meant that you could divide up monitors by Space, which would be useless unless the menu and dock were mirrored. By "support" evidently Apple meant "the most braindead, 'duh' support imaginable, short of letting windows on secondary monitors become stranded because Spaces doesn't recognize they exist"

It really depends. If you use Apple's mouse acceleration settings, maybe. If your hands are on the keyboard, use the keystrokes. However, if your hand is already on the mouse for something, then it's really quick and easy to flick the cursor around, a lot quicker than going back to the keyboard to hit keys.

Real palettes (that float above all documents) are property of the application (or the system). If an app is frontmost, you will see those palettes. Sometimes developers make a palette that may look and act like a palette but it's really just a regular window and it can be intermingled with other windows. Those regular (non-palette) windows are moved in and out with Spaces but true palettes are not. I don't know how the ActionScript panel behaves, but here are some other examples you might know in Tiger:

• Safari's Download Window = normal window
• Filemaker Script Editor = normal window
• Filemaker Script Debugger = application palette
• Finder Show View Options = application palette
• Finder Get Info Window opened with Command-I = normal window
• Finder Get Info Palette opened with Command-Option-I = application palette
• Voice Input (opened in System Prefs: Speech) = system palette

AFAIK, no.

To be clear, this is off-topic. I do hear some confusion when some of my Ubuntu friends start mistaking features in a virtual machine manager for the features in Spaces (a virtual desktop manager) and saying it comes up short, when in fact these are different issues. What follows are off-topic fantasy thinking that should in no way be construed as shortcomings of Spaces.

I'd love to launch a set of applications in their own Virtual Machine on OS X. When setting up a Filemaker driven website, it'd be nice to have a VM with Filemaker, Safari, and a text editor and the reference documentation setup. Instead of launching and quitting all those each day, I just freeze the virtual machine and restart it the next (without the launching and window arranging). Let's say I have a bunch of these VM's: a Photoshop/Illustrator one, and an XCode & Interface Builder one, and a bunch of others. When I launch one it takes over the screen and I can mix things within the VM, but I won't ever see an XCode window in my Photoshop area. Some extra enforced isolation when I want it. And now that we have an interface for managing the machines, we can also tack on an interface for scheduling and resource allocation. Let's say I had a Photoshop filter going that will take 4.3 hours (and has already been going for 2.5). I start to compile something in Xcode in my other VM and see it'll take and hour and a half. Since these are whole environments, I'd like to be able to freeze Photoshop for a while exactly as it stands and give Xcode the CPU so that it takes only half that time as when it's competing with the Photoshop VM. Then I can let Photoshop go again and have the CPU to itself. I have no idea what sort of interface would work well for this, all I can think of is a big 3x3 grid like the Brady Bunch intro except with VMs instead of Brady heads. Maybe something more "remote control" like since you are switching between channels yet the channels keep going in your absence. I don't know. As nice as all this is, it's kind of limited because each of these VM's is so isolated. Sometimes that isolation is good, but it might be more useful being able to selectively break down that isolation. Moving clipboard data. Moving windows in and out of other VM areas. InterVM communication as if the processes were talking over a network. These would be cool, but they'd be an incredible engineering effort to intelligently break down the isolation securely and with a user interface that could be intuitively grasped by users.

Virtual machine management isn't what Spaces is all about. I'd like to see it one day as some future OS feature, but I'm plenty happy with what's already been engineered.

I won't deny that Apple makes a badass OS, but the Spaces feature isn't really an innovation by them. As far as I can tell, the only thing differentiating it from Workspaces in Linux is the fact that you can give apps a permanent Space assignment. Also, in Compiz Fusion (no longer Beryl) on Linux, you don't even have to use the cube (I do admit it's silly, but it is fun for a while). They do have a "grid" feature, and you can do all the operations with moving windows and stuff that I've seen in Spaces demos. Actually, another difference is the fact that you can customize Compiz to look however you want, and with as many workspaces as you want.

http://nicofo.tuxfamily.org/dotclear...workspaces.jpg