Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Spaces - Page 3

Are you thinking of the Commodore 64 which came out before the Amiga? I had, as a child, a Commodore 64. Then my dad went all crazy and purchased a tape drive for it! Those were the days!! Mom would not allow an Amiga as she said computers were a fad! She can't live without her games now

compiz-fusion works out of the box on my Macbook.

Spaces sure sounds good and will probably change the way I work.

At the same time I would like the option to put a menu bar on a secondary display. I find I have to perform actions in multiple applications more or less at the same time. Consider writing a user guide for an application. In order to do it well one has to flip back and forth constantly: perform action, write description of action, perform action, write description, take screenshot, paste into instructions, etc. This is more efficient with two physical screens than one, but there's always the problem of which one to put the menubar on. If you need a function that either doesn't have a keyboard shortcut or is one you haven't memorized, there may be a trip to the other display needed. It's one area where Windows is actually more efficient because there's a menubar at the top of every window.

These are really stupid questions (and they are most likely in the text as well):

• Can a space have a full screen application in it, for example a full screen game or movie.
• Can a users specify the contents of each space to run on a differt core, or will it do this on its own?
• Can spaces be a differnt resolutions and still appear full screen when you switch between them. For example can one space be a 800x600 while another is 1024×768.

Windows XP supports multiple monitors, but it won't remember where those monitors are relative to each other. My Macs never had this problem.

For example, I have a laptop. At one office, my second monitor sits to the right of my laptop (due to lighting glare). At my other office, my second monitor sits to the left of my laptop. When I go from one to the other, Windows insists on putting the second monitor wherever it wants.

Also, when I switch from extended to mirroring and back, Windows forgets where the extended desktop was. Dumb.

I have the best of both worlds on my mac book. If I hit the bottom or right edge and click then I rotate to the next screen, if I hit Alt and up or left then I rotate that way. I have VirtueDesktop setup as 4x4 and this works great.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Spaces when you unplug the monitor (think laptop and external monitor, not mirrored).

Nice article. Although not really in the same league, QNX had a desktop that allowed you to drag applications between machines.

So if you have an editor open on machine A you can drag it to machine B and the app would run there.

a brief overview of this is at: http://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6...ch/photon.html

I really like the stuff that they did/do (I've been away from QNX for a couple years).


-- sorry for the interruption --

Well, full screen mode (where both the menubar and dock are hidden) is pretty undefined about what the expected behavior is for context switches (cmd-tab) even under Tiger. Spaces won't suddenly define that since there are different "right" answers. All these behaviors are possible (among others I'm sure):

• Move back to windowed mode to save resources or to re-orient users.
• Stay in full-screen mode.
• Stay full screen but pop up a window explaining how to get out.
• Lock into kiosk mode and try to stop all menubar, dock, and context switches.

All of these have their place but I'd say the first one is the most common today and will be what happens with most apps. Spaces does open up new user situations developers may not have expected so be understanding "What do you mean you want two different slideshows playing full screen at the same time? How can you watch both? Oh, right... Spaces." It's new interface territory; it's going to take time to evolve.



Spaces just manages virtual desktops. Something may happen under the hood, and OS X may juggle priorities if a space is swapped in or out, but there aren't direct settings to control processor or scheduling.



Leopard opens a whole new can of worms with the push toward resolution independence. Such preparations aren't clearly evident, but telling certain spaces to run in different resolutions doesn't seem to fit with that push.

Yeh man, awesome

I'm looking forwards to spaces, because multiple desktop are imo the most efficient way of swapping between a lot of open applications. All the third party solutions like VirtueDesktops are riddled with problems maintaining the z-order and focusing of windows as you swap out, and then back to a desktop. Even the *nix multi desktop managers don't do this very well. I think there's a lot of room for this to "implemented better", hopefully Apple's version is that.

First off, I love the "Road to Leopard" Articles. I remember using Mac OS 6 and growing up with OS 8/9 and then fully converting once OS X came out. Its great to look back and see the difference between OS 6-9 and OS X, even to see the vast difference in 10.0 to 10.4 and now 10.5!

Secondly, Spaces is great. I've been muddling in the Leopard builds for a while now, and I absolutely adore Spaces. I've shown it to quite a few of my Windows-Biased friends and they have started looking at Macs as a viable option for their next computer.

Now saying that, I believe that Apple has a very potential gold mind on here. If they want to really stick the Windows users and get them directly on it, what they need to do is incorperate a Windows space into the operating system. I know Parallels has a similar feature, where you can flip flop between Mac and Windows, but this could be amazing.

A quick example before I hit the sack; Say you are working in, oh say photoshop in OS X. When suddenly your boss sends you a reference in the email, a small free-ware game. He wants you to design the magazine cover (or whatever it is) like the user interface of the game. Instead of having to boot up into Parallels (can't multitask, it sucks up majority of CPU and RAM, at least not enough to multitask Photoshop and Paralllels) or switch over to boot camp (closing down your PSD and making you reboot... timely)... you can just flip over to your Windows Space, navigate to the folder and run your little game and get what you need.


Its just a thought. I think it sounded better in my head, but then again Its about 3 am and I'm reading through appleinsider archives... Then again, maybe you'll see this implemented in 10.5.5

System 6.0, I believe, added multiple monitor support when the Mac ][ came out in 1989. The Mac ][ had 6 NuBus slots, all the same speed and all very fast slots for their day. Thus, you could easily stick 6 video cards in the machine and have it all "just work". At MacWorld Expos, the MacroMind VideoWorks booth always had a huge bank of monitors being driven off a Mac ][ (VideoWorks later became Macromedia Director and was then bought out by Adobe).

9 years later, Windows 98 did add rudimentary multiple monitor support. The problem was that while Apple handled all their video drivers, Windows depended on the video card suppliers working it out for themselves. To make matters worse, Intel-compatible hardware at the time had major problems with IRQ conflicts and slow expansion card standards (it wasn't uncommon even in the late 90's to have most of the slots being old ISA slots). This meant that despite any OS support, it was EXTREMELY hit-or-miss as to whether any two given video cards-- whether from the same manufacturer or not-- would work together. Even if they did, they almost never did hardware accelerated graphics correctly.

By 2000, though, video card makers started making video cards that had two video-out ports. Driving two monitors from a single card simplified the process enormously. Adding to that was the proliferation of autoconfiguring and and speedy of PCI expansion slots. Thus, within a relatively short time period after 2000, Windows started shaping up substantially on the multi-monitor support. I'd say XP is the first OS where Microsoft got it more or less "right".

At the same time, Apple has significantly reduced the Mac's capability for handling many video cards. Most PCI video cards don't work at all or don't work well on a Mac. Long gone are the Mac ][ days when you could fill a machine's slots with video cards. And while a Windows machine that supports SLI communication between multiple video cards is fairly commonplace, Apple has yet to release a machine with such support. So, alas, at this point the Mac has nothing to brag about in this area except to say "we did it first".

Works now - its a great tip.

It doesn't really work that way. There's one desktop, one menu bar, and one Dock. Switching spaces just slides all the windows off and replaces them with another set. You don't really move from one desktop to another.

I musta hit a sore spot, eh? What part of "but even Space only displays a single instance of the Dock and menubar " did you not understand? Why would Apple make an exception for people like you that want to use a second monitor to make it do something it's not intended to do? My advice, switch to Windows.

So if you have files on your desktop, do they show up in every space, or can you move their icons to the space associated with that task?

For instance, if I have a set of text documents I'm editing and they're currently sitting on my desktop, can I move them to the desktop space where my text editor is active, and get them off of my other desktop spaces, or do they stay on the desktop no matter which space I move to?

Ok - now for my 2 cents about the reference to the Amiga Story since this is really halve of the whole thing!

Back in the original days of the Amiga - before it was purchased by Commodore, Amiga approached Microsoft to write its operating system - Yes Microsoft (youll find references to MetaComCo and BCPL and TripOS) - the story goes that Amiga didnt have much money left after designing the system and needed a cut down OS to make the system work prior to the sale to Commodore. Commodore originally purchased the hardware plus the rights to Amiga for a poultry sum. The offshute was AmigaOS and was and still is one of the first original true multi-tasking environments ever created. Microsoft would later attempt to buy back AmigaOS and fail - it is viewed that the AmigaOS (which uses the MagicID for Dos 1.0) was Microsofts first attempts at immitating UNIX. The basic kernel known as Kickstart has undergone numerous updates however there is still a faithful set of Amiga'ns out there!

Workbench is the name given the the GUI environment originally conceived and created from GEOS originating from the Commodore 64. GEOS was one of the first WIMP environments for the home user founded under XEROX - in those days alot of litigation was taking place regarding who created WIMP - it was finally awarded to XEROX (circa 1991). The GEOS system was supplied on a number of disks and in effect gave the workbench environment to the Commodore 64. Not many people used GEOS and as a result, it was more of a gimmic at the time that anything valuable in terms of functionality. It however laid the foundation to Workbench.

It was the Commodore 64 that first saw dedicated hardware for specific operations - one specific component was SID which was responsible for the sound ADSR (attack decay sustain release). Later on the Amiga enhanced the single channel sound processor to allow for 4 simulatanous channels. The 6502 processor is viewed as one of the first RISC processors in history with commercial success and still is found in numerous devices even to this day - some variants still live on such as the 6504 and the 6502e. The Motorola 68000 processor from which Apple and Amiga both were born would later take very different paths.

Most notable with regard to the Amiga is the separate portion of the processor known as BLITTER. Blitter is a block transfer and multiplication vector engine viewed as being the core behind the Amiga's success. BLITTERs capability allowed a block of memory to be copied and a simple operation to be applied to all elements in the segment. This was one of the first commercial uses of a vector processing engine within home computer architectures and would later form one of the basic building blocks for the PS3's Cell processing architecture. For those not aware, at the time, the only vector processors were found in Cray Supercomputers - later on however the DEC ALPHA would incorporate similar technology however would eventually get killed by COMPAQ (after COMPAQ acquired DEC) as direct competition with Intel would damage its position and so sacrificed the lamb. The team found itself sold onto INTEL, and would eventually be the ones to incorporate the DEC ALPHA technology into the XEON chipset. For those who remember the builds of Windows NT3.51 for DEC ALPHA those were very very fun days of re-install hell.

Back to the AMIGA, Commodore died because it basically started releasing computers which superceeded the previous systems every 3 months - PLEASE READ THIS STEVE - I was a trusty Amiga lover with the A500 and then the A1200 and A4000. During the 3 year period Amiga release the A500, A600, A1200 and various models of each - the A1200 had a buildin HD which at the time was amazing. Boy didnt we all love soundtracker!

Amiga is one of those computers like the Atari ST, Acorn Archemedies which will be remembered for us 30 somthing's as the great days on ground-shaking gaming. I for one turn 34 tomorrow and really am proud to look back on the last 20 years with very fond memories. Sitting here infront of a MacPro quad-core, im looking forward to Leopard in some respects, and in others dread of re-installing my system and then the chore of reinstalling software and patches.

Steve - two thumbs up for making us part of History - looking forward to the future as a loyal mac-fan. Regarding spaces - sorry but even with two 30'inch screens - screen realestate is still not enough

By the way - if you see references to MetaComCo - just go hunting and youll find Micro$oft.....

Here is a screenshot of GEOS - Wiki @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_%2...ting_system%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:G...mmodore_64.gif

Agreed. Completely irrelevant. What a lame excuse to mention that poor girl. All you Feiss-worshipping perverts should be ashamed of yourselves.

-Clive

OOps - mistake - Microsoft made AmigaBasic - AmigaOS is completely created by MetaComCo - apologies for incorrect statement

No, you're just being an ass for no apparent reason.


Well, for one thing, the incorrect grammar ("but even Space only.."). It's impossible to tell what you're trying to say there, except perhaps to suggest we should all be clairvoyant and have already known precisely what Apple planned to do. Space[s] on a single monitor only displays one dock and menu bar (and why wouldn't it? It's just one monitor!). What on earth does that have to do with multiple monitors, a topic which until now has not been directly addressed by Apple in press releases or any of the other publically available info on Leopard? We have all been left wondering what Spaces was "intended to do" with multiple monitors, and it was therefore perfectly reasonable to expect that their claim that a program intended to provide multiple virtual desktops would "support" multiple monitors meant that multiple desktops would be visible on these multiple monitors. Only now do we find out that's not so, but there was absolutely nothing in the information Apple has provided regarding this feature in the last 14 months that would allow us to know this.

And Windows does not provide anything like this functionality, what are you talking about? Stop being an apologist.

Looks like Spaces may be subject to the same legal issues that this news story describes about Red Hat and Novell


Computerworld article

Ah, ok. Quite a bit more than I was asking for (which was basically just changes to the Spaces UI). I'd be surprised if they went for VMs considering their paranoia about anything that could allow OS X to be run on different hardware (someone would surely reverse-engineer it). I could see them enhancing Spaces though -- would it require real virtualization, for instance, to force all the apps in a Space to go into some kind of "suspended" mode (although this admittedly wouldn't be perfect as apps can span multiple Spaces..). There are a lot of interesting possibilities for improvement -- some way to make a space prioritized just like processes can be, password-protected spaces, etc.

Question. So lets say I have Adium open. And I have it assigned to desktop 4. What happens when I'm in Desktop 1 and I get an IM? Can you assign apps parts of apps to a desktop? Or am I going to miss the notification. The only possibility I can think of is setting up Growl to permanently leave a new message on all 4 desktops at the same time so I don't miss anything.

Growl sends system-wide notifications, so you'll definitely be notified when you get an IM. And Adium will be in the dock, so if you have it set to bounce when you receive a message, you'll get that too.

Does automatic Space-switching happen when an app in one Space opens a window for another app in a different Space? With VirtueDesktops I'm able to open multiple Safari windows from NNW on the Browser desktop without being automatically switched there, keeping the News desktop uncluttered.

I've always preferred to explicitly switch between virtual desktops instead of it happening automatically (sometimes unexpectedly).


Moving windows to different virtual desktops is a basic VDM capability, although it doesn't always work correctly in VirtueDesktops.


I'd anticipate dialogs for the active (frontmost) application to open in whatever Space you're currently working in, not in a different Space the app may have been assigned to. What's less obvious is where uninitiated dialogs might appear when the app is inactive with visible windows in the current Space but assigned to a different Space. In some cases you'd like them to show up in the current Space; other times they may be better in the app-assigned Space.

I don't know how much control Spaces gives you over different foreground/background app, initiated/unitiated window scenarios.


Depends on the implementation. For me CodeTek VirtualDesktop Pro (an unfortunate abandonware victim) did a better job with that than VirtueDesktops.


I think named Spaces could be quite useful, e.g. in the menubar list or (if supported) a brief bezel display when switching between Spaces (like other OS X VDM's optionally do).


They seem an unnecessary unprofessional distraction, though not atypical considering AI's oft-tabloid mentality.

Even if the Switcher reference is totally irrelevant, the Arthur Dent reference is fantastic and more than makes up for it. Way to know your back half of the trilogy (and/or tertiary, quandry, and quintessential phases).

Multiple desktops can make it easier to manage different contexts than excessive app/window hiding/showing/switching.


Not sure I understand the z-order issue (got an example?) but window focusing has been a nuisance for me with VirtueDesktops, especially when Finder is involved.

I'm not fond of the term "virtual desktop" because it often implies characteristics that aren't "virtually" supported, e.g. a unique menubar, Dock, and/or set of Desktop icons on OS X. Giving it a fresh "Space" name in Spaces leaves it open to be more accurately defined for what it really is, including not necessarily being tied to the traditional desktop metaphor (which Dashboard and certain full-screen modes already offer some escape from).

Not sure I understand what's technically preventing you from already assigning a dedicated Space to Parallels and/or Fusion (having never used either). In general, why can't a Space have a unique personality that gives it the illusion of being independent from the traditional Desktop? Surely some people will leave certain apps running full-screen, each in their own Space that never (or rarely) exposes the underlying Desktop. And Conjure lets you create unique desktop-like layers, which works without Spaces though it could be interesting to see how it integrates with it.

The desktop metaphor really isn't as sacred as some people treat it and I think it's becoming increasingly easier to live without it if you want to. For better and worse, it still just happens to be one of the most stubbornly persistent of many possible virtual environments.

Yep, if the Desktop layer is visible in the current Space.


Nope. Still need a third-party app like Conjure for that, which probably won't be the most elegant solution because of OS X restrictions that make certain things frustratingly difficult for developers. For instance, it's a hassle to completely eliminate the Dock or to use Path Finder as a complete Finder replacement.

I don't know how it works with Adium and Spaces, but

When iChat is assigned to a desktop in VirtueDesktops the Messages popup window appears on the current desktop, then jumps back to the assigned desktop when clicked and I manually switch there to interact with it. I often make that Messages window sticky after its first opened (either automatically or manually) so it floats on every desktop, and it'll remain sticky if closed and reopened in the same iChat and VirtueDesktops session. It's a bit awkward though I didn't find any better way of handling it after fussing with different configuration options.

In VirtueDesktops I assign apps to specific desktops mostly so I won't have to move their windows around immediately after launching. I wish there were some type of differentiation between "app not running" and "app already running" states to make that kind of configuration possible. And it's tricky to control where further windows will appear and stay if they're moved.

Based on Apple's Spaces demo videos it looks like windows can be easily moved around, and hopefully remain in whatever Space they're in independently of any assigned Space settings. That would resolve the long-frustrating "window jumps back to assigned desktop" problem with VirtueDesktops, probably a worthwhile tradeoff for other features Spaces may lack.

Yes, that's right. They show up in every space. It's always the same shortcuts because it's always the same desktop and it never moves. Switching spaces moves the windows.

Great article... very enjoyable - thanks!

That's not true. Windows 2000 and previous NT versions have had multi-monitor support since 1996 or so. You didn't have to install drivers for the second video card if the drivers were already in Windows or you were using the same type of card for both the first and second monitors.

The one problem Windows had, and still has, is color calibration. It's a reason why doing color work within the OS is a real pain. Calibrating one monitor is a big enough problem, ding two isn't possible. There are supposed workarounds, but they really don't work.

MS has "tried" to fix this in Vista, but hasn't. There are problems with profiles, etc. Sadly enough, nothing useful has bee accomplished.

Not to say that there aren't some proprietary solutions, because there are. But they either only work with the specialized equipment that the manufacturer offers as a turnkey solution, or are just simply too expensive for much other than high end pro applications.

Here is just one article explaining the woes, something I've had to live with for years in my lab., a reason why, dual monitor support or not, Windows is a failure for the graphics arts, video editing, and photo professions.

http://www.outbackphoto.com/tforum/v...p?TopicID=2518

Probably not though.

Spaces doesn't actually provide different workspaces as such. It's a single workspace and triggering the switch to another space only (in reality) slides windows out of the user's view. The special effects such as windows sliding into the workspace and out again is just that...a special effect...it looks very convincing because it really looks like you're switching from one screen to another...but the Dock, the desktop picture, and the menu bar are all fixed.

It's a clever game of hiding specific windows and showing others. And if that kind of behavior is considered switching workspaces then there's plenty evidence of prior art to put this legal entanglement to rest.

I rarely defend Apple...but when I do, I get called an apologist. Am I really an apologist?

Anyways, I shouldn't be talking to someone with the word 'anus' in his name. Later, dude.

Does Spaces allow you the option of a desktop pager? I mean icons of your virtual desktops that are always there on your desktop, without having to hit a hotkey. I have become used to Codetek virtual desktops (I know they don't work on intel machines but I'll be upgrading as soon as leopard is released). I don't like the idea of having to hit F8 in order to get a snapshot of my desktops.

P.S. By the way, excellent articles and great forum (I am hooked and just registered).

No...the closest thing you'll get to a key-combo free view of all your spaces would adding a hot-corner to activate Spaces. But there is no way to view your other spaces without activating Spaces. Perhaps someone will have a utility that allows this eventually.