Inside OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion GM: Go Full Screen on any display

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  • Reply 21 of 86

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Quadra 610 View Post


     


     


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    Agreed, it reminds me of the Windows XP "Fischer Price" theme. Let's face it, MS just, simply, has no taste. The intro to the Surface was nauseating and so is this OS theme! Ugh! :)


  • Reply 22 of 86

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by RichL View Post


    A phone is a different device from a tablet and a tablet is a different device from a PC. They have different hardware, different screen sizes, different user input methods and different uses. Thus, they should all have a different user interface. A unified user interface leads to messy compromises. 


     


    Microsoft made this mistake with Windows Mobile and now with Metro. It's a shame that Apple is making the same mistake with OSX.



    I certainly see your point! :) But I have to admit, 99% of my "computing" is so much easier and more fun on iOS....and the more Apple melds the two makes it more fun and easier to use. Power users? I can see your concern, but for everybody else, I think Apple is on the right track.


     


    Best

  • Reply 23 of 86
    gosfordgosford Posts: 2member


    Well, Im really comparing Mac OS X to Windows 7. I always give software time to iron bugs b4 i start using, so no windows 8 for me yet. But I really dont see how the Mac OS beats windows 7 when it comes to dual screen functionality. I admit, I love the display on Macs and the smooth gestures HANDS DOWN.  The mac ok is nice, but the way the few people were talking about it, i was expecting more. to be honest, im very disappointed.

  • Reply 24 of 86
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by dev tty01 View Post


    Sorry, but the current behavior is completely broken.  Prior to "full screen" one could play a DVD with DVD Player and the player would be full screen on the monitor I chose and I could keep working with menu bar etc. on the other screen.  That was useful.  The 'new' full screen behavior takes away functionality we have had for years.  Let's call it what it is - completely broken for folks with multiple monitors.  I used to be able to go full screen in an app on one monitor and not full screen mode on the other monitors.  Just give us back functionality we already had.  I've had macs since '84, but when Apple does nonsense like this it drives me nuts.  They are taking away functionality in the interest of some purist full-screen vision. 



    It is not OS X that is broken, it is individual apps that have certain features or not. Applications must explicitly be coded to use the systemwide fullscreen mode, if the developer decides not to use the standard feature set (or not to have a fullscreen mode at all), they can implement other fullscreen modes.


     


    Take VLC, it goes fullscreen on whatever screen its window resides when you invoke fullscreen mode. Take Aperture, it allows you to select which monitor is the on that takes the primary fullscreen content, and it lets you decide what the other monitor shows (black, the linen pattern, mirroring, or a selected image).


     


    What Apple added with Lion was a systemwide method and UI to make fullscreen apps. It made it easier for developers to integrate a fullscreen mode into their applications, it made it easier for the user because all applications using it used the same UI and commands to enter fullscreen mode and it automatically created a new space for fullscreen apps, making it easier to switch from a fullscreen app to another one. In that process, applications that already had fullscreen modes (like DVD player) could lose fullscreen features that went beyond the basic systemwide method. As so often, Apple chose consistency over features. But the number of applications that lost features was very small (largely DVD player and iPhoto to my knowledge, not sure about third-party ones) and some applications like Aperture retained their extra fullscreen features (almost, it lost one minor feature).

  • Reply 25 of 86
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member


    If Mountain Lion has evolved into something troubling with it's full screen implementation (and I personally dislike what OSX is becoming), I can't imagine the agonizing mess Win 8 has become.

  • Reply 26 of 86
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by fyngyrz View Post


    I have six monitors. Mountain Lion's Full screen mode becomes six times as stupid on my Mac Pro.


     


    All part of the dumbing down of OSX.


     


    Fortunately, Snow Leopard works pretty well with multiple monitors, and I don't have to be sucked into the (cough) "vision" of whoever came up with this stupidity (or the sandbox, or certificates, or the crippled app store apps...)



    So, not having any OS-wide fullscreen in Snow Leopard is better than not using the fullscreen mode in Lion (or Mountain Lion)? How is the presence of a feature that you don't use (aka Lion) worse than the absence of that feature (Snow Leopard)?

  • Reply 27 of 86
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post

    If Mountain Lion has evolved into something troubling with it's full screen implementation (and I personally dislike what OSX is becoming), I can't imagine the agonizing mess Win 8 has become.


     


    Imagine relying on a button to do almost anything on your computer. That button is gone. The functionality is still there, but it looks completely different and is used differently.


     


    And half of it is on the other side of the screen where you'd never think to look for it.

  • Reply 28 of 86
    tylerk36tylerk36 Posts: 1,037member


    Correct me if I am wrong but isn't the golden master basically the final release?  I mean I installed Lion GM on my machine and it seems identical to the retail.  I havent had to upgrade the lion os GM or have had any issues.  So if one has the Mountain Lion GM or downloads the torrent of it they will actually have the real deal right?

  • Reply 29 of 86
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by tylerk36 View Post

    Correct me if I am wrong but isn't the golden master basically the final release?  I mean I installed Lion GM on my machine and it seems identical to the retail.  I havent had to upgrade the lion os GM or have had any issues.  So if one has the Mountain Lion GM or downloads the torrent of it they will actually have the real deal right?


     


    Very nearly, yes. Apple has released updates to GMs before, but often it's 1:1.

  • Reply 30 of 86


    You know what would be simple and, ahem, sensible? Not switching every monitor. I get this, one can switch to an entirely different workspace with a simple swipe, on all the available monitors… except this behavior cripples every full screen app (which, supposedly, Apple is pushing).


    Ideally, apps can use all the monitors, so you can get a single-tasking environment on every monitor… but most apps only really need one monitor.


     


    Back to the solution: one app uses one screen, one space uses one screen. If I create a space on screen 1, it doesn't mean I need it on screen 2. Also, if I go fullscreen on screen 2, leave screen 1 alone. 


     


    It's pretty simple if you think about that, it has always been like that, everywhere. I used to play fullscreen on Windows and have Winamp + MSN Messenger on the second monitor: it worked.


     


    There would still be some behaviors that need to addressed, but nothing unfeasible. 

  • Reply 31 of 86
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Cory Bauer View Post



    I really don't feel that the situation is all that complicated to solve. Ideally, Mission Control would allow you to drag/drop running apps on to the screen you what them to operate on in full-screen. This would allow you to have a full screen app on one display, and another full screen app on the other (or alternatively, the desktop where apps would run normally). When using the gestures to swipe between fullscreen apps, the gesture would work on whichever screen your cursor was currently hovering over, and the OS would simply skip over the app that was currently running on any other display.


    I don't understand. An app that runs fullscreen is a space, which would make dragging that application to a different space the dragging of a space to a space. That makes no sense.


     


    And could any of the people who want to have different fullscreen applications on different monitors tell me how the user would know which is the active frontmost application? Because keyboard shortcuts act on the frontmost application only (with the exception of tools that offer system-wide shortcuts) and thus it would be rather important for the user to know this.


     


    Even third-party apps that had fullscreen modes independent of the OS implementation tend to apply fullscreen mode to all displays (if they are smart). Take VLC which blacks out the other monitor when switching to fullscreen mode, or Aperture which had fullscreen mode long before Lion (and which offered to use a second monitor for some useful for the application, eg, mirroring, show a list of images on one monitor and one image fullscreen on the other, or just blackening out the other monitor as to remove distractions, as removing distractions is one of the key reasons to go to fullscreen mode). Or take Powerpoint or Keynote which offer a presenters view with upcoming slides and a timer on the second monitor when using fullscreen mode.


     


    Having separate spaces for each desktop is certainly an imaginable feature but I don't think making that the default would be helpful. Because a lot of applications (in particular in non-fullscreen mode) can span multiple displays (eg, the Finder but in fact every application that has multiple windows and even single windows can span monitors), having spaces that affect only one display would be very awkward to use with an application that has windows on multiple displays.

  • Reply 32 of 86
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Bfred it View Post


    You know what would be simple and, ahem, sensible? Not switching every monitor. I get this, one can switch to an entirely different workspace with a simple swipe, on all the available monitors… except this behavior cripples every full screen app (which, supposedly, Apple is pushing).


    Ideally, apps can use all the monitors, so you can get a single-tasking environment on every monitor… but most apps only really need one monitor.


     


    Back to the solution: one app uses one screen, one space uses one screen. If I create a space on screen 1, it doesn't mean I need it on screen 2. Also, if I go fullscreen on screen 2, leave screen 1 alone. 


     


    It's pretty simple if you think about that, it has always been like that, everywhere. I used to play fullscreen on Windows and have Winamp + MSN Messenger on the second monitor: it worked.



     


    Just leave it to the app developer to add options for what happens on a second monitor when going fullscreen. If an app developer decides to black out other screens, it is a feature of that app not of the OS.


     


    And again, how do you address the issue of keyboard shortcuts if you have multiple apps visible but no menubar (because the fullscreen mode by design removes the menubar for the app in fullscreen mode)?

  • Reply 33 of 86
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    Sadly, he is not wrong though is he.
    It is a real shame. It is unlikely to hurt Apple at all as they are so far ahead of Windows. But it would be nice if they would stop with all the stripping out of OSX.
    The situation almost calls for and OS X Pro. Still X / X Server 10.6.8 will do for a good while yet in most enterprise / business environments.

    It sucks that they no has the Single UNIX Specification 3 (SUSv3)¡ They've also removed the Utilities folder from /Applications and there is no way to add your new apps, everything has to go through the Mac App Store, unless someone finds a way to jailbreak their Mac¡ If this keeps up the next version of Xcode to develop Mac and iOS apps will be Windows program¡
  • Reply 34 of 86
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    tylerk36 wrote: »
    Correct me if I am wrong but isn't the golden master basically the final release?  I mean I installed Lion GM on my machine and it seems identical to the retail.  I havent had to upgrade the lion os GM or have had any issues.  So if one has the Mountain Lion GM or downloads the torrent of it they will actually have the real deal right?

    It typically is the release, as noted by the build number, they ship out but it's not necessarily going to be the same build number. The point of the GM is to make one final sweep of the code and functionality to ensure there is no major issues still hiding out.
  • Reply 35 of 86
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post





     there is no way to add your new apps, everything has to go through the Mac App Store, unless someone finds a way to jailbreak their Mac¡ If this keeps up the next version of Xcode to develop Mac and iOS apps will be Windows program¡


    Now, why would anybody claim one cannot install new applications anymore under Mountain Lion except via the Mac App Store? Because they just don't know better but apparently are not self-aware enough to refrain from making statements on things they don't know enough about? Or because they are demagogues and find pleasure in slander and belittling others? Take your pick.

  • Reply 36 of 86
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    noirdesir wrote: »
    Now, why would anybody claim one cannot install new applications anymore under Mountain Lion except via the Mac App Store? Because they just don't know better but apparently are not self-aware enough to refrain from making statements on things they don't know enough about? Or because they are a demagogues and find pleasure in slander? Take your pick.

    [VIDEO]
  • Reply 37 of 86


    APPLE **** I KNOW SOMEONE MUST BE READING THIS **** For CRYING out loud, fix this. This is the most IDIOTIC error present in your OS (10.7 and 10.8).  It's a grave design flaw - The Full screen app + blank second screen has absolutely no function nor beauty. Maybe you are thinking that it's a pretty choice since I cannot think any other reason for you not fixing it. Well is not pretty. AND It doesn't work.


     


     


    Thanks

  • Reply 38 of 86
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by CommentSF View Post

    APPLE **** I KNOW SOMEONE MUST BE READING THIS **** For CRYING out loud, fix this. This is the most IDIOTIC error present in your OS (10.7 and 10.8).  It's a grave design flaw - The Full screen app + blank second screen has absolutely no function nor beauty. Maybe you are thinking that it's a pretty choice since I cannot think any other reason for you not fixing it. Well is not pretty. AND It doesn't work.


     


    We're not Apple. Your concern would be best directed here.

  • Reply 39 of 86


    Thanks! I just copied and pasted over there. I do hope they listen

  • Reply 40 of 86
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by CommentSF View Post

    Thanks! I just copied and pasted over there. I do hope they listen


     


    As do I. I'd love full-screening to operate properly (because while this is certainly consciously intended, it's not proper) for multi-display users.


     


    I'd actually like full-screening to not create its own Spaces at all. For example, I already run iTunes taking up an entire Space, and I'd love to just full screen it properly to clear away all clutter, but it screws with my Space ordering, and I can't have that.

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