Apple Releases OS X Lion

Doug b said:

Actually, 4 finger swipe down isn't exactly Exposé as I remember it, considering the fact that it had to be combined with spaces for maximum efficiency. The "All Windows" feature is just not the same now in that vain. And though I'm aware of what Mission Control is, that doesn't mean it's better than what we had before.



Guess you didn't really read my post thoroughly. I already said what you did... and also said that it was poor implementation because it barely does very much to help out.

The types of visual/GUI changes they've made in the areas we're talking about here were not only unnecessary, but seem to take a step back away from maximum efficiency. Previously, with Spaces and expose... everything was spread and laid out in a way that was far easier to see and work with. To me, it looks as if they made these changes while throwing caution to the wind for the sake of change and nothing else.

Click to expand...

What are you remembering for exposé then? Do you mean when you throw all windows off the desktop? The gesture is pretty easy once you practice it like 10 times, but yea... I'm trying to think what else you could be referring to.

Really, you're right. It doesn't mean it was any better. I see that the OS hasn't gotten in the way of how I use each feature, though. I was always under the impression that 4 finger drag down while combined with spaces = exposé, and never really had much need to expose my desktop.

I guess it really depends on how you use said features. I might not really have an issue with many open windows in one stack because there aren't many applications I would do that with. But I can definitely say without a doubt that the previous methods used yielded cleaner and more efficient results. Perhaps if I'm feeling up to it tomorrow, I'll boot into SL and do a screen recording of how I used to work and then do the same from within Lion to compare the two.

I'm still pretty bothered by the fact I'm not able to 4 finger tap on my trackpad in order to bring up my scrollable running applications. I really don't want to have to CMD+tab since that means having my keyboard handy all the time, and I don't want to swipe up for Mission Control just to find and click on the app. It's just more steps that aren't necessary.

Doug

I recently had to do some multitasking with multiple emails, writing with Pages and faxing, research with Google and Safari. Multiple windows, with cross activities between apps. Mission control provided a good way for doing that. I like the ability to move a window away from the groupings into a space by itself for a certain task and then back into the group seamlessly when done. You can't really do that with SL. Lion gives you better organization of windows and visual cues to navigate through those windows and spaces. If that takes more swipes, I'm OK with it.

Now if they can make the magnification of the desktop thumbnails on top bigger or user adjustable like the dock that would really help. Right now the magnification is restricted to 6 or more and the size isn't big enough. I'm using MBP 13. Apple should make it a user adjustable option in preference.

Doug, thanks for that Two Finger swipe tip. Opened Mission Control and did it and sure enough, the windows for a given app do space out. THANKS so much for that tip!!!

Doug b said:

The types of visual/GUI changes they've made in the areas we're talking about here were not only unnecessary, but seem to take a step back away from maximum efficiency. Previously, with Spaces and expose... everything was spread and laid out in a way that was far easier to see and work with. To me, it looks as if they made these changes while throwing caution to the wind for the sake of change and nothing else.

Click to expand...

But let's be honest, you're judging the worth of the changes based on your personal use case and applying that globally.

I'm willing to bet for many people, the new Mission Control may be better, who knows. I'm pretty sure most people don't have 7 or 8 Safari windows open at once or have 18 different app windows open all at once.

I mean let's be honest, how often do you have that many Safari windows open at once?

Most people have maybe 3 or 4 app windows open at most at any given time. For them Mission Control probably works great.

@ Doug b, I'm with you there, and hope that this gets changed in an update, and/or someone finds a hack for it.... As mentioned, I have rolled back to SL, and happy about it, and am now unsubscribing from this thread as I don't want to read anymore about this mission control not being a problem due to the opinions of others.
If you do find a hack to get the all windows spread out like this, please pm me.

@6string

Like someone mentioned before, 3 or 4 fingers swipe down would give the view of all windows of an app. Within M Control there's swipe to view all apps with window clusters and app icon at the bottom of each cluster, and then if you click a particular app, you can swipe to view all windows of that app. We still have Expose like SL, but split into layers. One with all windows grouped into their respective application, another layer to show all windows of a particular app. More steps but better organized. Where as in SL you can see all windows of all apps within a space but scattered.

schweb said:

But let's be honest, you're judging the worth of the changes based on your personal use case and applying that globally.

I'm willing to bet for many people, the new Mission Control may be better, who knows. I'm pretty sure most people don't have 7 or 8 Safari windows open at once or have 18 different app windows open all at once.

I mean let's be honest, how often do you have that many Safari windows open at once?

Most people have maybe 3 or 4 app windows open at most at any given time. For them Mission Control probably works great.

Click to expand...

I did in fact, in my last post state that I likely wouldn't have that many windows opened, but that wasn't my point. I was drawing a direct comparison between having that many opened in SL vs. Lion and how the visual aspect of those things have indeed changed, and not for the better. This of course would and will affect someone whom MIGHT for some reason, have that many windows open. It's really just not nearly as easy to get an overall view of windows in a stack, vs spaced out the way they were with spaces combined with Exposé, previously. You'd have to at least admit that, right?

quin said:

I like the ability to move a window away from the groupings into a space by itself for a certain task and then back into the group seamlessly when done. You can't really do that with SL.

Click to expand...

Unless you're talking about something different from what I'm thinking, that is wrong. That was one of my favorite aspects of Spaces/Exposé! I was always able to move an open window into a different/individual space and then back again if I needed to.

Lion gives you better organization of windows and visual cues to navigate through those windows and spaces. If that takes more swipes, I'm OK with it.

Click to expand...

I'd love an specific example of this in a way where you compare trying to perform the same tasks in both OS's.

Doug

Just noticed last night that if I click and hold on an active application in the Dock, it now registers as a right click, instead of just showing me that app's active window(s) as it did before in 10.6. That is a huge bummer.

Also noticed that Lion takes a whopping 1.5GB of RAM just to cold boot on my machine. That is absolutely absurd.

I'm trying to give it a chance, but the more I see of Lion, the less I like it. Really having mixed feelings about it in general.

quin said:

@6string

Like someone mentioned before, 3 or 4 fingers swipe down would give the view of all windows of an app. Within M Control there's swipe to view all apps with window clusters and app icon at the bottom of each cluster, and then if you click a particular app, you can swipe to view all windows of that app. We still have Expose like SL, but split into layers. One with all windows grouped into their respective application, another layer to show all windows of a particular app. More steps but better organized. Where as in SL you can see all windows of all apps within a space but scattered.

Click to expand...

I fail to see how clustering windows to the point of not being able to tell which window is of what content, is better than having those windows evenly spread out??? The whole entire point of spaces, and being able to assign specific applications to them was so that things didn't get to the point of squinting your eyes in order to see what was what.

You didn't have to take extra steps such as a finger swipe to SORT OF separate the cluster (*which STILL doesn't reveal all*) and you didn't have to hover your pointer over the most minuscule of almost hidden window bars in order to hit the space bar for a Quick Look at a window before tapping on it to bring it into use. Honestly... how are any of these extra steps MORE efficient? They're not. And if you're using them in order to navigate, then it proves my point.

Doug

cwa107 said:

Just noticed last night that if I click and hold on an active application in the Dock, it now registers as a right click, instead of just showing me that app's active window(s) as it did before in 10.6. That is a huge bummer.

Also noticed that Lion takes a whopping 1.5GB of RAM just to cold boot on my machine. That is absolutely absurd.

I'm trying to give it a chance, but the more I see of Lion, the less I like it. Really having mixed feelings about it in general.

Click to expand...

You can still see the active and inactive windows though... Or am I misunderstanding something?

Doug

cwa107 said:

Just noticed last night that if I click and hold on an active application in the Dock, it now registers as a right click, instead of just showing me that app's active window(s) as it did before in 10.6. That is a huge bummer.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, you do have to take an extra step (hold > Show All Windows). I looked to see if there was a setting for this and there doesn't seem to be (as of yet). It's a shame that they did this when right clicking achieves the same thing.

@Doug b

I overstated, you can move windows to a different space in SL, however when you move it back to the original space it's not automatically grouped to the app like in Lion. I don't have to visually search for that particular window if I need it again among all other windows of all other apps like in SL. I can just click on, say Mail cluster, and know that all its windows are there. Then I can 3 or 4 fingers swipe to see all windows of Mail spread out.

Doug b said:

I fail to see how clustering windows to the point of not being able to tell which window is of what content, is better than having those windows evenly spread out??? The whole entire point of spaces, and being able to assign specific applications to them was so that things didn't get to the point of squinting your eyes in order to see what was what.

You didn't have to take extra steps such as a finger swipe to SORT OF separate the cluster (*which STILL doesn't reveal all*) and you didn't have to hover your pointer over the most minuscule of almost hidden window bars in order to hit the space bar for a Quick Look at a window before tapping on it to bring it into use. Honestly... how are any of these extra steps MORE efficient? They're not. And if you're using them in order to navigate, then it proves my point.

Doug

Click to expand...

And you can still lock your apps to x space, and then switch directly to a space. If the window you want isn't on top in that app, 4 finger swipe down and pick the windows with the content you want... It hasn't changed THAT much. As for spaces exposé inside MC, it works pretty much the same. MC just takes into account that fullscreen apps break off into their own space and shows them to you along the top. I think it's nice. If you don't, that's fine, but just sayin'. I haven't had any issue with that, yet.

Aaah... I can't open Activity Monitor anymore?? Says that my version is old? How is that possible ? I partitioned my HD and installed Lion on that clean partition. I don't get it.

Doug

Okay, now THAT is weird.

Doug b said:

IIt's really just not nearly as easy to get an overall view of windows in a stack, vs spaced out the way they were with spaces combined with Exposé, previously. You'd have to at least admit that, right?

Click to expand...

Sure, I won't deny that, however, that scenario represents and edge case, not the norm. For the norm, I do think Mission Control provides more power and flexibility than just Expose did in the past.

That's like saying Twitter should rebuild itself to make it easier to follow 25,000 people when in reality most never follow that many.

Apps and services build towards to the norm.

cwa107 said:

Just noticed last night that if I click and hold on an active application in the Dock, it now registers as a right click, instead of just showing me that app's active window(s) as it did before in 10.6. That is a huge bummer.

Click to expand...

That's how mine worked even in Snow Leopard. I seem to recall it doing that even in Leopard.

quin said:

@Doug b

I overstated, you can move windows to a different space in SL, however when you move it back to the original space it's not automatically grouped to the app like in Lion. I don't have to visually search for that particular window if I need it again among all other windows of all other apps like in SL. I can just click on, say Mail cluster, and know that all its windows are there.

Click to expand...

Guess I'm just not a fan of grouping. If I wanted similar windows in a group, I'd simply be able to drag them there without restrictions. And I can't say I've ever lost, misplaced or have been confused about where a window was previously

randalthor said:

And you can still lock your apps to x space, and then switch directly to a space. If the window you want isn't on top in that app, 4 finger swipe down and pick the windows with the content you want.

Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I know. This process too has also been made a bit less "convenient" IMO. Not only the act of assigning the apps to a space, but not having the ability to 4 finger tap and tap to get to it. Instead, I either have to go back in to Mission Control and tap on the window, which in its self is redundant, or do a keyboard shortcut to said window.

Doug

schweb said:

Sure, I won't deny that, however, that scenario represents and edge case, not the norm. For the norm, I do think Mission Control provides more power and flexibility than just Expose did in the past.

That's like saying Twitter should rebuild itself to make it easier to follow 25,000 people when in reality most never follow that many.

Apps and services build towards to the norm.

Click to expand...

So you're saying that the "norm" is best represented by a larger number of people in a comparison of say... 1000 people who use method A vs 500 people who use method B? We are after all, talking about millions of people, and it's kind of hard to gauge what best represents the norm in such large quantities. Of course, seeing as how I'm perhaps the underdog here... that could just me the minority opinion.

Doug