

Lion's Mission Control: UX fail, especially for multiple displays - idan
https://plus.google.com/u/0/106647697420529217400/posts/jKeN5UiKiJG

======
div
Ever since I switched from Ubuntu to OSX I've been missing how simple and
useable Virtual Desktops are.

I used them all the time in Ubuntu, and I had a keyboard shortcut to move the
currently active window to any adjacent virtual desktop (with loop around).

This was great when a context switch happened in a virtual desktop dedicated
to project A. I would just realize I need to do this on a separate desktop,
and use my shortcuts to fling to an empty one.

On OSX this involves clicking, dragging and aiming at the correct space, which
completely stopped me from using spaces at all. I tried dedicated spaces for
certain applications, but found that to be annoying when I want to run one of
those apps in the context of my current space.

I was kinda hoping Lion would improve on this, but sadly it seems they went
the opposite direction.

~~~
neanderdog
"Mission control, abort! abort!"

Well that's how I feel :)

Seriously, I too came from linux (ubuntu even) to osx having last owned a mac
when it had a whopping 128k memory.

I heard someone say on a podcast recently that when Apple Computer became
Apple (jan-07), that's when they started leaving power users behind.

Anyhow, my Lion/MC/Spaces gripes are along these lines:

1\. 1-D vs 2-D grids. This is terrible for me personally.

2\. Animations. If I'm typing ctrl->right/left, it means I'd like to get there
more quickly than my mouse allows. The (for me) nauseating animation is just
painfully slow and sickening (literally).

3\. I've read many people say, 'use ctrl-<desktop#>'. Well yea that's somewhat
better and has a snappier animation (like ctrl-<arrow key> had with SL spaces)
but I personally find this awkward. First, if I am going to go the trouble of
that, I want to get to that desktop immediately so any animation seems silly.
Second, it's still 1-D thinking. Having been able to ctrl-<arrow key> to my
3x3 grid in SL was a basic with my workflow.

Now I'm sure my mother will love Mission Control, and not tire of the eye
candy animations, but for people working all day with them.... ugh!

I just don't understand why Apple can't bring it's stunning "Here's how to use
a trackpad" gif-like spiffy animations to the System Preferences more broadly,
and add more customization to the UI in general (like turn of animations!).

I know we're the 20% and not the 80% but it does suck, making me seriously
consider going back to *nix now that I'm digging deeper into vim.

~~~
radley
_I heard someone say on a podcast recently that when Apple Computer became
Apple (jan-07), that's when they started leaving power users behind._

Basically they stopped being a computer company and became a consumer media
company.

------
algoshift
Well, as far as multiple displays is concerned MacOS UX has been broken since
day one. It is absolute lunacy to have the menu bar for an application pinned
to the first display while the application opens in a second or third display.

Our Macs have two or three 24 inch monitors, which makes you realize just how
dumb the whole thing is. If you are working on an application on the left
monitor and need to access a menu item you have to mouse all the way over to
the middle monitor and then back. Do this 200 times a day and you very quickly
realize just how stupid the whole thing is.

Furthermore, the menu bar might not necessarily contain menu items for the
application you are looking at because you happen to have clicked on the
desktop or another application.

Yes, of course, you can mentally manage the concept. That does not mean that
it is a good idea.

Linux, Irix, Solaris, Windows and other OS GUIs have gotten this right from
the very start. The application is a self contained window and every instance
travels with its own controls. No need to mouse across 72 inches of monitors
to get to a menu.

~~~
sudont
[http://web.archive.org/web/20080530025541/http://pixelcentri...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080530025541/http://pixelcentric.net/x-shame/docs.html)

The menu bar is part of a hierarchy of application > window, rather than
window = application instance. Because of this, the self-contained application
window is a bitch to deal with when using different windows across different
applications. I have to use Dreamweaver due a bunch of pre-written macros. I
can't ever, ever, ever take a tab out of Dreamweaver and pair it with a
specific preview firefox window (at least under Windows).

That's not to say that the Mac's window model is without fault. But, it is
much easier to patch to one's liking: <http://manytricks.com/witch/>

~~~
algoshift
Multiple monitors. Why try to cram it all into one? It makes no sense. It is
not uncommon for me to have ten applications open and actively in use. In some
cases (say, Excel) multiple files open. On our engineering workstations we
have a minimum of three 24 inch monitors. Going back and forth between
applications, dragging and dropping data and selecting which application
instance you need to work with is fluid and fast. Your Dreamweaver and Firefox
example has a trivial solution once you add a second screen.

------
KirinDave
This article is basically the statment, "I dislike change."

Truth be told, Spaces and multiple monitors (and in general, Applications
w.r.t. spaces) has been terribly broken to the point of near-unusability for
quite some time now. Apple's taken an easy fix for the time being: divorce
spaces into N discrete sets where N is the number of displays.

This actually ends up working out for the way I see most people use multiple
monitors _with a mac_. Since very few people have mac desktops, usually the
multi-monitor situation is one large display and a smaller integrated laptop
display. Most people do the bulk of their work on the big display and use the
secondary display for tasks like communication and reference.

As far as I can tell, Lion's Mission Control is a radical improvement across
the board for the actual usability of Spaces in the Apple model. The prior
implementation naively copied the Linux multiple-desktop model before (with
it's preference for MDI and application-local menu bars) to disastrous ends.
This is the first step I've seen Apple take to actually try actually adapt
multiple desktops to the Spaces model and the unified menubar model, and I
prefer it greatly so far.

The default of LRU Spaces ordering, on the other hand, makes me scowl. I'm
going to _try_ it to see if I feel any better after a day or two of use, but I
doubt I will end up happier.

------
smhinsey
I personally think Mission Control is pretty excellent, but then, I am running
Lion on an Air without an external display. For that use case, Mission Control
and the iOS-style features are both significantly more useful than I had any
expectation of them being.

You can replace Mission Control with Expose via the preferences, although I'm
not sure if it has inherited any of these changes the linked post complains
about or if it is in fact the old Expose.

~~~
idan
Expose doesn't provide spaces.

~~~
smhinsey
Indeed, but it is not Mission Control.

~~~
idan
The problems I outline are with management of windows across spaces and
displays; nothing in the post refers to issues with exposé or "finding"
windows inside a given space.

~~~
smhinsey
I just thought it would be useful to point out, in a conversation about
Mission Control, that if you don't like it, you can disable it.

~~~
idan
That's exactly the point -- I _can't_ disable it, because then I'd lose
spaces. If it wasn't clear from the initial post, I'm a fairly heavy user of
spaces. :)

If I didn't care about spaces, I wouldn't have taken the time to write up a
long post detailing how they are broken in MC. Broken spaces are bad, but no
spaces are worse.

~~~
smhinsey
I understand. My main machine has a multimonitor setup with 30'' displays and
I have not found anything that can manage the space effectively (pardon the
pun) short of xmonad, which I unfortunately can't use for my day job.

I didn't post that comment to you, it was more of a general comment to anyone
reading the thread who might think "hey, I hate this thing too, but for
different reasons!" Like I said, I expected not to like it at all myself for
unrelated reasons to yours.

------
jlongster
I never use spaces, it always seemed backwards to switch to a whole new
context just because I want to access a single app. What if I want to look
back at some code I was writing while I'm IM'ing someone? What if I don't want
a whole context switch, and I just want to send a quick message? What if I
don't care what space an app is in, obviating the need for all this crazy
Mission Control complexity?

All I do it bind my most frequently used app to hot keys (Cmd-F1, Cmd-F2,
etc.). When I want to use an app, I pop it open with Cmd-F#. When I want to
close it, I hit Cmd-H to hide it.

~~~
_delirium
If you mainly work at the granularity of single apps, I could see that. I tend
to use groups of apps, so without spaces I waste way too much time re-
assembling my working contexts. With spaces I can just swap in a whole
context, like "programming": my text editor, a terminal, and a browser open to
a relevant doc all pop up as a group, arranged how I want them. And stuff not
in the "programming" context disappears instead of cluttering my screen.

If I have to do this app-at-a-time, I need to bring to the foreground
Terminal, MacVim, and Chrome, each with a separate hotkey press, then hide
everything else. I admit this working pattern may be specific to a Unix style
of "IDE" made up from multiple apps used together, though. If you just use
XCode or Eclipse or something, it's already bundled into one app so maybe not
an issue.

~~~
jlongster
I use Terminal, Emacs, Firefox, etc., pretty much the standard setup.

The programming environment is the only bundle of apps that need to be
specifically arranged for me. They pretty much always sit positioned where I
want them, and I bring up other apps when I want to do other stuff, and hide
them when I want to get back to programming. I never really hide my coding
apps; I just bring other apps on top and hide them.

It's nice too to always know that Cmd-F1 will bring up Firefox, no matter what
is going on.

But this is definitely a user preference thing, and specific to how I like
working.

------
blownd
An app I developed, Optimal Layout, lets you switch to a window by typing it's
name: <http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/>

It doesn't solve all the problems in this post, but if you are trying to find
an open window I think it's the fastest way. Expose is chaos if you've got a
lot of windows open.

------
jeromeparadis
With the OS X menuying system that sticks to one monitor, I've always found
using multiple monitors awkward on the Mac. I've never had a good solution to
this other than learn shortened for every app. But there isn't always a
shortcut for what you want. Has any HN fellows ever found a good way to make
multiple monitors more usable on the Mac?

~~~
evilduck
Secondbar (I'm not sure about Lion compatibility):
<http://blog.boastr.net/?page_id=79> It puts another identical menubar on the
second screen.

If you prefer a more "vanilla" option, I've found that putting the menubar on
the right screen and the blank screen on the left reduces mouse travel (you
can move the menu between monitors in Display Preferences). Since menu for an
app is filled left to right, menu items are then closer to the center of your
workspace.

~~~
Slackwise
Honestly, this has been my argument against the menubar. It made sense in
MacOS 1.0 and similar, but nowadays, it's just an archaic element kept for
unknown reasons.

It's one thing that it's incredibly inconvenient in a multiple-monitor setup,
it's another that the menubar is context-sensitive. So even if you've got the
right app selected, you may have the wrong window, and when you go to print,
you get the wrong page. Worse than that is that depending which window is
chosen, certain options will also be grayed out.

It's the least innovative feature in MacOS X, and personally, I think it
should go. You'd think by now that we'd come up with something better than a
crappy dropdown menu.

~~~
pkamb
Adding to that: 'modern' apps are doing away with menubars completely. Chrome
has a single button for options/settings, Office has the Ribbon, etc. OS X
requiring a menubar for apps, even when they don't need one, is a huge barrier
to UI innovation.

------
ugh
Hm, if you don’t use Spaces (like me), Mission Control is, at least in my
personal experience, just as competent as the old Exposé. I like that OS X no
longer enforces a grid and that it proportionally resizes Windows (instead of
making them all the same size).

I think I also like that windows of the same app are grouped together. One
possible downside are the resulting overlapping windows, I think, though, it’s
wroth the tradeoff.

I do not like that single app Exposé still forces apps on a grid and still
forces them all to the same size. That said, I rarely use single app Exposé.

The new implementation of Spaces might actually be able to entice me to use
them from time to time, so it seems like an improvement for me personally. The
problems he is talking about are certainly serious and should be fixed.

~~~
idan
Mission control is a perfectly comptent exposé. My beef is elsewhere.

~~~
natesm
Not really.

Exposé hasn't been good since Leopard. In Leopard, there were some simple
rules.

\- Every window on the screen is fully visible.

\- Windows are sized proportionally.

\- Movement from the original position was as minimal as possible.

Snow Leopard removed the second two by arranging all of the windows in a grid
(iTunes is the same size as a tiny Adium window). Lion removes the first one.

~~~
pkamb
Well put. Lion doesn't have an "all windows entirely visible" Expose mode,
which will change my workflow immensely.

P.S. There's a hack to change Snow Leopard Expose back to Leopard style. First
thing to do on any SL install.

------
frederik
In snow leopard there used to be an option that forced Exposé's "Application
Windows" shortcut to show only the active windows of an application's on the
present desktop.

I can't find this option in Lion, and I desperately miss it.

Say I have two workspaces each with four terminal windows (each set of
terminals connecting to a specific server) and a third workspace with one
terminal window sitting around. Pressing the "Application windows" shortcut
now shows me all nine windows, and just to add to the confusion OS X Lion
switches away from the present workspace to the workspace most recently used!

In my view it contradicts the very purpose of "Spaces" since a workspace is
used to unclutter all the active apps and windows.

------
anothertodd
Spaces in prev OS X was almost terrible, it was just half-baked. I think they
brought this feature to Lion with some nice tunes, but not sure they did great
on showing multiple spaces on the _top_ of Mission Control.

Plus, Mission control itself doesn't really make user focusing on each
window(app). even if we don't care about multiple displays environment, Apple
did some good, and some wrong.

And I'm using this BIG cat right now.. :P

------
amatheus
Shouldn't this be solved by automatic saving apps' settings? In Lion,
shouldn't I be supposed to put an application somewhere and it will stay there
even after I quit it? I've installed Lion but had no time to play with it,
will try this when I get home.

------
knotty66
Similarly, in Gnome 3:

I can't see any way of having a 2D array of virtual desktops any more, the
only option I see is the 1D auto-expanding column of desktops. Anyone ?

------
teamonkey
A UX article without pictures? For those of us without Lion, what does it look
like?

~~~
jonknee
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/mission-control.html>

------
enterneo
has anybody found a way to navigate windows using arrow keys once I pop into
mission control using (ctrl+up)

~~~
Deadsunrise
crlt+alt+cmd+left/right moves you between desktops

------
4J7z0Fgt63dTZbs
This really speaks of Hacker New's segment. For non-techies it's perfect -
yes, multi monitor support is corrupt, but I'm sure it'll come by in couple of
months. The important thing is that working with fullscreen apps via mission
contra doesn't feel like IQ puzzles.

