5 ms·

I think Spaces is dead. I doesn’t really fit anywhere in the vision of the desktop Apple showed off in the Lion sneak peak, Apple might have decided to quietly

by ugh 16y ago

I think Spaces is dead. I doesn’t really fit anywhere in the vision of the desktop Apple showed off in the Lion sneak peak, Apple might have decided to quietly drop it. The new fullscreen mode might take its place. Spaces wasn’t mentioned in the demo at all and it would be very inelegant to just tack it on top of the concept Apple has for the desktop. I will be surprised if it is still there when Lion arrives. Multitouch gestures to switch between spaces (instead of fullscreen apps as was demoed in the sneak peak) would be pretty cool but I’m not holding my breath. Apple does like to drop nerdy features few people use from time to time. The only thing that gives me pause is that they also seem quite happy to keep at least some of them around. The screen corners would be one example. (Then again, screen corners don’t change the whole desktop around.)

podperson 16y ago
I'm kind of hoping the Lion demo turns out to be a complete dead end. Most of the stuff in the demo seemed quite badly thought out. http://loewald.com/blog/?p=3440 http://loewald.com/blog/?p=3440 (careful watching of the demo revealed that pretty much nothing showed worked terribly well) I think it might be interesting to integrate ideas in spaces, expose, etc. by dynamically rescaling the UI when the user does stuff like resize or move a window. (After all, when you're messing with a window's dimensions you're generally not too concerned with every pixel in a given window.) In other words -- why does Expose need to be an explicit mode? When I resize or drag and drop -- rescale the UI dynamically to deal with the relationships between windows and apps. And this becomes even easier if some or most windows are full screen by default.
- ugh 16y ago
  The guy who did the demo was visibly shaking, I think the errors he made were more owed to his own nervousness than flaws with the software. We will see, this is really you would have to use to see whether it works.
aaronblohowiak 16y ago
Spaces is vital to my current use of the 11" MacBook air: I wouldn't have purchased one if multiple desktops and application locking weren't available
tvon 16y ago
One note, you can use Better Touch Tool to invoke Spaces (and Expose) with gestures. I have 4-fingers-right for Spaces and 4-fingers down for Expose, is quite nice. I would be most unhappy if Spaces went away, but I wouldn't be too surprised either.
awolf 16y ago
Spaces is essential.
- ugh 16y ago
  Spaces is, first and foremost, off by default meaning that it’s pretty likely that most people don’t know about it and have never used it. If Apple would consider it essential, it would be on by default. Some people might think that Spaces is essential but Apple seems to disagree with them. (I’m not saying that Apple is right.)
  - brettnak 16y ago
    I'm not sure where I stand on this, however, I'd like to provide one data point, one that I expect many HNers share. I'm primarily a web developer, though I do frequently work on Android projects or random hacking on some python projects ( sage anyone? ). For web development, I find spaces essential. I have several api docs open at any given time, eclipse for android stuff, Aquamacs ( emacs in cocoa ), potentially an Android emulator, a preview image from our designer, several browser tabs for email, roadmap, and backlog tasks and a team chat window. I, too, thought that most people wouldn't really care much for spaces, however I have noticed several of my non-technical friends using and began wondering. The conclusion that I came to is that, if you replace my IDE with something like MS Word and my text editor with something else, perhaps Photoshop or Illustrator, you'd get roughly the same workflow that I have, just without the code. Now, I'm not saying that Spaces is essential, but I this is one case where something we think is nerdy, is actually pretty main stream. Since were on the topic of application visibility and switching. I'm wondering if there is a better way than spaces. It's obvious that full-screen mode with easy switching isn't it. I find that context switch to complicated though I'm not quite sure why - way back when I was on windows, that was the way I did things. Perhaps expose is underused?
    - orangecat 16y ago
      I just use Cmd-H and Cmd-Tab. I tried Spaces when Leopard came out and found it to be more trouble than it was worth.
jimmyjazz14 16y ago
As a long time desktop *nix user, I have no idea how any one works without multiple workspaces. For me it's second nature to me to switch to another workspace to start a new kind of task. Multiple workspaces is such a brilliantly simple concept I am surprised it took so long for it to be adopted into OS X. Sadly (for OS X users) Spaces is pretty poorly done compared to how multiple workspaces generally work in Gnome or KDE.
- podperson 16y ago
  I think it took so long to be implemented in OS X because it's actually not a big benefit when you have a nice windowing system with drag and drop that works everywhere (in fact the benefits of drag and drop are significantly reduced by using virtual screens and the benefit is -- for most users -- outweighed by the cost).
  - aphyr 16y ago
    You're the first person I've heard describe OS X as having a "nice windowing system". OS X has many good traits, but I've always thought of the WM as being rather poorly done. As far as I can tell it lacks proper maximization, horizontal/vertical maximization, snapping, mousefocus, intelligent raise behavior, tiling, tabbing, omnipresence, pin-to-top, pin-to-background, keyboard move-resize, and meta-key drag+resize. Not to mention configurable bindings for any of these. Now there's single-app mode, which I take as a tacit acknowledgement that real maximization instead of "zoom" was a good idea after all. How long did that take, again? I really really want to like OS X. It does so many things right (focus-stealing, DnD, and copy-paste among them!) It's just so painful to use after having a real WM. [edit] For reference, I use Openbox; the listed features (except for tiling/tabbing) are what I use everyday. I expect the awesome/ratpoison crowd has slightly different but no less valid criticisms.
    - Stormbringer 16y ago
      Expose is really really good. The biggest problem with Spaces is that it doesn't 'play nice' with Expose. The maximising the Window thing is a tacit acknowledgement that you're not actually using the full potential of your desktop as a multi-application environment. :-P If you want to bash a Windowing system that truly deserves it, bash the one from Windows! OS X isn't perfect, but Windows is really really bad. Except for Windows 7, which made big improvements (aka copying OS X) and is now merely really bad.
mickdarling 16y ago
I use BetterTouchTools http://www.boastr.de/ http://www.boastr.de/ which is free and I just setup three finger swipe to change spaces in that direction and three finger tap to see all spaces. I love it and hate using another computer without it now.
blahedo 16y ago
I'll be SO FUCKING PISSED if Apple goes and drops Spaces now. It's a piece of crap software that is far inferior to what came before, but since it came standard it drove the other multi-desktop extensions out of business. (I was particularly fond of VirtualDesktop.) Now Apple is the only game in town for multiple virtual desktops, and they might take it away? You know when Microsoft did this sort of thing in the browser wars, a lot of people got up in arms about it.
alextgordon 16y ago
Mission Control is a powerful and handy new feature that provides you with a comprehensive view of what’s running on your Mac. It gives you a bird’s-eye view of everything — including Exposé, >>> Spaces <<<, Dashboard, and full-screen apps. There you can see your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full-screen apps, Dashboard, and >>> even other Spaces <<<, arranged in a unified view. -- http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ Then again, the screenshot provided doesn't seem to show any hint of spaces. [Edit: Perhaps the spaces appear alongside the full screen apps?]
- ugh 16y ago
  Ah, cool. That’s pretty great evidence which reduces my suspicion greatly. I didn’t think to check their website copy. I think you see no hint of Spaces because it will probably continue to be off by default.
jcurbo 16y ago
There was a good discussion in the Hypercritical podcast by John Siracusa and Dan Benajamin about Spaces possibly being dead in 10.7. It was in episode 3: http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/3 http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/3

by ugh 16y ago

podperson 16y ago

I'm kind of hoping the Lion demo turns out to be a complete dead end. Most of the stuff in the demo seemed quite badly thought out. http://loewald.com/blog/?p=3440 http://loewald.com/blog/?p=3440 (careful watching of the demo revealed that pretty much nothing showed worked terribly well) I think it might be interesting to integrate ideas in spaces, expose, etc. by dynamically rescaling the UI when the user does stuff like resize or move a window. (After all, when you're messing with a window's dimensions you're generally not too concerned with every pixel in a given window.) In other words -- why does Expose need to be an explicit mode? When I resize or drag and drop -- rescale the UI dynamically to deal with the relationships between windows and apps. And this becomes even easier if some or most windows are full screen by default.

ugh 16y ago
The guy who did the demo was visibly shaking, I think the errors he made were more owed to his own nervousness than flaws with the software. We will see, this is really you would have to use to see whether it works.

aaronblohowiak 16y ago

Spaces is vital to my current use of the 11" MacBook air: I wouldn't have purchased one if multiple desktops and application locking weren't available

tvon 16y ago

One note, you can use Better Touch Tool to invoke Spaces (and Expose) with gestures. I have 4-fingers-right for Spaces and 4-fingers down for Expose, is quite nice. I would be most unhappy if Spaces went away, but I wouldn't be too surprised either.

awolf 16y ago

Spaces is essential.

ugh 16y ago
Spaces is, first and foremost, off by default meaning that it’s pretty likely that most people don’t know about it and have never used it. If Apple would consider it essential, it would be on by default. Some people might think that Spaces is essential but Apple seems to disagree with them. (I’m not saying that Apple is right.)
- brettnak 16y ago
  I'm not sure where I stand on this, however, I'd like to provide one data point, one that I expect many HNers share. I'm primarily a web developer, though I do frequently work on Android projects or random hacking on some python projects ( sage anyone? ). For web development, I find spaces essential. I have several api docs open at any given time, eclipse for android stuff, Aquamacs ( emacs in cocoa ), potentially an Android emulator, a preview image from our designer, several browser tabs for email, roadmap, and backlog tasks and a team chat window. I, too, thought that most people wouldn't really care much for spaces, however I have noticed several of my non-technical friends using and began wondering. The conclusion that I came to is that, if you replace my IDE with something like MS Word and my text editor with something else, perhaps Photoshop or Illustrator, you'd get roughly the same workflow that I have, just without the code. Now, I'm not saying that Spaces is essential, but I this is one case where something we think is nerdy, is actually pretty main stream. Since were on the topic of application visibility and switching. I'm wondering if there is a better way than spaces. It's obvious that full-screen mode with easy switching isn't it. I find that context switch to complicated though I'm not quite sure why - way back when I was on windows, that was the way I did things. Perhaps expose is underused?
  - orangecat 16y ago
    I just use Cmd-H and Cmd-Tab. I tried Spaces when Leopard came out and found it to be more trouble than it was worth.

jimmyjazz14 16y ago

As a long time desktop *nix user, I have no idea how any one works without multiple workspaces. For me it's second nature to me to switch to another workspace to start a new kind of task. Multiple workspaces is such a brilliantly simple concept I am surprised it took so long for it to be adopted into OS X. Sadly (for OS X users) Spaces is pretty poorly done compared to how multiple workspaces generally work in Gnome or KDE.

podperson 16y ago
I think it took so long to be implemented in OS X because it's actually not a big benefit when you have a nice windowing system with drag and drop that works everywhere (in fact the benefits of drag and drop are significantly reduced by using virtual screens and the benefit is -- for most users -- outweighed by the cost).
- aphyr 16y ago
  You're the first person I've heard describe OS X as having a "nice windowing system". OS X has many good traits, but I've always thought of the WM as being rather poorly done. As far as I can tell it lacks proper maximization, horizontal/vertical maximization, snapping, mousefocus, intelligent raise behavior, tiling, tabbing, omnipresence, pin-to-top, pin-to-background, keyboard move-resize, and meta-key drag+resize. Not to mention configurable bindings for any of these. Now there's single-app mode, which I take as a tacit acknowledgement that real maximization instead of "zoom" was a good idea after all. How long did that take, again? I really really want to like OS X. It does so many things right (focus-stealing, DnD, and copy-paste among them!) It's just so painful to use after having a real WM. [edit] For reference, I use Openbox; the listed features (except for tiling/tabbing) are what I use everyday. I expect the awesome/ratpoison crowd has slightly different but no less valid criticisms.
  - Stormbringer 16y ago
    Expose is really really good. The biggest problem with Spaces is that it doesn't 'play nice' with Expose. The maximising the Window thing is a tacit acknowledgement that you're not actually using the full potential of your desktop as a multi-application environment. :-P If you want to bash a Windowing system that truly deserves it, bash the one from Windows! OS X isn't perfect, but Windows is really really bad. Except for Windows 7, which made big improvements (aka copying OS X) and is now merely really bad.

mickdarling 16y ago

I use BetterTouchTools http://www.boastr.de/ http://www.boastr.de/ which is free and I just setup three finger swipe to change spaces in that direction and three finger tap to see all spaces. I love it and hate using another computer without it now.

blahedo 16y ago

I'll be SO FUCKING PISSED if Apple goes and drops Spaces now. It's a piece of crap software that is far inferior to what came before, but since it came standard it drove the other multi-desktop extensions out of business. (I was particularly fond of VirtualDesktop.) Now Apple is the only game in town for multiple virtual desktops, and they might take it away? You know when Microsoft did this sort of thing in the browser wars, a lot of people got up in arms about it.

alextgordon 16y ago

Mission Control is a powerful and handy new feature that provides you with a comprehensive view of what’s running on your Mac. It gives you a bird’s-eye view of everything — including Exposé, >>> Spaces <<<, Dashboard, and full-screen apps. There you can see your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full-screen apps, Dashboard, and >>> even other Spaces <<<, arranged in a unified view. -- http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ Then again, the screenshot provided doesn't seem to show any hint of spaces. [Edit: Perhaps the spaces appear alongside the full screen apps?]

ugh 16y ago
Ah, cool. That’s pretty great evidence which reduces my suspicion greatly. I didn’t think to check their website copy. I think you see no hint of Spaces because it will probably continue to be off by default.

jcurbo 16y ago

There was a good discussion in the Hypercritical podcast by John Siracusa and Dan Benajamin about Spaces possibly being dead in 10.7. It was in episode 3: http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/3 http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/3