Spaces in Lion

mrblack927 · Feb 25, 2011

Is there any way to arrange spaces in a grid (both vertically and horizontally) in Lion? I LOVED the 2 by 2 square spaces arrangement in SL. I used cmd+arrow to switch between spaces and no space was ever more than a single button away. Now to go from space 1 to space 4 I have to go allll the way to the end. Not to mention all of the "full screen apps" that appear in between 1 and 4.

This basically kills spaces for me.

Also, is there anyway to rearrange the spaces? Like if you have a bunch of "full screen" apps open and you launch mission control, you see them arranges across the top of the screen, in the order they were opened. Can you rearrange them?

Cougarcat · Feb 25, 2011

Control-1,2,3,4 (or any key combo you want) will send you to that particular space.

I did like the functionality you're talking about, though.

mrblack927 · Feb 25, 2011

Thanks, any ideas for rearranging the spaces though? This has been driving me crazy all day. Surely Apple would have included a way to do this.

celticpride678 · Feb 25, 2011

mrblack927 said:
Thanks, any ideas for rearranging the spaces though? This has been driving me crazy all day. Surely Apple would have included a way to do this.

As of right now, I don't see a way to change this. Maybe in a future release, however.

brettryan · Feb 26, 2011

celticpride678 said:
As of right now, I don't see a way to change this. Maybe in a future release, however.

I've been really worried about spaces since I saw apple demo lion. I don't have a copy but feared spaces may disappear entirely, I activate spaces through the bottom left corner mouse hot spot and have 3x3 layout, will be sad to see this go.

baryon · Feb 26, 2011

I'm with you on this. I hate how Spaces or "Desktops" work in Lion. It's lame, it's pointless, and I loved the way you can use four arrows to navigate non-linearly between spaces in SL and Leopard. Apple should NOT change this, it's perfect. Dammit! I also love Overview mode, when you can just see all your spaces and drag windows from one to the other easily. And you can also do an Exposé in that view, so there is no need for Mission Control, as this allows you to see everything. Also, you can see everything the way it is, all at once, and not by clicking through your stupid Desktops icon by icon.

brettryan · Feb 26, 2011

baryon said:
I'm with you on this. I hate how Spaces or "Desktops" work in Lion. It's lame, it's pointless, and I loved the way you can use four arrows to navigate non-linearly between spaces in SL and Leopard. Apple should NOT change this, it's perfect. Dammit! I also love Overview mode, when you can just see all your spaces and drag windows from one to the other easily. And you can also do an Exposé in that view, so there is no need for Mission Control, as this allows you to see everything. Also, you can see everything the way it is, all at once, and not by clicking through your stupid Desktops icon by icon.

Yep, forgot about the DnD ability, this is now gone? So freaking disappointed. I've always rushed for the newest OSX release, somehow I think I won't be rushing so fast for this one.

Apart from a single bug that annoys me in the current Spaces, I love it. That bug is where if you CMD+TAB to an app in another space, it somehow (sometimes) makes the focussed window in the background.

baryon · Feb 26, 2011

Why make the computer more and more linear? I have a keyboard with 4 arrow keys on it! Why not make use of that? Why not make the entire OS a single, scrollable screen, with System Preferences somewhere on page 234, the Dock on page 1, the Finder on page 8, etc... Then all you would have to do is SCROLL your way through your computer.

Reminds me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8gF0KTfMrQ

Haha... The irony.

mrblack927 · Feb 27, 2011

Fully agree. The Spaces issue has gone from a minor annoyance to really bothering me now. Lion looks like a really solid update and has a lot of little tweaks that make things better, but this one glaring step backwards is making me not want to upgrade at all. Now I'm conflicted. Spaces (SL style) is integral to how I get work done every single day. Sigh...

At first I thought I could get used to it, I convinced myself that it was still the same concept, just linear. Unfortunately the more I use it the more I find other things were taken out. For example, to move a window to a different space quickly, you could just grab it (like you're going to move it), and cmd-arrow over to the space you want. The space would move in the background and the window would come with you. This feature is now gone. The "expose view" as others have pointed out, exists in "mission control" form, but is functionally useless. Full screen apps get their own "space" which does nothing but get in the way and make it harder to reach your real spaces. When running two (or more) monitors, switching spaces clears the screen, then puts your windows back. It's getting to be more and more disheartening.

I realize that any number of these could be changed/fixed before the final version of Lion, but some inevitably won't. Really, do you expect them to bring back the grid-view (not just horizontal)? It won't fit in mission control, therefore it won't be changed. Apple is stubborn that way when they think they have a good idea. The best I'm hoping for is a 3rd party hack that lets you restore SL-style expose and spaces. I guess we'll see.

RRRize · May 13, 2011

I'm surprised this thread didn't pick up more traction. The last post was almost 3 months back. Yikes!! I wonder if that is indicative of people's acceptance of the new Spaces in Lion?? I have been using the Developer's release 2 of Lion and I have to say, the only thing I MUST give thumbs-down to is the new Spaces.

There's no ability to configure a grid of horizontal and vertical spaces. It is JUST horizontal spaces. This altogether ruins the whole Spaces experience for me. I really don't see the point to downgrading the functionality of what is one highly versatile and most functional and amazing feature of OS X. I get that Apple wants to unify the iOS/OS X experience, but to what end?? Why sacrifice the versatility of the desktop experience in order to match the limited ability of the iPad/iPhone??? Lion's Spaces is absolutely a downgrade of Snow Leopard's Spaces as stands right now in the Developer's preview. I truly hope they fix this before production because the way I see it, it is broken in Lion.

At best, perhaps they will introduce Snow Leopard-like grid Spaces to iOS and then bring it back to OS X. ...sigh. How backward : (

My 2 cent. }: |

Thunderbird · May 13, 2011

So, there is no way to expose all your spaces (i.e. overview) with all open apps and windows in Lion?

brettryan · May 13, 2011

RRRize said:
I'm surprised this thread didn't pick up more traction. The last post was almost 3 months back. Yikes!! I wonder if that is indicative of people's acceptance of the new Spaces in Lion?? I have been using the Developer's release 2 of Lion and I have to say, the only thing I MUST give thumbs-down to is the new Spaces.

There's no ability to configure a grid of horizontal and vertical spaces. It is JUST horizontal spaces. This altogether ruins the whole Spaces experience for me. I really don't see the point to downgrading the functionality of what is one highly versatile and most functional and amazing feature of OS X. I get that Apple wants to unify the iOS/OS X experience, but to what end?? Why sacrifice the versatility of the desktop experience in order to match the limited ability of the iPad/iPhone??? Lion's Spaces is absolutely a downgrade of Snow Leopard's Spaces as stands right now in the Developer's preview. I truly hope they fix this before production because the way I see it, it is broken in Lion.

At best, perhaps they will introduce Snow Leopard-like grid Spaces to iOS and then bring it back to OS X. ...sigh. How backward : (

My 2 cent. }: |

Hear, hear!

DeepIn2U · May 13, 2011

RRRize said:
I'm surprised this thread didn't pick up more traction. The last post was almost 3 months back. Yikes!! I wonder if that is indicative of people's acceptance of the new Spaces in Lion?? I have been using the Developer's release 2 of Lion and I have to say, the only thing I MUST give thumbs-down to is the new Spaces.

There's no ability to configure a grid of horizontal and vertical spaces. It is JUST horizontal spaces. This altogether ruins the whole Spaces experience for me. I really don't see the point to downgrading the functionality of what is one highly versatile and most functional and amazing feature of OS X. I get that Apple wants to unify the iOS/OS X experience, but to what end?? Why sacrifice the versatility of the desktop experience in order to match the limited ability of the iPad/iPhone??? Lion's Spaces is absolutely a downgrade of Snow Leopard's Spaces as stands right now in the Developer's preview. I truly hope they fix this before production because the way I see it, it is broken in Lion.

At best, perhaps they will introduce Snow Leopard-like grid Spaces to iOS and then bring it back to OS X. ...sigh. How backward : (

My 2 cent. }: |

BRAVO!!! This whole "bring the limited smartphone experience" to the desktop is a HUGE leap BACKWARDS!!

Synaesthesia242 · May 13, 2011

I much prefer it, but maybe that's because I have a Magic Trackpad. You can now switch between Spaces with a 3 or 4 finger swipe. It works brilliantly - so much better than before.

macrem · May 14, 2011

mrblack927 said:
[...]Unfortunately the more I use it the more I find other things were taken out.[...]

I'm also missing the ability to put an app in all spaces (or perhaps I am overlooking something). On SL I use this feature so the iTunes mini player follows me around.

dethmaShine · May 14, 2011

baryon said:
I'm with you on this. I hate how Spaces or "Desktops" work in Lion. It's lame, it's pointless, and I loved the way you can use four arrows to navigate non-linearly between spaces in SL and Leopard. Apple should NOT change this, it's perfect. Dammit! I also love Overview mode, when you can just see all your spaces and drag windows from one to the other easily. And you can also do an Exposé in that view, so there is no need for Mission Control, as this allows you to see everything. Also, you can see everything the way it is, all at once, and not by clicking through your stupid Desktops icon by icon.

lol

We both know how much this thing sucks.

GoKyu · May 14, 2011

i could seriously quote almost every post in this thread and add a +1 behind it...

Apple has seriously dropped the ball with Spaces, and taken it from a really productive feature in Leopard and Snow Leopard, to nearly worthless in Lion.

Didn't they learn *anything* about the difference between cassette tapes and CDs? Why would you ever want to go from random-access to sequential access, especially if you have 9 or more spaces...oh right, only "Pros" would have anything close to that many, and we know what Apple must think of their pro customers...

It's true, they're taking the sequential nature of iOS's page format, and saying that's the way it should be for virtual desktops. But while with iOS, you can swipe to a Spotlight search, you can technically do the same in OS X, but then you lose the point of virtual desktops to begin with...

Already pretty much decided not to upgrade immediately - I hope the guys who wrote Hyperspaces might consider making it a full virtual desktop replacement for Spaces.

dethmaShine · May 14, 2011

GoKyu said:
i could seriously quote almost every post in this thread and add a +1 behind it...

Apple has seriously dropped the ball with Spaces, and taken it from a really productive feature in Leopard and Snow Leopard, to nearly worthless in Lion.

Didn't they learn *anything* about the difference between cassette tapes and CDs? Why would you ever want to go from random-access to sequential access, especially if you have 9 or more spaces...oh right, only "Pros" would have anything close to that many, and we know what Apple must think of their pro customers...

It's true, they're taking the sequential nature of iOS's page format, and saying that's the way it should be for virtual desktops. But while with iOS, you can swipe to a Spotlight search, you can technically do the same in OS X, but then you lose the point of virtual desktops to begin with...

Already pretty much decided not to upgrade immediately - I hope the guys who wrote Hyperspaces might consider making it a full virtual desktop replacement for Spaces.

Spaces is one big thing Apple is messing up.

I mean, spaces is such a big utility for some of us; its just unbearable.
I might skip the whole of Lion just because this thing won't work for me.

Lion is such a great release. Seems to be much more like Leopard feature wise but they should just give an option to disable Mission Control.

sniffies · May 14, 2011

macrem said:
I'm also missing the ability to put an app in all spaces (or perhaps I am overlooking something). On SL I use this feature so the iTunes mini player follows me around.

How-to: right-click on iTunes icon in the dock, select Options, then Assign To All Desktops. Voilà!

macrem · May 14, 2011

PBF said:
How-to: right-click on iTunes icon in the dock, select Options, then Assign To All Desktops. Voilà!

Cool, thank you!

RRRize · May 14, 2011

Synaesthesia242 said:
I much prefer it, but maybe that's because I have a Magic Trackpad. You can now switch between Spaces with a 3 or 4 finger swipe. It works brilliantly - so much better than before.

This does not speak to the issue ay hand though. You prefer a downgraded feature because you can control it by swiping? That is very much like saying you'd prefer a Ford Fiesta over a Ferrari F430 because the Fiesta has leather seats and the Ferrari has cloth.

I have a Magic Trackpad too and I can do precisely what you are speaking of in Snow Leopard's Spaces using MagicPrefs (http://magicprefs.com). The thing that blows what you're saying way out of the water is, with Snow Leopard Spaces I can 3 finger swipe left, right, up AND down through all my spaces!! And let me tell you, it ROCKS!! In Lion, you will be limited to left and right ONLY.

Enjoy your Fiesta bud. If Lion ships with the downgraded Spaces, I will remain in Snow Leopard until some app that I absolutely need (like Aperture) has the minimum requirement of Lion. Till then, I will remain in the Ferrari... because I prefer better over lame.

mrblack927 · May 14, 2011

Sigh... Well Spaces-Fans, this looks like the end of the road. Behold, in DP3, the system prefs pane which used to say "Exposé and Spaces" now says "Mission Control":

And the spaces tab is completely gone:

(before)

(after)

The only remaining feature of spaces is the ability to set an application to a particular space (desktop), now moved to the dock icon context menu:

And that's it folks, once they make a "mission control" icon to replace the spaces icon for the system prefs menu, there will be nothing left. While I and many others had hoped that new Lion builds would start to bring spaces back to it's former glory, this most recent build shows that they are going completely in the other direction. By the time Lion comes out, there will likely be nothing left.

RRRize · May 14, 2011

mrblack927 said:
Sigh... Well Spaces-Fans, this looks like the end of the road. Behold, in DP3, the system prefs pane which used to say "Exposé and Spaces" now says "Mission Control"

Strange because I'm running DP3 as well but it still says "Expose & Spaces" for me. However, the rest of what you see, I see too (see my attached screenshots).

I have to say, this is truly disappointing. All of this effort to make the more potent desktop behave like the less powerful iPad/iPhone is pure rubbish as far as I'm concerned! It's clearly not power-user focused. But even more, especially in the case of Spaces, it's limiting the power and versatility of the desktop for the goal of making the desktop look more like a damn iPad. Bloody annoying stuff is this! Honestly, if they MUST make iOS and OS X more closely resemble one another, then do that, but WHY cancel great features and functionality? Why can't the desktop (OS X) keep all of it's power and functionality and in addition to what it's got, add the look and feel of the iPad... if you must. I'm bloody annoyed!

GoKyu · May 14, 2011

mrblack927 said:
And that's it folks, once they make a "mission control" icon to replace the spaces icon for the system prefs menu, there will be nothing left. While I and many others had hoped that new Lion builds would start to bring spaces back to it's former glory, this most recent build shows that they are going completely in the other direction. By the time Lion comes out, there will likely be nothing left.

WEAK.

Anyone know of a virtual desktop program available on OS X *other* than Spaces?

I might have to dig into the UNIX roots and change my window manager to LiteStep

Jolly Jimmy · May 15, 2011

This is bad news, I rely heavily on spaces. Yet another reason not to upgrade.

Spaces in Lion

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