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So is changing the dock like that going to raise hell with applications that are running at shutdown? Is this talk of applications starting quickly once they have run some sort of 'hibernation' scheme? It sounds like this 'new innovation' could be trouble for too many people and their programs.

I like the old Dock and the 'light' to show what's running. 'Breaking' it like this leak claims just doesn't make sense. And the 'light' is so simple too...

This leads me to a perhaps silly question: What is the current state of OS X multitasking? Does OS X 'multitask' or is it where the current active application rules? Sorry if it's a silly question but I haven't noticed... I think that early on I would start iTunes ripping a CD and then switch to FireFox or some other program and the iTunes rip would often have gaps or other badness so I figure it's not the greatest at multitasking. I now rip on a dedicated machine and wait until it's done to use it for other things...

The OSX kernel is just as capable of multitasking as any other OS, as far as I know. I've never had problems with it. (thankfully, seeing as that's been a feature of PCs for a very, very long time.)
 
As long as I can still easily run Ableton Live at full-whack, with loads of plugins and softsynths, whilst keeping any other music software, and the Cuemix software from my MOTU soundcard running simultaneously I don't care how it handles apps! If there's interruptions and background "clever stuff" accessing files at inconvienient times, taking up precious RAM and HDD access time, and causing glitches and dropouts to the very low latency audio, and making me look a chump and ruining the gig in front of large audiences in the name of "ease of use", then it'll be a massive fail and will be windows 7 on bootcamp time. I already have Win7 for MS Visual Studio on it and it's not a bad OS at all.

If on the other hand it gives me the same or refined OSX power with nicer ease of use, and I can finally resize windows with any corner then it'll be a nice win.

Let's see what next summer brings as it's far too early to say; a new more powerful MacOS, or a "Fisher-Price My First Laptop OS"?...
 
Of course iOS has a multitasking bar to help distinguish between what is running and what is not. It would be idiotic of Apple to deactivate this state in the Dock and then make you click some keys for it to show up iOS style.

I thought that Mac OS X was the root of the iOS operating system and now it appears that iOS will be the root of the next Macintosh OS X?

Cross breeding down is one thing. Developers have to make certain concessions due to the size and capabilities of the hardware but cross breeding up is another story. You don't have the complications of using smaller screen real estate and not having certain things you can't have on the smaller device like an actual readable screen and a real keyboard and mouse (or trackpad).

Wholesale bringing the complete iOS 'look and feel' to the big real world is a bad idea. Bringing some of the features would potentially be a good idea but just because it plays on the small screen doesn't mean that it will knock them out on the large one... The lid is off on the big system compared to the iPhone/iPad... People aren't looking for a crippled desktop that looks like their smart phone. They are looking for a powerful and intuitive desktop that works with their powerful and intuitive smart phone...
 
So making the scroll bars smaller and harder to grab is a good idea?

This is just Apple's way of getting everyone to purchase a Magic Trackpad. Scrollbars are unnecessary with multitouch scrolling. They just will just appear to give you a visual indication of where you are in the page/document/etc.

GL
 
It wouldnt make it much faster because the program will have to loaded off the hard disk back into RAM, same as when launching the program from fresh. The only advantage is that all the windows and things you had opened previously will be in the same place.
Noone said it would be faster. Faster is not a conceptual issue but a question of hardware and optimizing the system.

This is about the conception of apps retaining their state. And if they do, I shouldn't need to know HOW they do that, by either (1) "running" in the traditional meaning, (2) "formally" "running" with swapped out code (ie not doing anything but having a thread "running" that waits for the user to switch to the app again) or (3) no longer "running" but having the state saved to disk.

The difference is only the time it takes to resume, and (3) on my computer may be faster than (2) on your computer, but you still don't need to know how much RAM I have. And thus you don't need to know whether iTunes is in state (2) or state (3). The only thing you need to know is if it is playing your music or not. And that's independent of the state of the app because if the system wants to put iTunes into state (3) it tells iTunes to spin off a music-playing thread.

Of course, the above requires app support. Apps not supporting it can't be put into state (3). That's a difference compared to swapping because that's fully being taken care of by the virtual memory management. Olthough, maybe "fully" isn't correct because the system needs to know about "locked" code which cannot be swapped out.
 
This is just Apple's way of getting everyone to purchase a Magic Trackpad. Scrollbars are unnecessary with multitouch scrolling. They just will just appear to give you a visual indication of where you are in the page/document/etc.

That is a step backwards. Right now, they provide a visual cue full time. If I have to move/scroll whatever to get the same information, we have gone back, not forward.
 
Don't fix it?
but they're not fixing it. they're making it better.
in iOS you don't get a light indicator of Apps running in the background. Think about it, for example if iTunes is playing music you'll get the small "play" icon in the menu bar, just like it does on iOS devices. [Think Lion = Think Back to the Mac]

The indicator currently shows exactly whats running at any one time at an INSTANT glance - it does what it says on the tin ... how the **** then can taking this away and re-creating a new approach improve things?

I leave my Mac on standby overnight with several apps running, e.g. a word document ... so without word illuminated, how do I know if my document is open or not????? (not word, the document itself). Apple seem to be needlessly changing things just for the sake of change!!!!!
 
With LaunchPad is the dock even really needed? If only to show apps that are running. No need to keep apps on the dock.

But if 'launchpad' is an application that you need to keep running to keep tabs on what's running, doesn't it sooner or later make little sense when for how many years the dock has done that all by its self?

I don't know... Maybe this change isn't bad and I'm really not trying to piss on change because it's change but this sounds like potential badness... That coupled with the change of the switch on the iPad is making me wonder what the heck is up at Apple... To many 'committee decisions' for me...

But wait and see what Apple releases next year. It will either be this or some combination...
 
Noone said it would be faster. Faster is not a conceptual issue but a question of hardware and optimizing the system.

This is about the conception of apps retaining their state.


So programs (such as MS Word, Photoshop etc) are now considered Apps are they!!!! Apple ****ing things up as usual ... for ****s sake, if it aint broke, dont fix it!!!
 
Features for the Rest of Us

Hmm. Seems a little odd to remove the indicator, unless there is a significant change to the way apps handle memory and CPU time. When I'm hard at work with several processor- and memory-intensive tasks running, I often glance at what inessential apps are running and shut them all down to free up resources. Makes a huge difference (on a C2D iMac here).

I do the same thing, however, my wife has a bad habit of leaving everything running all of the time. I ended up getting her a more powerful computer with 8GB of RAM to appease her, however, it would be nice if people wouldn't have to worry about what's running and what's not. The computer should "just work" without having to try to manually optimize it.

I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but also I can never reboot my Mac without babysitting it. Unless I already have all of my programs shut down things hang and crash and need manual help. Hopefully OSX Lion will take care of these type of issues.

One more thing about OSX Lion..."Fullscreen" apps...Windows has had this forever...it's called the "Maximize" button. Personally I'd really like to see a maximize button on all my apps. I'm not a designer who likes all of my windows floating around free-form. I'm a programmer and I like my stuff structured. Also, while we're borrowing stuff from Windows how about the feature where if you drag a window to one side of your screen it automatically turns to half-screen size (so you can quickly/easily compare to screens side-by-side). I spend way too much time resizing things on my Mac. :(
 
iOS Multitasking bar?

Hey you never know, it could be that they'll bring the iOS multitasking bar into Lion - put your cursor at the bottom of the dock (bottom of the screen) and wait a tic and voila - up pops the multitasking bar which shows active apps / previously ran apps..
 
That is a step backwards. Right now, they provide a visual cue full time. If I have to move/scroll whatever to get the same information, we have gone back, not forward.

Maybe you have a good example, but I can't think of a specific situation where I need to know exactly where I am in a document 100% of the time. The only one that I could think of is if you are tremendously zoomed into a document where you can't recognize where you are by the content of the document vs. the scrollbar. In which case you would need to scroll anyway because you would be navigating somewhere else (because you are done with the section).

GL
 
CMD+q is much faster than "logging off".

Currently : Light on, click icon, CMD+Q. No lights ? Plug in.
Rumored Lion : CMD+TAB multiple times, CMD+Q multiple times.

Let's hope Apple comes up with a better quick visual cue than having to CMD+Tab.
Definitely. CMD-TAB and CMD-Q are "secrets" to most people. it's fine to have them (I use both all the time, and ALT-TAB on Windows), but at work people (including secretaries who work 8 hours a day with computers and several programs at the same time) always look at me as if I was a wizard when I switch apps using ALT-TAB.
The solution to the problem will definitely not include CND-TAB and/or CMD-Q. But I'm afraid chances are pretty good that your "special" user case will not be taken care of, ie you will need to log off with each individual app. Yes that's a step back, but on the other hand it is a special case indeed.
 
Hopefully it isn't "Better" like iMovie was "Better" and my FCE was made useless by the last OSX .... I'm on the move already .
 
Of course iOS has a multitasking bar to help distinguish between what is running and what is not. It would be idiotic of Apple to deactivate this state in the Dock and then make you click some keys for it to show up iOS style.
Where is that bar? In the top bar, there are very few icons only showing, essentially, only music playing, active location feature maybe one or two others (I'm still on iOS 3.2 on my iPad, so I can't check).
The app switcher invoked by the home button does NOT show what apps are running, that's a misconception.
 
I never used the indicator anyway. It's really far too subtle to use at a glance. I always use command tab. The light indicators are useless to me. That said, I always have my dock set to "auto-hide".
 
wouldn't that be confusing? Not knowing what's running at a glance?

My wife has been using Mac OS for years now and still doesn't understand (or care) about the distinction between an app that isn't running and one that's running but has no open windows.

I idea is that if there's no real difference in behavior between a running app and a non-running app, then there's no point in showing an app's running status.
 
It's too early to tell anything for sure, but I'm a sceptic as to the direction Apple is taking OS X.
 
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