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Losing the relative size of the windows under Snow Leopard is the biggest issue to me. I use Exposé far less now, because I can't distinguish what's what as easily as I did before. It's bad enough that I'm considering unmapping one of my precious extra mouse buttons which is currently set to engage Exposé.
 
I don't use Exposé that much but I've never had trouble quickly recognizing a window. In the new Exposé, I still don't have trouble recognizing any of my open windows. How often do you actually run into a situation where you have a hundred windows open and you use Exposé to find them? [...]

I never have hundreds of windows, either on a single or on all of the virtual desktops: no Expose implementation can manage hundreds of windows. Obviously the current implementation is better in that situation. But since many people do not work with tons of open windows, the current implementation lacks something. There's a big difference in the two implementations, our processing of the current Expose output involves a visual pathway different from the previous Expose.

However, that's not the point: HCI is not a science, there is no "USER" for general purpose softwares, there are no 'preferred' interactions. A good HCI group should study how they could introduce options and custom dynamics in the unitary user experience they designed (pardon my English but I do not have enough words for `complex' dialogues).

- thistle
 
By the way... I think I know a way how you can get the old Exposé back. If you can find a beta of Snow Leopard from BEFORE they added the new Exposé to the Dock, you can probably run that version of the Dock in Snow Leopard 10.6.2.

Just a guess.

Could work. Unless the earliest betas had a separate Exposé.app like Leopard did.
 
Could work. Unless the earliest betas had a separate Exposé.app like Leopard did.

That app that Leopard had was just to activate Exposé. It wasn't actually Exposé itself. I think the app just had a script in it that called on Exposé.

I'm pretty sure if you took the Dock.app out of one of the Snow Leopard betas, you'd have your old Exposé again.
 
Could someone with more technical knowledge than me (or with a computer still running an early beta) try that out?

Would taking the dock.app from a leopard machine work?
 
Could someone with more technical knowledge than me (or with a computer still running an early beta) try that out?

Would taking the dock.app from a leopard machine work?

No. Dock.app from Leopard will not work in Snow Leopard.
 
10.6.2 and still crappy "old" suxposé. looks like Apple don't want to have this thing fixed.

Anyone found hack for this?
 
Losing the relative size of the windows under Snow Leopard is the biggest issue to me. I use Exposé far less now, because I can't distinguish what's what as easily as I did before. It's bad enough that I'm considering unmapping one of my precious extra mouse buttons which is currently set to engage Exposé.

Fully agree. Where is that dock.app located in leopard and snow leopard? Can anyone provide a copy of that old dock.app (of that mentioned beta). I feel like a hacking contest!
 
my solution was... new HD and downgrade. Aaah i just love this computer again. Stays a lot cooler too comparing to SL. a lot faster, exposé works like it used to be and I can work again..

Ok it was painfull job to do downgrade and took about 2.5 days to do it due huge updates. I think in totally I downloaded about 3Gigs of sw updates to this computer. But now everything is ok.

So long SL.. i hope you melt soon ;)

I noticed that SL also breaks a lot network programs that I use, like AP Grapher, WireShark, Xcode development tools and many many others.
 
my solution was... new HD and downgrade. Aaah i just love this computer again. Stays a lot cooler too comparing to SL. a lot faster, exposé works like it used to be and I can work again..

Ok it was painfull job to do downgrade and took about 2.5 days to do it due huge updates. I think in totally I downloaded about 3Gigs of sw updates to this computer. But now everything is ok.

So long SL.. i hope you melt soon ;)

I noticed that SL also breaks a lot network programs that I use, like AP Grapher, WireShark, Xcode development tools and many many others.

I don't really believe you. Snow Leopard is noticeably faster than Leopard on both of my machines. I don't understand how people are having problems with Snow Leopard. It's been running like a dream for me. I guess I just know how to treat my Mac right.
 
I don't really believe you. Snow Leopard is noticeably faster than Leopard on both of my machines. I don't understand how people are having problems with Snow Leopard. It's been running like a dream for me. I guess I just know how to treat my Mac right.

Or maybe you're too near-sighted to understand that just because it works on one machine doesn't mean it works on every single machine. I too switched back to Leopard, because SL was such junk - especially exposé!
 
Or maybe you're too near-sighted to understand that just because it works on one machine doesn't mean it works on every single machine. I too switched back to Leopard, because SL was such junk - especially exposé!

It's the same software on every machine. How can it be slow on one machine and super fast on another? I think it's the user, not the machine.

Snow Leopard on the following machine's I've used:

My parent's Mac mini - Faster than Leopard
My brother's MacBook - Faster than Leopard
My girlfriend's MacBook - Faster than Leopard
My MacBook Pro - Faster than Leopard
My Mac Pro - Faster than Leopard

I've seen it across the board. Snow Leopard is faster than Leopard. Those who say it's not are using their computer wrong or have incompatible third party plug-ins or add-ons that need to be updated.
 
aah i'm just so happy with Leopard and 10.5.X exposé ... works like a charm comparing new one..

I posted screen shot earlier to this thread too and here is new screen shot for all to look at, with old exposé naturally... Even tho all windowses and desktops are shown on same time, you can still see quite easily their content and so it's much easier to click right window too. With new exposé you just cannot...

Reason to buy mac and spend some extra $$$ money for it was naturally it's overpower features over Windows. I cannot say anymore overpower over PC because mac is a PC now. And it looks like that now we are getting closer and closer to Windows.

If this continues, soon it's not worth to spend double or triple amount of money...

All i can say that i'm really sad for what has been happening for mac in last 1-1.5 years and direction is more down day by day...

Btw there are a lot discussion about slow SL's on Apple's support pages. Here is just few links to those postings...

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2141492&start=0&tstart=0

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2135726&tstart=0

There is also a lot discussion about exposé.. I do really hope that Apple will listen they customers but I do afraid that they are not listening. They just don't care about customer needs anymore.

And I'm only talking high end MBPs that I have been having 4 in total.

Worst mistakes atleast on MBP's are:
- Exposé changes
- Breaking a lot programs and libraries
- Glossy display (yeah sure you can have old style antiglare with extra price)
- USB port placing?? Doh, you cannot use anymore 2 USB devices at same time because ports are too close to eachother.. just extra 2mm would be enough
- New horrible plastic keyboard. Old aluminium keyboard was million times better and works better too.. Another bad design issue
- General quality on differences on computers
- Dropping out 400 FireWire
Just few examples..

It's going to interesting to see how new battery system will operate and especially if you need to replace batteries.. It's total B...S... that the locking mechanism takes so much of space inside body and battery.. Especially if you are looking their promo video at apple website and think of it. I've opened quite many PowerBook G4's and MBP's and maintaned them.

On this my current MBP i have 3rd HD running and 3rd battery going now and it's 3 yrs old MBP. First battery last about 1.5yrs, second 11 months and now let's see this 3rd batt... All batteries have been bought from apple shop. And have only 3 month warranty (coz they know that it's not gonna long...)

If I still have this same MBP when I need to replace my 4th batt, I will buy an OEM battery. At least I can get 1 yr warranty on that ;)

Btw. during screen shot time 103 programs and 506 threads running on 2.33Ghz Intel Code 2 Duo + 2Gb 667 DDR2 Ram and no problems at all, cpu's idling from 50-70% all the time.. Same setup and with SL cannot have even half of that untill you end up on problems..

EDIT: SL desktops screen shot on page 6, https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8637580/

--jp
 

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aah i'm just so happy with Leopard and 10.5.X exposé ... works like a charm comparing new one..

I posted screen shot earlier to this thread too and here is new screen shot for all to look at, with old exposé naturally... Even tho all windowses and desktops are shown on same time, you can still see quite easily their content and so it's much easier to click right window too. With new exposé you just cannot...

Reason to buy mac and spend some extra $$$ money for it was naturally it's overpower features over Windows. I cannot say anymore overpower over PC because mac is a PC now. And it looks like that now we are getting closer and closer to Windows.

If this continues, soon it's not worth to spend double or triple amount of money...

All i can say that i'm really sad for what has been happening for mac in last 1-1.5 years and direction is more down day by day...

Btw there are a lot discussion about slow SL's on Apple's support pages. Here is just few links to those postings...

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2141492&start=0&tstart=0

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2135726&tstart=0

There is also a lot discussion about exposé.. I do really hope that Apple will listen they customers but I do afraid that they are not listening. They just don't care about customer needs anymore.

And I'm only talking high end MBPs that I have been having 4 in total.

Worst mistakes atleast on MBP's are:
- Exposé changes
- Breaking a lot programs and libraries
- Glossy display (yeah sure you can have old style antiglare with extra price)
- USB port placing?? Doh, you cannot use anymore 2 USB devices at same time because ports are too close to eachother.. just extra 2mm would be enough
- New horrible plastic keyboard. Old aluminium keyboard was million times better and works better too.. Another bad design issue
- General quality on differences on computers
- Dropping out 400 FireWire
Just few examples..

It's going to interesting to see how new battery system will operate and especially if you need to replace batteries.. It's total B...S... that the locking mechanism takes so much of space inside body and battery.. Especially if you are looking their promo video at apple website and think of it. I've opened quite many PowerBook G4's and MBP's and maintaned them.

On this my current MBP i have 3rd HD running and 3rd battery going now and it's 3 yrs old MBP. First battery last about 1.5yrs, second 11 months and now let's see this 3rd batt... All batteries have been bought from apple shop. And have only 3 month warranty (coz they know that it's not gonna long...)

If I still have this same MBP when I need to replace my 4th batt, I will buy an OEM battery. At least I can get 1 yr warranty on that ;)

Btw. during screen shot time 103 programs and 506 threads running on 2.33Ghz Intel Code 2 Duo + 2Gb 667 DDR2 Ram and no problems at all, cpu's idling from 50-70% all the time.. Same setup and with SL cannot have even half of that untill you end up on problems..

EDIT: SL desktops screen shot on page 6, https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8637580/

--jp

Responding to: "New horrible plastic keyboard. Old aluminium keyboard was million times better and works better too.. Another bad design issue"

Hate to burst your bubble but, Apple has never made aluminum keys on any keyboard.
 
Worst mistakes atleast on MBP's are:
- Exposé changes
- Breaking a lot programs and libraries
- Glossy display (yeah sure you can have old style antiglare with extra price)
- USB port placing?? Doh, you cannot use anymore 2 USB devices at same time because ports are too close to eachother.. just extra 2mm would be enough
- New horrible plastic keyboard. Old aluminium keyboard was million times better and works better too.. Another bad design issue
- General quality on differences on computers
- Dropping out 400 FireWire
Just few examples..

- Expose changes are to do with OS X, not the MacBook Pro. Though.. new Expose does suck.
- Again, this is OS X, not the MacBook Pro. Snow Leopard has been out for half a year.. and developers had plenty time to prepare their programs.
- Agreed..
- You can have two USB devices in at the same time. Non-standard USB plug sizes will cause problems (such as old fashioned sized USB sticks), but of course you can plug two standard sized USB plugs in at the same time.
- Plastic keyboard..? The keyboards have always been plastic! And the old PowerBook style one had plenty of issues (squint keys, keys falling off easily etc..). The new one is a joy to type on compared to the old one.
- Eh..?
- FireWire 400 is outdated. Sucks that we didn't get another FW800 port, but big advantage with FireWire is you can daisy chain (unlike USB) so it isn't a huge deal.


It's going to interesting to see how new battery system will operate and especially if you need to replace batteries.. It's total B...S... that the locking mechanism takes so much of space inside body and battery.. Especially if you are looking their promo video at apple website and think of it. I've opened quite many PowerBook G4's and MBP's and maintaned them.

What..? Locking mechanism takes up so much space? Really? And if you want a replacement battery, the fees for a new one are really really fairly priced. No one is complaining about having their batteries replaced. Biggest complaint was you couldn't have a spare - but then these batteries can pump out 7 hours with brightness halfway and low level usage.

On this my current MBP i have 3rd HD running and 3rd battery going now and it's 3 yrs old MBP. First battery last about 1.5yrs, second 11 months and now let's see this 3rd batt... All batteries have been bought from apple shop. And have only 3 month warranty (coz they know that it's not gonna long...)

Batteries are consumables. It isn't really "how long" in terms of months your battery will last, but how much you use it. How many cycles you go through. If you are running off the battery everyday, charging and then using on battery, your battery will barely last 11 months. No big deal.. that is just the limitations of battery technology (something Apple has tried to address with the new built in batteries).
 
You are missing the old Exposé? Here something for your melancholy.

For you, who cannot forget about the superior old style Exposé with its beautiful, simple and functional design, here is, how you can experience a glimpse into the past:

On any Mac with a touchpad, that supports multi finger gestures and runs Snow Leopard do this:
- open System Preferences/Trackpad
- move your mouse to "Swipe Up/Down for Exposé" and mark this setting

Now enjoy the short video playing on the right side, showing you the old Exposé in its full glory to make yourself feel a little better.
 
I too prefer the old Expose but the new one isn't too shabby either, especially with the neat CMD+1 etc ordering functions.

If you asked me, I'd definitely prefer having a simple option to have the old one back just as they did it with the translucent bar at the top.
 
In these few months of Snow Leopard, I've almost completely forgot and stopped using exposé. It's now simply much faster to cmd + tab over 15 programs than use exposé and try to find that one window you want that has it's text unreadable and unregocnizable. Thing is, when I used my parents Mac with Leopard in it and saw how great and usable exposé used to be, I nearly cried.
 
I don't use Exposé that much but I've never had trouble quickly recognizing a window. In the new Exposé, I still don't have trouble recognizing any of my open windows. How often do you actually run into a situation where you have a hundred windows open and you use Exposé to find them? I am smart enough to know which windows are which without reading the titles and it doesn't matter how small they get.

Then your eye sight is much better than mine. I am by no means blind but reading the text that is below the window is the last thing I want to do. I should be able to glance at the window and figure out which one is the correct on for my needs!


I to have filled out a "complaint" with apple about this Expose problem. Message below:
I am writing to express my "dislike" of some of the changes that were made to Expose when I moved to Snow Leopard. I will try to keep this short and simple while still expressing what I feel is wrong with the current implementation.

When I switched to Snow Leopard I found it very enjoyable and the improvement were mostly for the best. There were little quirks that annoyed my, but I told myself this I would get use to them. The only exception to this has been with the new implementation of Expose in Snow Leopard. The "blue glow" I don't mind and can deal with, but the usability and efficiency took a huge hit. I have been on Snow Leopard from almost day one and to this day can not understand how the new Expose works. I am sure there is a method to its madness, but the rearrangement of the windows in the new version is utterly horrible. I find myself hunting and mousing over every finder window open to figure out which one is which, as I have no idea where on the screen it got moved to when I activated Expose. There is much, much more wasted space on the screen that could be use to make the windows bigger and more visible. I like the dock expose, and can live with "exposeing" the windows that are minimized to the dock but if a window is minimized and hidden then please please do not show it; there is a reason I hid it and don't want it visible!! I no longer minimize and hide windows to the dock as every time I active expose I see it again; not what I want as I hid the application for a reason. Point in case: if you do not minimize the window and just hide it expose "ignores" it! Why should it be different if the application had been minimized to the dock and then hidden?? The proportional sizing of the windows and the logical layout on the screen was the greatest asset of the Leopard version of Expose! With those two things removed it makes find big windows impossibly frustrating, and finding smaller windows laughably easy. Those two things should be just the opposite. I should be able to identify a word document that is 5 times the size of the mini player iTunes window much easier then it currently is. I like the text that has been added, but it is not nearly visible enough and does not stand out so that you are not hunting for the window you need. There are instances were the new "grid" layout would be more beneficial, but frankly I have not come across on instance of it yet!

If the proportional sizing and relative placement of windows could be returned to Expose it would be a much more usable and enjoyable experience

I mostly outlined my complaints above but to summarize and put in order what should be changed/brought back:
1. Proportional sizing of the windows when Expose is activated
2. Relative positioning of the windows when Expose is activated
3. If an app window is hidden, whether minimized to the dock or not, ignore it when activating expose
4. Make the text much more visible and apparent at first glance
5. For the windows that are minimized but not hidden show them when activating expose but DON'T make them nearly as large on the screen (it takes up to much precious space for windows that I want to see and have not minimized).
6. The "Blue Glow" needs to be a little more prominent also (or change it away from blue altogether).

Well that is just my 2 cents on the subject but hopefully something can be changed with Expose because as it stands now it is much less usable for me and my workflow, unlike the Leopard version was!
 
i couldn't agree more. I've been literally spamming Apple support with this and posted my anger in many forums but I fear they're not gonna change it back.


Shame on them..... the non-proportional window sizes just kill it for me. My Adium control window which is 340px wide appears at its original size in exposé whereas fullscreen Photoshop or a browser window of original 1440px width shrinks to less than 230px width. Who on earth is gonna quickly pick out the window he wants anymore? Ergonomic nonsense! :mad:
Not even to speak of all the wasted screen space.....

Dock-20100218-120417.jpg


Good example, window 1(big) and window 2 (smaller)
Expos%C3%A9_in_Snow_Leopard_ist_bl%C3%B6d_-_Ich_will_das_alte_wieder%21%21-20100218-121026.jpg


become this ******** :(
Expos%C3%A9_in_Snow_Leopard_ist_bl%C3%B6d_-_Ich_will_das_alte_wieder%21%21-20100218-121236.jpg


in old exposé it would have been this, which makes FAR more sense. A normal human can instantaneously pick the right window just from its proportion + the space gets used so you see more content.... I want it back! :mad:
Expos%C3%A9_in_Snow_Leopard_ist_bl%C3%B6d_-_Ich_will_das_alte_wieder%21%21-20100218-121435.jpg
 
I wonder why Apple felt the need to change Expose at all. Whoever they hired to develop/test it should be fired.
 
randfee2's examples are spot on. This SL Expose is driving me nuts to the point I rarely use it at all anymore, and it USED to be my only application/window switcher. It and Spotlight boosted my productivity immensely. I've also written bug reports and submitted feedback, just hoping one of these updates one day will take window size back into account like Leopard does and possibly fix the grid too. I don't want to have to downgrade.
 
Disappointed to see that 6 months later this bug still exists. Expose used to be a stellar feature of OS X - it was perfect in its 10.5 form... now it's nearly unusable.
 
It's the same software on every machine. How can it be slow on one machine and super fast on another? I think it's the user, not the machine.

Snow Leopard on the following machine's I've used:

My parent's Mac mini - Faster than Leopard
My brother's MacBook - Faster than Leopard
My girlfriend's MacBook - Faster than Leopard
My MacBook Pro - Faster than Leopard
My Mac Pro - Faster than Leopard

I've seen it across the board. Snow Leopard is faster than Leopard. Those who say it's not are using their computer wrong or have incompatible third party plug-ins or add-ons that need to be updated.

Ok. Let's try something. I open my laptop. I open a new safari window. It takes < 1 second. I bring iTunes up. instantaneous. My point is, it can't get faster. However, it felt like I was waiting for my computer to open a new Safari window, or bring up iTunes. to me, that is slower. When I have no need for Snow Leopard and only dislike for its new "features", I don't see any reason for using it.

If you want more proof, I'll gladly take a video and show you my MBP in action, running both 10.5 and 10.6 on an external drive, for you to compare.
 
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