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OS X 10.9 to Bring Enhancements to Finder, Safari, Multiple Monitor Support, and Multitasking

kristoffer4 said:
I wonder how the new multitasking system will work...What things won't be able to run in the background? :confused:
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My first reaction was similar, as I use true multitasking on a regular basis (and often wish that iOS supported a bit of a better system). But it occurred to me that this is a feature geared more toward my wife, my mom, etc., who are NOT power users. It's remarkable to me how often they complain to me that their computer is running slow and ask me to look at it, only for me to discover that they have a dozen different apps open, including Safari with a score of pages open. So, for them, some smart pausing of background apps would be extremely beneficial...

justperry said:
They should do something about the slow startup and shut down times, my old PB on 10.5.8 does it faster than 10.8

Oh, and a new file system, ZFS or similar.
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With regards to slow startup times, it's my position that you can't compare back to older computers running older OSes. Why? Well, the newer the OS, the more it does. So, there's always a tug-of-war between the speed of loading services vs. the number of services to load. In general, this is a fairly static state, but it's not that hard to look back and find a combination that outperforms the latest and greatest.

As an example, I have an old Mac LC that I've been known to pull out and start up every now and again. Running Mac OS 8.6, that computer goes from switch on to desktop in about 5 seconds. Should this be used as evidence that our current versions of the OS are slow and laggy?
 
jent said:
I try to give Apple the benefit of the doubt when most people bash the company, but I have to say, features like multi-monitor support for full screen applications should have been done right from the beginning, or at the very least made right in OS upgrades like Mountain Lion, when they had already had more than enough time to review customer complaints, analyze the technical aspects, and test any improvements. That being said, I'm looking forward to the new features described in the article.
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Agreed, but it may not necessarily be about having time to do it, it may have been upper management such as Steve Jobs who didn't allow for such elements to be included. Remember, although Jobs knew what to do in terms of envisioning a great OS for the Mac, he was very strict on how he wanted it to be operated and some of his decisions left me baffled. For example, I never thought they'd get rid of those ugly aqua scroll bars in OS X. Been there since 2000 public beta all the way to Snow Leopard, yuk. Sadly after so much progression in OS X there are still parts of the OS that have aqua.

Cook may not be the visionary that Jobs was but it looks to be the case they he is more open to making changes and fixes that needed to happen that Jobs otherwise may have not approved of.
 
Multi Monitor support and Finder improvements are promising after the disaster 10.7 introduced. Not keen on the idea of iOS-esske multitasking... seems a little pointless on a computer. I'd prefer my apps just to run normally in the background.

Then again, for all we know, this rumour could be way off base.
 
Tags - it's about time! This seems such a basic way to enhance file/folder organisation (and necessary), why in the underworld has it taken so long? This is very good indeed.
 
Stella said:
Multi-tasking method could be either good or bad - but better not be as restrictive as iOS by default.

It would be great to have an application that is idol to be persisted to disk. But please, no automatic closing of applications.

Great to have the focus on power uses.
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It won't be as restrictive mainly because we have more screen real estate to use in OSX. That and layers. I love layers. This is how I see the background process working.

It's similar to Launchpad. We click on the Launchpad icon and a different layer pops up. The same concept could be used in background applications. Click on the dock icon and the application comes to the front. Click on it again and it goes to the background and uses less resources.

This could pave the way for widgets in OSX. Do away with the separate space currently used for widgets and make it a background process that includes badges and pop up notifications. When something changes in the background e.g.. Twitter or Mail a notification pops up and you just click on the icon and the application comes to the front.
 
DesertEagle said:
Which subfamily of Felidae will it be this time?
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bViSmBg.jpg


This. OS X 10.9 Top Cat.
 
What i want is that only the monitor that has the cursor on it swipes through desktops and apps, and the other one keeps still. I have 6 desktops, 3 full screen VMs and more apps. I want to be able to put any 2 of those 10+ spaces on my monitors. And to switch through those 10+ spaces independently, so i have space 1 on monitor 1 and space 9 on monitor 2, and that i can put any space between 1 and 1x while keeping space 1 on monitor 1.

Also, enable launchpad scaling. When you have a 2560x1600 monitor(s), it sucks because the icons are the size of playing cards.
 
gnasher729 said:
Probably similar to iOS, on a voluntary basis: If your app is moved into the background and doesn't show a user interface anymore (that would happen if another app runs in fullscreen mode), it is told about that; it stops doing things that it shouldn't do in the background (like iPhoto showing a slideshow would be pointless waste of CPU time if the app is in the background), it prepares that it will not get any CPU time unless it asks for it, and it saves its state to the disk so that it can be stopped and restarted if the OS decides to do that.

Another iOS feature that is missing on MacOS X: In iOS, when the user quits an application, that app can continue finishing its work, even though to the user it looks like it has exited. That doesn't work in MacOS X currently.




Don't confuse "multi-tasking" with "running multiple apps in a way that is best for the user". Multi-tasking is easy. Doing what is best for the user is hard, you get screamed at by people who don't understand it, but your users are actually happy. The point here is to pause background activity that shouldn't happen and is a waste of time, as opposed to background activity that _should_ happen.




Actually, it is very, very good. It just doesn't do things the way that some programmers have learned and can't get out of their minds.
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I think he means from a UI perspective..
 
HenryDJP said:
Agreed, but it may not necessarily be about having time to do it, it may have been upper management such as Steve Jobs who didn't allow for such elements to be included. Remember, although Jobs knew what to do in terms of envisioning a great OS for the Mac, he was very strict on how he wanted it to be operated and some of his decisions left me baffled. For example, I never thought they'd get rid of those ugly aqua scroll bars in OS X. Been there since 2000 public beta all the way to Snow Leopard, yuk. Sadly after so much progression in OS X there are still parts of the OS that have aqua.

Cook may not be the visionary that Jobs was but it looks to be the case they he is more open to making changes and fixes that needed to happen that Jobs otherwise may have not approved of.
Click to expand...
It's because of Steve and his protégé Scott Forstall that we have iOS littered with fugly skeuomorphism. I wouldn't be surprised if Ive has hated the UI for a long time but because Steve liked it (and in Steve's world Ive was hardware design only) he had no ability to change it. Based on the rumors from Gruber and Rene Ritchie I'm cautiously optimistic iOS 7 will be a lot more visually pleasing. :)
 
roadbloc said:
Not keen on the idea of iOS-esske multitasking... seems a little pointless on a computer. I'd prefer my apps just to run normally in the background.
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Uhm, significant battery life savings? Whats not to like about it? And it will be optional anyway, they won't force you to use the new APIs.
 
ConCat said:
It allows a different design methodology where you can assume that anything your app is doing will be in the foreground 99% of the time. You don't have to worry much about hogging resources as a background app, you just have to tell OS X when your app can be paused and it will do so.
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You do realise I was posting about automatic termination and not this backgrounding API?
 
I was struggling to think of why I'd ever need tabbed Finder, but I can come up with a couple use cases. The majority of my Finder usage would be un-tabbed, however, and rightly so.

Pausing background apps, also hard to fathom, but as long as it's developer-decided, so be it. Multiple monitor support hopefully means multiple menu bars and docks as well.

I am slowly coming around to 10.8. 10.7 remains a travesty, and 90% of my computer usage is still on 10.6, but I'm coming around to 10.8. Hopefully whatever 10.9 is like, it fixes most or all of the things that still bother me about the direction of OS X.

What I'm really looking forward to is rumors of OS 11. I think that's where you'll see Ive's true influence. I believe it's the reason for Apple's management reshuffling, as well. I'm hoping Apple maintains good backwards compatibility with OS X, while at the same time building from the ground up with a modern set of decisions. We've come a long way from 10.0 and OS X is showing its age. The way we interact with computers now is so much different. I don't want to see OS 11 go more towards iOS, but have it be a reaffirmation of what makes full-featured personal computers useful. At the same time, it can fit better in the cloud and work with our other sorts of devices better. I'm thinking a new filesystem, similar but better interface, and some real bottom-up improvements across the board. So many of the problems with OS X is related to its original design constraints, with features glued on top of an aging kernel. I really can't wait to see what Ive and company create when they're freed from those historical restrictions. OS X "2.0" could be really very exciting. Oh yeah, and dump the stupid cat names.
 
markso2 said:
It seems about time the Finder got looked at. It's been feeling years behind other OS components. Is anyone else tired of double-clicking the little grab bar that makes a column width actually show a whole filename? Hoping that also gets a review.
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Nope, never used the Finder that way and I use it extensively but there's always a chance that gets reviewed and fixed so it works the way you hoped. One thing to keep in mind is that they may like the way it works and they may have not received much, if any feedback about it.

Not to discount your concerns but Mac OS X could use more attention to bigger things such as Automator, more UI refreshments, more Dock options, more Service menu options and for the small stuff, it's so frustrating to me in Launchpad that when clicking a folder and opening a file within that folder, the folder doesn't close back. It stays open forever until you manually close it. It does that same crap in iOS. At least offer the option in System Preferences to have it spring back to closed after opening an app. Here's to hoping.
 
The Phazer said:
You do realise I was posting about automatic termination and not this backgrounding API?
Click to expand...

Automatic termination means if you don't have a window opened the app can probably close because it does nothing and starts so fast that you don't see a difference.
So why do you have something against it ?
You won't lose your work ?
It saves you cpu and battery power and also memory
it removes the need to manually close the application.

There is nothing you CAN'T like at automatic termination.
At least unless you are a moron of developer who can't set the flag correctly on his app
 
More Important Stuff

I truly wish apple would address the slow shutdown issue on M.Lion.

fixing Bugs has a priority over other features... A Mac should feel like one and not like an iOS..

;)
 
The new backgrounding management, which I assume will be double click swipe click, should be much better than:

$ ps ax | grep -i safari
1012 ?? S 0:22.06 /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari -psn_0_467058
kill -STOP 1011

do other stuff

kill -CONT 1012
 
JarJarThomas said:
Automatic termination means if you don't have a window opened the app can probably close because it does nothing and starts so fast that you don't see a difference.
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I'll be the judge of that, thanks.

So why do you have something against it ?
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I'm a better judge of what application I need open and active than Apple is.

You won't lose your work ?
Click to expand...

By no means guaranteed.

It saves you cpu and battery power and also memory
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Desktop.

it removes the need to manually close the application.
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No it doesn't.

At least unless you are a moron of developer who can't set the flag correctly on his app
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Apple can't even get Safari to keep the machine awake when there's an active file download.
 
OSX Pussycat :)

Although Lynx, Wildcat or Cougar are more likely. :D

It's a shame we aren't upgrading from Leopard, as you could have Clouded Leopard to indicate the new cloud features. ;)
 
mrxak said:
I was struggling to think of why I'd ever need tabbed Finder, but I can come up with a couple use cases. The majority of my Finder usage would be un-tabbed, however, and rightly so.
Click to expand...

I can. Instead of having 10 different finder windows open I can have just one opened with 10 tabs. Would look a whole not neater on the screen.
 
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