Video Shows Differences Between Mavericks and Mountain Lion Multiple Monitor Support

[cwfeldmann]

To all the Haters out there

I will not hide! I would LOVE more multimonitor support and those of you that think it's useless are something else. My set up at home is 3 Screens (27' iMac and two 24's on each side) it's beautiful and I refuse to admit it's overkill cause it's not - and for the professional crowd it's sometimes necessary. I have two screens at work and even on those many of the things the video highlighted I can see as pretty decent issues, don't be dazzled by his crazy 6 screen set up, even in lesser numbers these tweaks to how multi monitors are handled wont be welcome. My biggest disappointment is the merged background issue, it works terribly in OS X and wonderfully in windows 8, thats right! a feature that trumps in Mac. Surrounding myself with a collection of inspiring wallpapers that rotate in my background is quite relaxing and enjoyable for me but I can't do it on my work computers only my gaming computers and I wished so much that this was a feature in the new Mavericks. - I had to write my own script to do this and it's still such a mess!

 

[dragje]

Tons of people. If I can't have Adobe Premiere across both monitors I might as well throw my 2nd monitor away right now.

Same here, but with Adobe After Effects and Photoshop.

By the way, a new Creative Cloud update will come this week!

 

[Going Digital]

Actually

He actually found plenty of places to actually insert the word actually in to what actually seemed like every sentence. That is so actually annoying.

 

[AfzalivE]

Why is this so hard to get? The wallpaper is just a proxy for what he's talking about. You can't lay out a bunch of apps spanning his 6-monitor setup in one space, then a completely different set of apps spanning the array on another space, and then switch between those two spaces. That context is lost entirely with this arrangement.

I thought that was the whole purpose of Spaces, even though I don't really use Spaces because if I did, I'd just focus on one space.

 

[donutbagel]

still broken, snow leopard is better and faster.

I wish I could go beyond Snow Leopard, but my GPU seems to hate the new ones. And the new ones seem faster.

 

[iLilana]

huh?

So if I wanted to spread one app or window over more than one monitor to (for example) create a giant VR driving experience I can't? Mind you I could just get the new 1080p occulus rift. But if I need to use more than one screen per window for whatever reason... that option is now gone?

 

[Porco]

Looks like it will work great for me. I usually only use 2 displays at most, but it's been a mess. I don't think the guy in the video's issues will really be much of a problem for me (I do think 6-display users will be in a small minority!!), although I don't see why Apple can't give us enough options to configure it in such a way that makes everyone happy, it shouldn't be all that hard.

The main thing for me is the ability (for the OS) to full-screen an app on one display while not affecting the other display(s). It's kind of incredible they've left that so long without fixing it.

 

[donutbagel]

The only real issue is not being able to have an application spread across multiple monitors. That's the only issue for Apple to "fix".

It can as long as that application has multiple windows.

 

[dpruitt]

The mic?

Another problem appears to be the mic. It makes people sound like they are stuck in a Harry Potter movie.

Bada bomp! I'm here all week.

 

[Quu]

Is that real, though? He never shows anything but a single Safari window.

My question is, can you have different Adobe After Effects windows in different monitors? Like, is it just 'windows' that can't be spanned...or do they all stick together and it is, in fact, 'apps' that can't be spanned.

There's not enough information in the video to determine this. Anyone else know?

My concern here is that I currently can drag one app across three displays, for example games. It is quite immersive. Now if I want to do that with a game the game has to support that feature and create three separate windows. No game on OS X will ever support that.

Games is a very specific usage scenario of course I'm sure it won't affect many people here but honestly I'd like the ability to be able to drag a window beyond a single display, have individual spaces per display and fullscreen apps on each display. That would be perfect in my opinion.

 

[JackANSI]

Simple fix for Apple to implement a compromise without sacrifice?

Hold Option or some other key while doing the screen swipe to shift every monitor to the next space. (and have a switch in the trackpad settings to have it either way by default).

Not a hard "problem" to fix. I doubt Apple will figure it out, or maybe a better way to put it, I doubt Apple will care because they want you to use it how THEY designed it.


Seriously though... If I was this guy's boss I'd be pretty upset at how much time and effort he puts into his wallpapers.

 

[rmwebs]

Another problem appears to be the mic. It makes people sound like they are stuck in a Harry Potter movie.

Bada bomp! I'm here all week.

Oh dear. Didn't realize MacRumors had become that kind of a place...

 

[strausd]

Apple has only gone backwards from Snow Leopard in terms of Expose and Spaces.

 

[dpruitt]

Oh dear. Didn't realize MacRumors had become that kind of a place...

Oh come on, I was just being silly.

 

[spazzcat]

It's not the wallpaper. It is not being able to switch all monitors at the same time. You can't cover an array of monitors with a single space, and switch between spaces like you can now.

Right, either they are treated as one screen or multiple screens, but not both...

 

[pcmxa]

I don't really have a problem with this since the old way (while not ideal) is stil there.

Again, the issue is not wallpaper. It is applications running on multiple screens. When I run Premier of After Effects I run them on all three screens I have (One for the monitor one for clips and timeline, one for everything else). I run them in separate spaces. The new way would require me to go to each screen and slide in a new space (three times for each pogram). Since I am often editing a clip that is an After Effects comp (meaning the programs look the same and have similar info on them) this could be quite confusing and inefficient.

Not a big deal since they left the old way, and that just means I maximize apps rather than run them full screen. But it isn't about wall paper for most of us, it is about being able to efficiently switch spaces for apps that occupy multiple screens.

 

[spazzcat]

Unable to switch all the screen at the same time it too much for this guy because it messes up his multiple screens wallpaper.

How many of you would like to stretch an app windows onto multiple displays anyway? I guess Apple just made the changes to make it fit to the majority of the users.

Stretching is an issue, but wallpapers not so much....

 

[AppleInLVX]

Yes, if you close the lid of the MBP you can fry the entire mother board.

Read several threads about that and did that to mine.

Telltale sign is excessive fan activity.

Add to that not taking out the battery when on normal power, plus a hardcase shell and you make things nice and toasty from the bottom to the top.

I spoke with the tech after they'd written it off, and I did most things right to try to offset all that. I ran it with the lid at least cracked open a little bit if not fully up when using it because I found the fans were on all the time, and it bugged me. I also typically had it elevated on a stand that allowed the air to flow all around it, so that probably helped. I didn't take the battery out, however. I didn't know that made a difference, and they didn't mention a thing about it. Besides, the newer ones don't have a removable battery, so I'm not sure if that matters, although battery technology may have changed since I had my issue.

Thing was, it was a little onboard 128meg video chip and I did a *lot* of graphics heavy photography work on it, all the while driving the 27" monitor I had attached. I really was asking a lot of the GPU in retrospect.

----------

Actually what?

Actually the guy in video used the word "actually" excessively. I picked up on that too. It's a little bit of a pet peeve with me, right alongside the over/misuse of "literally".

If what you're saying isn't actually the case, then why are you saying it?

 

[JackANSI]

Actually the guy in video used the word "actually" excessively. I picked up on that too. It's a little bit of a pet peeve with me, right alongside the over/misuse of "literally".

If what you're saying isn't actually the case, then why are you saying it?

I literally, no actually, laughed out loud at this.

 

[Scapal]

Screen binding

You should be able to bind screens so they act as a single desktop/space.
A bit like rawspan or colspan in a html table

This way you could have both behaviours.

Full screen app on bound screen would spread on them, so you could watch you movies on you 6 screens setup (or buy a really good projector for that price).
Bindings forming non-rectangular shapes may challenge that :-/

 

[a.coward]

I know right?

1) who cares?
2) How is splitting an app window across monitors helpful? As long as the app itself isn't contained to one screen, I am happy (ie two word docs on different screens)

#1 is purely aesthetic, so yeah, I don't care too much.

#2 is functional, so I do care. You'd be surprised on how useful this can be
for some people. For instance, working on a large spreadsheet across
multiple monitors, or when "diff"ing source code side-by side. To me, this
is almost a deal breaker, especially seeing I don't care too much about full
screen apps. If I needed multiple full screen apps, I'd just maximize
windows on different screens instead of using full screen mode. To me,
there is very little difference between these two modes of operation (at least
for the apps I use). My biggest gripe is more to do with the fact that even
with Mavericks, you cannot have Dashboard displayed on a single screen
while still working on other screens. I realize I'm probably in the minority,
but I actually like dashboards widgets.

 

[ctdonath]

His problems are odd.

- He cares a lot about the wallpaper in the background?
- He wants the apps splitted/extended between monitor?

Odd? I consider that perfectly normal. When I've had multiple monitors, the first thing I did was set a background spanning all displays, then would set up my IDE to spread across them as well. The whole point (AFAIK) of having multiple monitors is that you just can't get one monitor that size & resolution, so you arrange them & their content as one.

 

[uberman15]

Basically, there are two positives:

1) Separate menubar and dock on each monitor
2) Going full-screen with an app does not blank out the other monitors

Seems the rest should be handled with basic settings

Option 1:

Each monitor is separate. That means spaces on each monitor change independently of other monitors. In this setup, apps cannot be spread across multiple screens (current Mavericks setup)

Option 2:

Spaces are connected across monitors. Changing a space on one monitor changes the space across all monitors. In this setup, apps can be spread across multiple screens. This setup might be a bit awkward with the two changes identified above. This is why I think Apple hasn't implemented it this way as an option.

 

[bacaramac]

I see his point on out of sync spaces. They should just add an option to lock all spaces together and another to allow an app to span multiple screens when the first lock spaces check box is marked.

I could see where a creative professional needs multiple apps. If you are creating movies maybe having a space for each stage of processing would help. If you need multiple apps at each stage all spaces are synced up and a single flip between spaces gets to a whole set of apps running.

 

[ValSalva]

His problem does highlight two fundamentally different ways of considering the desktop. The old way sees multiple displays as one big display. The Mavericks way sees each display as its own desktop which is the way most people seem to want it judging from all the complaints about Lion/ML.

The different approaches are not easily bridged. Just look at each display having a menu bar in the Mavericks way. It's very different.