What is the point of spaces?

[reubs]

While I'm not a power user, the only glitch I've found with Spaces comes from the third party Neo Office. I can't just click the Neo Office icon to switch to that space, so now I use Bean for most of my word processing.

Other than that, Spaces is great for my small 13" screen. I really don't know how I managed without it. When we upgrade our PC to an iMac I'm sure I'll still use Spaces there, also. It makes it all so much cleaner and more streamlined for me.

Great feature!

 

[krye]

Spaces is great if you need it. It's one of those things that your either need or you don't. If it's usefulness has to be explained because you don't see the benefit, then it's obviously something hat you don't need. It's like explaining a punch line. Try it out, it's great to keep things organized. Say for example, you have some "happening" in an application that you want to keep am eye on, say Handbrake or a Quicktime export. You want to keep your eye on it, but don't necessarily need it in your face or you don't want to minimize it to the dock, you can throw it into another space while you continue to surf the internet, for example. Then with a quick control+arrow, you can check it's progress and then jump back to what you were working on. If you don't like it, you can save resources by disabling it.

 

[Mad Mac Maniac]

Mute button...

or just Cmd + W... and you don't have to mute and switch quickly...

 

[DaveF]

Spaces strength and weakness is that it's a tool to create virtual workspaces based on application. For example, I have a space for Parallels. I can run Parallels fullscreen to have a dedicated Windows environment. And I simply go to a different Space to do Mac tasks. Parallels doesn't intrude on the Mac nor do I have to exit and enter full screen mode, as I did before Leopard. This is a near perfect use-case for Spaces.

But this application-centric model is also a major weakness. Most people, I assert, don't do application-centric work, but document- or task-centric work. For example: In practice, using Safari isn't a task. But using Safari to browse the web is one task (leisure) and using Safari for online banking is completely different task (personal finance). But to Spaces these are equivalent tasks, and implicitly requires you to have a "Safari" space rather than allowing you to have "Leisure" space and a "Finance" space.

 

[clevin]

Spaces strength and weakness is that it's a tool to create virtual workspaces based on application. For example, I have a space for Parallels. I can run Parallels fullscreen to have a dedicated Windows environment. And I simply go to a different Space to do Mac tasks. Parallels doesn't intrude on the Mac nor do I have to exit and enter full screen mode, as I did before Leopard.

I thought VirtualDesktops offers app specific solutions for Tiger, for free?

But to Spaces these are equivalent tasks, and implicitly requires you to have a "Safari" space rather than allowing you to have "Leisure" space and a "Finance" space.

There are many site-specific browsers you can try out, Prism for Mozilla Firefox (addon), Safari Fluid, or upcoming safari 4.

 

[muldul]

I too don't use spaces, but it can be useful for separating things into different topics, or hiding windows you don't want a teacher to see (games)

 

[gcmexico]

spaces is great, it definitely clears up the clutter, and allows you to have multiple programs open...you have different desktops set up with specific programs...all you have to do is click a space and see only those programs fully opened...I have space for email and contact, one for music, one for ical...ect

 

[iMacmatician]

I find that Command + Tab and Exposé are enough for my usage scenarios. With multiple applications and dozens of windows open, I actually find Spaces more of a hassle. Then again I'm just used to Command + Tab and Exposé, and I haven't used Spaces much.

 

[BlaqkAudio]

I like using Spaces to separate my apps into groups:
Space 1 - Internet (Firefox, Adium, Transmission, etc)
Space 2 - Work (iCal, iWork, Bento, MathType, etc)
Space 3 - Creativity (Photoshop, Flash, iPhoto, Dreamweaver, etc)
Space 4 - Media (iTunes, VLC, etc)

I find it useful in separating what I am doing.

 

[operator207]

I love multiple desktops. When I was a network admin, I had ~10 on my FreeBSD workstation. One for each server/router/switch I was working on at the moment. It was usually 4-6 at a time.

When I moved to OS X, I missed them for awhile, until VirtualDesktops came around. It was ok, but I missed too many things with WindowMaker's setup.
(Focus Follows Mouse in ALL apps, wired window placement, scroll on desktop to change to another desktop)

I currently use spaces with 2 desktops. One is OS X, the other is my VM running XP Pro.

I guess I could run more, but I have ended up with 2 for now.

 

[DaveF]

I thought VirtualDesktops offers app specific solutions for Tiger, for free?

There are many site-specific browsers you can try out, Prism for Mozilla Firefox (addon), Safari Fluid, or upcoming safari 4.

Safari is just an easy example, but the document- or task-specific idea applies broadly. iPhoto is used for both Photo work and Video work, which might be two different tasks. Excel is used for personal finance, for professional use, and for civic-club membership lists -- all three potentially different tasks worth individual spaces.

But you can't create task-specific spaces. You can only create Excel spaces and iPhoto spaces. And this only crudely maps to how people actually work.