I think this is all related to the iOS X direction Apple is going with their desktops. they would rather force a broken implementation of full-screen which mimics iOS than rethink it for a desktop. And you know, I hate to say it (as a long time user of Apple computers) but in general they really need to pull their heads out of their arses when it comes to the bizarre direction they're going with the OS X user experience. Imaginary linen canvas everywhere? Horrible slow transitions <i></i>everywhere<i></i>, all the time?<p>Or maybe I just want to get some god damn work done here.<p>Apple, we know you can do this stuff ever since the days the genie minimize effect was introduced (or shift-minimize for ultra slow!). Please, get some sanity and just put an advanced panel somewhere in the system preferences with, among other things (tabs in Finder?) an animation = slow/normal/fast/disabled option. We should not need to resort to plist hacks.
I'll probably get slaughtered for saying this, but the more I use OSX and see the really simple stuff that either doesn't exist, doesn't work, or doesn't work well, I end up really confused where most Mac users' complaints of Windows comes from (especially compared to Win7).<p>This comes from working on a '10 MBP with Lion. Full screen is basically like "Maximize" in Windows. To me it was shocking that in 2011 that was touted as a new feature.<p>Other things bother me too, like constantly getting the "beachball" for seemingly simple actions and xcode crashing if I breath too hard.<p>I just assume most people aren't having a similar experience.
Wow, apparently some people are so blinded by fanboyism (I know one such person myself) that they can't accept something created by Apple might have an issue. Some of the answers can be summed up as "hey, before you couldn't do X before, so stop moaning and keep doing what you did before if you don't like how X works!".<p>Even in the bad old days of Microsoft MVPs you didn't get answers as hostile as that. This is almost religious fervor. WTF?
I could care less about Apple's Fullscreen API -- what I hate is that apps are <i>replacing</i> their old Fullscreen behavior (like Chrome has) in favor of the Apple standard. Which led me to make this comment on a Firefox 12 HN post a few months ago: "... it will be a shame when they implement full screen if it takes away the current layered option. Firefox is the last major OSX browser to work in fullscreen while still allowing apps to be above or below it. With Moom's hotkeyed window positions--it's extremely convenient to bring a text editor to focus and still be able to scroll the web in the background. Mozilla, please don't let this happen!"
Apple's Fullscreen API just seems like a lazy approach to delegating UI real-estate and the last thing power-users would want.
Honestly, I think the suggestion of hitting the green button to maximize is completely fine.<p>Except that the green button DOES NOT MAXIMIZE. And never really has. Window management in OSX has always been a complete joke, and it continues to be so. Now pressing the green button in chrome resizes to small and "current" sizes, not "full screen."
I can confirm it's still busted. After a year of Lion I've learned never to bother with the full screen button (that's a feature for noobs anyways right?)<p>Though what really pisses me off about Mountain Lion multiple monitor is they removed the "Detect Displays" menubar option. Just gone. So now I'm reduced to unplugging and replugging my thunderbolt 27inch display when I connect it to my laptop. F'ing asinine
This is not a bug. It is a very intentional feature, like the scroll bars, they decide they had to go against the norm to implement it and they went aead with it. The intended use case is to allow the app access to both the screens. Imagine this in say a video editing environment where you could have the video playing on the left and all the myriad number of controls on the right. The problem is, to my knowledge, almost no app has taken to it yet, no one wants to be the first, heck not even apples own apps feel the need to do it.<p>Conjecture->
The problem is unlike scroll bars you can't have a setting to disable it, because that would mean the app had to retroactively allow itself to run in a single window full screen mode which might be considered unpredictable behavior, something they don't like.
So to give them some benefit of doubt I see where they're coming from.
I agree this behavior of full-screen mode is counterproductive on multi-monitor set-ups, and it's a serious issue if Apple is encouraging app developers to rely on this behavior instead of providing more useful window layouts. It's a violation of metaphor: "full screen mode" is actually "dedicated space mode," which isn't what multi-monitor users expect or want.<p>From personal experience, I suspect this feature is intended to make Spaces more accessible to novice users on laptops without external monitors, a common case. I never got the hang of Spaces originally, but once I started using full-screen mode while portable, my laptop got immensely more useful. For me, this was a gateway into the rest of Spaces, and now I maintain 3 desktop spaces and 1 full-screen app, and switch between them and Mission Control with trackpad gestures. Heck, I might even start using Dashboard, since it's sitting right there. (Ok, probably not.) It's a gradual introduction to an advanced feature.<p>Apple routinely cuts off its long tail as a streamlining measure, sometimes for UX reasons, sometimes for engineering reasons. They shouldn't always get away with it. At least in this case the intent seems reasonable, even if the side effect isn't.
I solved this problem very easily, by downgrading to Snow Leopard. Also that got rid of kernel panics caused by a bug in Darwin virtual ttys.<p>The worst part of Lion's featured 'fullscreen mode' is that software, that worked fine in fullscreen before, now uses Lion's fullscreen. This doesn't happen on Snow Leopard.
The other annoying aspect of this is that there are (hidden?) APIs for making apps functional in fullscreen mode across multiple monitors. Aperture (for sure) and Final Cut Pro X (I believe) both make use of multiple displays.
I finally upgraded to Lion a few weeks ago because a client I have (I'm a web dev, mostly rails) had an app that was built on Xcode 4.3 that I needed to be able to compile and test. I really miss snow leopard. my computer runs slower now under lion and I'm dubious as to whether the UI improvements improved anything.
Tim Cook is the Steve Ballmer of Apple. And I mean that in every negative way possible. This kind of shit is a great example, but everything he's done since he took over has been a tremendous disappointment.<p>Nobody was clamoring for the iOS experience on the desktop. It's horrible. Get rid of it.
OS X is the least usable of the desktops I worked on for a longer period of time (Gnome 2 and Windows XP). Mostly because of clunky and slow way of app switching and poor window managment. Unfortunately, "modern" desktops like Gnome 3, Unity or Metro are even worse.
Frankly, I don't find the full-screen issue that much of a problem. I use BetterSnapTool to emulate the Windows 7 style drag window to edge functionality. So going full-screen on a window now works exactly like Windows 7.<p>The bigger problem is how it is not possible to drag a window from a "space" on one display, to a "space" in another display when viewing Mission Control. There is no conceivable reason they don't allow this. It worked just fine in Spaces. It has nothing to do with full screen mode. I just don't get it.
I (mostly [1]) get around this by using SizeUp and its "full screen" keyboard shortcut to maximize my windows. I'm sure Divvy and other tiling window manager software have an equivalent.<p><a href="http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/" rel="nofollow">http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/</a><p>[1] I say "mostly" because it just maximizes the window and doesn't put the app into Apple's Fullscreen API mode.
You know how I know every operating system is turning into sh_t? The install sizes keep increasing...I could write an operating system with much of today's functionality in probably under 100 mb. With the right system architecture/standardization, I could probably write an operating system under 10 mb.<p>Time for a new operating system.<p>WHO IS WITH ME!? ;)
I've never found built in apple features to typically handle dual monitors too great.<p>Sure, multi monitors is fine, but the Spaces and Mission Control UX never scaled well when you added another monitor (IMO). Full screen behaviour just adds to it. It seems to me that >1 monitors are not how Apple envisions their computer configs.
The way I think they justify this (and I do), is that if you have multiple monitors, then you generally have lots of screen real-estate, and thus won't be using fullscreen mode anyway. I don't, because apps are too big on 24" - fullscreen is best on a small notebook display.<p>I still think Apple should change it though.
I don't use Fullscreen. I have 2 27" monitors hooked up through a Dual Head 2 Go. I use Divvy, which is set up so I can put an app on either 27" screen, or on the left of right of either 27" screen. I find Mission Control to be an adequate Exposé substitute.<p>I don't use spaces.
Disclaimer:I have 0 Apple products,<p>Does using a usb powered/driven screen have the same problem? (as they tend to use their own driver IME). I know they are slower to update, but for monitoring use should be fine.
Fullscreen is meant to focus you on one app.<p>Spaces, aka. Mission Control, aka. "whateverthehellthey'recallingitthisweek", is meant to multimonitor set-ups with a bunch of apps in preset places. Use spaces/missioncontrol.<p>Personally, I don't get full-screen apps at all and wish this feature would die a painful and horrible death. I'd love to see stats on its use, as I've never seen anyone who actually knows what its cryptic icon represents.