Comments on: Spaces Review

By: Alternatives to Apple Spaces | The Apple Blog

Alternatives to Apple Spaces | The Apple Blog — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:30:45 +0000

[...] gave us Leopard (OS X 10.5), and along with it came virtual desktops for the masses, in the form of Spaces. For many this was an interesting new way to expand their workspace virtually. For the rest of us [...]

By: Goobimama

Goobimama — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 23:57:27 +0000

Btw, while in the spaces birds eye view (F8) you can hit F9 and it will invoke expose so you can see all your windows in all your spaces. Pretty cool…

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 12:22:55 +0000

No individual desktops, desktop icons, screensavers and docks for each space makes Spaces a non starter.
Here’s hoping for a major revamp in 10.5.1

By: Carl

Carl — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 22:38:07 +0000

I would love a key combination to tab between programs in one space.

By: htiawe

htiawe — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 22:27:20 +0000

TinyElvis: It would not be a bad idea making every space an individual desktop, it would actually make it less cluttered. How the OS handles it is no biggie, how does OS X know what to do when you Apple-Tab? How does the iPhone know how to predict what you wnated to type when you make a typo?

There are VMs out there that lets you get a true virtual desktop and makes it easier to handle. If you want space 1 to be web browsing, space 2 to be programming and such then it makes sense to only be able to access the programs associated to that space when tabbing.

Alternativly you could have one combination for tabbing between all programs and one combination for just tabbing between programs associated to that space.

By: Michael Long

Michael Long — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:29:52 +0000

One additional trick to switching spaces is to use your "Expose" hot corners for Spaces instead. Then switching can be done with the control-keys or with just a flick of the mouse, depending upon where your hands happen to be at the moment. With most of my windows assigned to various Spaces, I hardly use nor need Expose any more. Quite a few more tips to making Spaces more useful can be found at iSights.org under: Confessions of a Space-oholic

By: Jesse

Jesse — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 02:33:34 +0000

I was using Virtues for a while and it too allowed you to have different desktops for each “space’. this was really helpful to identify which “space” you were in.

Maybe in 10.5.1?

By: Monty

Monty — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:57:00 +0000

You Control:Desktops is the best virtual desktop program I’ve found–better than Spaces. You can customize each desktop; you can control which of your desktops appear as icons in the menubar; you can control which and where your apps will be seen. It’s great.

By: AJ

AJ — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 14:45:42 +0000

Eric,

Time Machine does support shared-network folders for backup. I have my Mac Book set to sync to a shared folder on my Mac mini. The catch seems to, unfortunately, be that the other machine needs to run Leopard too.

By: Eric F Crist

Eric F Crist — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:54:54 +0000

After using Leopard for about a week now, there are a few glaring omissions in an otherwise great operating system. I’ll try to itemize and explain these the best I can.

* Spaces:
Spaces is missing a few key features that I feel would be greatly beneficial.
1) Allow me to name the spaces. I’m probably never going to assign an application to a
certain space, but move things around and my current task changes.

2) Show the dock in the spaces view.
3) Show window positions (outline) in the pager, and simply outline the currently
selected desktop. A number really means very little.

I feel you’ve tried to reinvent the wheel. Linux/BSD have had virtual desktops for a while, take some lessons from their development.

* Stacks:
It is my opinion that stacks, in it’s current form, is broken. I should not be
required to use them in every instance. The biggest of these examples would be
the Applications and Utilities folders I have located on my dock. Currently,
with stacks, my Applications folder looks as if it’s another link to my Address
Book. My Utilities folder looks like a link to Activity Monitor. I recommend
the following additions or changes:

1) Allow me to disable Stacks, on a per-folder basis, if possible.
2) Allow me to set the icon for a stack. There are cases, like the downloads folder
where I would like to keep stacks, but I hate the dynamic icons.

* Mail:
Please, please, please, build in support for GnuPG!

* Time Machine:
It would be nice if Time Machine supported *any* network accessible shared drive.
At home, we have a server with RAID/etc setup for backups. Currently, I back up
my Mac Book Pro and my Powerbook G4 via rsync across my network. Really, there
shouldn’t be any reason Time Machine shouldn’t support this. I would like to
see the following additions to Time Machine:

1) Support for “locations” and networks devices.
It would be nice if I could have a folder for work, that was backed up via
Time Machine to a work-accessible back up host. When I’m at home, let me
back up to my USB/Firewire HDD.
2) Support for network backup devices via AFP, Samba, and ssh/rsync.