I recently wrote about alternatives to Apple’s Spaces virtual desktop offering that comes included with Leopard. There, I confessed that I’ve come to appreciate the simplicity Spaces offers, though miss configuration options.

Well Hyperspaces is the forthcoming extension to Spaces and does well to fill the ‘configurability’ void that some of us pine for. Tony Arnold (who once upon a time provided Virtue Desktops) has been hard at work on Hyperspaces, and has kindly given me a chance to play around with it. I liken the relationship of Spaces and Hyperspaces to Starsky & Hutch — the former doing things by the book, the latter bringing some fun to the party.

When using Hyperspaces, you expand upon the features that Spaces offers. Gained is the ability to assign names to each of your desktops, display that name on your desktop in any font you choose, and on whatever portion of the screen you desire. Next, you can set your specific wallpaper for each different desktop, and you have the option to tint each desktop using the color palette (regardless of whether you choose custom wallpaper). As mentioned earlier, you can name your desktops, and on a desktop by desktop basis you can choose whether or not to display its name or not.

There are additional features, such as assignable hotkeys for adding rows and columns of additional spaces (desktops). Another hotkey shows a nice looking desktop pager off the menubar icon. This feature seems slightly useless for my personal needs (though it looks very nice!) because it only shows the wallpapers you have assigned — no actual open windows. Again, adding more features to the sparseness that is the vanilla Spaces.

What I really love about Hyperspaces is the polished look and ability to blend in with the rest of OS X. Tony has done a great job of mimicking the Spaces System Preferences Pane. By doing so, it’s very comfortable and makes it unnecessary to familiarize with a new user interface and how it may work. So if you know the Spaces Preference Pane, you’re set to configure Hyperspaces options.

This weekend marks the release of the Hyperspaces Public Preview. For you, this means it’s time to extend Spaces and hopefully make it more the way you want it to be. I have it on good authority that Hyperspaces will always allow you to customize the first 2 desktop spaces for free — it will never expire. Should you so desire to customize more than the first 2 desktops, it’ll cost you $12.95. I’m undecided if the price is right for the current set of functions — obviously your mileage may vary — but considering the great utility I got from Tony’s previous efforts with Virtue Desktops, I happily ponied up for Hyperspaces.

It’s new software, and isn’t without some small bugs, but Tony’s aware and working on it. From what I’ve observed, he’s been greatly responsive and added some nice features requested by early testers. So if you’re using Apple Spaces and wishing there was more to configure with your virtual desktop spaces, then look into Hyperspaces. The customizations are plentiful, and a great step in the right direction for leveraging Spaces.

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Almost a year ago Apple 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 [power users?] it was a letdown in execution. What was worse, the third party options looked to be dwindling as well. Last November I called for third party developers to bring the competition – let’s take a look at the result of that call to arms.

We’ll start with the non-contenders of the bunch, of which, sadly are most of them…

Desktop Manager

Desktop Manager was dead long ago. R.I.P. Desktop Manager. However, if you’re still getting by on a 4 or so year old Mac with the likes of OS X 10.2 installed, I highly recommend this application for virtual desktops. No Joke. While it was buggy, it was still my favorite back in the day.

Virtue Desktops

As I mentioned in last year’s post, Virtue Desktops was the first victim to fall to Apple’s Spaces. Virtue was born of the Desktop Manager code, and was a great successor. But ultimately, the developer (Tony Arnold) wasn’t willing to take on the juggernaut. But in other news, Tony has an interesting project brewing along these lines – more on this in a few…

CodeTek Virtual Desktop

When I started writing on this post a week or so ago, I sent out emails to developers, looking for any news. I never heard back from CodeTek. A check of their website offers nothing more than a Tiger-compatible beta that expired back in July of this year. Since OS X 10.4 (Tiger) is about three and a half years old, I’m going ahead and writing the $40 CodeTek Virtual Desktop option out of this equation. (Should I hear anything from CodeTek to the contrary, I’ll update this post accordingly.)

You Software’s Desktops

You Software was the one developer I got a response from, and as luck would have it, they were putting the finishing touches on releasing their Leopard-compatible 1.3 version of Desktops. In one of my very early posts here on The Apple Blog, I reviewed all of these Virtual Desktop options, and You Software’s application was one I enjoyed enough to purchase. Desktops thrives on giving users oodles of configuration options (something Spaces lacks almost completely) to create the ideal virtual workspace on an individual basis.

If you can’t stand Spaces’ limitations or quirks, do head over and try Desktops out for yourself. If you like it, a license will set you back $29.95.

Apple Spaces

Call it the Stockholm syndrome if you like, but I’ll admit that Spaces has endeared itself to me over the past eleven months. (That is of course, once Apple fixed the problem – or rather, offered an opt-out – where switching to an application on a blank desktop would transport you to the desktop where that application already had a window open.)

I really love the ability to zoom out (Exposé style) and see – in full screen – the pager-esque view of all my desktops at once. The cherry on top is then being able to execute my Expose commands to see all the windows that are open across all desktops. This really is a killer feature.

But Spaces still lacks some of those ‘luxury’ options that Desktops offers. Enter, Hyperspaces.

Hyperspaces

As I mentioned above, Tony Arnold (Former Virtue developer) has turned his free time to an interesting project. This is it. Hyperspaces proclaims to be an extension for Apple’s Spaces to provide the kind of custom configuration that currently only Desktops can give you on the Leopard platform. The application extension is currently in a closed beta stage, so you can’t go try it yourself just yet. Likewise, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to dabble with Hyperspaces myself, but am hoping to hear back from Tony soon. When I do, I’ll be sure to post what I can here.

I’m excited about the potential that Hyperspaces represents. Given that I’ve settled in to a comfortable relationship with Spaces and its functionality (or lack thereof, depending on your stance), Hyperspaces may just be the BAM! that Spaces needs.

I am still disappointed that more developers haven’t stepped-up to fill the void in this application space. You Software and Tony Arnold seem to be the only ones toiling away, and to them I give my thanks. You Desktops and Hyperspaces don’t represent a plethora of virtual desktop options, but they’re fighting the good fight. After all, without competition, improvements and stability of any software could take an eternity. Not that Apple feels the pressure of these two developers, but wouldn’t it be great if others began to push the limits of this type of software? I mean, we’ve got probably two dozen FTP options out there – how about some more virtual desktop offerings for crying out loud?!

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A sad side-effect to the news of Spaces however, was the announcement that a former favorite in this space – Virtue Desktops – would be shutting down further development. The story of Apple taking the best ideas and applications and baking them into the Mother Ship isn’t anything new – but generally the developers of these applications hang in there a bit before throwing in the towel. The most unfortunate part however is that competition is good for the consumer, typically resulting in better quality, more features, and plenty of options to fit any user. I completely understand being busy and not wanting to make time for a side project that would most likely be Apple’s victim, however I do wish the competition against Apple’s Spaces would make a fight out of it.

I don’t want to rehash all the gripes with Spaces that have accumulated around the internet these past couple of weeks, but let’s just say I agree with basically all of them. Mostly the issues stem from the ridiculous lack of configuration options. But the whole zooming me from one Space to another when I OPT+TAB is gonna send me over the edge one day in the not too distant future. Seriously. Why on earth would I want be bounced back and forth amongst my Spaces each and every time I want to work in a different application? My personal workflow has me using the Virtual Desktop concept as a division for my projects, not my tasks…But I digress. I do get it though – Spaces is meant to bring Virtual Desktops to the masses in a way that they can all get it. Unfortunately that leaves the rest of us starving for more.

The real shame here is that some great applications have faded into the background as Apple has released their own replacements. So those of us who loved those third party apps are left wanting when Apple’s solution doesn’t cut the mustard. When those great developers forsake their code – and consequently, their users – the spirit of competition and innovation in that particular application space is generally lost…Or at the very least, left up to Apple and their timeline to update. I’m fearful that Spaces is a prime example of this.

I’m greatly saddened by the fact that my two favorite [Pre-Leopard] Virtual Desktop apps are no longer getting any love from developers. Desktop Manager hasn’t been touched for a couple years, and Virtue Desktops (which hatched from the Desktop Manager code base) which – as I mentioned earlier – was the first casualty upon Spaces’ announcement. (I do however feel that I should point out that Tony Arnold – former Virtue Developer – is working on a companion to Spaces, called, HyperSpaces.) So the two freeware options are no longer. How about the shareware side of the house?

I sent a couple of quick emails off to CodeTek (makers of CodeTek VirtualDesktop) and You Software (makers of Desktops) to see what their intentions were on this front. Being that they’re selling their wares and have a user-base that has invested in them, I was glad to get responses that they will continue to bring the fight to Apple’s door with updated versions of their applications for the Leopard platform.

While the forthcoming enhancements to CTVD 4 will bring Universal stability to the application, Bill Goldstein from CodeTek informs me that CTVD 5 will be when the real enhancements and features become available. Meanwhile You Software sees this opportunity as a great one to capitalize on the new visibility that will be brought to the Virtual Desktop concept and will definitely be working to bring more advanced feature-sets to those seeking more than Spaces can offer. At $40 and $30, respectively, they’re clearly not free options when compared to Spaces, but those looking for more control shouldn’t mind too much I suspect.

I think this is a better time than ever for these developers to be coding their hearts out (and encourage any other enterprising and talented developers to jump on the opportunity as well), as Spaces will indeed bring Virtual Desktops to the masses. And when those masses become accustomed to the concept, my guess is that many of them will undoubtedly be hungry for more… Not to mention that fact that the continued competition will hopefully serve as a prodding to Apple to bring added functionality and configurability to their own Spaces application within OS X.

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As I mentioned, Desktop Manager is dead, for all intents – still downloadable, but no one’s really expecting any further updates, and the Softpedia link to the latest update, 0.5.4, is really a link to 0.5.3. I’m not expecting the error to go away, so I was looking for another virtual desktop application. I went through a number of others, and just as I was about to give up – Apple announced Spaces. So, more than most other things, I was looking forward to Spaces.

Sadly, it’s not nearly the beauty I’d hoped. Yes, it does have all of Apple’s usual flash, but in many ways, it’s sadly lacking.

First, the pager. Many virtual desktop applications have some sort of visual pager, to allow the user to switch easily from desktop to desktop. My favorite is Desktop Manager’s convenient menubar visual pager, a series of boxes with an outline of the windows open on each. Spaces, in contrast, has one of the worst pagers I have ever seen – a tiny box in the menubar, with the number of the current desktop centered in it. There is no image at all of what’s where; it rather reminds me of the Virtual Desktops PowerToy that you can add to Windows, a sad excuse for a proper multiple desktop environment. Click on this box, and you will see a list of your desktops by number. You can also switch from one desktop to the next by means of configurable hotkey combinations, as with more desktop managers.

This is, however, somewhat compensated for by the Expose-like effect that Spaces has. Activated by F8 by default but remappable, this mode shows a full image of the various windows on each desktop. This kind of highly-visual rendering seems to be a theme in Leopard – document icons appear as an image of the document now, too. This view also lets you move windows from one desktop to another, simply by dragging. I would like to be able to see the dock and menubar in this view – it’s frustrating to move a full-screen window to a new desktop and find that you can’t reach any buttons because it’s stuck behind the dock. (I leave my dock visible on the left-hand side.)

A feature I like much more, though, is the ability to drag windows to other desktops. Grab a window, slide it off the side, and it will appear on the new desktop. This is a nicely-orchestrated switch; the window retains focus, and it seems that the desktop itself is sliding under the window. I have heard complaints that this seems too spontaneous; in fact, I often have trouble triggering it when I want to.

The drawback to this seems to be that this is the only way to move windows. You have to drag them in one of the views. I’m used to minimizing the window, switching desktops, and then reopening the window. In Spaces, this behavior takes you back to the desktop you just came from.

Spaces also lets you lock an application to a desktop, a feature often missing in desktop managers, including my personal favorite. All windows from that application – including my personal love-hate object Adium, and its ever-renewing chat and error messages – spawn on that desktop and only that desktop. Click on the application icon and Spaces will take you to the right desktop. And that goes for any application, not just those locked to a desktop.

The big feature that keeps me using Spaces, though? Interoperability. Spaces is smart; it sees and works with my existing virtual desktop solution. This means that I can have everything – the menubar pager and the app locking, for instance. When you fire up Spaces for the first time, if you have a virtual desktop program running, Spaces sees it and sorts your applications to the desktops your other manager had been using, seamlessly.

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