Comments on: Apple Spaces Needs Competition

By: J

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:58:13 +0000

I’ve had virtual desktops since the 90’s and my favorite desktop of the Linux days was WindowMaker. It worked perfectly, has a teeny bit of eye candy and just gto out my way. The fastest implementation i ever got on a Mac was DesktopManager. I only dislike Spaces less than have no desktop manager at all.

I don’t care about animation or effects, and I never drag windows across desktops with the mouse. That was one thing I LOVED about WindowMaker was I could right click on a windows and say send this to desktop X. And another killer feature was it would remember what windows lived on what desktops and would automagically start them up when I started it up (which was rarely as I never had to shut it down). I worked this way for years. Sigh, no more..
Anyway, I’m a registered user od CTVD Pro and it would be great if they released something - soon. I remembered CTVD was sorta slow too, so maybe this will be addressed. I did find a link to OSX Gnu Desktop Manager

http://www.osxgnu.org/software/pkgdetail.html?project_id=269

But couldn’t get it to compile. And the MacPorts version

http://desktopmanager.darwinports.com/

also will not build as well. I’ve tried hacking on these with no luck.
So close it seems..

By: 10 Things I hate about Leopard | Rick Tech

10 Things I hate about Leopard | Rick Tech — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 01:36:56 +0000

[...] option by right clicking on the application. And I need to be able to open the same program in multiple spaces instead of being dragged back to the window it’s running in.3.) New Folder Icons really suck. [...]

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:27:49 +0000

I’m sorry but I really beg to differ on this Spaces thing. I had Virtue sitting on my menu bar for a year using Tiger and only used it when running a virtual machine or using Remote Desktop to control another computer. With Spaces, I’m using it like crazy and loving life. Switching is so fast and easy, and F8 (especially with expose) is amazing. I set Quicktime to be on all spaces which is great for playing a video full screen on my second monitor while still switching between Spaces. I understand some of the claimed missing functionality, but come on you guys, Spaces is IMO much more usable than previous implementations.

By: Pascal

Pascal — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 02:28:11 +0000

I’m with you here, Nick.

Ideally, Spaces would only switch spaces when I decide it should (by using some of the shortcuts).

And even better, the cmd-tab would only switch between the apps that have windows in the current space (although I’d settle for having to use an extra modifier to achieve this)

By: Nick Santilli

Nick Santilli — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:33:20 +0000

Leo - check out my comment #6 - the link’s there

By: Leo

Leo — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:55:34 +0000

Nick, a little off topic, but is that your desktop background in the pic associated with this post? Where/what is it? Can you send it to me via embedded email address?

By: Nick Santilli

Nick Santilli — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:12:38 +0000

CTVDUser -
I did hear from the CT CEO that his developer’s been quite sick and the development effort has been delayed as a result. But 18 months is a long period. While I hope the dev is feeling better, it seems more like excuses at this point than anything. Hopefully they do what they must to support their paying/supportive customers.

Tony -
Thanks for the insights. Let me know when HyperSpaces is ready for a look-see…

TR755 -
Nope, you got me. Hate Apple and everything they do. VERY accurate powers of deduction amigo…

By: TR755

TR755 — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:37:10 +0000

I’m just curious, is there *anything* Apple does that you don’t complain about?

By: Tony Arnold

Tony Arnold — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 08:48:00 +0000

The problem with most virtual desktop solutions on the mac is that they really rely on what Apple has implemented in the OS to do their work. This means that unless Apple deems it necessary for Spaces to have functionality you’re looking for, exposing something new against what is there is quite difficult.

I’m very interested to see what CTVD have up their sleeves in their rumoured 5th release - shiny things make us all happy! In saying that, I recognise that most virtual desktop apps (Virtue most definitely included) are fairly unstable beasts.

As for Hyperspaces, it will be more of a companion to Spaces, providing more superficial features such as naming your desktops, and allowing you to set per-desktop decorations. I’m also working on a pretty tight little visual pager, but my non-existent Core Animation skills are being put to the test, and I don’t want to promise too much before the damn thing works properly

In any case, I’m hoping to have some time over the upcoming holidays to get enough of Hyperspaces written to at least post some screenshots and more information on the (rather anaemic) product site.

By: CTVD user

CTVD user — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 05:23:05 +0000

I’d like to believe that CTVD will be updated, but I’m skeptical. CTVD has been at version 3.2 since early 2006; I don’t know if it ever worked on Tiger. I have an email from the developer in April 2006 saying that they were working on a beta of version 4. No news in the past 18 months. As a loyal CTVD user, I’m disappointed, but will have to make do with Spaces and its limitations for now.

By: Seth

Seth — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:22:39 +0000

I like spaces overall but my main gripe is that new windows of the same app want to spawn on the same space. This probably works fine for Mail or Photoshop but I like having multiple terminals open if I’m working on a server and each collection of terminals on its own space/desktop.

Spaces really doesn’t seem like this setup and there’s no way to change this. I wish they made it more like Gnome or KDE style of multiple desktops or at least an “advanced” option. This would allow for new users to use it easily and allow power users to make adjustments.

By: Gazeteler

Gazeteler — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 09:24:25 +0000

Thanks for URL Nick

By: Oliver

Oliver — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 18:08:35 +0000

thanks mate

By: Nick Santilli

Nick Santilli — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 17:00:10 +0000

Chris -
the last release of Virtue was actually pretty buggy. The 2nd to last was quite solid however.

Papa/Oliver -
I actually extracted the background graphic from the adium theme found here - http://urltea.com/260i - and used it as my wallpaper

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 15:48:54 +0000

I had tried Virtue desktops some time ago and it was a POS buggy application. So, on that note if they stop making it is that not good news?

By: Oliver

Oliver — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 10:59:01 +0000

yep, where did you get that background :O very nice

By: Papa

Papa — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 10:40:46 +0000

Hi,

Where can I download that background?

Thanks

By: Nick Santilli

Nick Santilli — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:45:48 +0000

I’ve been using the “virtual” desktop concept for years - before I returned to the Apple platform, so don’t operate on the misconception that I’m wet behind the ears and just figuring this whole thing out.

No where did I ever say Apple stole some other developer’s idea of virtual desktops - and if that came across then I apologize, but I don’t think that’s a theory that was communicated here in any form.

My point here is that when Apple decided to add this functionality to Leopard, the 3rd party devs in this same space seem to have stalled somewhat on a return volley. I’m highly anticipating the answer that these 3rd party developers have to Spaces, as it’s a bit rudimentary for the power users amongst us.

By: VanFruniken

VanFruniken — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:40:42 +0000

Suffice it to say that the concept of multiple (”virtual”) desktops is very old. Many pre-linux Unix systems already had it.

Don’t give me this s–t that Apple is stealing someone else’s best ideas.

Can’t blame Apple for producing a very streamlined implementation. It is precisely in clean and user-friendly implementations that Apple excels.