Into the Lion’s Den: Mission Control

One of the main features touted in Steve Jobs’ Lion keynote was Mission Control, a system-wide console that allows users to see all their desktops and running application windows at a glance.

In theory, this was a good idea. But in my actual usage of Mission Control over the past week, I feel like it’s a step-backward in usability. In both Leopard and Snow Leopard, assigning applications to a specific space used to be from with the Spaces preference in System Preferences.

In Lion, the term “spaces” is now referred to as “desktops”. To assign an app to a desktop, you have to first right-click on the application within the Dock and choose whether to assign it on all desktops or the current desktop. This isn’t so bad by itself (it makes sense, after the fact) – but if you’re accustomed to assigning apps to spaces in Snow Leopard, it will not be obvious how to do this in Lion.

A big usability fail in Lion is how “desktops” work – moving a window from one desktop to another is hit or miss, particularly with a multi-monitor setup. In Snow Leopard, moving windows around Spaces was as simple as dragging the window from one Space to another, regardless of the size of the display.

In Lion, you cannot directly move windows from one desktop thumbnail to another. For example, if two desktops are the same size (i.e. on the same display), moving windows and apps between them is now a two step affair. In “Mission Control”, you must select the desktop that contains the window; it must be active. Then you must activate “Mission Control” again to move the window to its new display. This is frustrating.

With a multi-monitor display (one 30″ and one 19″), moving apps and windows between different size displays simply isn’t possible.

A specific scenario: I have iTunes on Desktop 4 (on my second display) and I want to watch it on Desktop 5 on my my main display. One would surmise that all I would need to do is drag the app from Desktop 4 (display 2) to Desktop 5 (display 1). Not so! Every time I try to drag the window over to its new desktop, the window “bounces” back to its original desktop. (I’m hoping that this is a bug.)

On the plus side, I will say that switching between desktops is a breeze with the Magic Trackpad. As is invoking Mission Control with the four fingers “swipe up” motion.

I’m curious to know what other Lion users think of Mission Control, compared to the Spaces / Expose implementation in Leopard / Snow Leopard. Feel free to share your thoughts below.

-Krishna

Krishna July 30, 2011 Lion, Mac OS X 10.7, Mission Control