Yeah, Apple was never really a company that is known for making original ideas. Probably a company known for stealing original ideas and executing them well.

Stealing? That may be a bit of a stretch. More like knowing when and where to buy technology and how to package it.

Peace,
Gene

Yeah, Apple was never really a company that is known for making original ideas. Probably a company known for stealing original ideas and executing them well.

Nobody needs an excuse to sue Apple. There are plenty of candidates trolling for action, and attorneys to take their cases.

Peace,
Gene

Just as some history, X-Windows desktops have had a very similar capability for many years. My HP-UX workstation (circa 1998) can be configured with either four or eight workspaces.

You navigate between them by clicking on a button (that you can click on and rename).

It too has the problem where I start an application or open a window in one workspace, then quickly jump to another workspace and have the app or window open there instead. Then you have to go into the workspace “manager” and move the window/app back to the workspace you originally intended or it’s actually possible to have the same window in two places. You can’t close the window in one workspace without closing it in the other. But, you can tell the WS manager to only show it in one workspace.

Basically, Spaces isn’t an entirely new concept. It too has been around in one implementation or another for a while. But, as with most things “Apple”, this is a new, fresh, and well implemented version.

Gee, I just hope I haven’t given some company a reason to sue Apple!

For the past couple of years I’ve been using a commercial virtual desktop program, which is still better than Spaces in at least two ways. First, suppose you have a desktop reserved for the novel you’re writing, and another for general purposes, and suppose that you want to leave your Word files for your novel open and meanwhile use Word to write a letter to a friend in the second desktop space. My other program allows you to have different windows belonging to the same program open in different desktops. Admittedly, it’s got some stability problems about remembering window placement that the developers have never quite got around to solving, but at least their engineers anticipated that some users would have this need. Apple didn’t, and I think they really blew it here. Second, the commercial program allows to assign a different desktop pattern to each desktop, which is a very helpful visual cue to have a separate style for each desktop.