We ended last time leading into a discussion about “Spaces”, a feature in Mac OS 10.5 “Leopard”, coming to a Mac near you in Spring 2007. Modern operating systems running on computers with lots of relatively inexpensive RAM give users the ability to have many applications (programs, for you PC types) open at the same time. Some people even set up their computers to open their browser, email program, instant messaging, MS Office – basically everything they use during the day – when they first boot up the computer in the morning. And they’re all running ‘til the computer’s shut down for the night.

The dilemma for multitaskers is: now that you have, say, five or six applications open and running with windows scattered all over the desktop, what do you do with the windows you’re not using at the moment, so they don’t get in the way?

In the old days, Mac users could collapse an application window into just the thin bar at the top of the window containing the window’s title, to get the majority of the window out of sight. Apple called it Windowshade. In Mac OS X, Apple replaced Windowshade with the “minimizing” feature also found in Windows, where the minimized window drops down to be an icon in the Dock (or TaskBar). Newer versions of Mac OS X leverage powerful Core Graphics technology to enable Expose´. With one mouse button click or keyboard stroke, Expose´ fills the screen with large thumbnail images of all your open application and document windows, making it easy to move between them, saving you from having to move windows around or minimize.

Leopard’s Spaces feature moves a step beyond Expose´. To illustrate, let’s look at one Leopard user – we’ll name her “Mary Multitasker” – and see how Spaces can make her computing experience more efficient. Mary owns a small business, is an amateur (but very good, I might add) photographer, and has a couple of kids away (well, if Orono is away) in college.

Mary can easily have Mail (Apple’s email application), the Safari web browser, iChat, iTunes, iPhoto, Adobe’s Photoshop Elements, MS Word, MS PowerPoint (no, wait, we don’t wish PowerPoint on anyone – better for Mary to use Apple’s Keynote), QuickBooks, MS Excel, and Apple’s Address Book open at the same time.

Looking at it a different way, on a given day Mary’s computing activities can be organized into communications, business, and hobbies (photography in her case).

So, Mary organizes her Mac into three Spaces to match her activities. Using simple mouse clicks in the Spaces control panel, she creates the Spaces and populates them with applications. Mail, Address Book, iChat, and Safari occupy the communications Space. iPhoto and Photoshop Elements live in the hobby Space. Word, Excel, Keynote, and Quickbooks comprise the business Space.

When she works in one Space, the applications in the other Spaces are invisible on the desktop, seriously reducing screen clutter. A simple keystroke or mouse button click can display all her created Spaces, making it easy for her to instantly jump from one to another.

How can Mary tell if someone is instant-messaging her while she’s working in her business space? The iChat icon bounces in the Dock, calling her attention to the incoming chat. She clicks on the icon, and goes to the Space containing iChat.

Say the incoming chat is from her son in Orono, and she wants to chat with him while working on an Excel spreadsheet. No problem. One keystroke shows all her Spaces, and she drags and drops iChat from the communications Space to the business Space.

Piece of pie. Easy as cake. More Leopard goodies next time.

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski