Multiple Monitors: Windows XP Versus OS X

Having used multi-monitors since I found out about it maybe 8 or 9 years ago I can tell you is is hugely useful if you are a developer. You can have your reference material, e.g. your design specs, up in one window while you have your dev environment up in another. Or if you are building webpages you can have a full screen copy up WHILE developing.

Basically I just don’t think people know how to use multiple monitors. Seldom is it useful for me to have a single app span multiple monitors; it’s just too much space to look through. In my experience what multiple monitors are good for is displaying reference material while you are working on your main data on your main screen. In fact I often have multiple sources of data I want to see at the same time like two servers’ performance live and my log app in the middle.

Funny thing is as a guy who has spent the last 28 years working on a PC of some sort, I am without a doubt a Microsoft expert. I have had dual and triple monitors for years on me Windoze machines. I have coveted the idea of a quad of more setup. Some people say it is over-kill but I do modeling and each screen gets used extensively. Having said all that, last summer I finally broke down and bought two iMacs: one for me, and one for my daughter. At first, I was frustrated with the switching issues. But as time went by it turned around. Now I hate having to go to work and use my Dell. I love my Mac in every way but one. That is the dual monitor setup. As you so clearly stated the hassle of locking the menu to a distant monitor is a royal pain.

While some here have complained that your monitors would make you move physically, they miss the point totally. When working on monitor four, you have need of things that only are available on the menu. The menu being on the far away monitor is the problem. If it weren’t there, you wouldn’t have to move ether the mouse or your chair. What these people are missing is that you can and do use the other monitors to work separately from the work being done on the monitor on the other side. This is not always the case but it is frequently.

In my case, I have an iMac 24″ connected to a 22″ external monitor that is on a swing arm. The setup is in my den and I sit at a big overstuffed chair with the iMac to my left on an end table. The swing arm monitor is used to pull the screen in front of me so I can look at it without having to twist my neck. A solution could be to make it my primary monitor but the problem with that is that I frequently disconnect the swing arm monitor and put it away. This is true when we have guests. Another use is we will watch a movie or hulu show on the swing arm monitor because I can easily swing it around for easy viewing by everyone. Both of these things would be better with a menu on the monitor in use rather than on a distant one.

Like other posts, I came here looking for a solution to my frustration and regret that I am stuck with this problem. I also came here to see what kind of idiot would make such a blatantly bold and ridiculous statement as to say a XP is better than OS X. I stand corrected. After reading the article I completely agree with the author’s position. In addition, if this problem were present on a Windoze environment, I submit someone would have written a utility to work around it. The work around community seems to be much stronger on the Windoze side.

Having said all that, I still love my Mac and will not give up on it. I may have to get some software development tools to create a workable solution on my own.

It never ceases to amaze me how the average Mac user (I own two Macs and a PC (which runs XP and Linux), BTW plus two AppleTVs and an iPod Touch) does little more than offer EXCUSES for why the Mac can’t do something right when on the rare occasion it does something wrong or stupid (and then they’ll call you a ‘hater’ when you argue the point) and this is definitely one of those situations. I’ve never understood the blind loyalty and fanaticism surrounding Apple. What is so great about stuffing a computer into a monitor shell so you can’t add any internal expansion and then have to stuff crap all over your actual desk surface because some brainiac didn’t consider backup drives or anything else except the base look when they designed the thing? And laptop GPUs are better than desktop ones in a so-called “desktop” machine? Or is it just that Steve Jobs is obsessed with THIN so much he forgot all about functionality along the way?

In any case, those are the Macs weak points and they come down to choosing ‘pretty’ and sometimes ‘simple’ over useful. It’s getting so bad that professionals are finding Firewire disappearing and staring at reflections because Steve decided that glossy looks pretty and matte looks passe despite the fact that some of us prefer NOT to stare at our own reflections when trying to get some work done. And since Apple refuses to allow anyone else to build the hardware they do not want to build or offer (i.e. no clones), they’ve pretty much created situations where they’re telling their customers if you want a matte screen so bad, throw out all your Mac software and go buy a PC from Dell, knowing full well you’re unlikely to toss out your entire software library to make the switch (and while virtualization is allowed to make it easier to switch from Windows to Mac, Apple will not allow you to virtualize OS X to make it easier to switch back to Windows). Thus, Apple just screams of both arrogance and hypocrisy (just witness the mini-display port on the new laptops for which there is exactly ONE monitor in the entire world (by Apple of course) that it will plug into without a $99 adapter (sold only by Apple of course) so that you can use it with a $199 monitor by someone else. If Apple could tax you for the air you breathe, they probably would…unless you subscribe to iTunes and buy at least 5 songs a month and name your first born Steve. GREED is the word I’m probably looking for.

I’ve digressed WAY off course here but these are the things that are driving me NUTS about Apple, which is sad because I have despised Microsoft for SO SO long (I used to be an Amiga and C64 user once upon a time and know full well just how BAD Microsoft’s OS has been…at least until XP came along, which is almost tolerable. They then took that and threw it right down the crapper with Vista, which is utterly utterly HORRIBLE. This is where OS X comes off smelling like roses for the most part except for this multiple monitor business and an utter disdain and lack of support for (in both software and especially hardware until recently) games.

Here’s the gist of the matter. Apple could solve their multiple monitor issues as outlined above with two simple changes and they could even offer it as an option in the monitor preference pane. I see absolutely NO REASON why OS X could not simply clone the menu bar AND the dock for ALL SCREENS. It’s repetitive, yes, but it’s also FUNCTIONAL. Why should I EVER have to move over to another entire screen just to get to the dock (same goes for Windows start menu and task bar, BTW, which also only appear on one screen) to access such basic functions and tools? If it doesn’t hurt to have a dock and menu bar on a ONE monitor system, why in the world would it hurt to have them on each monitor in a two, three or even a 10 monitor system? Then each workspace would be self-contained (don’t forget the drive icons as well) and you could work wherever and whenever you want without any preconditions or issues. You select the app to start on the screen you want and/or drag it there and continue working as normal. It’s not only simple, it’s also elegant and functional. You don’t need the menu bar to “move” or appear on the working screen. Just have it there all the time on all screens just as it would be if you only had one monitor. The problem is solved, everyone is happy and Mac fanatics don’t have to make an excuse, but can go back to gloating about how great OS X is.

I would suggest this simple change to OS X to Apple, except that Apple almost never listens to its customers and instead seems to live in a perpetual state of going “lalalalalala” with their virtual fingers stuck in their ears. They do not respond or listen (and probably don’t even read) any feedback you provide. I’ve tried to get very simple bugs fixed in AppleTV now for over a year and they do not respond, reply or fix any such things. The fans probably have a good excuse for why that is, but the reality is they don’t care. Apple doesn’t offer products that customers WANT. They sell products they want to SELL. They do well when those two accidentally coincide (e.g. iPhone, iPods) and very poorly when they do not (Newton, Pippin, the TAM, etc.)

Ironically, Linux has solutions and new problems for the multiple monitor situation. On the one hand, you can have two entirely separate spaces and each monitor can have its own task bars, docks or whatever you want (Linux has endless options, which also means it lacks unified standards coherence and thus commercial software) but this system has one major drawback and that is you cannot move windows between monitors at all. On the other hand, as long as you start a program on the one you want, you don’t need to as everything you would need otherwise (menus, start bar, task bar, whatever) is already there. Or you can have something similar to Windows and OS X with the ability to move programs between screens with the added ability in KDE to ADD extra start and taskbars to the 2nd display (imagine that!) The downside is a lot of software doesn’t properly recognize the so-called Twin Mode (which on some level is just one giant screen with an artificial separation between the two) and tries to open halfway between the two screens and other such nightmares that arrive from the lack of non-unified standardization. Everyone just does whatever they want in the Linux world and so you get a lot of anarchy. And where Mac users are fanatics that often have little actual knowledge, Linux users usually have a lot of knowledge but no people skills and serious god complexes. Windows, of course, has bugs, viruses, spyware and bloat. NONE of them are ideal. Choose your own poison and don’t expect any of them to listen to anything approaching REASON.

There is one killer multi-monitor feature in XP with ATI/AMD drivers that may not be possible on MAC.

I use a PC for multitasking AND as an HTPC while working on the PC. An HDTV tuner card is used and main viewing is on a 1920×1200 LCD which provides near ideal quality viewing. But if I move my view to the PC monitor, I still want to see the video in a small window while working on other things.

With AMD “TheaterMode” settings, I get video in the player window on the PC monitor (non-full-screen) while the same video is shown full-screen on the HD monitor. In addition, the HD monitor is properly shown at 1920×1080 with small bars above and below.

Both video windows are fully de-interlaced at very high quality (perfect HQV scores for newer AMD cards).

Dual display is important here because as I shift focus between the two monitors, I get the exact user mode that is appropriate without changing any settings. When controlling the tuner, or file playback slider, I see video, instead of the black box that would normally appear on a dual video display where the controlling display has been set to secondary.

In fact, I have to agree with the article.
I use a MacPro with three 30″ ACDs.
My main screen is in the middle and the other ones left and right in a 45 degree angle.
Even though is kind of hard to access the the menu bar, I got used to use QuickSilver to do that. One key combination (option+space bar) to open apps and stuff and another key combination (command+space bar) to open the menu items. It’s even faster than going all the way up to me menu bar as I can write a few letters of what I want in the menu, quicsilver way.
So, accessibility depends on how you are using your Mac.
Also, in my secondary monitors, I always use apps that don’t require much intervention like monitors, graphs, downloading files, etc. Even if I am using a Virtual Machine, being it windowed or full screen, the content is all there.
Spaces is nice but I kind of like to see all the information I need at (almost) the same time. Spaces is just way too distracting for me (even though I use it very often too).
If you need help setting up QuickSilver to access your application menus, visit this page:
http://www.themerlinshow.com/ep/008-howto-quicksilver-application-menus

I agree with the article. It’s dumb that I have to move to the other screen. It took me a while to get a Mac to work on again, because I prefer to work in OSX. Yet this multiple monitor baloney has me ready to switch back to Windows. OSX gets pretty much everything right but games! Why does this have to be this way?

I understand that maybe most people don’t need to go to the menu for half their apps as much as I do, but doggone it I should be able to have my apps open in whichever the heck screen I want, when I want! If Windows can make it work, then OSX ought to make it work even better. Just give me a second menu bar, for crying out loud!

Here’s what really gets me (and I simply MUST believe it’s a quirk on my system, I can’t believe Apple or Mozilla is this dumb): when I right-click in Firefox, the context menu appears on screen one.

The point is that all design is compromise and too many other virtues would have to be sacrificed for a very limited number of people in limited circumstances. The price of MDI is substantial loss of usability in other areas that would affect most users instead of a small few. And it isn’t something people feel needs to be “fixed” anyway. The tens of millions happily using it that way for twenty years suggests it isn’t “brain-dead.” It just assumes a different sort of organization consistent with the rest of the system’s design.

It is a matter of preference, really, and my view is that OS X should be designed to accommodate it. Doesn’t seem like too much to ask – especially since Windows does such a better job of it and Apple remains so snotty that Microsoft can’t figure things out.

It just seems to me that OS X’s design lends itself to ask the question on whether to have more than one screen. And, that should not be the case. I know I can use Spaces. I know I can spring for a 30″ monitor. But, my preference is to be able to see several apps at once, and not have to buy a 30″ monitor when I already have several laying around.

I fail to see how the document-centric approach, Fitts law, or whatever it is has any bearing on this very basic GUI design choice.

good points, although the distance between those monitors in the picture is a little absurd, youre going to have to move your chair for that, not just the mouse :)

i believe apple’s stance on this is that they’d rather you use one massive 30″ cinema display than two 15 inchers, and that the majority of users with more than one monitor consciously or subconsciously use one as a primary, whether theyre in windows or os x. in my own work experience, and as Bill noted, most people set up a second monitor for email, tool palettes, etc. all secondary uses. most work actually gets done in a single frame. case in point, as i type this, im looking at just one of the three monitors i have going.

also use Spaces of course.