[aprendo]

If you go full screen, the app in full screen mode gets to use all your monitors. It gains control over every last pixel available to you. The other monitors are not unavailable, they are greyed out because the app you are using doesn’t take advantage of them. It could if it wanted to.

That’s the decision Apple took. It makes sense† but it’s also utterly stupid. For some reason they stick to it. I don’t think it’s a big deal. Fullscreen apps suck anyway and there is no reason whatsoever to use them on a big screen, much less when you have more than one screen available to you. They might make sense on the 11" Air but certainly on no other computer or screen Apple sells.

Just use apps like you always did (before Apple introduced their stupid fullscreen mode) and they will work fine. Like before, like nothing changed. I have the sneaking suspicion that only maximize-crazy Windows converts run into this problem. On the Mac you don’t maximize. Apple only implemented fullscreen mode the really stupid way to make that abundantly clear to everyone.

—

† More than Apple just disabling other monitors, anyway.

[rsync]

How does DVD Player going full screen "not make sense" ? Don't you want movies full screen ?

And if you have other monitors, you want them to be useless while, say, Quicktime is full-screened ?

I have triple 30s on one side of the room, and a 60" on the other side of the room. With snow leopard (and presumably, any other OS) I can watch a DVD or other video output full-screen while other output continues to display on the three other screens.

Also, what about full-screening a guest OS in vmware on one monitor, while you do other productive work in your other physical monitors ? That must be a very common use case, right ? As in, all day every day for most vmware users ?

I'm not going to waste time talking about the "maximize" issue - even if I conceded every point of the maximize issue, there's still a problem with an inability to go full screen in one physical screen while working in another...

[aprendo]

Why so angry? I totally agree with you. In all cases where Apple ported an already existing fullscreen mode to their new solution they fall flat on their face. It’s an awful experience if you have more than one screen. So that’s QuickTime and the DVD Player. Not a big deal.

Third party developers should just not use Apple’s stupid mode. Problem solved. (Though I don’t understand everyone’s sudden fullscreen love. It’s just goofy on a big screen expect for a select few use cases. Don’t use it. That has always been the Mac OS philosophy.)

Overall I don’t think it’s a big issue. A small minority of Mac users is affected by this problem in a tiny number of use cases. It sucks for them – but no need to whine for hours on end. That’s just annoying for the rest of us :-)

It seems like every single discussion about OS X is dominated by this stupid topic. It’s boring. Yeah, it sucks. Everyone knows it. Apple made a stupid decision. Can we talk about something more interesting now?