[leicaman]

I tried to like LaunchPad, but it's too unwieldy. It threw every Automator action in my Mac into the very oddly named array of folders. Massive information overload. It is great for the iPhone and iPad, until they come up with a better way there. But I'm thinking it's not for me.

[Verboten]

Launchpad is just plain dreadful...it is unwieldy and difficult with lots of apps installed. Quite a move away from the GUI guidelines set out by Apple. Horrible.

[jeffm23]

I don't see myself using Launchpad much (at least in its current form), so I pulled it from the Dock, but "Full Screen" mode (or whatever it's called) seems to have pushed the usefulness of Spaces -- and thus Mission Control -- up just high enough for me.

I could see where Launchpad would be useful in a "limited access user" situation, like for your pre-tween kid or something similar. But I think it needs to be a little more customizable to be useful to more, um, sophisticated users.

[markmacas]

In Snow Leopard, I used to assign apps to launch on a specific "Space". When I upgraded to Lion.... it does seem to still follow those rules I set. Question is... Is there a way to continue to customize launching apps in a specific space? I install new apps and want to assign them on a space or change existing assignments to a different space.

[ultiweb]

I too have page after page of apps on Launchpad. Who would spend time sifting through all that, especially without any sort options? And adding new apps from the app store to the last page with the rest of the apps in alphabetical order after upgrading? Did anyone test this on anything but a brand new computer with nothing installed? This was a useless waste of resources that will pretty much be universally turned off in short order.

MW has described the changes to Spaces/Expose' very diplomatically. It's too bad you can't turn this crap off. Why would you remove features, especially something as useful as this was previously? It makes no sense. I'm fine with Apple adding simplified functionality and calling it Mission Control but there should have been an option to switch back and forth from MC to Spaces/Expose'. This feature appears to be a hit with about half the posts I've read on different venues but the anger of the other 50% probably could have been easily avoided.

I'm in the "I already have an iPad (and iPhones)" camp and don't want or need to turn my MBP into one. When I heard that this was to be a fusion of iOS and OS X I knew that was a bad idea. It would have been a better idea to put resources on a new file system instead of making us rely on a 25 year old one that is as rickety as can be. I love the new security changes and there is lots that is good with Lion but more mistakes than I've ever seen coming out of Cupertino. The iPad and iPhone are hits but we use them for different tasks than we do our laptop/desktops and Apple needs to realize that. Not everyone spends all their time in a browser and email.

[rlav]

I like the idea of Launchpad, but I think Apple should be ashamed of the way they implemented it. At a minimum it needs:

• sorting options
  
• the possibility of entering the first letter of an app to navigate to it
  
• an easy-to-remember keystroke to navigate from app to app within a screen

The depressing thing is that Apple will probably get rid of it in a couple of years, saying "it wasn't our finest hour" (or possibly saying nothing at all), rather than putting in the effort to get it right.

[RobT6X]

Mission Control is awful. It's a major step backwards. In exposé, you could see every window that was on the screen, making it easy to find the one you want. In Mission Control, you can't do that, or not that I've found, so all you can see is a useless stack of windows that you can't cycle through. Totally worthless.

Also, Spaces worked much better. In Snow Leopard, hitting spaces allowed me to easily see what was in each Space and I could efficiently check what was going on in each Space. Now with "Desktops" all you get is a very small icon at the top of the screen which is too small to be useful.

And, if you used Control-Arrow to navigate to the next Space, when you got to the last Space, you would wrap around to the first Space. Now, you can't and just stay on the last Space. Before leaving work, I used to enter Spaces and cycle through all of them to see what apps were still opened. It didn't matter on which Space I started, as I could continuously cycle through them. Now, I can't.

I hope Apple realizes that we don't want our Macs to work like iOS devices and stops this dumbing down of the OS.

[d00d]

RobT6X, on 27 August 2011 - 12:05 PM, said:

Mission Control is awful. It's a major step backwards. In exposé, you could see every window that was on the screen, making it easy to find the one you want. In Mission Control, you can't do that, or not that I've found, so all you can see is a useless stack of windows that you can't cycle through. Totally worthless.

You can spread windows of each application out by gesturing two fingers up.

Quote

Also, Spaces worked much better. In Snow Leopard, hitting spaces allowed me to easily see what was in each Space and I could efficiently check what was going on in each Space. Now with "Desktops" all you get is a very small icon at the top of the screen which is too small to be useful.

You can scroll through them with gestures or control-direction hotkeys.

Quote

And, if you used Control-Arrow to navigate to the next Space, when you got to the last Space, you would wrap around to the first Space. Now, you can't and just stay on the last Space. Before leaving work, I used to enter Spaces and cycle through all of them to see what apps were still opened. It didn't matter on which Space I started, as I could continuously cycle through them. Now, I can't.

Bummer, but you could turn on the control-number shortcuts, press control-1 and then navigate through in that linear manner (I submit this with the humble hope that you're more interested in solutions).

[sandman619]

I like Mission Control. For the first time, I see a use for Spaces & Exposé, which I wasn't getting the need for. But Mission Control bundles the two in a useful interface that I am now using all the time. Launchpad is another story. That's been deactivated & mothballed

Cheers !

[gregarious47]

I've just mothballed Launchpad too. Since you can't sort it, it is useless. Go figure. All sorted any way you want in Finder, but not in Launchpad. Also, dumbing down OSX to iOS is stoopid.