Q: Anyone grasped dual monitors with Lion yet?

Full screen Apps only run on the Main Display, all others are blacked out

I'm having the same issue with my 2 screens, it seems Lion doesn't know how to deal with multiple monitors. I wonder how many people will shell out $999 a pop for a second Thunderbolt Cinema display when they realize the OS renders it practically useless.

With Snow Leopard you could keep the MacBook display off while opened for cooling purposes. Now with Lion, you can't.

anyone know how to turn it off completely and just use my ext display while keeping it open.

If y can please let e know.

Same Problem here !

Might want to start a new thread on the laptop question. That's a different issue.

It's absolutely ridiculous.  One of the key selling points of full screen apps was to take away the distractions of the window furniture, menu and dock - letting you focus on what's important, now what do we get to distract us - in my case a 1600x1200 linen pattern on my second monitor.  Daft.

FWIW - I don't think the 'film reel' approach mentioned above would be a good a solution - as it assumes the 2 full screen apps to want to view are adjacent, and since Mission Control rearranges spaces to suit the 2 apps may not continue to be adjacent.  Surely though it would be easy enough to allow a different full screen app on the second screen (which would be excellent imho), I tend to have a development window open and a browser on the second screen - having both full screen is exactly what I'd want to view.  Alternatively, having the second screen as a plain 'Desktop' space would be acceptable (at least then I could open the apps I want in a non-fullscreen manner).

I don't think this is going to limitted to edge cases either - earlier today I was typing out an email, and needed to calculate a quick sum to include (mail was fullscreen) - in order to call up calculator I need to go : Mission Control, Switch to Desktop Space, Locate calculator, Perform calculation, remember it, mission control, switch to Mail Space, type calculation answer - ironically one can't even trigger Spotlight and do the calculating in there - as menubar is disabled when creating an email - but anyway, I digress.

Other than this (admittedly major) issue, I find full screen apps a great way to work - and even with this issue, they're a huge boon when I'm using the laptop sans extra monitor.

Regards,

Ryan

I'm really disappointed in this as well. Apple really missed the mark on this one. I hope they fix this SOON in an update. What is needed is for the second monitor to stop being treated as an "extended desktop" but rather a second desktop. Let me have two full screen apps on both monitors. Or let me have two completely independent desktops on both monitors.

I've felt this way for a long time with Spaces. When I switch a space on my primary display, it shouldn't switch the space on my secondary also.

I got around this by assigning key apps to stay static across all spaces. So I could have mail/itunes/ichat open on my secondary display and breeze between spaces on my primary display. But this feature has been removed in Lion. I can no longer assign apps to spaces, and the full screen apps render my secondary useless anyway.

PLEASE apple. Fix this!!! You'll sell more of your fancy thunderbolt displays if they're actually useful to use!

I think most would be happy is with a check box in diplay prefs. to turn of the MPB display completely if using a external display, I know for a fact the code would be minimal.

Hey apple , please

I know, right?!

How am I suppose to utilize dual monitors if Apple decides to cripple the second monitor with a perpetual gray screen?

Wouldn't I be able to be more productive if I could have two programs open on seperate monitors at various times?

You can drag an app accross the screen to the other display. I would just like to turn it off while open and use my Cinema display.

a closed MBP gets very hot if running for a while closed

I've been trying to have an app open full screen on both monitors. As soon as an app is full screen it transfers itself to the Primary display and leaves the Secondary display blank.

The only exception so far is Google Chrome. This has a full screen mode and will sit quite happily on the secondary display in full screen, with other apps open on the primary display, although not full screen.

This suggests it should be a fairly easy patch for the future.

ok, I discovered that if you right click an application and go to options, you can assign the app to a space.

However, I still wish that I could control expose/spaces/mission control/dashboard independently across displays. What's needed is more than a quick fix.

Ryan, next time you need a quick calc, trigger spotlight.  It does math quite well, handling parens nicely.  Only thing it doesn't do is put a thousands separator in results, but it has completely replaced calculator for me.

Oh, and yes this reply does nothing to address the issue of the OP, which I share -- I, too, am baffled by the big-screen-of-gray-linen on my 2nd mon.