Q: Dual monitors and fullscreen fiasco, is there a work around?

Yes, really really hoping Mountain Lion will fix this thing.

I have to agree to you.. until 10.7 everything was working very fine, but now the fullscreen mode is only usable on one monitor. It really happened only a coupel of times that i had a kernel panic with 10.5 or 10.6, but now almost every time my mac book is waking  up while a monitor is plugged it freezes and i have to manually shut it down.

samhaque wrote:

 

Yes, really really hoping Mountain Lion will fix this thing.

Not yet, sadly.

I have seven Mac computers in my house/workplace.  I will never buy another unless you fix multiple monitor support in OS X 10.7 or 10.8.  I can no longer use a full-screen application without it occupying all monitors with that god-awful ugly grey canvas.

webavant.com wrote:

 

I have seven Mac computers in my house/workplace.  I will never buy another unless you fix multiple monitor support in OS X 10.7 or 10.8.  I can no longer use a full-screen application without it occupying all monitors with that god-awful ugly grey canvas.

We can't fix it.  This is a user-to-user forum.  You need to tell Apple.  Please!

Thanks, yes, I have already reported it, and I will continue to report it until they fix it.  Until then, I will research new PC hardware for my next build.

I see this admonition often, and it's true... complaints and feature requests SHOULD be directed to Apple.  What I do NOT get is why complaints and feature requests should NOT be posted on this "USER" forum.. seems the perfect place to me... "Spread The Word"... others, after all, may agree... it may spark their memory saying to themselves, "yeah, I need to report that". 

Granted, some probably post in hopes that their 'anger' will be heard by the Apple Powers that be.   That ain't going to happen, and frankly, I don't think Apple gives a rats patootie what we think until a mass uprising spells a curtail in profits. 

But I DO like reading that I'm not alone in 'disliking' some of Apples moves, even while loving their products.  Loved participating, for instance, in the '**** Apple for getting rid of iWeb and mobileme galleries' threads.  Those threads weren't ABOUT to change Apple's mind... but it DID lead to great reviews and opinions regarding 'alternatives'.

Guess what I'm saying is... I, too, can get annoyed at 'venting'.. but I can also understand it, and perhaps not always, but sometimes, it can 'help'. - JamesJM

John Kitchen wrote:

 

webavant.com wrote:

 

I have seven Mac computers in my house/workplace.  I will never buy another unless you fix multiple monitor support in OS X 10.7 or 10.8.  I can no longer use a full-screen application without it occupying all monitors with that god-awful ugly grey canvas.

We can't fix it.  This is a user-to-user forum.  You need to tell Apple.  Please!

yep, it's really anoying! The problem is: Apple is pushing developers to use this feature instead of manually fading out the menu-bar and the dock ..

Chrome e.g. used a self-made fullscreen function in snow leopard .. now it uses the build-in Lion function ..

OK so every time I post they're deleting it...let's see if I can re-word this in a way that doesn't violate the terms of the forum &_&

This problem is NOT going to be fixed in the future.

The next mac you buy, whatever it is, it will have the same problem.

WINK WINK.

JamesJM wrote:

 

I see this admonition often, and it's true... complaints and feature requests SHOULD be directed to Apple. What I do NOT get is why complaints and feature requests should NOT be posted on this "USER" forum.. seems the perfect place to me... "Spread The Word"... others, after all, may agree... it may spark their memory saying to themselves, "yeah, I need to report that". 

James,

I agree TOTALLY that we should post such requests and complaints in this forum.  I just want anyone and everyone who cares about this issue to not rely on this forum to get the message to Apple.

I'm delighted to see so much support for fixing the problem, and I use this and other discussions on the topic as supporting evidence in my feedback submissions.

So please don't hold back from venting OR using feedback.

I find myself between a rock and a hard place.  MobileMe is going away and I have to move to iCloud.  But to move to iCould requires me to move to Lion and accept this absurd full-screen implementation on my triple monitor iMac.  So I have been very vocal to Apple, and even signed up as a developer to get a better voice and an earlier look at OS X builds and versions

You bet, John.  I'm often between that 'rock and hard place' as well.  Now it appears that my Mac Pro, early 2007, will not be able to handle Mountain Lion. 

The two monitor and full screen situation is one of those 'incredibly' negligent decisions.  Makes no sense. - JamesJM

Unfortunately Apple has, in recent times, been hard at work steadilly degrading the user experience they spent decades refining and improving. This multiple-monitor support issue is only one such example. (And, on a sad note, NONE of the current UI design flaws are present in Windows 7. How extraordinarily ironic that Windows 7 supports and functions so much better on my Apple hardware than Lion does...) Anyway, I'll get off the soap-box now and say that I too use multiple monitors and find that Apple has almostly completely managed to eliminate the advantages of having multiple displays in all of their "consumer" level software.

Luckily for those of us who actually require our Macs to *produce*, there are usually "power options" available. As has been mentioned here, VLC will indeed allow you to play a Quicktime movie on one screen, in full-screen, while not blacking-out the other screens, just as ALL software should. Look for the option in the VLC Preferences.

WaldenGreen wrote:

 

Luckily for those of us who actually require our Macs to *produce*, there are usually "power options" available. As has been mentioned here, VLC will indeed allow you to play a Quicktime movie on one screen, in full-screen, while not blacking-out the other screens, just as ALL software should. Look for the option in the VLC Preferences.

When I tried that, it just made the other screen black instead of the ugly grey canvas texture.  You mean "disable native fullscreen support in OS X 10.8 Lion" option in VLC preferences?  Yeah, that did not work for me.

@WaldenGreen Exactly! I just switched from Windows 7 and I am so upset to see so many things Lion UI is awful at but Win7 had it nailed, even XP did, so much more flexible and user friendly. I can't even justify the switch now. Because Lion is not stable for me at all, even Apple apps are crashing now and then. i5 is working slower than my Dell i3. And I'm just miserable learning all the option-click tricks. Nothing is doable in a straight forward way as possible on Win7. What did I just pay $1500 for?

I truly feel like I'm using some half-baked Linux OS.

VLC settings worked for me on 2 occassions randomly. But now even VLC won't go FS on the right screen.

Blacking out other monitors and Native vs Custom fullscreen APIs are two different settings in VLC.