Hyperspaces

Tuesday, October 28, 2008 in Macintosh by slowe | 5 comments

I have long had a “love/hate” relationship with virtual desktops on Mac OS X. In late 2005, I discovered Desktop Manager, a then-great application to provide virtual desktops. In early 2006, I switched to Virtue (later to become VirtueDesktops) and continued to use that up until I purchased my MacBook Pro in late 2006. At that time, VirtueDesktops was having a bit of a challenge making the transition to a Universal binary, so I settled for using Exposé instead of virtual desktops.

VirtueDesktops ceased development due to the introduction of Spaces in Leopard, but the developer—Tony Arnold—later unveiled that he would create an application to enhance Leopard’s Spaces. That application, Hyperspaces, is now available as a public preview.

I had high hopes for Hyperspaces, having worked extensively with VirtueDesktops. I was disappointed. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected so much, given that this is a preview of the 1.0 release. I had been hoping for a bezel pop-up similar to Quicksilver and VirtueDesktops, but instead we have a menu item and an attached pager. There’s no moving windows between desktops without reverting to the standard Spaces interface, and none of the very cool special effects that graced VirtueDesktops—like the cube effect—are present.

I strongly imagine that Tony will greatly enhance and expand the functionality of Hyperspaces over time. Until then, I’ll stick to Exposé.

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  1. Tony Arnold’s avatar

    Tony Arnold on Tuesday, October 28, 2008 at 11:46 pm

    Hi Scott – yeah, it’s definitely a preview build.

    HOWEVER (here comes the kicker) Apple removed some very useful (although very private) APIs in Leopard that would have made moving windows between spaces possible. As far as I can see, there’s no way to restore this functionality (yet – I’m still looking). Stay with me on the switcher and fancy transitions though – the switcher is attached to the menu at present, but it won’t stay there forever. The transititions – well, I’m investigating that at the moment :)

    One of the main design goals of Hyperspaces was to not do anything that Spaces did myself – it overlays on top of the existing functionality – unlike VirtueDesktops which did everything manually itself.

    I’m glad you checked out the preview!

  2. slowe’s avatar

    slowe on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at 6:20 am

    Hi Tony! Thanks for the added information. It’s odd that Apple removed the APIs for moving windows between spaces, since that’s something that Spaces currently does–I can invoke Spaces and then drag windows between desktops. I’m not doubting you about the APIs, because you clearly know this stuff, but how is Spaces doing it?

    Anyway, rest assured that I, for one, will be continuing to watch the development of Hyperspaces. Thanks for the hard work thus far and keep it up!

  3. Tony Arnold’s avatar

    Tony Arnold on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at 9:38 am

    That’s exactly why I haven’t given up ;) If Apple’s doing it, chances are there may be a way I can, but the CGSSetWindowWorkspace() methods do appear to have been made fully private in 10.5. It does seem odd that they removed this functionality, but it was never public to begin with and they want developers to not worry about how their app interacts with Spaces at all (which I think is a bit of a pipe dream, but anyway…).

  5. slowe’s avatar

    slowe on Thursday, October 30, 2008 at 9:41 pm

    I tested Warp once, early after its initial release. It looks like it may have matured some since then so I may have to try it out again.