Hands-on with OS X Mavericks: Multiple-display support
One of the big additions in OS X Mavericks, the new version of OS X due out this fall, is much richer support for Macs with more than one display. Macs have supported multiple displays for ages, but only with Mavericks do all the workspace-ordering features of Mission Control, including Spaces and full-screen mode, truly take advantage of a second display. (And now any TV connected to an Apple TV can be an extra display, too.)
For the last year or so, I’ve been using my MacBook Air at my desk with the lid closed. But I’ve spent the last few days running Mavericks full-time at my desk on a MacBook Pro (a review unit pre-loaded with Mavericks by Apple) attached to an external display. Mavericks will make using two displays—especially a smaller display the like one you’ve got on a laptop with an external monitor—a pleasure.
Two screens, two sets of spaces
OS X Lion added support for full-screen apps and coalesced all of its window-management features into one place, Mission Control. These features were nice for people with one screen, but users who work with multiple displays have felt left out. If you popped an app into full-screen mode on one monitor, the other monitor went blank, displaying only a stock linen pattern as dark as my heart. All spaces encompassed both displays, too, so when you switched between then, the content on both displays changed.
What Mavericks will provide is more or less exactly what a multiple-monitor user like me was pining for: Two screens that act independently, each with its own spaces and its own full-screen mode. When I drag the Calendar app onto my laptop screen and click the full-screen icon in the top-right corner of its title bar, it expands to fill that screen. Meanwhile, my larger external display remains fully functional.
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