OS X should embrace multiple displays

Macworld - For most of my life, I've been a single screen kind of guy. I spent the vast majority of the last several years working from a 13-inch MacBook. When I did eventually add a 27-inch Cinema Display to the mix, it took at least two weeks before I was willing to finally stop piling all my windows into roughly the same amount of space as that MacBook screen.

Unsurprisingly, I adjusted. iTunes migrated to the MacBook screen, while I arranged my most frequently used apps--Mail, Safari, Adium, my Campfire client--on the larger display. No longer did it require repeated invocations Command-Tab every time I wanted to check something in my Web browser while composing an article in BBEdit. I grew fond of my multiple displays, embraced their ability to help me do my work more efficiently.

And then came Lion. Lion, with its easy-to-swipe spaces and full-screen mode apps. Lion, with its apparent "Who the what now?" approach to multiple monitors.

Multiple monitors have long seemed like an afterthought to Apple. The original Mac--and most of the models that immediately followed it--had built-in screens. So did arguably Apple's most famous model, the iMac. Most of the computers the company sells these days are laptops with their own built-in displays. And now, with the focus on iOS devices like the iPad and the iPhone, the company seems to see secondary displays as vestigial organs, lumping their users in the same category as those power users longingly waiting for an update to the Mac Pro.

On the one hand, I think Apple is looking forward and seeing a future in which we're more likely to use multiple devices with single displays than single devices with multiple displays; on the other, the company still sells a pretty darn attractive display that seems like it was separated at birth from the MacBook Air.

While I may be a relatively recent convert to the dual-display lifestyle, they say that there are none more zealous. And though Lion's embrace of multiple monitors is paltry, Apple has an opportunity to reinvigorate the capability with Mountain Lion, if only it chooses to do so.

Lion's dirty linen

What's so bad about Lion's multiple monitor support? In some ways it's no better or worse than previous incarnations of OS X. You have a choice to mirror the screen or extend the desktop, and the freedom to choose which monitor has the menu bar, and how the two monitors are arranged. Simple enough.

But there's a real problem with Lion and multiple monitors, and its name is full-screen mode. Full-screen mode's goal is to remove distractions, let you focus on a single app at a time. And, boy does it work--probably a bit too well, in some cases.