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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

Does this fix the broken fullscreen apps with multimonitor setups?

Highly doubt it. That's a relic from Lion, doesn't appear to be a "bug".

As a user of the OS, in my experience it's absolutely a bug. Now whether or no Apple is going to own up to it or just insist "No it's a feature!" and declare victory is another story. Right now it's looks like they're going with the unfortunate fingers-in-the-ears, 'lalalala I can't hear you' response. Not their finest moment.

Obviously the functionality of it is terrible, I don't get it at all. But how something so large would be overlooked is near impossible. Not a single developer/tester had a dual monitor setup? Unlikely.

Just because you don't like how it works, doesn't mean it's a bug.

>Just because you don't like how it works, doesn't mean it's a bug.

OTOH just because Apple closes the bug 'as designed' doesn't make it a non-bug. Five seconds with Google tells you that it's a bug in the eyes of a vast number of users.

Stop being ridiculous

With multimonitor setup the apps are allowed to use those extra monitors while in full screen. You're supposed to be able to drag pieces of the apps into them if the app supports it.

It actually seems like there's a way around this on an app level-- I downgraded iTerm2 from the current 1.0.2.whatever to the 1.0.0 stable, and Full Screen properly takes up one screen on 10.8 instead of filling my other monitor with felt.

I wonder if they are just implementing it "wrong", and not using the Apple APIs.

No... the new APIs take over all monitors. When you use the fullscreen apis, you can then target your windows for the other monitors. No body does so you see crosshatch pattern on them. If you download final cut on MAS and fullscreen it will use both monitors.

The problem is that fullscreen gives developers all monitors because the feature is supposed to encompasses the user entirely in one app experience, throwing out the multitasking concepts. It's like distraction free mode in many editors and follows the iOS concept of one App at a time. Apple allows the developer to use all the monitors when in fullscreen the way they want in the app but less than 5% of the fullscreening apps actually do anything with the other monitor. This unfortunately isn't the pattern that many users want especially when less than 5% of the fullscreening apps do anything with the second monitor mostly using the full screen mode to help 11 inch MBPAir users effectively use space.

Given that, fullscreening windows without the Apple API (as was done in older Mac versions) will still work but it's tricky and many apps didn't behave perfectly. The new API while not perfect is simple and just works for most devs, so they use it.

Without a doubt, 1.0.0 stable came out (I think) before 10.7. That said, it's my preferred functionality, so I'll gladly take it if it means it doesn't consume my second monitor like some sort of vermicious knid.

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