Why don't Macs support multiple monitors? | Hacker News Reader

Why don't Macs support multiple monitors?

cafe.elharo.com

2 pointsnasalter6 comments

"Maybe if I make my title sensational enough, people will actually read my stupid blog post about a nitpick that most other people would probably consider to be a good design choice."

Well, it might be a sensationalist article, but it does bug me that mac's don't have the menu bar on the second monitor. To me, I rarely use it, I just find the disjunction between the screens slightly jarring...

I can understand that it might be far more hassle than it's worth to support and code, but what might be a good design reason for not putting it on other monitors?

It wastes space and then you have to think about a way to display two separate items which represent the same data but which can be in different states.

If you're using the menu bar so much that having it on the other screen causes you to be unable to use the second display, you should consider learning keyboard shortcuts for the menu items instead of clicking on them manually each time. They should be labeled in an application's menus, if it follows Mac design guidelines (and common sense.)

And with Snow Leopard, you can assign your own keyboard shortcuts - and they'll even show up in the menus! System Preferencea->Keyboard=>Keyboard Shortcuts->Application Shortcuts (click on the plus sign)

I can see the point of the writer; but at the same time, if I was double-full-screening, as shown in the post's screenshots, I would choose to hide the menu bar too! (For instance, I can double-full-screen terminals, and set the menu bar to auto-hide.)

If I'm not in pure full-screen mode, I actually find it distinctly un-Mac-like to force windows to use up every last pixel of space. That's kind of the point...the Mac's document-centered focus, ability to hide apps, use Exposé, and yes, menu bar, make it far easier to have 12 completely unrelated things open and use them effectively (compared to Windows and the Linux window managers I know about, anyway).

One tidbit people might not notice, is that the OS lets windows "stick" to the top of the screen; this works both under the menu bar and under the top "edge" of your 2nd display. So it's pretty easy to arrange windows anyway.

On Linux there are dynamic window managers available. They automate window placement to maximize use of screen real estate. Many are keyboard driven and seem difficult to use. I usually have 15-30 windows open so I've been looking at them as alternatives to ALT + TAB.

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