This column is a continuation of last month's column on Mission Control, but I first want to discuss great new wallpapers provided by Mavericks.

Magnificent Hidden Mavericks Wallpapers

As indicated in Brian Voo's article entitled "20 handy mavericks tips & tricks you probably don't know" (page 12 of this newsletter), Mavericks has 43 new but hidden wallpapers. They are magnificent! They are more buried than hidden, but Brian is the only one I've seen who has unearthed these treasures. To find them do a Spotlight search on "Default Collections". The path is Hard Drive/Library/Screen Savers/Default Collections. The latter folder has four folders - National Geographic, Aerial, Cosmos, and Nature Patterns.

The article indicates "...you can drag and drop these folders into the desktop background options to use these wallpapers", but I'm not sure what that means.

So I selected a desktop in Mission Control, went to System Preferences, selected Desktop & Screen Saver, and tapped the + at the bottom left of the window. (Just go directly to System Preferences if not using Mission Control.)I then went down the above path until I arrived at the four folders. Tapping on each folder and then doing a QuickLook by hitting the icon for each image file, I previewed the images in the Finder column. I then selected one as my wallpaper for that desktop. I repeated the process for each desktop. It's a bit cumbersome, but I ended up with wonderful wallpapers for all the desktops.

I have never been enamored with wallpapers, primarily choosing those that didn't obscure the desktop icons. In addition since my screens were primarily full of application windows I never saw very much of these wallpapers anyway.

However, these Mavericks wallpapers are so much better than any of the available wallpapers (other than images of some of my grandchildren) that I really enjoy seeing them. What makes it even better is that with 11 Mission Control desktops, I can see many of these wallpapers simultaneously. True, they are the thumbnails, but when you select one of the desktops, practicularly one that doesn't have an application window on it, you can see the wallpaper on the large screen. It's similar to the difference between looking at a picture on an iPhone and on a 46 inch high definition TV.

If you do nothing else after reading this newsletter, you have to take a look at the 43 wallpapers in the Default Collections. I'm sure you will enjoy them mightily.

And now back to Mission Control.

Mission Control Part 2

Mission Control can be a fantastic tool for many people. It can also drive you crazy since there are a number of bugs which Apple has yet to fix. Although Mission Control started back in Lion days, the number of bugs and the length of time it is taking Apple to fix them is disappointing. Just Google "Mission Control problems" and you will see many posts, including many to the Apple Discussion Forum which Apple is supposed to read. Is there a lower priority for Mac operating systems as opposed to iOS? One long-time Mac user said it looked like Apple is taking a page from Bill Gates' workbook. What is more surprising is that the reviews of Mavericks and Mission Control don't point out these problems. It seems that the only place you read about them is in the discussion forums.

Nonetheless, I am definitely going to continue using Mission Control, even though I know that at times I have to devise some workarounds to deal with two related problems. The usefulness of Mission Control far outweighs the small inconveniences which I sometimes encounter. The two easiest ways to bring up mission control and see the desktops are (1) hit F9 (but you can assign any function key to do this), and (2) do a three-finger upward swipe. You will see the windows for the various files which are open and at the top you will see thumbnails of the various desktops you have set up.

Theoretically you should be able to assign an app to a particular desktop, but most of the time that's not true. Apple indicates that the way to assign an app to a dektop is to click on the app's icon in the Dock which will bring up a menu, one of the items of which is "Assign To". However, that choice is grayed out every single time I've tried it.

I use my iMac with two displays, one the display which is a part of the iMac and the other an external display. Most of the time the menu items are Display 1 and Display 2, but not Desktop X on Display X.

With a few exceptions, there is no way to assign an app to a particular desktop using the Dock icons. The exceptions are that Pages has been assigned to Desktop 1; Mail to Desktop 4; and Finder and Excel to Desktop 1, even though I'd like to put them to Desktops 2 and 3, respectively. I've worked on this issue for several hours and have not been successful in solving the problem. It's not a fatal bug since, as you will read, there is another way to assign an app to a particular desktop.

Theoretically, the second way to assign an app to a particular desktop is to drag a window using that app to the desktop you want the app to be on. That does it temporarily. For reasons I have yet to determine, the apps at times tend to float to different desktops when I close the app and reopen it or move the window from one display to the other. Pages and Finder for the most part stay on Desktop 1 and Desktop 2. I'm never sure where Firefox and Safari are going to end up, but I move them around a lot from one display to the other, depending upon what I am trying to do. If you go to System Preferences - Mission Control, there are five choices that can be selected.

I find the most interesting one is the last choice - Displays have separate Spaces. I have set up 11 desktops. If I select (check) the last choice, I get 11 desktops in total, spread among the two displays in whatever fashion I choose. If I deselect (uncheck) the last choice, I get 11 desktops on each display. Not only do I think the results are counterintuitive, but with the last choice deselected you have doubled the number of desktops and the two sets of desktops almost operate independently.

I can move windows and apps to the desktops on Display 2 independent of what is on the desktops on Display 1. However, the function keys for opening a desktop operate on both displays simultaneously. Thus, when I hit F1, Desktop 1 opens on both displays. If I hit F2, Desktop 2 opens on both displays, etc. This leads to some very interesting possibilities which I'm still exploring. However, I think the ways that the function keys operate in conjunction with the choices you select for Mission Control is one of those rare situations which some people consider a bug, but I am starting to consider a useful feature.

One last bug — hitting the function keys to go to a particular desktop only works up to F6. I think this may just be a carryover from the way Mission Control works in Mountain Lion. It's just a nit, but I think it indicates that the release of the new Mission Control was rushed.

Bottom Line — I find that Mission Control is very useful, despite its problems and idiosyncrasies, and I highly recommend it to serious users who use numerous applications.

— Mark S. Bazrod,
Newsletter Editor