FYI, you can use Leopard's Exposé in Snow Leopard: http://superuser.com/questions/118424/old-leopard-expose-on-...

I really miss "all windows" Exposé; Mission Control is not a worthy replacement. Any word on Exposé changes in 10.8?

For me, it's really Spaces whose usefulness was diminished in 10.7. They used to be configurable in multiple dimensions (i.e., X & Y): now they're linear only. Lame city.

I use change space(https://github.com/sdsykes/Change-Space) to get around this, but the fact that I can't have native 2-d spaces really bothers me. Change Space is good, but it does have a few bugs that wouldn't exist if Apple hadn't insisted on breaking spaces for no reason that I'm aware of.

I love my Macbook but can't stand the direction of the operating system. It feels like I use more and more hacks like the above just to have a usable machine.

I used this to the very end :) A friend who first started using OS X with 10.6 saw it and installed it right then too.

Good news! There is a system preference in 10.8 to ungroup windows (by application) in Mission Control.

Still, the "spaces bar" and dock show up every time you use MC, so there's less real estate than on 10.5. Dragging to the Dock stopped being useful in 10.6 IMHO, that's still the same in 10.8. (In 10.5, dragging an icon to the dock in Exposé would act the same as clicking the icon - e.g. for Skype it would open the window if it was closed.)

The more apps catch up with 10.7, the more they all do that unbearable fullscreen-on-some-weird-new-unexpected-virtual-desktop thing, yuck.

To chyme in and rant...

iTunes must be the worst offender. I always fullscreen it, because I seldom access it but want it to use all of my 13".

Then I start a video podcast. It runs inside the iTunes chrome. I hit cmd+F, it opens a new space. I finish watching the cast. The space closes and I land on the desktop instead of back in iTunes. What?

I wish any high-level blogger would start caring about OS X usability again. 10.7 needs more and not less public shaming. I don't think anyone even noticed that mouse/trackpad click-through is different again in 10.7, and for the worse IMHO. :(