The green button is not meant to "MAXIMIZE". It is meant to switch between user and standard states. You can read about it in the OS X Human Interface Guidelines. I've never liked having a window take up a whole screen personally, and think window management has been much better than Windows.

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/userex...

> Honestly, I think the suggestion of hitting the green button to maximize is completely fine.

It definitely isn't fine when your goal is to maximize content visibility and remove as much chrome as possible, which is the reason you'd put a video player, image reader or web browser in full-screen.

> Except that the green button DOES NOT MAXIMIZE.

The purported role of the zoom button is to fit the window to the content, but shift-clicking it should maximize. It does so in all the applications I use except (strangely enough) Cocoa Emacs.

But that is not fine because it leaves all the chrome around, where the point of full-screen modes is to remove that and potentially re-layout the display to make better use of the now chrome-less canvas.

Hold shift then click the green button. And I'd say Expose/Spaces coupled with the built-in hot-corners feature is great on OS X and window management is far from a 'complete joke'. In fact it's one of the big benefits for me over Windows.

My solution to that problem was finding an amazing app called "Moom". Makes window management (specially the old problem of "maximizing" windows) extremely easy. Just thought I'd plug it, hope the dev gets some love :)

I use ShiftIt for the same purpose, and it works very well. Though I probably spent more than $10 of my time trying to make it compile nicely with Xcode 4.3 ;)

Now that I've got it working, though, I have to say that there's something almost liberating about being able to make the window take up the whole screen, without having to dick about any more. Every time I do it, I get a slight frisson, imagining myself sticking 2 fingers up at an oncoming army full of tutting, hissing, ponytailed-and-bearded turtlenecked Apple fanboys, all crying out for my head, "Burn the Windows-loving witch!" Well, dear fanboys, screw the lot of you, and dear OS X, screw you too, and that goes for Safari and iTunes as well. Hey, Safari, I just took your window AND MADE IT TAKE UP THE WHOLE GODDAMN SCREEN... and I don't give a fuck how big you thought I needed to have it.

Considering what the Apple brand is supposed to connote, or at least what I thought it was supposed to connote, I find this kind of ironic.

I'm personally partial to SizeUp. Moom's interface is a lot better (its grid system is brilliant), but I can't stand that you can't use it to send windows to other spaces.

This has always drove me crazy.

Some apps, like Mail or Spotify (for example), do actually go full screen when I click the green button to maximize. Other apps, like you mentioning Chrome, don't. This makes me believe it has to do with how the app is coded, not a OSX problem.

What drives me crazy is that sometimes running youtube videos in full-screen mode under Chrome will sometimes initiate the Lion full-screen behavior, and sometimes it won't. If there is a rhyme or reason behind it, I don't know it.

I believe this has to do with whether you're running a Flash or HTML5 video. I thought HTML5 triggers Lion fullscreen, although I'm not sure.

It's not a Windows-style maximize button. It's a "fit window to content button". It's being a good neighbor in a multitasking environment. Instead of taking up an entire screen for no reason, the window only takes up the space it requires.

If everyone started out on OS X and then went to Windows, people would be whining that the middle button takes up the entire screen when they don't want it to.

Try "BetterSnapTool" for all your window sizing needs.

http://blog.boastr.net/?page_id=2342

http://itunes.apple.com/de/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580?mt...

I love angry rants from people that think every window manager has to act like Windows.

It's a zoom button, not maximize. If you simply Shift-Click you will get the expected effect. There are half a dozen tools that will change the default behavior if you require it.

But I don't know what "zoom" means in the context of a window. And the inconsistencies of my experiences with various apps didn't make it clear either. (e.g. the infamous mini-player for iTunes)

As for Shift-Click I tried it with Chrome and I thought you had made my day. However it didn't do anything different on Messages, nor Safari: it just stretched the window vertically. In my short survey of currently open apps, half were stretching vertically while the other was doing fullscreen. (be it Shift-click or plain click) Only Chrome acts differently.

Zoom tries to remove the scroll bars. It makes the window big enough so that the scroll bars disappear. If there are no scrollbars and the main content just automatically resizes with the window (e.g. in Aperture) it is equivalent to the maximize button.

The biggest problem with that is that developers make it work inconsistently.

Browse around iTunes until you find a track that doesn't quite fit horizontally. Click the "zoom" button, to make the window big enough. Oh wait, it doesn't.

If by "developers" you mean "Apple" then yes. I never use the "zoom" button because it exhibits apparently random behaviour.

Agreed. It's one of those "we'll figure this out later" things from the late 90's without any real programmatic constraints that led to a mishmash of pointless and unexpected behavior.

I personally can't come up with a good reason not to just remove the green ball entirely.

So the issue is iTunes, not the green button? And admittedly itunes behaviour is very well known, it's hardly surprising.

I completely agree with you. Don’t be so aggressive, be nice!

Apple should remove the zoom button. It’s not necessary, more confusing than anything.

I'm new to Macs so I may be missing something, but I tried your shift-click approach in a half dozen applications (including Apple ones). It didn't maximize any of the programs. I suppose a separate software program may enable this functionality, however.

He meant command-click.

I definitely didn't. I just tried Shift+Click'ing on Chrome, Terminal and Sublime Text 2. They all exhibited the Maximize/Restore functionality that I've been using in Windows for years.

No love in Safari. Not a fan of tools I can't rely on.

Ironically Safari is the only app I can't make work. But by God, who uses Safari? :P

Yep, my mistake, did some incorrect testing.

I'm a die-hard mac user, and even I can admit that their window management is atrociously bad. My only hope is that it was based on some stupid edict handed down by SJ, and now that he's out of the picture they'll finally get around to fixing it.

> I love angry rants from people that think every window manager has to act like Windows.

Wrong. They're from people who think every window manager should act consistently. This is decades of UI design and expected behavior being flushed down the toilet by a company for which NIH is religious dogma.

That Windows behaves the correct, expected way is an indictment on OS X, not its growing base of increasingly frustrated power users.

"Wrong. They're from people who think every window manager should act consistently. This is decades of UI design and expected behavior being flushed down the toilet by a company for which NIH is religious dogma. That Windows behaves the correct, expected way is an indictment on OS X, not its growing base of increasingly frustrated power users."

I don't see how that couldn't be turned entirely on its head? Windows is clearly the one ignoring the decades of UI design and expected behaviour from Apple, as from checking from screenshots, has been since at least System 3 — predating Windows 3.1. ;-)

Though, I agree that Apple seem intent in ridding themselves of powerusers and developers, which seems like a somewhat perverse set of incentives.

I did not know that, that's useful thank you.

I still stick to my guns: the default behavior is insane. Focusing on one task (ie: one screen, window, app etc) at a time is the common use case, when I want to show two screens at once it's the exception. Current behavior is based on a philosophical concept of carrying through the "desktop" metaphor, and SJ's obsession with showing off his stacked windows, which mac was first to have, rather than on how humans actually want to use computers.

Not a mac user here but its amusing to know that OS X has had problems supporting such simple things such as dual monitor.

It has no problem with dual monitors. Or four. (On a dual-video-card Hackintosh, no less.)

The problem is with the full-screen behavior introduced in Lion. And it does suck, but I personally it very low on the list of annoyances.

OSX has plenty of annoyances, and that's what this is - an annoyance. Multi-monitor support exists, it works great - just not on the Lion-new "fullscreen mode".

I have used 4x simultaneous monitors on my MBP for years, and it's still more comfortable overall than Windows7 (YMMV - Win7's experience varies greatly on your drivers/hardware).

Apple has always had issues with window-management, it's one of those things like lock-screen that Windows still does better in some ways.

>I have used 4x simultaneous monitors on my MBP

What do you use for that?

Displaylink x2 + 1 MiniDP + laptop screen

http://www.displaylink.com/

I run two older versions of this evga product (as my monitors are older - 1650x1080). http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-100-U2-UV19-TR-Supporting-2048x11...

> it's one of those things like lock-screen that Windows still does better in some ways.

Right? Unless I'm missing something, my friends and I all use a hot corner to activate the Screen Off to be able to lock our screens when we leave our laptops since there is no Win+L or Lock equivalent. :/ I guess they just expect me to close it everytime I leave? I have lots of long running stuff that I normally don't want to stop just because I want to go to the kitchen or bathroom.

Actually, that's now resolved since Snow Leopard - there's a "sleep display" key-combo (IIRC: Ctrl-Shift-Eject) that, combined with screensaver password will do effectively Win+L.

My major issue is that sometimes it showed content before screen is unlocked (likely my displaylink device) or fails to unlock (sleep/unsleep resolves this)

I don't remember if it has to be configured, but I just press Ctrl-Shift-Eject to lock my screen.

There's no eject button on Macbook Airs

Hit the power button. It pops up a modal with restart, sleep, shut down and cancel.

It's like no one read my post. I specifically do not want to sleep.

the sleeping is only for the monitors, the computer is still running.

That's... not true.

cmd + alt + eject is the sleep you're thinking about. ctrl + shift + eject is just for the displays :)

You can go into the Keyboard system preferences and set a keyboard shortcut for "Sleep".