Mission Control desktop switching with keyboard is painfully slow

Originator:nivi
Number:rdar://12205218 Date Originated:30-Aug-2012 10:46 AM
Status:Duplicate/12171760 Resolved:
Product:Mac OS X Product Version:>=10.7
Classification:UI/Usability Reproducible:Always
 
Summary:
Animation priority in Misson Control has led to a situation where people must sit and wait patiently for a gradually decelerating sideways shunt to end. 

Steps to Reproduce:
Press ^←/→ (or whatever you have bound to switch between desktops in Mission Control)

Expected Results:
The adjacent desktop. Quickly.

Actual Results:
A quick initial animation followed by a frustrating second of looking at the desktop that I want to be on but being unable to actually do anything with it because it is still crawling very slowly towards focus.

Notes:
I would be interested in any estimate for the number of times people have issued that keyboard shortcut since Lion came out. Given that Lion and Mountain Lion have had phenomenally successful penetration and that it's at least half a second of wasted time per switch, I wouldn't be surprised if a good decade or more of humanity's time has been wasted waiting for this animation to end.

I regularly use a mouse and keyboard setup in front of a raised platform that my laptop sits on. Despite having easier access to the ^←/→ shortcuts than the trackpad, I still find myself raising my arm up to the laptop and swiping between desktops because it is less of a needlessly painful experience.

The animation of invoking Mission Control is also way too slow by default, but you can defaults write your way around it, which I really, truly appreciate.

Comments

Let's work this out, then

Assumptions (extrapolating from http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/07/27/apple_os_x_mountain_lion_hits_32_penetration_in_two_days.html):

~70 million total Mac users.

~40% on >=10.7; 28000000 people

~40% of Mac users trackpadless (or keyboard-centric); 11200000 people

~20% of Mac users make good use of Mission Control; 2240000 people

Those who make good use of mission control switch between desktops, say, fifty times a day; 112000000 switches per day

Each switch wastes half a second; 56000000 seconds wasted per day

In the last month (~30 days), that's 1680000000 seconds wasted per month

Which is 1680000000/60/60/24/365 = 53.272450534 years

Of course, this is a rough estimate, but it's probably within an order of magnitude or two of correct.

By nivi at Aug. 30, 2012, 10:04 a.m. (reply...)

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