I looked forward to the new Mac OSX Leopard, and as soon as I could free some time, I installed it. It went smoothly. Just what I expected from Apple.

One thing I looked forward to, was Spaces. By default Spaces is not enabled, but I could nicely enable it from the dedicated panel in System Preferences. I added four spaces.

Next, I wanted to set the key bindings, just like I had for Desktop Manager in Tiger. At the bottom of the same dedicated pane, I immediately spotted the place where I could set the keys for switching between the spaces. I chose Ctrl+Arrows.

I then I started to play with my new toy. It all went fine until I started X11. As you might know, the default settings in X11 change slightly the keyboard, and Ctrl+Arrows is mapped on navigating between words in a text. After some moments of annoyance and confusion from the conflict of my subconscious and reality, I decided I should change the Spaces key bindings to something more suitable for my already hardwired preferences.

I opened again the dedicated panel, and I set myself to choose a key combination that will not produce a conflict with an existing one. Much to my dismay, I could combine Arrows only with simple modifier keys: Ctrl, Shift or Apple. But, both Shift and Apple are taken by regular text editors.

I could not believe that Apple designers would miss such a trivial point, so I did not give up. I opened the Keyboard Shortcuts panel from System Preferences, but I could only find the setting for showing the overview of Spaces (F8). Nothing about the keys for switching between spaces.

I then fired up Google and eventually stumbled over the following hint from the Apple Support site:

You can set any key combination to move to the next space in your specified order, from Space 1 to Space 2, from 2 to 3, and so on.

Ok, but how? I could not believe it.

All in all, over some half an hour I must have opened the dedicated panel some tens of times looking for the solution. I just could not get it. In the end, I decided to put up with Apple+Arrows for some days until I figure it out.

I must admit these were some annoying days. I complained on our internal mailing list, but no one picked the issue up. Eventually I complained more lively in a one-to-one discussion.

At one point Lukas got annoyed with my complaints and then opened the Keyboard Shortcuts. Hmm, it was not there. Ahh, then it must be in the dedicated panel. Hmm... and then he shouted: "Can’t you read?!" (truth be told, the shout was not without merit and it was not entirely because of this incident :)) Hmm. Read? Yes, read.

No, I did not read. I do not think I ever read anything since I started to use Apple products. I always found it useless and I got used to that.

So now the question is: Should I have read it?

p.s. Apparently, I was not quite alone in my grief.

p.p.s. In all fairness, I like Spaces. I now have it mapped on Apple+Option+Arrows and it works just fine. I particularly like how Spaces combines with Expose. That is a true Apple touch.