Mission Control v1 = Spaces v0.5

Numerous reviews and personal comments on Lion have indicated how amazing Mission Control is. Most of these authors precede their praise by admitting, almost proudly, "I never used Spaces much." Spaces added two extra dimensions to the traditional two-dimensional desktop. It was glorious. My work, my windows, my applications - they were all arranged spatially such that the frequently accessed windows were easiest to get to (in terms of number of keystrokes), and the lesser used windows were less conveniently accessed.

Mission Control took that control; that organizational beauty; those two extra dimensions; and reduced it to a straight line. Kid's stuff. A playground instead of rock climbing. Rounded-edge scissors instead of a razor blade. Etch-a-sketch instead of drafting tools. And now everyone concludes that Mission Control is brilliant.

It wasn't until Mission Control was announced that I discovered that essentially no one uses Spaces. So, what were these people doing? All of your applications and windows crowding and overlapping in a single desktop? Seriously? And they aren't covering their heads in shame? "How else would you do it?" - I'm sure someone has retorted.

I have no doubt that Mac OS X 10.8 will introduce Mission Control 2, which will allow for a grid of desktops instead of just a line, and everyone will wonder how they got along with just that one line.