Mission Control (Apple)

Mission Control is a feature that allows you to view open and full-screen apps from OS X, which was introduced with version 10.3 "Panther" and was called "Exposé" up to version 10.6.

After pressing a key combination (standard F3, formerly F9), either all open windows of all active programs or only the windows of the current program are reduced in the foreground and displayed as playing cards on the desktop. The user can then select the window with which he wants to work next, and thus continue to work with it. Furthermore, all windows can be moved from the visible area at once to allow unhindered access to the desktop background. Mission Control is also needed to manage the virtual desktops in OS X, allowing the user to move, delete, or create new desktops.

You can also start Mission Control from the launchpad as a normal program, or by moving the mouse pointer to a corner of the screen (so-called "active corners").

On computers that support Quartz Extreme, the display of the windows is updated in real-time. Mission Control also works on computers without Quartz Extreme support.

Mission Control was modeled on other operating systems. So there is for Windows XP iEx and for Unix Skippy (is not further developed), Compiz. Windows Vista includes a similar function, in which the windows order three-dimensionally in a row. The GNOME shell offers a similar function with the so-called activities mode.

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