> rather than showing you a preview, the bar just says "Desktop 1", "Desktop 2"

I never noticed that behaviour because I only use mission control in full-screen mode. If you swipe up with three (or four) fingers from a full-screen window the previews are visible immediately. I have no idea why we need a different preview for desktop vs full screen however.

The part of this UX that annoys me is the spaces get re-ordered for no apparent reason. I usually have a few IDE windows open and it's tiring to have to double-check the window hasn't moved.

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jimrandomh 25 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The full-screen mode handling might be a clue about what went wrong: if you swipe up from a space that contains a full screen app, it has an animation where the app goes into a slot in the preview strip, but that animation doesn't make sense visually for a non-full-screen space. So, perhaps someone was implementing that animation, didn't want to implement an alternate animation for the non-fullscreen case, and decided to minimize the preview strip instead? And because this was after Steve Jobs had died, there was no one left in charge of UX to explain why that was a bad idea?

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fragmede an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

that's a setting you can turn off. settings -> desktops and spaces -> reorder spaces

	▲	brigade 12 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Unfortunately that also forces new fullscreen apps all the way to the rightmost space, which is slightly more annoying than being unable to predict what clicking on a dock icon will do.
	▲	willtemperley an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Ah thanks! The setting is "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use" which explains why the behaviour felt so intermittent.