Macs aren’t really into multitasking, even though the OS and hardware is made for it. For the past couple months since I’ve had my Macbook pro, I still have not found a simple way to run two or more instances of Phoenix Viewer (or any SL viewer) with out resorting to using the terminal, or opening Finder and digging deep into my Applications folder and manually launching the viewer from there (which just spawns a terminal window anyway). All of that adds more crap on my desktop that I just don’t want.
The only way I can do this by installing a different viewer and launching that, but that really isn’t practical. In Windows you simply just run the app again by double clicking the shortcut on the dekstop again; simple. Why can’t OS X be that simple? After all Macs do things in a much simpler manor compared to the overly complex unnecessary cluster-fuck of how Windows does things. Running two+ more instances of the same app should be a no brainer on a mac…. But Noooooooo!
Is there a way to edit the Phoenix icon on my dock, or desktop, to allow me to run Phoenix in as many instances as I like? I’ve noticed if I right-click Finder on the dock, I have the option to open a new finder window. But that’s technically not running in another instance, since Finder is the core of OS X, just as Explorer is for Windows. But still if i can have that option for Phoenix on the Dock, it would be perfect!
Hugsies Blog! 
It’s not the Mac, but the viewer that is made wrong for it. It is a Windows program really.
Comment by Mimika Oh — December 8, 2010 @ 3:46 pm
Here is your answer though. Run Applications/Utilities/Script Editor. In the script, type something like this:
do shell script “/Applications/Phoenix/Contents/MacOS/Phoenix –multiple”
or whatever you use in Terminal to get Phoenix started in the quotes. Save as Application. Put in your Dock. Have fun!
Comment by Mimika Oh — December 8, 2010 @ 3:48 pm
No it IS the Mac, not the fault of the app that you have to go though so much crap to launch another instance of the app. Since so-called “native” apps on the Mac don’t run more than once anyway. You can’t run iTunes more than once, or any apps starting with i.
And it’s not really a “windows app” after all we are all using the same hardware, it’s the same code. there’s really no such thing as native apps for windows, mac or even linux. It’s all the same hardware. What’s different are the library files.
So after going back and forth with you in world trying to figure this out, the script to use is simply this:
do shell script “‘/Applications/Phoenix Viewer.app/Contents/MacOS/Phoenix Viewer’ –multiple &> /dev/null &”
Still this should be a lot simpler to accomplish on a modern operating system.
Comment by hugsalot — December 10, 2010 @ 9:47 am