Hi all-
I've been running into this issue for the last few months and at first thought it was Enthought specific but now have confirmed it on a clean (virtualenv) install of Fonnesbeck's superpack using built in Apple python and a dev matplotlib on Lion.
With the OSX backend, figures clearly have focus issues:
1. Keyboard input always goes to the terminal. Shortcuts don't work in the standard plot windows and my custom widgets no longer catch key_press_events (I'm not sure when this functionality broke exactly as I haven't used those widgets much recently but it worked when I developed 'em a year or two ago.)
2. There's no icon in the cmd-tab task switcher corresponding to the figure windows. Swapping to the terminal running ipython (or the qtconsole for ipython qtconsole) does not raise the windows.
3. Using mission control, the figures appear grouped as if they belong to an application of their own. However, when you click on them to swap to them and bring them forward from behind other windows, they raise and then immediately disappear again. I think that mission control is raising the specific window you select from the collection of figures, but then OSX is somehow immediately re-raising the previously selected app, which hides the figures again.
Just to check its not IPython's fault, I also checked running a bare python, import all from pylab and showed a (blocking) figure -- exact same behavior.
Is this a known bug? It's quite annoying not to be able to switch focus to a plot window.
Best, Chris