Apple working on 3D Mac OS X user interface (images)
appleinsider.com
appleinsider.com
Basically, apple is investigating making multitouch part of the "normal" os x interface. A touch interface has to overcome the fact that fingers aren't good for precise pointing, and thus a lot of tasks that are tedious-but-doable with a mouse (like positioning windows, or using pulldown menus, or clicking small icons) become hugely painful with a finger.
It's pretty obvious what a good touch interface for os x would have to be like: - the app is designed with full-screen mode in mind - the app's primary content area fits in one central area - the tools and so on are in sidebars-and-bottom-bars
...and the app would avoid: - overlapping windows (either within the app, or between apps) or floating palettes - lots of little icons or finely-detailed controls
In other world: every app would look like iphoto or ical or itunes.
A "2.5d" interface like in this patent makes a lot of sense: each open app is in its own "slice", and you navigate forwards and backwards through the slices using some multi-finger gestures. The edge of the screen is used to show contextual information about what's currently open, and provides cues as to how to navigate to different items (eg: is that photo "behind me" or "in front of me"?).
In a touch-heavy environment the gimmicky 3d interfaces from the past all of a sudden become potentially a lot more helpful. You'll notice apple's been working on possible solutions to making a touch interface usable for a long time: - a lot of the expose tools make more sense as ways to easily navigate between windows with a finger (eg: hit the expose key, see all open windows in miniature, then touch the one you want to maximize...) - dashboard makes a lot of sense in a touch context, as a way of easily pulling down some lightweight apps without disturbing your current ui arrangement - spaces makes a lot of sense in a touch context: each collection of screen layouts in its own little slice that's given a spatial location, and so not only do you not destroy a layout by bringing a different app to the top, you also give spatial cues as to where your other open programs are
This guy summarizes things much better than I ever could...
You don't gain much from this that you don't get from having a MDI window tiled against a bunch of toolbars. The idea of having toolbar items pinned to the "wall" is interesting, but in general I'd think it would just perspective-distort the icons used on the boxes/buttons.
Despite the obvious/intuitive feeling that if 2D is good, 3D is better, I think as long as we're viewing the desktop through a single 2D viewport there's really very little advantage to this.
On the other hand, as multiple displays are becoming more common, there might be an advantage to building an internal 3d model of a desktop and creating multiple viewports into this space with the LCDs. I don't think the Apple model shown in the link really aligns with that at this point, however.
And 3D interfaces, even inside a 2D screen, could improve the illusion of that concreteness.
I'd have thought mixing up you applications/claims like that would have done more harm than good.
It even looks almost exactly the same.
Don't even get me started on 3D mice...
This is why I love APPLE!!!!!!!!
</fanboy>
But seriously, so impressive... I can't wait. This type of innovation and Apple's ability to bring it to the consumer market justifies a closed hardware platform, IMO. We don't need 30 million configurations, we're over that period as hardware is now a commodity.
"If you want to build great software, control the hardware."
I anticipate a counter along the lines of "x company must have gone through y impractical prototypes during..." which I will not disagree with, but secretive is not really in everybody's interest here. It is in the company's interest, which does not justify the closed platform.
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