Apple's 3D Desktop Patent Filing Examined 156
phantomfive writes "The patent office has released some patent filings by Apple which indicate that the company is working on a 3D desktop of some sort. They call it a multi-dimensional desktop, according to the patent filing." There's also some commentary at ZDNet; both stories link to a detailed run-down at AppleInsider.
Re:I love 3D (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that your monitor is still in two dimensions- so what benefit do you get with a 3d interface that you constantly need to translate back in to 2 dimensions?
Re:Guess they haven't heard of... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I love 3D (Score:2, Insightful)
You think the next iteration of the MacBook is going to be a giant cube? Or a sphere perhaps?
I don't know about you, but I'm not putting any stupid cube or sphere in my backpack, thankyouverymuch.
Re:I love 3D (Score:4, Insightful)
The same benefit you get from running a 3D game instead of a 2D one.
The fact is, desktop has never been 2D. It has always been 3D. The shadows under a button that make it look pushed or not are a 3d effect, even if it's implemented as a black shadow in a bitmap.
You can have top or botton windows. That's 3D aswell.
3D desktops will not be about having a "3D room" in your desktop. They will be normal desktops just like they're today. The difference will be that instead of drawing a bitmap with a black line to make a button look like it's pressed, you'll have a 3D engine and the toolkit will tell the 3D engine: "move the button x pixel in depth" - and the engine will move the button and will draw the shadows according to the surrounding objects.
IOW, you'll have a 3d engine powering your desktop, managing not just your windows (beryl can do that today), but also your widgets. Or icons. Icons won't be just a 2d bitmap/vector image, they will be a 3d object that will react to events with all kind of 3D effects - rotation, lighting, jumping, smoke...whatever
As expected, it seems that Apple has the lead. It's a shame that nobody in Linux is doing something similar. It's an oportunity to take lead in the desktop.
Jobs is not an inventor (Score:5, Insightful)
Jobs is a marketer. What happens is a programmer gets a cool idea, writes a prototype, and sends it up to the execs for review along with a dozen other ideas. Then jobs gets baked, reads through proposals, sees the cool one and goes "OMG I can so sell that to millions of n00bs! A brilliant marketing plan for this just popped into my head! I will 0wnz j00r w0rldz with my reality distortion field muahahahahahahaha!!" Developers get paid, Jobs is triumphant, and the result is not perfect but pretty good, incredibly stylish, and everyone except the most die hard slashdotters and luddites will want one.
Re:Guess they haven't heard of... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people always concentrate on the compiz cube?
Along with the windows opening/closing animations and the wobbly effect, the cube ranks among the most useless effects in Compiz (though I must admit I like the windows effects a lot somehow)
Expo, fading, windows preview, all the magnifier and zoom functions, the shift switcher, along with the shelf functions are actually very useful (and productivity enhancing, once you get past the WOW effect), but somehow nobody ever talks about them. Hell ... even the water function is useful, as it can be used as a silent (and cool looking) system beep.
Yes, they are also very pretty and geeky, but so what? just because something does look cool doesn't mean it's useless
Re:I love 3D (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a shame that nobody in Linux is doing something similar. It's an oportunity to take lead in the desktop.
Sun's Project Looking Glass has been running on Linux for about 3 years now. The hard part is not the 3D effects, but coming up with a way of making it usable. If Apple has figured that part out, I expect it will be copied by everyone else in short order.