Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

When will we get Beryl/Compiz fuion type space switching in OS X?

R

rsm5068

macrumors regular
Original poster
So if you guys haven't seen it yet here is a video of Ubuntu Linux using the Compiz Fusion user space switching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JYokZ4rv-0

Now when will we get something like that is OS X? We already have spaces which is the core of what they are doing with Compiz. Just wndering if I was alone in my desire for this feature...
 
Too much eye candy, not enough gain in usability. I don't think apple would ever do it. Someone might write an app to do it though.
 
i don't think all is just eye-candy. i mean why can't apple implement these nice visual details.

if you look at spaces. it's just very crude squares. why can't they polish that up a bit more and make it graphically appear nicer. a bit more like stacks field with a subtle gradient and maybe even a little reflection.
there are thousands of ways to make it a bit nicer than what it is now.
 
Its more about the usefulness of space, rather than eye candy of compiz, put eye candy aside, 3D spaces switching in compiz is more flexible and easier than space.

when its easier, it will get used more.
 
Apple are good at putting in eye candy that actually does something helpful, instead of just wasting resources and looking pretty. Everything on that video could have been done with OSX some years back, but there's very little point as I see it.

Take the spaces vs. the cube thing. With apple's method, you zoom out and it's instantly obvious what's going on and how it works. With the cube, it's a lot less obvious, not as fast or easy, and you can't even see all your desktops at once. The cube looks prettier but it's actually worse. And what happens if you want more desktops? Do you get dodecahedrons? Are you forced to work on a triangular desktop? =)

The window wobble too.. it's cute, but all it does is waste resources, and a lot of people don't like it anyway. Transparent windows is a bit more useful, but only in a very few cases. I bet most people will never touch it, or will have a play with it and then never touch it.
 
psonice said:
Apple are good at putting in eye candy that actually does something helpful, instead of just wasting resources and looking pretty. Everything on that video could have been done with OSX some years back, but there's very little point as I see it.

Take the spaces vs. the cube thing. With apple's method, you zoom out and it's instantly obvious what's going on and how it works. With the cube, it's a lot less obvious, not as fast or easy, and you can't even see all your desktops at once. The cube looks prettier but it's actually worse. And what happens if you want more desktops? Do you get dodecahedrons? Are you forced to work on a triangular desktop? =)

The window wobble too.. it's cute, but all it does is waste resources, and a lot of people don't like it anyway. Transparent windows is a bit more useful, but only in a very few cases. I bet most people will never touch it, or will have a play with it and then never touch it.
Click to expand...

lol, I smell sore grapes, 😛 not to mention, compiz has more to offer than cubes. desktop expose, and desktop wall is just what space does, with better accessibility.

I would advise you at least to try for yourself. Making judgment by watching a video, IMHO, isn't good enough.

Could have been done? would have been done? lol, Is this type of reasoning change any facts that apple is behind on this topic?
 
psonice said:
Apple are good at putting in eye candy that actually does something helpful, instead of just wasting resources and looking pretty. Everything on that video could have been done with OSX some years back, but there's very little point as I see it.

Take the spaces vs. the cube thing. With apple's method, you zoom out and it's instantly obvious what's going on and how it works. With the cube, it's a lot less obvious, not as fast or easy, and you can't even see all your desktops at once. The cube looks prettier but it's actually worse. And what happens if you want more desktops? Do you get dodecahedrons? Are you forced to work on a triangular desktop? =)

The window wobble too.. it's cute, but all it does is waste resources, and a lot of people don't like it anyway. Transparent windows is a bit more useful, but only in a very few cases. I bet most people will never touch it, or will have a play with it and then never touch it.
Click to expand...

That particular cip may not have been the best. There are other features that behave exactly like spaces in compiz. In fact I believe that is where Apple took the idea from. And the cube doesn't have to stay a cube you can have up to 16 desktops I believe and the 3D environment changes accordingly.
 
clevin said:
lol, I smell sore grapes, 😛 not to mention, compiz has more to offer than cubes. desktop expose, and desktop wall is just what space does, with better accessibility.

I would advise you at least to try for yourself. Making judgment by watching a video, IMHO, isn't good enough.

Could have been done? would have been done? lol, Is this type of reasoning change any facts that apple is behind on this topic?
Click to expand...

Lol, no sour grapes. I use osx, windows, and linux. Linux mostly on servers, where compiz isn't used, but sometimes on the desktop too. They all have their good and bad points - I'd say linux was best on the server, osx for getting things done reliably and quickly, and windows for having a big range of tools and flexibility.

I know about the expose + spaces features too, but weren't they made after apple did them? (i.e. they copied apple - I might be wrong, but that's the impression I had). Apart from the apple copies (if that's what they are), I've not seen anything really innovative or useful in it.
 
psonice said:
L
I know about the expose + spaces features too, but weren't they made after apple did them? (i.e. they copied apple - I might be wrong, but that's the impression I had). Apart from the apple copies (if that's what they are), I've not seen anything really innovative or useful in it.
Click to expand...

well, again, try it.

Also, Eye candy is part of OSX's attraction from the beginning. a system that just work but looks ugly won't sell. Look around and see how man apple fans here despise some apps just because they are "ugly!, not looking mac-ish", no matter how powerful they are.

PS. I strongly advise people stop using the world "copy", no matter who comes up the design first.

I have strong sense that apple will adopt many stuff from compiz-fusion in 10.6, Im sure SJ will never call himself a photocopier.

The false idea of some people that apple invented everything is sad and dishonest, its getting to the limit of pushing people away. This narrow minded culture created by apple is harmful and further takes some mac users away from the reality.
 
psonice said:
Apple are good at putting in eye candy that actually does something helpful, instead of just wasting resources and looking pretty. Everything on that video could have been done with OSX some years back, but there's very little point as I see it.
Click to expand...

Yeah but it attracts the consumers 🙂 And EVERYONE loves a bit of eye candy - and if the option to turn it off is there, scrooges can turn it off 🙂

psonice said:
Take the spaces vs. the cube thing. With apple's method, you zoom out and it's instantly obvious what's going on and how it works. With the cube, it's a lot less obvious, not as fast or easy, and you can't even see all your desktops at once. The cube looks prettier but it's actually worse. And what happens if you want more desktops? Do you get dodecahedrons? Are you forced to work on a triangular desktop? =)
Click to expand...

lol I am sure that Apple would come up with something more innovative than that. Maybe they would make the cube thing taller to fit more in? Or just show your 4, 5 or 6 (depending on whether or not they allow another space on top and bottom) most active spaces? Plus if you could use both normal spaces view and the cube view then it would please everyone.

psonice said:
The window wobble too.. it's cute, but all it does is waste resources, and a lot of people don't like it anyway. Transparent windows is a bit more useful, but only in a very few cases. I bet most people will never touch it, or will have a play with it and then never touch it.
Click to expand...

Yes, the Window wobble is a bit pointless but at the same time, if you can turn it off then everyone is happy. You've got to remember that OS X needs to appeal to consumers AND pros. You can't cut some things out because pros and scrooges don't want them. I wouldn't use the Window Wobble but it would be useful for showing off OS X to friends, encouraging them to switch over... especially if you could activate it just by holding a key (like holding shift to slow down animations).
And, I could imagine just about anyone who needs to use a web tutorial using the transparent window feature.
 
I'm perfectly happy with spaces. As mentioned, there's not too much eye candy (meaning functionality is not lost).

compiz looks good, but swithcing can be annoying if you're going backwards and forwards. What would you do if you wanted 16 virtual screens!.
 
Compiz does everything Spaces can do x10, so functionality is a bad argument. It was also out long before Spaces so they've had a lot of time to develop. And let's not even start arguing about useless animation. *cough* Time Machine 😉

Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with OS X Leopard though. I hope Apple will finish their transition from the old Aqua interface to the new one in Leopard. There's still some inconsistency in icons and scroll bars (which can easily be fixed, but should be an official update).
 
clevin said:
well, again, try it.

Also, Eye candy is part of OSX's attraction from the beginning. a system that just work but looks ugly won't sell. Look around and see how man apple fans here despise some apps just because they are "ugly!, not looking mac-ish", no matter how powerful they are.

PS. I strongly advise people stop using the world "copy", no matter who comes up the design first.

I have strong sense that apple will adopt many stuff from compiz-fusion in 10.6, Im sure SJ will never call himself a photocopier.

The false idea of some people that apple invented everything is sad and dishonest, its getting to the limit of pushing people away. This narrow minded culture created by apple is harmful and further takes some mac users away from the reality.
Click to expand...

Talking 10.6 already? What will they call it? I like Minx myself.
 
10.6 I would imagine we'd get some of these type of features.

It has to do with the power of the machine. I tried loading Ubuntu and Beryl on a laptop and I couldn't get any effects to work. I guess the video card was too whimpy.

Ubuntu, which the new version seems more graphics intensive, is also a bit sluggish on it (a Thinkpad P4 with discreet ATI Radeon graphics).

I would imagine 10.6 because I believe that Apple would require a minimum of Core Duo and 1Gigs RAM and the GMA 950 chipset. Recommended C2D, X3100, and 2Gigs RAM for all the eye-candy.

Sort of like Vista with all the eye-candy - needs more power!
 
rsm5068 said:
Talking 10.6 already? What will they call it? I like Minx myself.
Click to expand...

I thought about it, there are so many cats already, and name is running out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantherinae apple might want to switch to bird, such as Morphnus

gkarris said:
10.6 I would imagine we'd get some of these type of features.

It has to do with the power of the machine. I tried loading Ubuntu and Beryl on a laptop and I couldn't get any effects to work. I guess the video card was too whimpy.

Ubuntu, which the new version seems more graphics intensive, is also a bit sluggish on it (a Thinkpad P4 with discreet ATI Radeon graphics).

I would imagine 10.6 because I believe that Apple would require a minimum of Core Duo and 1Gigs RAM and the GMA 950 chipset. Recommended C2D, X3100, and 2Gigs RAM for all the eye-candy.
Click to expand...
I sincerely doubt thats the case. My Evo 610C with 512MB Memory and ATi Mobile 7500 32MB vRAM runs compiz-fusion very smoothly. Ubuntu might need better graphic card and/or more memory, but definitely not for the reason of compiz-fusion.

PS. you can try different distroes such as pclinuxos or mandriva, they seems to do much better with old machines.
 
Eluzion said:
Compiz does everything Spaces can do x10, so functionality is a bad argument. It was also out long before Spaces so they've had a lot of time to develop. And let's not even start arguing about useless animation. *cough* Time Machine 😉
Click to expand...

To be honest, you've been able to rotate between workspaces with the cube (or several other transitions) on a Mac for at least five years now using Desktop Manager. I used it briefly in 2003-2004 after I got my iBook and then deleted it. So whenever I see people salivate over the cube in Compiz (which they do for some reason), it seems so five years ago to me...

I do use wobbly windows, a very light version of the burn animation (mystical), and the ring switcher, though. I'm still playing around with it to see what I do and don't like. If I can figure it out, perhaps I'll make a Youtube video of my current settings. That's the thing about compiz though. It can do a lot, but it takes a ridiculous amount of fiddling. Very few of the presets in it were at all considered in the context of ergonomics.
 
mkrishnan said:
you've been able to rotate between workspaces with the cube (or several other transitions) on a Mac for at least five years now using Desktop Manager. .
Click to expand...

except you can't control the cube. compiz-fusion is more "game-ish" on this, which is much more fun.🙂
 
Apple and eye candy

My point about apple not using much eye candy was just that they put it in only where it's helpful (well, with the exception of the menu bar + dock in leopard, and look at the criticism they got there!).

The minimise anim, expose, spaces, user switching - they're all eye candy, but they're also useful, and actually quite minimalist. It's possible to do far more with osx (like somebody said, desktop manager does more, there's also another one I used to use on 10.3 that had a lot of very fancy effects).

I think that's where apple succeeds so well - it's all minimal, but very functional.
 
I love Ubuntu on my Laptop, it runs smoothly & the eye candy looks pretty cool, especially when showing off to friends who are windows users.

I'm on the fence on this debate though. I mean, it would be nice to have more eye candy on OS X, but then, I'm more into effiency on the hardware.

But then, lwhat if like Linux, a simple .app in System Preferences was available to turn it off. Nothing to hard is it? I mean, at least; & no offence to the people that put there hard work into Linux OS, it would be more stable as the software could be written for the hardware that Apple use as its just a small amount of different hardware.

Like I said it would be nice, but its like Vista, looks nice & can be usable but until dual/quad core processors are used more effiently plus other hardware, theres no point. I mean, Vista needs 1Gb Ram just to run the desktop. I know Linux is alot better? but the new processors have a lot of time to mature before they intergrate eye candy features. Unless they use a switch in Sys Pref's then I can see people wanting it.

Imagine rendering a film, or compiling something in OS X & you need it done that day but you want to run iTunes, surf the web, write a document/ spreadsheet & email people whilst doing so, or even ripping/converting DVD's or alike, moving between screens and the eye candy showing would slow down the system.

It just depends on what your pref's are. Apple have done well so far. The only time I will ever get a new Windows PC once I get my iMac will be when Windows 7 comes available. If its what they say its going to be??? & then that will only be used for work.

Eye candy is not always the be all & end all. If I could use terminal to convert files, I would. But the GUI is always the way it goes now. I like eye candy, but it doesn't help me do my work better.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back