Panther Feature: 'Piles'

[MacRumors]

MacNews.net.tc (http://macnews.net.tc) linked this article (http://www.asktog.com/columns/035SquanAdv.html) from 2000 entitled "Apple Squandering the Advantage".

Of most interest is a description of a long-patented UI feature of Apple's... known as "Piles":


Apple holds a patent on this one. Developed by Gitta Salomon and her team close to a decade ago, a pile is a loose grouping of documents. Its visual representation is an overlay of all the documents within the pile, one on top of the other, rotated to varying degrees. In other words, a pile on the desktop looked just like a pile on your real desktop.

To view the documents within the pile, you clicked on the top of the pile and drew the mouse up the screen. As you did so, one document after another would appear as a thumbnail next to the pile. When you found the one you were looking for, you would release the mouse and the current document would open.

Piles, unlike today?s folders, gave you a lot of hints as to their contents. You could judge the number of documents in the pile by its height. You could judge its composition very rapidly by pulling through it.


A recent Naked Mole Rat Report (http://www.macedition.com/nmr/nmr_20030404.php) from MacEdition claims that Mac OS X 10.3 will bring us an implementation of Piles... along with some new dynamic featuers causing windows to "shrink and jump" in response to users' movements. LoopRumors (http://www.looprumors.com/) had recently claimed that Panther will be "unlike anything else" and raises hopes on the upcoming release.

[TMay]

...microsoft will now patent its competing ui...

....hemmoroids....

I'll be 'itching" for XP when that feature is dropped in!

[iJon]

wow, that sounds pretty badass. man i cant wait for wwdc so we can find out whats gonna be in this cat.

iJon

[G4scott]

Very Cool. This would really help me organize projects and other things that use multiple files that are hard to find in a folder.

It would also bee cool when organizing video files, where a pile would expand, and play clips of the files inside.

With some work and innovation, this would be a very innovative feature...

[jholzner]

I think I'll have to see this in action before I decide if it's worth it...can't wait for 10.3.

[vniow]

That sounds very interesting, I wonder how it looks in application?

[DHagan4755]

I think this feature is something I'd have to see in action before I decide whether or not it's useful.

[MacBoy88]

Sounds Cool ! I can't wait for panther !!
(Panther WILL work in my iBook, Right?)

[tjwett]

I don't know, sounds kind of annoying to me. then again, i don't like the spring-loaded folders either. still, the more features the better i suppose.

[sergeantmudd]

I know that if it gets on the front page instead of Page 2 you believe it to be somewhat reliable, but I like what has been done in other posts. After the source of every rumor, comment on the reliablity of the source. I know about the reliability of the big one (Thinksecret and Spymac, great and terrible respectively) but I am not sure about the smaller ones.

[bikertwin]

Wasn't this something from Taligent or some other Apple/IBM collaboration? I remember discussions of piles back in my OS/2 days when it was supposed to be the next big thing. (We all know what happened to Taligent.)

Didn't make sense at the time, but the description above sounds more plausible.

Wow. Is Panther really going to be that different?

[BillyShears]

I'm not sure I understand this.

What is the benefit to this, as opposed to a folder with thumbnails turned on?

Maybe this is something (as others suggested) that needs to be seen.

[chewbaccapits]

Originally posted by TMay
...microsoft will now patent its competing ui...

....hemmoroids....

I'll be 'itching" for XP when that feature is dropped in!

Yeah, T...No kidding..I can't wait till everyone mistakenly believes its inception was MS born...


BTW, even though its a rumor, I'm expecting to pay for this upgrade now. Seem like Panther will be chock full 'o NEW features...Start saving now boys and girls....

[mnkeybsness]

sounds sort of like paging through a book quickly. i think this could be a great feature, assuming it's SMOOTH and doesn't lag at all. there are parts of the aqua UI that still aren't smooth enough to everyone out there... on that note, i am really hoping that with 10.3, the UI is really fluid.

[beatle888]

doesnt this sound like that feature apple was working on called clustering? as you moused over certain data it would expand and release sub divisions of that data. it doesnt sound very productive to me UNLESS you can SEE into the documents, that would help.

[DakotaGuy]

My guess with all of this new "animation" going on they will probably require a minimum 400Mhz G3 or any G4 processor to run 10.3, so this might be the first time we see some of the older Macs not running anything further then 10.2.5. Of course, as my iMac 400 G3 runs Jaguar pretty good I would think it would be painful on a 233 as it is anyway. Hopefully, like the dock, preferences can be set to avoid too much animation of folder to help performance on older computers.

[MorganX]

Piles sounds very cool. Wouldn't it be great if you could share "piles" over the network with a visual indicator on each document if someone else was current accessing it. Something like Mail's dock notification.

Windows shriking and moving based on actions sounds messy.

[Freg3000]

Originally posted by jholzner
I think I'll have to see this in action before I decide if it's worth it...can't wait for 10.3.

Yeah, I don't really understand it and don't know if I'll even need it or use it. This is one of those things you need to wait and see on before making a decision.

[MorganX]

Originally posted by bikertwin
Wasn't this something from Taligent or some other Apple/IBM collaboration? I remember discussions of piles back in my OS/2 days when it was supposed to be the next big thing. (We all know what happened to Taligent.)

Didn't make sense at the time, but the description above sounds more plausible.

Wow. Is Panther really going to be that different?

Been a long time since I used OS/2 but you could create groups of related documents and launch with a single icon... Microsoft tried a less elegant Office only solution in Office Binder. Piles sounds much more intuitive and useable.

[dynamicd]

Yeah, I may not use this feature but I'm sure it'll just be another thing to show off to my pc friends. And if the rumor is right that next update will be something we've never seen before then I'm sure there will be plenty of other things that I'll be able to make use of.

[nagromme]

Sounds cool! Useful? Who knows. But they'll keep the file views we're used to anyway. This would just be one more view to choose from. So why not try something very different? Someone's bound to, may as well be Apple.

Remember "Project X"? Later called "Hotsauce MCF" and made into a plugin for netscape Navigator if I'm remembering correctly. (Something like Meta Content Format??) It was Apple's experimental data browser thingie that let you "fly" forward through 3D-layered "X space"--clusters of color-coded data--and see them expand to reveal more details as you approached. Piles sounds very similar. An interesting experiment--and one you can still download (for OS 9). I downloaded it last year (after MUCH searching) but it's considerably older than that.

http://hotsauce.apple.com no longer works, but here's a Google search that might start your investigation...
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Project+X%22+apple+download+mcf&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Seems like there was once a LOT of attention being paid to Hotsauce in the computer science field. In some ways it sounds like MCF could have been what XML is now. (The "3D" browser was just one way of looking at the data.)

Ah--got it: Apple's official page. Good o'l Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/19961224042753/http://hotsauce.apple.com/

http://web.archive.org/web/19961224042833/hotsauce.apple.com/images/pxsmall.gif

May or may not be directly related--but that's what this "piles" talk makes me think of. (Well... that and Minority Report.)

Anyway, just because Apple's playing with it doesn't mean it will make the final cut. I still sting from the omission of the Minimize-in-Place which was seen in Jaguar betas. (Talk of an enhanced Panther Dock makes me hope MIP will finally arrive, though--a great improvement on windowshade.)

[j33pd0g]

I would like to see this "pile" in action... maybe we'll see some kind of artist rendering?
The only thing I can imagine would be if you held down on a folder long enough its contents would be displayed in a circle around it.
Maybe these "content displays" would have the same kinds of properties found in the dock. Maybe these "content displays" would only represent its given file type, and when you clicked on them you could see a "list menu" of those types of files.
This is what I visualize when I read that description of "piles".

[medea]

sounds great, let's hope Panther is as amazing as it is starting to be hyped up to be.
And let's hope for a upgrade discount.......

[arn]

Originally posted by j33pd0g

This is what I visualize when I read that description of "piles".

??? Really?

I thought it was clear what it described...

A stack of papers:

http://matrix.scranton.edu/images/alumni/stack-of-papers.jpg

(but top down view)

Simply collecting documents of the same type... presumably the user would just drag them into a pile.

So, all my documents from a certain project or topic I can throw into one pile... and then just click on it, and scroll up and down to get to the right one.

That's my interpretation... and I think it would be very useful.

arn

[MrMacMan]

Hm... that sounds... weird enough...

I suppose its good, but, um I need to see it in action to get a good idea of what exactally it does do.

[Luigi]

... it was called LifeStream.
Here is an example of the idea. It worked on the Apple Newton (hint, hint)

http://www.pencomputing.com/Newton/lifestreams2.html

There is a version of this software of this software out for MS WIN 2K/XP.

I do not remeber what it was called, but I will try to find it.

Regards,
Lou G.

one more thing... I always like Be OS because I was able to "database" my files via Meta Tags. Making my search better and faster. I do not use Be OS anymore, I am with OS X. But I do miss building a database with my file system.

[yzedf]

sounds a little processor intensive to me (as others alluded to). 10.2.5 is slow feeling enough on the current iBook (800 with 640MB). i would rather apple worked on speed (os x and the hardware both) and usability first. more eye candy isn't needed, thanks.

[Perceptes]

This sounds like an even worse use of $130 than Jaguar was to start if this is the kind of stuff that's going to be pushing it.

[NavyIntel007]

Well I don't get it but sure why the hell not?

[iJon]

Originally posted by Perceptes
This sounds like an even worse use of $130 than Jaguar was to start if this is the kind of stuff that's going to be pushing it.
what exactly would you like them to push into it.

iJon

[scem0]

This could be very interesting. I hope apple keeps people
from stealing this very interesting idea. If not, apple will be
apple to do it better than MS and other companies. ;)

[iJon]

Originally posted by scem0
This could be very interesting. I hope apple keeps people
from stealing this very interesting idea. If not, apple will be
apple to do it better than MS and other companies. ;)
well apple patented it so i dont think anyone will be stealing it without a lawsuit.

iJon

[scem0]

Microsoft sure does seem to do well at copying apple 'legally' though... :( ;)

[evoluzione]

sounds pretty damn cool if you ask me, not sure about the name though, "piles" :rolleyes: . nah, just conjures up some nasty stuff. I thought they should call it "stacks" instead, as in stacls of papers, but then that has the "stacked" connotations, nicer than the "piles" connotations mind ;)

[iJon]

Originally posted by scem0
Microsoft sure does seem to do well at copying apple 'legally' though... :( ;)
well if apple was smart they would have copyrighted the mac os and windows wouldnt be what it is today. if it made me the richest man in the world i would do it too.

iJon

[scem0]

I have no problems with 'piles' although I could understand
people attaching..... odd connotations to the word. ;)

stacks, files? What other names are possible?

[insidedanshead]

as a designer and dealing with, to say the least, MANY more files than the average user, lately I have been experimenting with different ways of organizing my own data... it seems that no matter how hard I try by days end I have a hundred files on my desktop.. .. my interpretation of this "piles" thing is something of a "portfolio" or better yet a "packet" where any type of file (.psd, .ai, .jpg, .doc, .indd, etc) could be put in a project by project based pile..or maybe this is only my wishing.. organization freaks abroad should get geeked about something like this.. this would be my savior to organization and the cure to endless headaches...

then again this could also turn into one of those "genie effect" dock things that serve no purpose but bog down your machine and a thing to show drooling windows users.. only hours after owning jaguar I switched to "scale effect" over "genie effect"

[MasterX (OSiX)]

One of my past ideas was to be able to drag "spring loadad dock items" into the dock to reduce clutter. for example, you click on a globe and OmniWeb, IE 5 X, and Safari all overlay the globe so you can pick one.

The last post gave me another idea though, iTunes has smart playlists, imagine porting the idea to files. I'm thinking how this could work, but basically you would set rules for a folder and it would create subfolders for you. For example all files in your documents folder say created within 2 days would be in a folder, all your photoshop files in another folder, and so on.

[iJon]

Originally posted by MasterX (OSiX)
One of my past ideas was to be able to drag "spring loadad dock items" into the dock to reduce clutter. for example, you click on a globe and OmniWeb, IE 5 X, and Safari all overlay the globe so you can pick one.

The last post gave me another idea though, iTunes has smart playlists, imagine porting the idea to files. I'm thinking how this could work, but basically you would set rules for a folder and it would create subfolders for you. For example all files in your documents folder say created within 2 days would be in a folder, all your photoshop files in another folder, and so on.
you can already do that, drag a folder to the right part of the dock and your set.

iJon

[vniow]

I wonder if this is going to operate somewhat like the minimize in place hack?

Here's what they look like when you 'pile' them on top of each other:

[soosy]

I remember reading that article of Tog's a while ago... piles was one of the cooler ideas in it.

there's a lot more that can be done on the interface so I'm hopeful...

I've wanted to see more done with icons... Adding "Show Item Info" in Jaguar is good, but why not have a badge on folders that tells how many items are in it? there's a lot more ideas out there... like instead of locking up the finder when you connect to server, how 'bout showing a server icon on the desktop with the spinning progress indicator on the icon until it connects.

[iJon]

Originally posted by vniow
I wonder if this is going to operate somewhat like the minimize in place hack?

Here's what they look like when you 'pile' them on top of each other:
that was in the first couple of betas for jaguar, i wonder if they will bring it back in this one. wasnt a feature i was to fond of anyways.

iJon

[maxterpiece]

Originally posted by iJon
you can already do that, drag a folder to the right part of the dock and your set.

iJon

you can also pretty much do the iTunes indexing through column view. I mean it's not exactly the same, but it's pretty similar... just organize your files in whatever way you please (eg make a folder with photoshop stuff) and navigate away.

[vniow]

Originally posted by iJon
that was in the first couple of betas for jaguar, i wonder if they will bring it back in this one. wasnt a feature i was to fond of anyways.

iJon

I love it, I couldn't operate as well without it, since I have a small screen, my dock gets full rather quickly so I just hold down ctrl and click on the minimize button and I have this little mini-window that I can drag around wherever I want, I never had it on by default, but I do appreciate the option to use it if I choose (by clicking on the minimize button while holding down the ctrl key ot double clicking on the top bar while holding down the ctrl key...)

[iSmell]

Originally posted by MasterX (OSiX)
The last post gave me another idea though, iTunes has smart playlists, imagine porting the idea to files. I'm thinking how this could work, but basically you would set rules for a folder and it would create subfolders for you. For example all files in your documents folder say created within 2 days would be in a folder, all your photoshop files in another folder, and so on.

I believe I read something about that exact idea recently. Wasn't this going to be one of the features of Copland?

::searches internet::

Oh yeah, here it is in an ArsTechnica article (http://www.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-5.html) . Live search folders. I guess they had some problems implimenting them because they didn't want the user to be waiting while the search was going on, but the searching has to happen sometime. Personally, I would like to have this feature, even if I had to wait everytime I opened the folder. It seems like that would be very easy to impliment just by tying saved searches with folder-like icons. Maybe we'll get that in Panther. That seems way more useful to me than piles, but I don't think I really get piles anyway. I do think self rearranging windows would be cool as long as it's snappy. Imagine if your whole desktop scaled under your cursor like the dock does. You could fit tons more open windows on it. As long as you could turn it off after you've shown your friends, I think it would be neat.

[Xero]

i just installed this little hack... just wondering: if i want to can it, is it easy to find and trash by just searching it in the finder?

what interests me about this rumor, besides "piles", is the mentioning of windows/objects having a dynamic reaction to your "input". makes me think of how dock icons sort of move out of the way when your adding a new icon, but having to do with actual App windows.

EDIT: this was supposed to be in reply to vniow about the MIP hack

[BaghdadBob]

Originally posted by iSmell
I believe I read something about that exact idea recently. Wasn't this going to be one of the features of Copland?

::searches internet::

Oh yeah, here it is in an ArsTechnica article (http://www.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-5.html) . Live search folders. I guess they had some problems implimenting them because they didn't want the user to be waiting while the search was going on, but the searching has to happen sometime. Personally, I would like to have this feature, even if I had to wait everytime I opened the folder. It seems like that would be very easy to impliment just by tying saved searches with folder-like icons. Maybe we'll get that in Panther. That seems way more useful to me than piles, but I don't think I really get piles anyway. I do think self rearranging windows would be cool as long as it's snappy. Imagine if your whole desktop scaled under your cursor like the dock does. You could fit tons more open windows on it. As long as you could turn it off after you've shown your friends, I think it would be neat.

Maybe I havn't spent enough time violently exploring Jaguar, but maybe they could implement some tagging-type system to the file system? Like labels? Personally I've had a tendancy to be pretty well organized in my file system (although I finally had to overhaul it to be more Jaguar-friendly) but over the years I have had more and more need for fine organization, and frankly have never liked the way colorized folder icons work.

With an Aqua interface this could be much cooler. They could do not only colorization but perhaps badging as a visual representation, and then allow you to sort according to this. This would only work within folders, of course, but personally I hate to have a cluttered desktop (he says, reaching over his overdue bills, DBZ toys, and bunny ears). It interferes with the beauty of my wallpaper.

Piles sounds like it could be neat, but more indexing features would be considerably more useful.

You know what else would be useful, Jobs? A two button mouse! You could save us all a lot of animation and just give us a frickin two button mouse! Do you know HOW HARD IT IS TO PLAY DIABLO WITH A ONE BUTTON MOUSE??

Sheesh

[cb911]

this sounds ssooo good!! :D i'm a big fan of minimise in place, i've loved it ever since i installed it... it's just awesome! imagine if 'piles' were like minimise in place, but when you put the cursor over them, they enlarged like the dock!!! :D :D that would be so good for organizing stuff, hope it makes it into Panther!!:D:D YAY!! :D

[foniks2020]

I'm reminded that there is also a rumor that BeOS like database files system may also be showing up in 10.3

Now combine this with 'piles' and you get a wonderful mixture of what we have now. Folders and 'bundles'.

Folders are a hierarchical organization tool. What happens when you need to organize a folder? you make more folders... and on and on. Folders are application agnostic... they tell you absolutely nothing about the contents other than the number and size.

Bundles on the other hand are very specific folders which contain very application specific contents... all the files and media needed for the 'application'.

I see 'Piles' as a correlative to 'Bundles' in that they are specific folders which contain specific contents relating to a specific project. These folders or 'piles' can now be given specific meta data related to that project which would not be useful for a generic folder. This is kind of like talking about a formula one race car having certain characteristics as opposed to an economy car, certain attributes in the f1 car aren't relevant in the economy car.

So going back to the BeOS DBFS (database file system) which included massive meta data capabilities you can see how further classification of specific folder types is possible when it has so much potential meta data. 'Piles' is just the beginning and really 'bundles' preceded them as well... Keynote itself creates 'bundles' as it's ouput with all the media inluded with an XML description of what all of that media is used for. So 'piles' seems to essentially be a new 'project' type 'bundle' or folder type.

I'm sure you all can extend the analogies and metaphors I've used to cover more specific uses of 'folder types'.

I'm definitely interested.

[yumpin yiminy]

Arn and a few others explained the idea in a way that sounds cool.
If they are right, it will likely rely on your knowledge of what is in the pile. So, if like insidedanshead wrote for his want, you would be able to have an IN box/OUT box type of arrangment. A bunch of disparate doc types that would be labelled as you mouseover them.
It also might signify metadata returning to the fold. that is very cool because it would mean the implementation of more GUI additions which allow for customizing the interface or arranging the Desktop to your personal preferences. That said, piles might be a feature you turn on or off, but if you are dealing with a ton of related files you'd likely want it on.
As for Hotsauce....oh, that was a great idea i hoped would have gone down. But its demise was because of Apple's R and D budget being cut. It was one of the first technologies that made me think the web could be cool like the search engine in that movie "End of the World" made it look. Well, OK. not THAT cool, but, cool enough.
here's to hoping Panther just changes alot...
some Copland related links(yikes. wha happened?):

http://www.access.ch/power/infoservices/MacWeek/MacWeek220196.html#Index3
http://www.mug.jhmi.edu/mirrors/InfoAlley/0296/12/copland.html

[MacBandit]

I too like this idea. This thread is an interesting test for left brain/right brain. I take it those that are actually imaging the idea as it was described must be right brained people and the others left brained.

Any how, any way they can give me to further organize. They need to give us something. They took away spring loaded folders thought they begruddingly gave them back. They took minimize in place and they took pop up windows. In place those wonderfully great ideas they gave us column view which really doesn't do anything for keeping me organized.

I can understand peoples sentiments about the name it does bring up some relationship with the poop thread.

Also here is a great image of the piling filing system in action.

[CZone]

Maybe the video in this page could illustrate better a piling filing system in action:
http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi96/proceedings/videos/Fertig/etf.htm

[bdkennedy1]

a pile.... how about just perfecting what's already there?

[rinnin]

Originally posted by nagromme

...Remember "Project X"? Later called "Hotsauce MCF" and made into a plugin for netscape Navigator if I'm remembering correctly.(Something like Meta Content Format??) It was Apple's experimental data browser thingie that let you "fly" forward through 3D-layered "X space"--clusters of color-coded data--and see them expand to reveal more details as you approached. Piles sounds very similar.

...May or may not be directly related--but that's what this "piles" talk makes me think of. (Well... that and Minority Report.)..
[/B]

In relation to nagromme's post, I just happened to see Minority Report by coincidence last night & thought the whole "pre crime" set looked very Apple-ish. Transparent flat screens, smooth curves, smooth flowing graphics etc.
Got me thinking about older rumors of Apple making hologram displays and this piles thing makes it even more fascinating.

Also, remember Juarassic Park (the 1st one) where Lex had to hack into the computers to get the doors working or something? They used some "fly-in" file system like what Project X / Hotsauce above seems to describe. - I always thought it was a UNIX filesystem.
Can anbody confirm this or know anything about what they used in that scene?

Ronan
:)

[nagromme]

Originally posted by rinnin
Also, remember Juarassic Park (the 1st one) where Lex had to hack into the computers to get the doors working or something? They used some "fly-in" file system like what Project X / Hotsauce above seems to describe. - I always thought it was a UNIX filesystem.
Can anbody confirm this or know anything about what they used in that scene?

That was something they made up--not Project X. I seem to recall it was running on PowerMacs, and yet the little kid recognized the flying 3D interface as "UNIX"... just bad writing I think!

[Awimoway]

Originally posted by Xero
what interests me about this rumor, besides "piles", is the mentioning of windows/objects having a dynamic reaction to your "input". makes me think of how dock icons sort of move out of the way when your adding a new icon, but having to do with actual App windows.


This is what I thought, too. But it doesn't excite me. I find dock magnification really annoying. It's a good concept for keeping your dock small, but in my experience it doesn't work properly because magnification is often not very smooth--it will hesitate just long enough for me to accidentally click on the wrong icon.

I'm not sure I want my windows magnifying when I mouse over them.

[nickgold]

Originally posted by BillyShears
I'm not sure I understand this.

What is the benefit to this, as opposed to a folder with thumbnails turned on?

Maybe this is something (as others suggested) that needs to be seen.

I am trying to figure that out as well. Maybe because it takes up a whole lot less screen real estate than a very large directory open in list or column view, or even icon view. I am intrigued, but we will see if it even makes it in to the release. I hope so.

[dongmin]

It could be a nice little addition, but I doubt it'll replace the existing folder system. Piles work for small collections of documents, but after a certain number, the whole scrolling-through-previews of all the documents within a pile would become horribly inefficient.

I rarely just throw stuff into a single folder. Instead, I create subfolders within folders to organize documents according to different characteristics. I create groupings, layers, and hierarchies. To me, this kind of 'outline' system is a lot more efficient than a 'pile' system. The existing file system has the added advantage of being highly customizable--I can organize files however I want, in a way that's efficient for me. I like Tog's other suggestions like adding more visual cues to folders, like 'lables' in OS 9.

What was so great about 'lables' was that was 'cheap' to implement, meaning no added demands on the CPU. My big compaint about OS X is that many of the UI features are very processor-intensive. Piles simply would not work right now because previewing on OS X is really slow, a lot slower than previewing on Windows. I don't know if this is due to the OS or the hardware, but it has ways to go before it can be fully integrated with the UI.

[contempt]

This sounds like it would make the finder run even slower. My dual 1gig pauses if it needs to load a folder with tons of icons. Imagine the lag on this.

I just want an upgrade that'll speed everything up. I'm still a believer that OS9.x was a lot faster than 10.2.x Just give me raw speed in this upgrade.

[BaghdadBob]

Originally posted by dongmin
It could be a nice little addition, but I doubt it'll replace the existing folder system. Piles work for small collections of documents, but after a certain number, the whole scrolling-through-previews of all the documents within a pile would become horribly inefficient.

I rarely just throw stuff into a single folder. Instead, I create subfolders within folders to organize documents according to different characteristics. I create groupings, layers, and hierarchies. To me, this kind of 'outline' system is a lot more efficient than a 'pile' system. The existing file system has the added advantage of being highly customizable--I can organize files however I want, in a way that's efficient for me. I like Tog's other suggestions like adding more visual cues to folders, like 'lables' in OS 9.

What was so great about 'lables' was that was 'cheap' to implement, meaning no added demands on the CPU. My big compaint about OS X is that many of the UI features are very processor-intensive. Piles simply would not work right now because previewing on OS X is really slow, a lot slower than previewing on Windows. I don't know if this is due to the OS or the hardware, but it has ways to go before it can be fully integrated with the UI.

I agree with you here on a lot of points. There are some serious issues with the performance of the UI as far as I'm concerned. Now, I use a 400mhz G3 iMac, and all things considered it's not too slow, but I had always felt that way because I had a slow computer and thought it would be more of a stretch for my system before I installed it than it turned out to be.

But it's not just the redraw speed, it's things like the fact that my Iomega drive spins up for absolutely no reason (bogging down the system) when I'm accessing the hard drive. It's things like the fact that when I'm trying to drag an item from one column into a folder in the previous column and I expect it to select that folder for the column on the right so I gan go into the heirarchy, it opens a new window in icon view. Gee, thanks.

It's stupid stuff like sorting iPhotos into folders first by their year, then by their month, and then by their day. As if the photo itself did not have this information. And then the "subfolders" you create are nothing but aliases, not only in iPhoto from a photo management perspective, but also on the hard drive itself. And then iPhoto won't burn on my Iomega drive. And the aliases don't work on my fiancees XP system, so copying it directly makes it so that you have convenient non-working aliases and all your actual photos highly divided and five levels deep. So you have to do it by hand with third party software.

There has GOT TO BE a better way of organizing the photos on your hard disk than that. There just has to. And if I was doing it by hand, they would be better organized. But Apple needs to give us more organizational tools than what we've been provided in Jaguar, especially if it's not going to be very fluid moving back and forth between heirarchical levels of folders.

So in that way piles wouldn't be too bad, but I would like some more indexing options. Really, I am a highly disorganized person when it comes to my personal life, but I like to keep everything tidy on my computer. All I'm asking is for Apple to help me out some. And even labels would be better than nothing. Piles would be nice, but unless you can display them in grouped but already laid-out view in column view, it's not good enough a system by itself.

I mean, for goodness sake, Outlook (office ed.) is easier to sort your emails in than the finder is to sort your files in. I only know this because I use to work at CIGNA HC and I had about 100 emails a day directed at me and had to find an efficient way to organize them...I wouldn't buy it for myself, I don't even own an Xbox....

No one is probably reading this thread anymore anyway...yay! new safari!

[cubist]

Originally posted by TMay

....hemmoroids....


Exactly! See 1 Sa 6:5, the Philistines had to make golden images of their, er, hemorrhoids. Hello, Marketing?

Piles... and in another thread we have Clutter. Now we can make our computers as disorganized as the rest of our lives.

From the description of this feature's working, it sounds pretty awful.

How about something like the universal tree described in Jef Raskin's book "The Humane Interface", but with local zooming (the items nearer the user focus become large, with the items in the corners being small, so that the whole thing fits in a window)? I think that'd be more workable.

[vniow]

Originally posted by Xero
i just installed this little hack... just wondering: if i want to can it, is it easy to find and trash by just searching it in the finder?



Not sure exactly what you're asking, but the MIP hack replaces your current dock and its preferences so you'd have to replace those with the origionals if you want it gone.

[vniow]

Originally posted by cb911
imagine if 'piles' were like minimise in place, but when you put the cursor over them, they enlarged like the dock!!!

That sounds like the autoshading feature in Linux where you double click on the title bar to shade it and when you move your mouse over it, it expands, move it away and it retracts, to stop it, you just double click on the title bar again and it'll stay expanded.

Nifty feature although it can get annoying in some cases...

[eric_n_dfw]

Originally posted by foniks2020
I'm reminded that there is also a rumor that NeXt OS like database files system may also be showing up in 10.3
...
So going back to the NeXt DBFS (database file system) which included massive meta data capabilities you can see how further classification of specific folder types is possible when it has so much potential meta data. 'Piles' is just the beginning and really 'bundles' preceded them as well... Keynote itself creates 'bundles' as it's ouput with all the media inluded with an XML description of what all of that media is used for. So 'piles' seems to essentially be a new 'project' type 'bundle' or folder type.
I think you meant BeOS who has this database file system. No?

(BTW, it was NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP - not NeXt OS :) )

(And to be even more geeky - OPENSTEP was NeXT's implementation of OpenStep :eek: )

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by rinnin
Also, remember Juarassic Park (the 1st one) where Lex had to hack into the computers to get the doors working or something? They used some "fly-in" file system like what Project X / Hotsauce above seems to describe. - I always thought it was a UNIX filesystem.
Can anbody confirm this or know anything about what they used in that scene?


The "file system" in JP, just like most computer interfaces depicted in movies, is a complete fabrication, devoid of any relationship to reality.

But, you are correct, it was described as a Unix file system, and the GUIs depicted (not the fly-though stuff, the other UIs ...) were mainly Mac Classic-based.

[suzerain]

First, on HotSauce, it was cool. I HotSauced my Web site way back in the day (1996-7, I guess). It was kind of a cool way to look at data, although really ugly.

Second, I think Tog has some good ideas in that article, like having folders visually display things like age, time last opened, and how "full" they are. And, the "pile" concept is interesting.

HOWEVER

My own personal opinion is that people are now sufficiently acquainted with computers that we can stop all these stupid real-world metaphors. A "file" in computer parlance is not really a file; it is simply an address where data resides.

If you think about it, all the Finder does is mimic the command line. With the exception of aliases, it's a concrete representation of the stupid, old Unix/DOS directory hierarchies.

I think we need to take the BeOS system-wide database thing even further, and instead forget where things are grouped, and just have all groups be dynamic searches.

You know, say you create a Microsoft Word document which is a letter to a potential employer. In my Finder, you'd save that to groups you've assigned (basically just pieces of metadata), rather than choosing a "fixed location" (like now).

So, you give the file a name, and the save dialog box allows you to just pick as many groups that you have defined as you want, like "Work", "Cover Letters", "Company XXY", and the document is "saved" in all of them at once.

So all of those are really dynamic searches of all the documents that match that particular criteria. For an added bonus, they could use an iTunes-like rating system so that, for each group, you could specify the relevance of the item. Like, the cover letter might be a 5-star relevancy to "cover letters", but only a 2-star relevancy to "Work", so when you viewed the Work folder, if sorted by relevance, it would be lower in the list.

A simple example of this behavior in OS X is with the Address Book. I have different groups in my Address Book called "Friends", "Colleagues" and "Basketball Team". I can create a person in "Colleagues", and then drag their name into "Basketball Team" if they join the team I play on, but it doesn't *move* them, it simply adds them to another group. In short, items can exist in multiple groups at the same time.

This whole "spatial Finder" thing was useful back when computers were a new paradigm, because it related to the real world, but we've now reached the point where continuing these metaphors is an exercise in futility, and is really holding computers back, rather than helping them become more useful.

Just my unsolicited opinion on all of this.

[Xero]

Originally posted by Awimoway
This is what I thought, too. But it doesn't excite me. I find dock magnification really annoying. It's a good concept for keeping your dock small, but in my experience it doesn't work properly because magnification is often not very smooth--it will hesitate just long enough for me to accidentally click on the wrong icon.

I'm not sure I want my windows magnifying when I mouse over them.

whats the speed of your system? this is probably why your seeing lag in the dock. you do have a point tho; this dynamic stuff would probably take a butt-load of processing power

[eric_n_dfw]

Originally posted by Xero
whats the speed of your system? this is probably why your seeing lag in the dock. you do have a point tho; this dynamic stuff would probably take a butt-load of processing power Also depends on what you're doing. My G4 500 (Single Proc - no Quartz Extreme either) here at work can magnify my dock smooth as silk when I'm just browsing and using terminal, but on my Dual 500 at home - with a Radeon 8500 and a ton of RAM - it can get a little jerky while Final Cut Pro 3 is the focused app and is rendering something.

[Kedward]

I can't believe nobody bothered to check the original patent. You're all discussing how it might work when the patent details exactly how it works with GUI ideas and standard activity flowgraphs...

Try here (http://patimg1.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=06243724&idkey=NONE) for details.

[porovaara]

Originally posted by nagromme
That was something they made up--not Project X. I seem to recall it was running on PowerMacs, and yet the little kid recognized the flying 3D interface as "UNIX"... just bad writing I think!

No, the interface existed and still does if you want to use it, you can run it on SGIs. However the usability of it sucks hardcore as anything other than a tech demo.

[AgtAlpha]

Originally posted by porovaara
No, the interface existed and still does if you want to use it, you can run it on SGIs. However the usability of it sucks hardcore as anything other than a tech demo.

He's right ... The system is the 3-D Filesystem Navigator (http://www.sgi.com/fun/freeware/3d_navigator.html) that still runs on older IRIX machines. It was specially coded for the movie, but does serve for data-set visualization.

-- Rob

[arn]

Originally posted by Kedward
I can't believe nobody bothered to check the original patent. You're all discussing how it might work when the patent details exactly how it works with GUI ideas and standard activity flowgraphs...

Try here (http://patimg1.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=06243724&idkey=NONE) for details.

Hey Kedward...

A voice of reason... thank's for pulling the patent... I guess I never thought it would cause such a discussion regarding the actual details of the implementation.

arn

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by suzerain
My own personal opinion is that people are now sufficiently acquainted with computers that we can stop all these stupid real-world metaphors. A "file" in computer parlance is not really a file; it is simply an address where data resides.


Replace "people are" with "I am" and you might be correct. In my experience, however, the vast majority of computer users are not beyond real-world metaphors; they cling to them voraciously and are completely lost when those metaphors are violated.


I think we need to take the BeOS system-wide database thing even further, and instead forget where things are grouped, and just have all groups be dynamic searches.


Why completely discard heirarchal organization in favor of endless searches? Seems silly to me. Heirarchal organization is just so easy to implement, and so easy to ignore if you don't want to bother with it (just put everything in your "Documents" folder ...) that it's just plain silly to discard it altogether.


You know, say you create a Microsoft Word document which is a letter to a potential employer. In my Finder, you'd save that to groups you've assigned (basically just pieces of metadata), rather than choosing a "fixed location" (like now).


As an example, if you didn't want a core heirarchy, the file "name" you chose would just be in the Documents folder. You only have to use folders if you want to. I mean, DOS 1.0 didn't even have folders!


So, you give the file a name, and the save dialog box allows you to just pick as many groups that you have defined as you want, like "Work", "Cover Letters", "Company XXY", and the document is "saved" in all of them at once.


An excellent idea (meta-data on files), but, again, this does not mean that folders must or should be forgotten.


This whole "spatial Finder" thing was useful back when computers were a new paradigm, because it related to the real world, but we've now reached the point where continuing these metaphors is an exercise in futility, and is really holding computers back, rather than helping them become more useful.

Just my unsolicited opinion on all of this.

Well, I don't see how spatial concepts are "holding computers back". Layering additional functionality over the top of a solid spatially-oriented core makes far more sense to me.

Take a ride in a modern jet and you'll find the same basic controls you'd see in a prop-driven plane 75 years ago. The controls back up to electronic sensors and such, and pulling back on the stick doesn't connect directly to the flight control surfaces via cables and pulleys, but still the controls are the same. Why? Because, in a desparate pinch, many aircraft will backup to manual systems, because every school child knows how to operate a joystick, because the original controls were designed in a human-oriented manner.

The idea here is simple: when all else fails, the fundamentals still apply. If you saved a file and can't seem to find it via your searches, you can still go in and manually scour the folders for it. While it's nice to just say "Work reports, most recent" and get the most recent report you worked on, sometimes things get mis-labeled and mis-filed, and sometimes indices get out of whack (programs continue to have bugs).

IMHO, a lot of the "spatial Finder" stuff is overblown, but we have lost the clear distinction between our spatially-oriented foundation and the browsing-oriented abstractions. The result is a measurable loss of usability. By "measurable" I mean via formal usability studies: have a dozen subjects do common tasks and measure how quickly and easily they end up doing them.

The simple fact is that most people out there are not database programmers, and don't think of their files as "an address where data resides". They think of files as physical, tangible objects somewhere behind their monitor. No matter how "spatial" or "abstract" their interaction with these files is (ie, the Finder), they continue to think that there is somewhere some physical object that holds their data. Now and in the future, most people will use the computer as a tool, and should not have to adjust their way of thinking 100% to be in line with that of their tools.

In most fields the cutting edge is abstract as can be, but concepts are quickly reworked so that they can be understood in common terms. Scientists and engineers strive to come up with concrete metaphors for their concepts, because that is the fundamental key to progress. I find it odd that there is a strong tendency in computer circles to do the opposite.

[cubist]

Originally posted by jettredmont
... Take a ride in a modern jet and you'll find the same basic controls you'd see in a prop-driven plane 75 years ago. The controls back up to electronic sensors and such, and pulling back on the stick doesn't connect directly to the flight control surfaces via cables and pulleys, but still the controls are the same. Why? Because, in a desparate pinch, many aircraft will backup to manual systems, because every school child knows how to operate a joystick, because the original controls were designed in a human-oriented manner. ...

No, modern jets do not have joysticks. Very little of the operational controls of a jet airplane - or a four-seater private plane for that matter - have any similarity to those of a 1927 biplane.

I don't like hierarchicalism, especially when it gets deep; hierarchies should never be greater than three or four levels deep. Dynamic searches have potential, especially with caching. But the former is too rigid, the latter too flexible and inefficient. What's called a "twisted hierarchy" might be the best model.

[coolsoldier]

I see no use at all for anything of this sort on the desktop...though it might be useful in the dock...I never have enough dock space. If it's anything like the "piles" on my physical desk, though, I'll never find anything in them.

Also, good point on limiting hierarchy. I think about how I use iTunes. I rarely use playlists, I just type the qualifier in the "Search" box, and my "playlist" comes up instantly. Of course, Files on the hard drive aren't "tagged" like mp3's, and you can always put everything in the root folder and use the "find" feature. What you are suggesting with limiting hierarchy reminds me of the old MFS days when you couldn't put folders inside of folders. (Hierarchy was ripped off ot the "Directory" system in other OS's). Dynamic grouping would be interesting, though, IF they could come up with a universal system for meta-information that would be backwards-compatible with older files (although Apple doesn't seem to care much for backwards-compatibility these days)

[Awimoway]

Originally posted by Xero
whats the speed of your system? this is probably why your seeing lag in the dock. you do have a point tho; this dynamic stuff would probably take a butt-load of processing power

I'n using a DP 867 with 1024 MB of RAM. Often, using the dock is pretty smooth, but if I move too quickly back and forth a couple times trying to remember what app I wanted (the processor speed of my brain could use some work too ;) ), then it will hesitate just long enough to sometimes screw me up.

[foniks2020]

Originally posted by eric_n_dfw
I think you meant BeOS who has this database file system. No?

(BTW, it was NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP - not NeXt OS :) )

(And to be even more geeky - OPENSTEP was NeXT's implementation of OpenStep :eek: )

Yeah that's what happens when you're trying to get a post in in between real work... well I stand corrected ;-p thanks.

Some times it's obviously better to remain vague and let those whoe know what you're talking about fill in the proper nouns..

[herr_neumann]

So, How long before MS releases something called Stacks???

We all know it is gonna happen, and it will be sooooo totally not the same thing....:D

[Luigi]

Check this site www.scopeware.com

Same type of idea of "piling" documents on top of each other.

Photo here
http://www.scopeware.com/products/prod_v_individuals.html


Pretty cool, I look forward to using in on a MAC.

Lou G.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by Luigi
Check this site www.scopeware.com

Same type of idea of "piling" documents on top of each other.

Photo here
http://www.scopeware.com/products/prod_v_individuals.html


Pretty cool, I look forward to using in on a MAC.

Lou G.

Sort of but not really. What you need to imagine is a dozen or so folders all stacked right on top of eachother. When you click on it then drag away they expand one by one until you get to the one you want and you release to select that one.

[Wry Cooter]

Originally posted by BillyShears
I'm not sure I understand this.

What is the benefit to this, as opposed to a folder with thumbnails turned on?

Maybe this is something (as others suggested) that needs to be seen.

From what I understand of its possible implementations, you can have the finder Re-sort the piles by different criteria if you wish. Such as a pile of documents for this weeks work, then last weeks or :resort: piles of documents by document type... the jpeg pile, the text pile, the screen snapshot pile.

Of course you could sort everything manually into folders, but people don't work that way.

As I write this, I have probably over a hundred icons on my desktop (thank goodness I can make them small in os X) Sometimes I sort by date to find something, other times, I sort by type, or name. But this could probably be reduced to Four or Five piles of icons.

In a way, it is sort of like labels... you could probably save a custom search as a pile description.

[jayshao]

Piles sound interesting as a concept, and two different possible metaphors come to my mind.

1) When I think of piles, I think of an entity where order is important. I think that piles could be a modified package that maintained the order of the documents. Something similar to what Microsoft tried to do with Binder, but a the system level. Perhaps as a generic filetype, which would allow you to mix and match your Word, HTML, JPEG, OmniGraffle, Keynote and other documents into one coherent, ordered package (like a report). With OS support, and a standard API, we could even have neat things like headers and footers that worked across documents, and the ability to print the entire pile at once. You could even drag files around after you "spread" the pile to reorder them (e.g. move chapters around) and possibly have some smart files like tables of context, and indexing based on the OSX search/indexing service. Piles could contain sub-piles, and even folders.

2) As an interface for live queries. A kind of views interface, that was readily distinguished from folders to eliminate confusion from people who don't understand how the same file can be in 4 different places.