Apple Acquires 18 'Axis-Based User Interface' Patents from Maya-Systems

[a0me]

Apple Acquires 18 'Axis-Based User Interface
For a moment I read that as "18' Axis-Based User Interface" and thought "man, the Apple TV is going to be huge..."

 

[a0me]

This is eerily close to what I've been preaching for the last year, but no one is listening.

The best way to store your stuff is all in one synchronized (and backed up, version controlled) place, say Dropbox. But organizing files inside by JUST folders is bad.

Instead, there should be labels or tags, similar to Gmail's labels. You can apply them to files/folders, and get different views into your stuff:

-Files related to project A
-Photos
-Shared with person X
-Created within last 30 days
-Custom search queries?
-etc., etc.

Folders are very limiting cuz each file can only be in one folder. What if it's both a picture, and a part of project A? Do I put it in /Pictures or /ProjectA? Apply both labels, problem solved.

iCloud currently sucks for contents storage cuz you can't see all your files no matter what app they're in, so it's easy to forget what you have and where.

I really hope something good comes out of this.

I'm sure that I've read about an OS (a Linux distro maybe?) that did exactly that, i.e. a tag-based file system instead of the classic folder based file organization. That's what I love about services like Evernote or Simplenote, as it makes creating documents and tracking projects that much easier.

 

[s.horsfield]

How many friggin times does the narrator say 'documents'?

16 times

 

[canman4PM]

You mean a "server"? 😱

This "cloud" terminology is merely a metaphor for the general public to explain 'not on your local computer, somewhere on someone else's server'.

But you are correct about Dropbox, they by no means rule the server business... just a relatively well designed consumer-grade, kiddy toy by comparison. But you'll see it championed as the be-all-end-all because they give out a free GB peanuts to all the chimps at the zoo. For example, A3 crushes Dropbox, but you gotta pay for it, a detail not popular with members of the new KKK (Kollectivist Klown Kollective).

iCloud doesn't do everything MobileMe/iTools did. Personally I think for what it does, it does it way better. In addition, unless you're a 6-fingered noob, it's also totally easy to set up and sync for iDevices. I think the most valuable part of Apple's strategy was enabling iCloud to be a primary set-up and sync method for iDevices. If you want to attract new users (which they seem to be pretty good at), helps if you don't have support a ton of legacy platforms and hardware to get your fancy new device happening. That's big shift to try and spearhead, I think you'll see Apple pushing further into the more sophisticated services when they build out more data-center capacity.

Remember to remind whining babies moaning about iCloud, that it takes a local server cluster to make any of their petty feature wishes a reality across all of Apple's sizable user base.

And not only syncing - upgrading is sooooo easy. Why would I not buy a new iDevice to replace the old iDevice.

----------

Exactly, tagging is the future, like in Adobe Lightroom. What if your image belongs to 2012, San Francisco, Mom, and red dress at the same time? How do you create such folder structure? Are you going to nest by date first, and then by place, or the other way around? Folders alone are very limiting. Folders should be used for rough grouping, such as Work, Music, Photography, Lifestyle. But at some point you have to start applying tags.

A good example is Webbla, a bookmark manager. It allows you to create folders based on catagories, but within each folder you organize your links by tagging them. For example, I may tag one web link as "Photography, technique, forum, landscape". That's the way you can later find anything quickly.

You could do it like iTunes' meta-data: have a box for year, location, people, and some user defined ones. Then a search or smart folder with San Fran locations would hold it. So would a 2012 folder/search, etc.

 

[Glassed Silver]

And always will. iCloud is awful and Apple apparently thinks users are too stupid to understand "files" and "folders" even though the metaphor was fine 30 years ago. However, in iOS, users are forced to remember which apps holds they document they're looking for... Ex. did I save that PDF into iBook or into DropBox?

Preach it.

It's so horrible I dearly hope Jony Ive will do something against this mess.

Also, what's up with apps not being able to move files to others apps?
It's all copying copying copying.

Ever saved a movie from one app to another? I sure hope it's not a big movie file, because let's say you're on vacation and your iPhone is filling up.
You shot that awesome movie and it's in your camera roll and now you've got that 1GB sucker on there, but only 700MB free.

You want to edit that movie, but oh oh... can't be copied...

Probably a bad example, but you get the idea...

One more reason we need proper filesystems for flips sake. The sooner the better.
ZFS with de-duplication at least on our desktops.

I want so good under-the-hood and really needed innovation in OS X again.
I know they implemented some niceties, but really, is a proper filesystem that much to ask for?
If you want Apple, you can go start slacking for 5 or 10 years after giving me native, fully supported ZFS, I won't care because I will be a happy panda knowing all my digital life and memories, photos, family videos and diary entries just got a little more safe.
Mind you, a backup does not fix the need for checksum-based data integrity verification.

Anyways, I digress. 😱

Glassed Silver:mac

 

[pietrociao]

Next big thing for OSX..

I hope the next big feature for Mac OSX will be a new Finder. Tagging/labeling is key. I love what they did with Final Cut Pro X in terms of keywords to browse clips.

 

[Rocco83]

The problem with folders is that a file can only be located within one folder at a time when it actually could need to be associated with multiple different folders. This happens all the time. Do I put this receipt in the "2012 taxes" folder, the "Receipts" folder, or the "Client X" folder?

If you've ever used Gmail, you can see how this would work great with the way iCloud works. I love the way iCloud associates documents with the application that creates it. It makes it really easy to find your files and you save time and frustration by not having to figure out where to store them. The only downside is when you want to view files by project rather than type. It seems that applying tags to iCloud documents so you can view files in other ways would make it the best of both worlds.

I get what you are saying, but a little organization ahead of time with how you store files as well as aliases seems to do things just fine for me. Personally I would rather just not be lazy with organization than to treat my storage system like a twitter post.

To each their own.

 

[cambox]

That wasn't a real voice on the video? Was it? It sounded like Siris sister!

 

[Carniphage]

Apple's biggest unfinished change

The unix-style file and folder system is perfectly good as an underlying mechanism for computers to organise stuff on a disk.

As a solution for human beings it is unfit for purpose.

Because the only human beings that can safely use it are ones that can meticulously apply storing algorithms when they name folders, place files and so on. Such human beings are actually very rare.

In tests, no one can use a file system safely. We all create clutter and mess.
I consider myself an expert at designing efficient and usable file storage trees. But I still get tied up in knots, when stuff belongs in two places.

Storage works best when computer algorithms and not people do the heavy lifting. The complexity and underlying mess is hidden, and you just get your stuff as you want it.

Dropbox adds nothing to this problem. It's just a 1960's file system, but in the cloud. It solves an access problem, but not the organisation problem.

I am pretty sure that Apple have been working on a common solution for iOS and Mac for a while. We have only seen hints. No actual stuff.

When it does finally emerge, it's likely that it will resemble other solutions.

If I were Apple, just to be safe, I'd buy the company with the solution that it most resembles.

 

[Fishticks]

Apple innovating.
Again!

 

[whooleytoo]

Nuts! I was working on a time-based UI like this, where everything was plotted on horizontal tracks in a timeline (but not just files; also events, tasks and projects), grouped by tags/metadata. Even imagined pitching it to Apple one day - as if that ever would have happened.

Probably a good thing I was too busy/lazy to get it finished, or I'd have been sued out of existence because of these patents. 😛

 

[flottenheimer]

While I really like the thought of a Finder organized this way (perhaps even more the thought of a new Finder approach in general), I simply don't see myself tagging everything I save.

And I guess that's a basic premise for this kind of thing to actually work better than the existing Finder+search capabilities.

But I could be wrong? Any thoughts?

—

Another thought:

Could this be a new unified way to browse everything on both OSX and iOS? — Finder, Apps, iTunes, App Store, Mac App Store, search in Safari, media in Final Cut, younameit?

— The very base of a brand new OSX/iOS UI?

 

[Digitalclips]

They lost me at "You just add tags to all your files and photos"

Been there, stopped doing it for lack of time 🙂

I agree, there has to be a very fast and easy way to do this for sure or it simply won't get done. Aperture is a great example of how powerful it could be if only I tagged everything as I should. I rarely do. I was just thinking yesterday, if I could utilize Siri on my Mac when importing several hundred pictures to simply speak a group of tags to be applied I might actually do that.

----------

Apple innovating.
Again!

Sometimes genius is recognizing opportunity.

 

[andy721]

They copied this from Project Mercury. Trust me they didn't take long to do this.

PROOF: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuGdQqUhKD4

**** YOU APPLE **** YOU!

----------

You still brainwashed aren't you. Try doing research people.
Don't reply back because this whole apple and patent is getting quite annoying and people brainwashed will never learn.

I agree, there has to be a very fast and easy way to do this for sure or it simply won't get done. Aperture is a great example of how powerful it could be if only I tagged everything as I should. I rarely do. I was just thinking yesterday, if I could utilize Siri on my Mac when importing several hundred pictures to simply speak a group of tags to be applied I might actually do that.

----------



Sometimes genius is recognizing opportunity.

 

[ThisIsNotMe]

This comment makes me cringe. People use the word "Cloud" as if it refers only to offsite data storage. DropBox offers a sliver of the cloud (data storage).

They by NO MEANS rule the cloud. A "cloud" is defined as on-demand, self service, shared resource, resilient, multi tenant, quickly scaling up or down. I could offer fantastic offsite data storage and be not much different than DropBox.

The real rulers of the cloud are Amazon, Rackspace, Azure, etc...

Cloud is just a buzz word for what has been going on for 30+ years.

 

[LLIBSETAG]

GUI Black light + Black Velvet

So Adobe Bridge and Apple's coverflow have gotten into the sack and had some hot dirty GUI action.... [cue 70's porn music]

"Brown chicken, brown cow..." repeat.

 

[theSeb]

This is eerily close to what I've been preaching for the last year, but no one is listening.

The best way to store your stuff is all in one synchronized (and backed up, version controlled) place, say Dropbox. But organizing files inside by JUST folders is bad.

Instead, there should be labels or tags, similar to Gmail's labels. You can apply them to files/folders, and get different views into your stuff:

-Files related to project A
-Photos
-Shared with person X
-Created within last 30 days
-Custom search queries?
-etc., etc.

Folders are very limiting cuz each file can only be in one folder. What if it's both a picture, and a part of project A? Do I put it in /Pictures or /ProjectA? Apply both labels, problem solved.

iCloud currently sucks for contents storage cuz you can't see all your files no matter what app they're in, so it's easy to forget what you have and where.

I really hope something good comes out of this.

Everything you have described can be done in finder and the ability to do so has been there for longer than you have been preaching.

 

[RedCroissant]

Maybe iWork.com is coming back as part of icloud.com?

This makes me think that there could be a suite of iWork web apps coming to the cloud so that editing can be performed on devices that are not connected to one's AppleID. I think it's great.

 

[roadbloc]

"Did I save that spreadsheet in 'folder X' or 'folder y'".

Run a search and find out. It takes .1 of a second on most modern OSs.

 

[Prince Akeem]

That wasn't a real voice on the video? Was it? It sounded like Siris sister!

Yes, the voice on this horrible video is 100% text-to-speech...

 

[spydr]

Apple already solved this by having Smart Folders and Aliases. For example, if I have Garageband file saved in my "Music" Folder, it would show up in my smart "Projects" Folder (which I have show all the Garageband and iMovie files).

Or, if I have a frequently used MP3 in my "Music" folder that I use in my movies, I would create an alias for it in my iMovie folder.

Tagging files (like one instance of a photo or music can appear on several relevant virtual/smart folders or playlists etc) has been there forever. Clearly Apple hasn't been doing this for all files but the idea is old. And companies like devonthink etc have been doing this for years, for general files, for the same exact uses and reasons, perhaps the only difference being it all being done on local machine as opposed to on the cloud.

The 'axis based based UI' sounds like mumbo jumbo to sell IP than anything revolutionary, which therefore leaves me wondering how they racked up all these patents for ideas that are pretty much 'prior art'. 😱

 

[shurcooL]

Everything you have described can be done in finder and the ability to do so has been there for longer than you have been preaching.

Please, give me a few examples or point me in the right direction.

 

[Renzatic]

I'm sure that I've read about an OS (a Linux distro maybe?) that did exactly that, i.e. a tag-based file system instead of the classic folder based file organization. That's what I love about services like Evernote or Simplenote, as it makes creating documents and tracking projects that much easier.

It was MS originally wanted WinFS to be. An entirely new system structured around metadata, tags, and all other kinds of interesting, relationship based values you can hit up and use to organize your files.

Unfortunately, MS ditched it along with all the other cool things they were dreaming up when Longhorn ended up taking too long to get done. Now we have to watch Apple do it first, then endure the resulting "x copied" accusations for the next 20 odd years.

 

[theSeb]

Please, give me a few examples or point me in the right direction.

Check out Finder. You can apply labels and tags to files. Then use saved searches to get out tags, dates, documents last modified in x days. You can do all of that right now, just as you described.

You have a list of labels that you can edit. You can apply them to files if you right click on a file or group of files. If you hit cmd + I on a file, then you will see a file info window. At the top there is a Spotlight comments box. In there you can add tags to your heart's contents. Now you can use those tags to find and index the files using Spotlight and saved searches. What is lacking is the ability to quickly add spotlight comments to multiple files (cmd + alt + I does not allow it)

 

[MikeDTyke]

I know this thread is a bit old now, but i wanna stake the claim that 10.9's standout feature as revealed in wwdc 2013 will be a new tagging interface that positively encourages users to add tags and where possible automatically adds them through computer recognition of people/objects/colours/ocr'd words. Add this to the metadata we already have in the filesystem (date/times, geo coordinates, doc type & embedded text) you'll have the basis for a axis 18 style timeline filesystem view.

Now all they need to do is add a user intent system to ios so any app can open any file, regardless of sandbox and we are golden. 🙂