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Apple Exploring 3D Desktop and Application Interfaces

So THAT explains it!

So THAT'S what they've been wasting time on instead of implementing Blu-ray and fixing FCP/FCS and Logic for content creators.

100 years of motion pictures and we STILL don't have 3-D films (and likely never will) and Apple goes there based on some Tom Cruise movie.

Why not all the way to the iBrain, where no interface is required beyond electrodes into your brain?

Someone needs to pull Jobs feet back to the ground, at least occasionally. There's plenty of work on planet earth to be done Apple has been woefully ignoring for almost two years now.

:apple:
 
spydr said:
I think a functional 3D desktop interface cannot be successfully implemented without dramatic advances in display technology that would allow real depth as opposed to apparent depth. If it necessitates goggles, so be it.

More important that just improving the desktop paradigm, will be the fact that such a 3D hardware supported interface would be friendlier to our ocular focusing mechanisms (fixated on one plane, it quickly gets fatigued; in long term caused more permanent focusing problems).

So I am all for a paradigm shift in the display technology and befitting UI.

BTW, BumpTop as it looks and feels right now, is not gonna really take of. I hope it improves upon itself substantially. I am already glad for what it has achieved so far, in terms of buzz and interest.
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That's the thing as screen resolution goes up you don't have to use it for a flat screen, a diffraction pattern in the glass could focus some pixel to each eye.

Sure 160+ dpi screens are small now and mostly used in mobile devices but they are getting bigger, so either use that to make the screen finer or you could go 80dpi each eye. Which as you point out could be a much better for our eyes.

Now that would make this real eye candy.

Hey steve did say that the 3D environment was some thing you had to do in pieces to train people in to it.
 
Good for Win 8

Maybe this is the Apple's of windows 8.

Some of this seems it will make life easier but most will make using a Mac over complex.
 
Quillz said:
Not in the past few years. They seem more obsessed with thinness and build quality than functionality.
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Hear hear! I second this, and I add that Apple is also sacrificing functionality in order to make cheaper products that they can market to the average no-nothing computer buy. (I'm not saying Apple shouldn't do this, since the goal of any company is to make money, but it doesn't change the fact that it's bad for us as consumers)

Firewire gone in the name of thinness. Matte screen gone in the name of looking shiny in the store when sitting next to the other manufacturers' shiny screens, and matte is also gone because it's cheaper to sell one screen type than it is to offer an option. Both laptop lines have the same case and very similar internals with very little differentiation because the more similar your products are, the cheaper they are to manufacture. Mac Mini, with components that are literally years out of date, is still being shamelessly sold at the exact same price it had when it was released over a year ago (and it was old technology inside it even on the day it was released). etc.

I've been a huge fan of Apple products for decades. I've seen Apple product quality go through ups and downs. Since Jobs came back Apple product quality has been amazingly incredible. But over the past year or so Apple has definitely been swinging back toward the low quality products again. I hope it's a short detour rather than a long term trend.

That's the way I see it.
 
qubex said:
This looks totally unusable.
Unless you argue for a truly immersive 3D environment with goggles and whatnot, in which case it isn't only the desktop metaphor that becomes unusable, but the whole computer system.
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I agree. I'm sure some day we will have a 3D or quasi-3D computer interface paradigm, but I haven't seen any conceptual example, whether from a hollywood movie or an academic research laboratory, that is actually practical for daily, general purpose interaction with a computer. Projects like "BumpTop", the old Sun
"Project Lookinglass", and some of the 3D desktop multi-touch demos from Jef Han are certainly innovative and exciting from a technology standpoint, but it's got a long way to go before making it on a Macbook.
 
xbjllb said:
*snip* 100 years of motion pictures and we STILL don't have 3-D films (and likely never will)
Click to expand...

Um, actually there have been a handful of stereoscopic "3D" films in the theaters lately, and not all of them are animated. the "U2 3D" concert film was one of the more unique ones. Do you mean 3D films that don't require glasses? There are a few different forms of that technology available, although I'm not sure if any of them work with a projector or theater size room with a 300 different viewing angles. The HDTV sized displays with goggle-less 3D technology are still really expensive, but I'm sure they will eventually be sold to consumers along with some form of updated 3D Blu-ray player for home movies...
 
This reminds me of that '90s Amiga game, Another World. In the intro sequence the character sits down at a holographic cube display.

For some reason it's not easy to find a good screenshot of that but many of you would have seen it.
 
The 3D desktop in the You tube video seems cool and looks like it would be fun to play with. I like how when you toss a file it bangs into the others. But it also reminds me of my cluttered desk at work. Stacks of papers usually means I end up spending extra time trying to fine that one document in the middle of one the stacks I have.
 
More clutter!

Compile 'em all said:
You didn't even use it and you are calling it clutter?

download the looking glass disc and see how it can improve things. You can even flip a browser's window and write on its back some notes.

but yeah, that stuff is old and been done before.
Click to expand...

I don't care to spend time turning blocks around or upside down --or front to back, even if it's only a piece of paper. Having icons on a 2-dimensional screen means I can move the cursor back, forth, up and down with minimal movements and minimal time spent calling up a program or file, or just searching (without resorting to Spotlight, necessarily) for a file, etc. This seems to be, at best, playing with blocks. So, I say, "Clutter."
Maybe I'll change my mind if I ever get a chance to try 3-D. Until then.... Clutter.
 
haven't read any of the posts but inmediatly i feel this is no good news since any sort of "3d" in a 2d screen will take precious pixels out of the working area.

my way of seeing this kind of "updates" is "let's make os x look cool rather than let's make os x faster

just an opinion.

cheers.
 
integrate with multi-gesture

So you can zoom in and out of the "depth" of the screen..

Say zoom in to go into and through the layer and zoom out to come out.
Then some sort of "home" key/tap to re-center you back to the top.

Rotate, prob not as that would get confusing..

So its like "spaces", but instead of trasistioning laterally, you go through "layers". You heard it first.. LAYERS!! :p
 
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