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Apple Working On Automated Desktop Pictures

Apple has always been at the forefront of smooth animation. My work PC still has trouble making stars go by smoothly on that old "flying through space" screensaver.

This patent is a one in a long line of patents related to smooth visuals. My favorite smooth visual transition is when the dock sucks in the app.

SLUUURRRPPP!!!!:D
 
Being lazy and only reading the excerpt in this posting it sounds to me just like they are switching to vector-based wallpaper rather than a raster image. After all, procedural graphics from a recipe is just something like SVG.

The 'fragment' bit is then about 'clipping' the image to "composite" - which I assume means calculating the visual effect of transparency without needing to load a bitmap at the start.

The only missing part then is the movement, but that's no big deal and perhaps even distracting - just like a lot of flash animations. Gee, could it just be you can put a .swf file as your wallpaper?
 
noaccess said:
This is the image included in the patent.

40647tj.jpg


See the "Top Secret Project" folder on the desktop? What's described in this patent could be some of the Top Secret stuff... or the guys at Apple are just trying to stir us up, then at WWDC Steve's gonna show everyone the new GarageBand and add another entry for the 'Super Secret Apple Rumors' podcast. If anyone remembers that one. Funny guy :D
Click to expand...

But in the window that is open in the picture, it also says "holocaust.gif"
so we have a "Top Secret" folder and pictures with "holocaust" as the name...
Startin to really creep me out...
:)
 
How many of you are old enough to remember computer graphics BEFORE raster displays were common?

It takes at least about a MB of VRAM to hold a raster image for display. You only have to go back to the 1970's to find a time when 1MB was more RAM then even a big university computer would have. Clearly graphic displays back then did not contain 1MB of VRAM. No, they had only enough memory to hold what was called a "display list". The list contained commands like "draw a line" "fill a box with color" or "put this text at location x,y". The display device could hold at most a few thousand commands and would loop over then, over and over and "compute" the image for each refresh cycle. The only image "memory" was the persistence of the phosphor. The main computer would change the list of commands if it wanted to change the display. Rather then working like a TV set as current monitors do the old display list devices would paint the electron beam around on the phosphor randomly as it it were a pen plotter drawing with ink. Shorter display lists had faster refresh times.

Sounds like the new patent doesn't it?

Over time I think ALL of the old mainframe techniques from the 1960's will creep up onto our desktops.
 
noaccess said:
This is the image included in the patent.

40647tj.jpg


See the "Top Secret Project" folder on the desktop? What's described in this patent could be some of the Top Secret stuff... or the guys at Apple are just trying to stir us up, then at WWDC Steve's gonna show everyone the new GarageBand and add another entry for the 'Super Secret Apple Rumors' podcast. If anyone remembers that one. Funny guy :D
Click to expand...

They are totally messing with us...but seriously that is weird...
 
I want to make a couple of points.

1. Emergence of Alternative UIs

2. Desktop as Possible Alternative UI, so that Dock and Traditional OS environment is only left for apps

3. Need for Such a Situation

1. Apple has introduced two shipping alternative UIs: Front Row and Dashboard, where the user leaves all interactivity with the normal OS environment. And it has introduced Time Machine where the user in a way leaves the traditional OS environment (although is still working with files etc).

2. The current method for dealing with files is the Finder, Desktop, Open and Save dialogue boxes, and the trash can in the dock. It is confusing for people like my grandmother who I help on the phone with her iMac quite often. Maybe the desktop will become an "alternative UI" like the ones I previously mentioned. It might be a three dimensional wooden table top, upon which you interact with files, see your disks, and so forth. It would be invoked in some similar manner to Dashboard and would eliminate the use of the Finder. The traditional OS would become just another UI, one that has a dock and applications, but no finder or trash on the dock. That would be handled by the Desktop UI.

3. This would greatly simplify the use of a computer I believe. You have a desktop where all your stuff is, then you have Dashboard where your widgets are, and you have the traditional OS environment where you use your Apps, and finally Front Row for using your media.


Don't be too harsh with this wild idea, it's 2 AM and I'm a bit punchy.
 
hotdamn said:
do yourself a favor and google fenetres volantes.
welcome to a year ago.
Click to expand...

Wow, that's totally what we were all talking about! You're amazing! Thank you, hotdamn, for telling us to look a screensaver up on Google! Oh, thank you!
 
swingerofbirch said:
I want to make a couple of points.

1. Emergence of Alternative UIs

2. Desktop as Possible Alternative UI, so that Dock and Traditional OS environment is only left for apps

3. Need for Such a Situation

1. Apple has introduced two shipping alternative UIs: Front Row and Dashboard, where the user leaves all interactivity with the normal OS environment. And it has introduced Time Machine where the user in a way leaves the traditional OS environment (although is still working with files etc).

2. The current method for dealing with files is the Finder, Desktop, Open and Save dialogue boxes, and the trash can in the dock. It is confusing for people like my grandmother who I help on the phone with her iMac quite often. Maybe the desktop will become an "alternative UI" like the ones I previously mentioned. It might be a three dimensional wooden table top, upon which you interact with files, see your disks, and so forth. It would be invoked in some similar manner to Dashboard and would eliminate the use of the Finder. The traditional OS would become just another UI, one that has a dock and applications, but no finder or trash on the dock. That would be handled by the Desktop UI.

3. This would greatly simplify the use of a computer I believe. You have a desktop where all your stuff is, then you have Dashboard where your widgets are, and you have the traditional OS environment where you use your Apps, and finally Front Row for using your media.


Don't be too harsh with this wild idea, it's 2 AM and I'm a bit punchy.
Click to expand...
No Trash in the Dock? No Dock at all? Disks only available on the Desktop? No file management in Open and Save dialogs? Some environment with special little tools (or a certain folder containing those)? A Desktop you have to activate (or dig your way towards, or reach for, or whatever you'd like to call it) when you're busy working in any other application?

Sounds a lot like Mac OS 9.
 
Bengt77 said:
No Trash in the Dock? No Dock at all? Disks only available on the Desktop? No file management in Open and Save dialogs? Some environment with special little tools (or a certain folder containing those)? A Desktop you have to activate (or dig your way towards, or reach for, or whatever you'd like to call it) when you're busy working in any other application?

Sounds a lot like Mac OS 9.
Click to expand...
What I was envisioning for save/open dialogues would be some sort of creative 3d experience whereby when you go to save something, you save it literally to your desktop and that 3d environment appears (a wooden desk) and allows you to bring your document physically to where you want it saved, be it a pile of papers about literature, etc, or just an empty spot on the desk under your coffee cup, whatever. It would somehow integrate both the window from the OS environment and then as it is saved shrink the window to an icon that is on this dekstop, much like Time Machine uses an alternative 3d environmental with the traditional OS windows.

Concerning the dock, etc: what I meant was the environment you are likely in now, using Safari etc, would stay similar as it is now and be just another UI, as is Time Machine, Dashboard (or Desktop in my imagination). So yes, you would still have your dock. All your apps and aliases would still be in it. But, the finder and the trash would not be. The finder and the desktop are one now and they are the Desktop (the 3d environment). As per your comment about having to wade to it, I guess in what I was conceiving you would get there through a mouse click, like designating a mouse button, a key or something for access, or it would appear automatically when you save a document, or open one. The trash would of course be somewhere cute, like underneath the 3d desk..... So basically you have different environments, Desktop environment is for managing files, Time Machine is invoked by a big red emergency button on the Desktop wooden desk, Front Row is for viewing media, Dashboard is for get fast info, and traditional OS is for running all your full-fledged apps...

OK, so I KNOW it's a weird idea, I was just thinking!
 
swingerofbirch said:
OK, so I KNOW it's a weird idea, I was just thinking!
Click to expand...
Okay, I see what you mean now. Sounds very interesting. A real digital analogy, this would be. Well, it would be so analogous, that it woulnd't even [/i]be[/i] an analogy anymore. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Don't see how saving or opening files would send you to this desk area, though. Well, in real life, yes, but digitally? Weird, yes, but a very cool idea, nonetheless.
 
Here's what I hope comes out of this.

When you trash an item from your desktop, it "falls" with a cool animation through the back of your desktop and disappears!

Wouldn't that be cool?
 
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