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BumpTop 3D Desktop Environment Acquired by Google
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Pfft...
Yay! Now my virtual workspace can be as cluttered and disorganised as my physical one is. Exactly what people are after...
Yay! Now my virtual workspace can be as cluttered and disorganised as my physical one is. Exactly what people are after...
Not really 3d is it? More like multiple 2D surfaces.in the shape of the inside of a cube. Most 3D environments of this type that I've seen are more inter-spacial where you are "in" the desktop doing a "fly through" of your data.
It's still pretty cool, though, I could see it translating well to a mobile device (making your desktop feel more spacious). Certainly more cool than the way you interact with the iPhone today.
It's still pretty cool, though, I could see it translating well to a mobile device (making your desktop feel more spacious). Certainly more cool than the way you interact with the iPhone today.
I tried it and found it poorly conceived and implemented. I'd like to see Apple's take on the concept of 3D. Look how Apple treated back up in TM after decades of everyone else's stolid and boring UIs. It was stunning to say the least. Apple could with TM and 3D actually combine all four dimensions in a GUI, Dr Who comes to the desk top. 
Help I'm trapped in a metal box desktop... claustrophobia anyone?
Yes! That was my feeling exactly, but don't blame 3D per se, it is a horrible implementation of it that caused that I feel.
I was just at last years SIGGRAPH. Part of your comment is somewhat true but after checking out all the immersive interactive projects, I wouldnt say all Hollywood
Looks fun, but in practice...
It looks fun. You could really make your virtual desktop look more like a real desktop, but I don't see how that would make me more organized or productive (Which is the point of a virtual desktop, no?) I'm always losing things in the real world because it's 3D.
Also, what if I ran out of space? What if I couldn't find something only to find out later that I had posted it on a wall that isn't immediately visible. No search function? Definitely seems gimmicky.
Give me simplicity, or give me... well I don't want to die just yet. Just give me simplicity and ease of use.
It looks fun. You could really make your virtual desktop look more like a real desktop, but I don't see how that would make me more organized or productive (Which is the point of a virtual desktop, no?) I'm always losing things in the real world because it's 3D.
Also, what if I ran out of space? What if I couldn't find something only to find out later that I had posted it on a wall that isn't immediately visible. No search function? Definitely seems gimmicky.
Give me simplicity, or give me... well I don't want to die just yet. Just give me simplicity and ease of use.
I second that. My desk looks like a bomb went off on it, but my Mac stays fairly clutter free. I'm looking into getting an iPad with Bento. Anyone try that out yet?
I dunno. I get digital devices to make my life *more* organized--not replicate the disorganized state of my work desk.
Haven't Google realised that almost nobody wants their Android OS, and even less want Chrome OS?
Stick to search, ads and some web-based apps. Leave OSes to the Consumer (non-geek) friendly people (although it's arguable if MS falls in that category truly)
Stick to search, ads and some web-based apps. Leave OSes to the Consumer (non-geek) friendly people (although it's arguable if MS falls in that category truly)
More than that. If Google wanted to do a full on commercial grade OS above and beyond chrome to compete with windows and OSX, this would be a great piece to refine.
Bingo ....
When Bumptop first hit the scene, I tried it on OS X. I was initially pretty excited, because it sounded like they added a few great desktop GUI tricks that were promised but not really delivered on in Windows 7 or OS X to date.
In reality, it went exactly like sasuke12 describes. I wound up playing with Bumptop for a few hours, mostly to show off to my friends, but ultimately found the 3D box effect for the background a big distraction. I didn't care for the additional use of memory and system resources for it either. (This type of thing needs to be integrated into the OS itself -- not bolted on as an add-on package -- if they expect it to be taken seriously.)
The biggest problem I saw with actual use of Bumptop though? Same thing one of my friends concluded after she tried it for a while; It's too desktop-centric for your file organization and storage! Right now, one of the biggest issues I have with GUIs for ANY platform is the tendency for people to get lazy about file organization, and leave everything they use scattered all over the desktop. Bumptop, essentially, claims to "solve this problem" for a user by letting them stack things in virtual piles, or change the size of stuff and throw it up against one of the virtual 3D "walls" of the "box".
In real life, that would be like saying "Instead of bothering to file things away in that file cabinet sitting beside your desk - you can just leave everything out on your desk when you're finished with it! It's ok, because we put some partitions up on your desk so things will stay put better as you stack them into tall piles! And hey, if you still run out of room? Here are some thumbtacks so you can slap a few things on your walls too!"
When Bumptop first hit the scene, I tried it on OS X. I was initially pretty excited, because it sounded like they added a few great desktop GUI tricks that were promised but not really delivered on in Windows 7 or OS X to date.
In reality, it went exactly like sasuke12 describes. I wound up playing with Bumptop for a few hours, mostly to show off to my friends, but ultimately found the 3D box effect for the background a big distraction. I didn't care for the additional use of memory and system resources for it either. (This type of thing needs to be integrated into the OS itself -- not bolted on as an add-on package -- if they expect it to be taken seriously.)
The biggest problem I saw with actual use of Bumptop though? Same thing one of my friends concluded after she tried it for a while; It's too desktop-centric for your file organization and storage! Right now, one of the biggest issues I have with GUIs for ANY platform is the tendency for people to get lazy about file organization, and leave everything they use scattered all over the desktop. Bumptop, essentially, claims to "solve this problem" for a user by letting them stack things in virtual piles, or change the size of stuff and throw it up against one of the virtual 3D "walls" of the "box".
In real life, that would be like saying "Instead of bothering to file things away in that file cabinet sitting beside your desk - you can just leave everything out on your desk when you're finished with it! It's ok, because we put some partitions up on your desk so things will stay put better as you stack them into tall piles! And hey, if you still run out of room? Here are some thumbtacks so you can slap a few things on your walls too!"
Let's be fair here .....
Google Apps, I think, qualifies as a "great thing". Sure, it's not perfect as an Office suite and people can come up with a laundry list of things they "wish it could do". But it's probably the first attempt at a "cloud based Office package" that really gained any traction. We have a point-of-sale/cash register system place in town that switched almost all of their employees off of Microsoft Office and onto Google Apps - and the results were largely really positive.
Among other things, they gain the ability to allow multiple people to edit a document at the same time. Open up a spreadsheet in Google Apps and allow other users to modify it? Then you can have them connect up to it and start changing cells while you've still got it open, so you can watch them making said changes on your screen in real-time. Try that in Microsoft Excel!
Google Apps also has a fairly useful "forms" tool. If you have a spreadsheet that calculates things for some of your employees, but you want to make it more user-friendly? You can create a form template that links to that spreadsheet, so they can just fill in the blanks on the form, and let the form pass those into the appropriate spreadsheet cells.
I'd also say Google Earth and Google Maps are pretty solid offerings that plenty of people use and enjoy. Sure, the maps have been offered by others before them, but most people feel that Google Maps offers better routing and more accurate map info than older competitors they had like Mapquest.
Google Apps, I think, qualifies as a "great thing". Sure, it's not perfect as an Office suite and people can come up with a laundry list of things they "wish it could do". But it's probably the first attempt at a "cloud based Office package" that really gained any traction. We have a point-of-sale/cash register system place in town that switched almost all of their employees off of Microsoft Office and onto Google Apps - and the results were largely really positive.
Among other things, they gain the ability to allow multiple people to edit a document at the same time. Open up a spreadsheet in Google Apps and allow other users to modify it? Then you can have them connect up to it and start changing cells while you've still got it open, so you can watch them making said changes on your screen in real-time. Try that in Microsoft Excel!
Google Apps also has a fairly useful "forms" tool. If you have a spreadsheet that calculates things for some of your employees, but you want to make it more user-friendly? You can create a form template that links to that spreadsheet, so they can just fill in the blanks on the form, and let the form pass those into the appropriate spreadsheet cells.
I'd also say Google Earth and Google Maps are pretty solid offerings that plenty of people use and enjoy. Sure, the maps have been offered by others before them, but most people feel that Google Maps offers better routing and more accurate map info than older competitors they had like Mapquest.
I've tried it and it's pretty cool idea. But as many people said, it could use a lot of tuning. Example: there's no way to automatically organize files. In the regular Finder, you can have the icons be organized by name, file type, date modified, etc. Nothing for Bumptop.
Also, I just don't like the 2D icons on a 3D-ish desktop. When looking at one wall when there are files on the bottom, those files look flat & can't really recognize them without looking t the bottom. While it's easy enough to look at the bottom, it's just annoying.
Also, I just don't like the 2D icons on a 3D-ish desktop. When looking at one wall when there are files on the bottom, those files look flat & can't really recognize them without looking t the bottom. While it's easy enough to look at the bottom, it's just annoying.
Just like the iPhone IMHO.
It's a phone, I don't understand why people waste their lives fiddling with 'apps' all the time.
Okay, a lot of you really do just hate anything Apple doesn't do. All of you are talking like Google is just going to use bumptop as is, slightly fine-tuned. Now THAT is something Apple would do: take a product, slightly fine-tune it, then release it again every couple quarters. Like somone else said, they probably bought them for the talent. I really see the crew doing more important things than bumptop now that they've been acquired by Google. But, I guess Apple has got everyone used to slight changes of everything, and becoming pretty predictable. I'd expect a new interface from this acquisition, possibly on a new device, with a new method of interaction; maybe even with a true 3-d no glasses display. People are focusing too much on bumptop virtual desktop software, which I will say, I dislike. But acquiring the talent would be great for anyone.
But the iPhone isn't some crappy bolted on feature, that doesn't really add anything of value beyond some eye candy (or is it iCandy
).The iPhone is a whole functional eco-system that addressed almost everything wrong with the mobile phone market at the time.
The fact that, even now, you think the iPhone is "something you play around with for a couple of hours" just goes to show either your complete lack of understanding, or your total bias towards another platform.
The market wants and uses iPhones more than any other smartphone on the market, end of story!
Love it, but now confused
I tried it, and I must say I love the idea. It does help organize things a little better instead of going through finder. It helps decrease a task by just mere seconds, but maybe with google and their huge wallet, they can make something revolutionary.
My only question is ...how the heck am I going to get the pro serial key ...I want it, but they don't sell it. Any one has an advice, or tip. Where do I get one?
I tried it, and I must say I love the idea. It does help organize things a little better instead of going through finder. It helps decrease a task by just mere seconds, but maybe with google and their huge wallet, they can make something revolutionary.
My only question is ...how the heck am I going to get the pro serial key ...I want it, but they don't sell it. Any one has an advice, or tip. Where do I get one?
Thank you. Everyone is complaining about the "bolted on to the real OS" part and the ugly cube background part. Yeah, I'm sure the people at Google can't possibly do ANYTHING to make this stuff more useful and more efficient.
I think many of the posters here would do well to be a little more creative than that. Or if that makes your brain hurt too much, then just wait and see what Google actually does with it, which I'm sure is more than Scotch-taping it to their current products. (Something I wish Apple would do with Color. Apple-fy the frickin' thing already!!!!)