Quartz
Something tells me that I will need Quartz Extreme for this new feature. Time to buy a new Mac.
Something tells me that I will need Quartz Extreme for this new feature. Time to buy a new Mac.
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Mac OS X Panther Feature? 'Piles' (The Patent Description)
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Re: Quartz
There's not anything that would require it, but offloading the compositing of those icons would surely help the speed of it being displayed/manipulated.Originally posted by RIP
Something tells me that I will need Quartz Extreme for this new feature. Time to buy a new Mac.
I remember seeing a demo of "flying through" a filesystem, where the folders and files zoom by you like a starship moving through space. If you head into a folder, it opens and you see the files inside the same way. If Apple provides a 3D view like that, we might all want to switch to joysticks. However, with a conventional filesystem, a given file is in only one container - its enclosing folder. Even if you can fly through to see it, that fact remains.
However, if files can have new attributes for grouping or belong to many stacks, piles, clusters, etc., then a file can be in as many groups as you like, based on criteria you pick. Then all you need is the convenience to look for files by any of these criteria whenever you access files, e.g., on the desktop, in Open and Save dialog boxes, in applications that deal with certain types of files, etc. That's what I want to see.
I know there are. But I have this funny ideal that Apple should revolutionize their own interface, irregardless of how good TPS is. Especially if they want the bragging rights of having a truly superior OS, they can't just have marginal superiority here and there, they have to revolutionize the way people work with their UI...
For the better, BTW. That means you, Apple.
barking up the wrong tree Bob, I don't think Apple puts too much effort into monitoring macosrumors, although it is fun a lot of the time. (this site)
On the contrary, I think Jobs monitors these forums personally to ensure that he doesn't inadvertantly do anything we would have found too close to our own ideas of "good" or "useful." I wasn't on this site before OS X came out, but I'll bet that of all the ideas of what it could have done the genie effect was the last thing anone saw coming....
"Ha! It'll be the last thing they expect!!"
to those who are unsure as to how the files will arrange themselves, note that panther is said to use extensive 'metadata'. this is similar to how iTunes can sort your files by bitrate, filesize etc, but it will be in the finder. piles are simply like 'smart playlists' in itunes, that accumulate and remove files according to criteria you set for each pile. imagine a pile with your "25 most used documents" or "Jpegs larger than 100kb, created after 12/03/03, used in the last month" etc. imagine the possibilities.
now, i'm sure most of you don't use your smart playlists in itunes very often, but such a feature in the finder will have a different order of functionality.
finally, to those worried about expanded views of piles going off the screen, just imagine that only 1 file is fully spaced out between the others, and the distance between floating icons decreases as you look above/below your cursor. imagine each pile is like a dock with magnification turned on, only vertical, and the sizes of the icons don't change, only the distance between them.
to those worried about older computers having difficulties with previewing the files within a pile, just imagine that each image has its preview BUILT IN to the icon. currently, for most images, the previews are generated 'on the fly' in Jaguar. this eats up processing power and places more demands on the hard drive, taking more time. this would cause piles to 'stick' when they are opening. if every file (ie images, text) had a small preview BUILT IN to the icon (or into its associated data), this would allow much faster performance. imagine that whenever a file is created, this preview is saved along with it. this can also apply to movies with a few seconds of a low res (128 by 128 max) preview movie. sure, this will add a little to file size (a REALLY tiny bit) but it will be worth it. of course, as in the current finder in column view, you will be able to see the full, larger previews such as movies at full size (in piles, when your cursor actally passes over each file), and this information will have to be taken from the file itself (on the fly). but the icon image/movie previews will be prerrecorded.
on another note, what do you think about putting more maginification in the finder in general? like waving your cursor over some small icons in a finder window and having them magnify?
now, i'm sure most of you don't use your smart playlists in itunes very often, but such a feature in the finder will have a different order of functionality.
finally, to those worried about expanded views of piles going off the screen, just imagine that only 1 file is fully spaced out between the others, and the distance between floating icons decreases as you look above/below your cursor. imagine each pile is like a dock with magnification turned on, only vertical, and the sizes of the icons don't change, only the distance between them.
to those worried about older computers having difficulties with previewing the files within a pile, just imagine that each image has its preview BUILT IN to the icon. currently, for most images, the previews are generated 'on the fly' in Jaguar. this eats up processing power and places more demands on the hard drive, taking more time. this would cause piles to 'stick' when they are opening. if every file (ie images, text) had a small preview BUILT IN to the icon (or into its associated data), this would allow much faster performance. imagine that whenever a file is created, this preview is saved along with it. this can also apply to movies with a few seconds of a low res (128 by 128 max) preview movie. sure, this will add a little to file size (a REALLY tiny bit) but it will be worth it. of course, as in the current finder in column view, you will be able to see the full, larger previews such as movies at full size (in piles, when your cursor actally passes over each file), and this information will have to be taken from the file itself (on the fly). but the icon image/movie previews will be prerrecorded.
on another note, what do you think about putting more maginification in the finder in general? like waving your cursor over some small icons in a finder window and having them magnify?
New OS features ...?
Easy to see how people can get upset over certain deficiencies in OS gui, but then why get worked up. Maybe piles is somewhat useful, but what was wrong with folders or archives. At the end of the day, your work has to be saved and back upped. And a personal computer is a machine for one person. And who cares about the location of the "ok" or "cancel" box. Because of 1/2 a second, I'm not worried a bit.
Yes, Mac OS X is not as "strictly logical" as Mac OS 9 maybe was, and it does not take the hardware to new paradigms as much as it maybe could. There's still no "3D file system" even though 3D works very fast and very well, as software like Unreal Tournament proves. But using OS X practically, it crashes very rarely if at all, and it provides a strange type of fluency that is a real time saver. When working towards deadlines, I'm simply less tired and get on faster. The collapsable windows together with the dock are very good. I also use old round iMac mice on the new G4 computers simply because even though they look somewhat weird, they work very fast.
The real innovation probably lies in taking networked applications to new levels.
There, XML, RSS, pHp and mySQL are the technologies that are really ground breaking. Already now, the free pHp/mySQL-based 'gallery' package is ten times as useful as iPhoto - even if you only run it locally under Mac OS X - and even then, people on the same network can also look at the images without additional work; you can copy whole albums because albums are represented by finder folders - unthinkable with iPhoto.
swisswuff (using swisschick's login account)
Easy to see how people can get upset over certain deficiencies in OS gui, but then why get worked up. Maybe piles is somewhat useful, but what was wrong with folders or archives. At the end of the day, your work has to be saved and back upped. And a personal computer is a machine for one person. And who cares about the location of the "ok" or "cancel" box. Because of 1/2 a second, I'm not worried a bit.
Yes, Mac OS X is not as "strictly logical" as Mac OS 9 maybe was, and it does not take the hardware to new paradigms as much as it maybe could. There's still no "3D file system" even though 3D works very fast and very well, as software like Unreal Tournament proves. But using OS X practically, it crashes very rarely if at all, and it provides a strange type of fluency that is a real time saver. When working towards deadlines, I'm simply less tired and get on faster. The collapsable windows together with the dock are very good. I also use old round iMac mice on the new G4 computers simply because even though they look somewhat weird, they work very fast.
The real innovation probably lies in taking networked applications to new levels.
There, XML, RSS, pHp and mySQL are the technologies that are really ground breaking. Already now, the free pHp/mySQL-based 'gallery' package is ten times as useful as iPhoto - even if you only run it locally under Mac OS X - and even then, people on the same network can also look at the images without additional work; you can copy whole albums because albums are represented by finder folders - unthinkable with iPhoto.
swisswuff (using swisschick's login account)
I don't think that this is how Piles are intended to be used. I think they're intended to be a way of organizing small collections of documents, such as documents related to buying a new house, or preparing your taxes. This may replace folders containing small numbers of items, but I think that you'll still have a Documnts folder, for example, which in turn may contain some Piles.