Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Patent: Multi-Sized Icon Interface for Mac OS X?

That's just pointless.

Wow, my icon is 50x bigger than my other icon, it must be more important. That's gonna be a organizing nightmare and that's never how a real desktop is presented (do you put your important documents in a bigger folder?)

There should just be a different type of folder icon that's more "important" looking than others.
 
iJawn108 said:
Please Apple team up with Sun and give us leopard with something like looking-glass and piles and this. 😛

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXv8VlpoK_g
Click to expand...

Looking glass is 100% eye candy a 1% usefulness.

Same with the whole wobble effect and the 3D cube effect in Beryl.

Looks nice but not really useful.

Though I must say the attaching notes to backs of websites can be useful. But I just use pencil and paper when I do research lol.
 
wankey said:
That's just pointless.

Wow, my icon is 50x bigger than my other icon, it must be more important. That's gonna be a organizing nightmare and that's never how a real desktop is presented (do you put your important documents in a bigger folder?)

There should just be a different type of folder icon that's more "important" looking than others.
Click to expand...

It's not pointless. In every folder there are some files that are more significant than others, and users do not, generally, like spending hours making new folders and moving files to them, especially if you're trying to collect related files in one place.

If you're creating a document, for instance, the chances are you want things like the images and notes to be in the same place as the document itself, and probably the output (as HTML, PDF, etc) there too. It's intuitive. All of these are related, why should you spend ages building sub-folders and patiently moving stuff to and from them?

At the same time though, you don't want to open the folder and immediately have to look through a hundred similar looking icons to find the actual Document.

In a spacial environment, with this feature enabled, you can easily organize the folder so there are no scrollbars and everything is right there. The support files would be clustered together and fairly small. The output files, the ones taking the final published form of the document, HTML, PDF, etc, would be larger and clustered together. Alternative versions of the main document would also be larger and clustered together, arranged in a row. And finally, the document itself, the thing you're most likely to want to edit, that would have the largest icon, right there in the middle of the window representing the folder.

Myself, I think a more interesting technology would be one that makes all of this automatic. Anything dragged into the window would have one, very small, size, and clustered with other dragged-in files. The Word Processor would use settings associated with the folder to set the icon of the main document to be "Main document" size and located somewhere in the middle. It would also cluster the outputted publishable files and set their size, as it would back-ups and alternate-versions.

It's an interesting technology that could be very, very, useful, if the UI to it is sensibly written.
 
iJawn108 said:
Please Apple team up with Sun and give us leopard with something like looking-glass and piles and this. 😛

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXv8VlpoK_g
Click to expand...
We have some pieces of this, but definitely not system-wide. For instance iTunes CoverFlow mode looks very much like Sun's CD-selector. The flipping-windows-over is the standard way for Dashboard widgets to reveal their configuration controls.

Right now, Apple can't go that far, because they are still supporting older Macs (like G3s and many G4s) that don't have very powerful video chipsets. So any 3D features must either be optional or be designed to the lowest common denominator.

With Leopard, this might start to change. If the rumors are correct, and it drops support for G3 systems, then that means Apple can assume a higher amount of horsepower (both in the CPU and in the GPU).

To do something like Looking Glass, however, I suspect the system would require a GPU with hardware 3D, so nothing below a GeForce 3MX would be sufficient - meaning incompatibility with 3/4 of the G4 systems sold. I don't think Apple will do this (at least not as the One True Way of running the system) until OS X becomes Intel-only - meaning it won't happen in 10.5.

But I've been proven wrong before....

BTW, It's amusing that Sun's 3D desktop is called Looking Glass. Looking Glass was also the name of a very early desktop/launcher/control panel application for UNIX/X11 systems. (LG was produced by the now-defunct Visix Software. It was bundled with many UNIX platforms in its day, including DEC Ultrix and Novell/Caldera's Linux distribution.)
 
wankey said:
That's just pointless.

Wow, my icon is 50x bigger than my other icon, it must be more important. That's gonna be a organizing nightmare and that's never how a real desktop is presented (do you put your important documents in a bigger folder?)

There should just be a different type of folder icon that's more "important" looking than others.
Click to expand...

Some of the key elements in graphic design (the art of visual communication) is size, spatial relationships and color. Saying size is useless is like saying color labels are useless.

In my biz, we often have a folder containing a document. The document relies on supporting files for it's content. Those files are not meant to be opened on their own neccessarily. Making one file much larger (the main doc) obviously draws your eye to it first. Second you may read it's tag "open me first" or something like that which validates your eye's choice. You open it.

Colors could be used in this instance, but you'd have to figure out the color codes. Sub folders could be used, but they beg the question "maybe something important is in there?"

All methods have their place. The more options the greater the chance for clear graphic communication.
 
wankey said:
That's just pointless.

Wow, my icon is 50x bigger than my other icon, it must be more important. That's gonna be a organizing nightmare and that's never how a real desktop is presented (do you put your important documents in a bigger folder?)

There should just be a different type of folder icon that's more "important" looking than others.
Click to expand...

I would more likely write REAL BIG on it something like "IMPORTANT STUFF - DONT THROW AWAY"

Notice, I would not write really small - "important stuff, don't throw away" because logically, I know someone would be more likely to see the LARGE sign or moniker, not the tiny one. Duh.

In a true spatial environment like your desk, size is acutally related to quantity and may still draw the eye, but can also be ingored because of other variables. Proximity, color, lighting, smell, you name it.

You walk up to a building. Do you choose the big double doors with the logo above them straight ahead, or do you try the small unmarked door to the side?
 
Did I find a typo in the patent application itself?

Patent Application 4-5-07 US 2007/0079255 A1

Sheet 5 of 5

Box: Open incon sizing application 15 (~510)

Rocketman

tagged
 
Like A Tag Cloud!

The description of the icons reminded me of the tag clouds you see at flicr, del.icio.us, etc., where the more an item is tagged, the larger it appears in the cloud. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud)

This could be very cool if we would start tagging our files (I think you can already using the spotlight comments). That, in combination with how frequently we access a file could determine the relative sizes of the icons.

This would be a super cool feature in iPhoto as well. Where the thumbnails for photos you view frequently would bubble to the top and be larger, and the thumbnails for photos you don't view often would be smaller and on the bottom.

Really looking forward to 10.5!

Joe
 
clevin said:
its good, right now finder's image thumbnail is horrible.
But
Patent? is that necessary? don't be that greedy, this sort of thing does not deserve a patent.
Click to expand...

I could not agree with you more. The idea behind this doesn't really appease me, but it seems there is a nice mixture of people who would find this otherwise a great feature. I find that in the event I think something is important I give it a color. Nothing else really. I also rarely use the icon layout, rather I use the list layout. If this feature affects the list layout icons as well I would think the different sized icons would otherwise annoy me after the thrill of having yet another new OS X feature at the tip of my fingers.
 
so is apple trying to patent this?
screenshotuc2.png
 
bibimbap said:
Looks like Jobs is pulling a "Konfabulator" again.

Check out the Bump-top interface, they've been doing this for a while:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ
Click to expand...
It's a fascinating UI concept, but you can hardly call variable-scaling icons a rip-off of it. That is only one minuscule piece of Bump-top. One that is almost insignificant in comparison to the rest.

By your logic, a round patio block is a rip-off of an automobile, because cars have round things in them.
 
bibimbap said:
Looks like Jobs is pulling a "Konfabulator" again.

Check out the Bump-top interface, they've been doing this for a while:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ

m.

http://comingupforair.net
Click to expand...

Umm... how does a 3D file manager have anything to do with adjusting the size of icons individually? Another thing is... I use a computer so I don't have to deal with documents just scattered all over my desk, why on earth would I want that on my computer as well? It just seems like such a stupid idea... sure, it's cool looking but, I'd much rather have organization than some sort of 3D file chaos like Bump-Top. I really hope Apple isn't taking the Bump-Top route because that would completely defeat the purpose of having a computer to organize your files. Also, who would want files laying on top of files? I like to open a folder and see all of my files in it without having to drag my mouse around and try to find a file that's hidden in a stack. It all just seems like stupidity really. I'm the type of person that likes to use my mouse as very little as possible by using keyboard commands so that it's less work for my hands.
 
TheSpaz said:
Umm... how does a 3D file manager have anything to do with adjusting the size of icons individually? Another thing is... I use a computer so I don't have to deal with documents just scattered all over my desk, why on earth would I want that on my computer as well? It just seems like such a stupid idea... sure, it's cool looking but, I'd much rather have organization than some sort of 3D file chaos like Bump-Top. I really hope Apple isn't taking the Bump-Top route because that would completely defeat the purpose of having a computer to organize your files. Also, who would want files laying on top of files? I like to open a folder and see all of my files in it without having to drag my mouse around and try to find a file that's hidden in a stack. It all just seems like stupidity really. I'm the type of person that likes to use my mouse as very little as possible by using keyboard commands so that it's less work for my hands.
Click to expand...

I agree. though it's starting to get off topic here: it's obvious (to me) that the next-generation of file managers will be solely based on search and tagging of files. Just like Gmail... whatever the new GUI will be it will be built around these ideas as well.
 
BlackDan said:
I agree. though it's starting to get off topic here: it's obvious (to me) that the next-generation of file managers will be solely based on search and tagging of files. Just like Gmail... whatever the new GUI will be it will be built around these ideas as well.
Click to expand...
... Which will ultimately justify the late Jef Raskin's vision that he was trying to promote, with little success, for over 20 years.
 
odedia said:
Apple really became patent-fanatic. I guess they don't want 1984 to repeat itself.
Click to expand...

And/Or they don't want to get into legal battles with Microsoft and other companies that patent every little thing. This really shouldn't be something that should be patented. But if Apple is going to use it they better patent it before someone else does. So they don't get a competitor fighting with them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back