I find it curious that the menu bar in these patent example images is no longer pinned to an edge of the "screen." The major historical justification for the Mac OS X having a single global menu bar was to exploit Fitt's Law by giving the menu bar an effective "infinite" height. Unless there is a pointing device that handles 3-D positioning or otherwise provides some feedback or scroll dampening when traversing a corner of this "virtual room," Apple may as just as well give up and pin menus with each window like all the more recent GUIs do...
That was part of the justification. The other part is you get duplicate clutter all over the screen. 15 instances of "File, View, Preferences, Help" spammed all over your screen instead of one. When you almost never use a menu if the window doesn't already have focus.
I agree with that. (I'm a long time Mac user all the way back to the 68k era.) It's just that ever since Steve's return, there seems to be a subtle disregard for the history of the platform and a willing forgetfulness of the R&D effort expended by the company over the last few decades...
How so? I've only started following Apple in the last few years; my first Mac ran Leopard. Were there anything big that disregard previous usability, beyond the reflecting dock?
I know this is a late response, (I only just found it on my comments page) but major usability loss occured with the introduction of the "non-spatial" Finder with OS X.
This guy summarizes things much better than I ever could...
3d isn't how to think about the interface outlined there.
Basically, apple is investigating making multitouch part of the "normal" os x interface. A touch interface has to overcome the fact that fingers aren't good for precise pointing, and thus a lot of tasks that are tedious-but-doable with a mouse (like positioning windows, or using pulldown menus, or clicking small icons) become hugely painful with a finger.
It's pretty obvious what a good touch interface for os x would have to be like:
- the app is designed with full-screen mode in mind
- the app's primary content area fits in one central area
- the tools and so on are in sidebars-and-bottom-bars
...and the app would avoid:
- overlapping windows (either within the app, or between apps) or floating palettes
- lots of little icons or finely-detailed controls
In other world: every app would look like iphoto or ical or itunes.
A "2.5d" interface like in this patent makes a lot of sense: each open app is in its own "slice", and you navigate forwards and backwards through the slices using some multi-finger gestures. The edge of the screen is used to show contextual information about what's currently open, and provides cues as to how to navigate to different items (eg: is that photo "behind me" or "in front of me"?).
In a touch-heavy environment the gimmicky 3d interfaces from the past all of a sudden become potentially a lot more helpful. You'll notice apple's been working on possible solutions to making a touch interface usable for a long time:
- a lot of the expose tools make more sense as ways to easily navigate between windows with a finger (eg: hit the expose key, see all open windows in miniature, then touch the one you want to maximize...)
- dashboard makes a lot of sense in a touch context, as a way of easily pulling down some lightweight apps without disturbing your current ui arrangement
- spaces makes a lot of sense in a touch context: each collection of screen layouts in its own little slice that's given a spatial location, and so not only do you not destroy a layout by bringing a different app to the top, you also give spatial cues as to where your other open programs are
If I was a betting person I would bet against this interface becoming commonplace as it is shown right now. It seems driven by appearance and not functionality.
You don't gain much from this that you don't get from having a MDI window tiled against a bunch of toolbars. The idea of having toolbar items pinned to the "wall" is interesting, but in general I'd think it would just perspective-distort the icons used on the boxes/buttons.
Despite the obvious/intuitive feeling that if 2D is good, 3D is better, I think as long as we're viewing the desktop through a single 2D viewport there's really very little advantage to this.
On the other hand, as multiple displays are becoming more common, there might be an advantage to building an internal 3d model of a desktop and creating multiple viewports into this space with the LCDs. I don't think the Apple model shown in the link really aligns with that at this point, however.
As multitouch screens becomes more common, users will want an experience more familiar with the real world because the interface becomes more concrete.
And 3D interfaces, even inside a 2D screen, could improve the illusion of that concreteness.
Recall that Apple hid a lot of their iPod interface patents, like the scroll wheel, in a patent application for an "advanced TV remote controller". I wouldn't be surprised to see this turn up not in a 3D OS X but in a different device.
The only way that more-than-2-dimensional UIs will work will be if there's an extra dimension _only_ for each of the elements ("in-and-out" for the window stack, etc)... otherwise people will get frustrated with mousing...
The very day Apple demos its first 3D environment, Microsoft will announce that Windows n+1 will sport a 3D user environment. Of course, it will never, ever, ship, but will prevent some 'softies from considering the switch.
One week later, the Linux enthusiasts demo their new 4-d UI, which features window placement on the surface of a hypercube. The system mostly works, but has a bad habit of turning your browser inside-out.
But seriously, so impressive... I can't wait. This type of innovation and Apple's ability to bring it to the consumer market justifies a closed hardware platform, IMO. We don't need 30 million configurations, we're over that period as hardware is now a commodity.
"If you want to build great software, control the hardware."
Apple is the most secretive company in the world and have no need to publish unpractical prototypes on YouTube, lol. I assure you, they've been exploring alternative interfaces for quite sometime... their entire history encompasses the user experience.
That's true, their entire history encompasses the user experience, dating back to when they first stole the mouse and graphical user interface from Xerox Parc, then claimed ownership over the ideas and sued Microsoft for using them.
I gave you an example of open innovation with similar foundations. The existence of impractical, exploratory research is a good thing.
I anticipate a counter along the lines of "x company must have gone through y impractical prototypes during..." which I will not disagree with, but secretive is not really in everybody's interest here. It is in the company's interest, which does not justify the closed platform.
And then, I am not saying that Apple should be less secretive -- I am saying that while Apple makes good UIs, Apple gets over-credited in when it comes to innovation. I say this with no motivation other than to add a perspective. :)
Is there any evidence suggesting that Apple is actually working to implement this UI into OS X? I don't think filing for a patent necessarily means betting on it big time.
