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Apple's 3D Desktop Patent Filing Examined
phantomfive writes "The patent office has released some patent filings by Apple which indicate that the company is working on a 3D desktop of some sort. They call it a multi-dimensional desktop, according to the patent filing." There's also some commentary at ZDNet; both stories link to a detailed run-down at AppleInsider.
Not surprising if you look at the 3D effects that Apple put into Time Machine and the document stack. I love these.
What will make this really interesting is the navigation itself: since Apple is about to get rid of all buttons on the trackpad (and mouse?), I'm wondering if they have thought of some fancy 3 or 4-finger gestures to move around in 3D. I can think of some games that could use that.
The first time I saw the idea of 3D navigation for the desktop was when Hypercard came out (was that 10, 15 years ago?). Someone came up with this concept of a house where you'd store various things. In the basement would be the backups. On the desk in the office would be the open documents, etc. You'd just walk around your house in what (at the time) felt like 3D.
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Setting aside for a minute the fact that data storage is already a multidimensional representation on any modern computer..
The most efficient way to manipulate that data is in a 2D matrix. That's because we can see all of it at once -- at least, as much as can fit on the display and/or our arc of vision. If we lived in 4 spatial dimensions, it would make sense to represent data in 3 dimensions, because we could see all 3 of them at once (assuming we had 4D sensory input.. whatever that might be). Creating a 3D representation of data might look cool, but it's just not efficient to work with for any amount of data beyond 2-3 items. See: Win-Tab in Vista, Stacks in OSX. It's not that we need better ideas for how to represent data in 3D, rather it's a physical limit that we need to accept and stop trying to do it "because we can."
If you still don't buy that, imagine living in 2 dimensions (which is probably easier than imagining 4). We exist only on a plane, and objects can be represented only on the axises around us; nothing above or below, and we could only see the 180 degree arc from left to right. It would make no sense to represent data as more than a 1D line. Sure, we could send a line to the front or back, but working with a set of data would be most efficiently accomplished along that line.
It's always more efficient to work with a set of data in 1 less dimension than you exist in. (Unless you live in 1D.. then I guess you're screwed.) There's a reason we don't use a 3D writing system. There's a reason we don't stack monitors one behind the next. Store it in 3 dimensions, fine, as a book, or as a stack of 2D windows, but use it in 2 dimensions. A 3D desktop is form over function in the worst sense.
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Back around 99, I remember installing a little OpenGL accellerated 3D desktop for Win98. At the time, I had an STB Permedia2 based card (full OpenGL ICD) and it was one of the very few cards that could run this "desktop" of sorts. Icons could be placed ANYWHERE in a 3D field and I could navigate 3D space around them. I could move through all three axis, rotate, do all kinds of things, even lose icons if I placed them in an area of 3D space too far away from the rest of the desktop stuff. It was neat for about 6 days, then I stopped using it.
I'm sure I still have a copy of this in my CD graveyard. I'll look for it later and post up something when/if I find it.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
I think more realism in metaphor implementation would definitely help people crossover to computers easier. File organization, menus and multiple windows are a tough one for most folks. Being able to understand how three dimensional physics affects pieces of paper (documents), photographs, application windows (needs a good metaphor that doesn't conflict with paper documents) and folders for keeping it all in will help a lot of people who can't grok it as is.
A lot of people bitch and moan about "terrible eye-candy". It might slow you down some, but for a lot of people visual hints and metaphors are the only way to understand this stuff.
Work in any kind of design field for a while and you start to appreciate how simple visual hints help or hinder people. Being able to intuitively grok the way anything from a toaster to a can opener to an operating system works without having to really think about it is a Good Thing.
I agree though, you shouldn't be able to patent a metaphor, an algorithm or an analogy. It's just dumb.
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