Nealry two years ago, we and others reported on Apple’s patented “Piles” (Apple’s patent was filed in 1994), and the rumors that Apple would bring “Piles” to Mac OS X, which didn’t happen with “Panther.” Some MDN readers also suggested at the time that “Stacks” would probably be a better and more-palatable name for the feature than “Piles.”
We provided a link to a flash demo from Piles Preview creator Richard Das who showed his impression of how the rumored feature ‘Piles’ would work here.
Now, we see from Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows that Longhorn will feature, “Stacks” (screenshot) which “will help aggregate content by such things as authors, keywords, type, and so on. You can then group Stacks by various properties, such as name, size, modified date, type, or authors, in order to provide multiple relevant views on the same data.”
Is this “business as usual” for Microsoft or are Longhorn’s “Stacks” an original idea?
Full SuperSite for Windows’ article here.
[Thanks to MDN reader “Tom V” for alerting us to the Longhorn “Stacks” information.]
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Mac OS X 10.3 Panther ‘Piles’ screenshots posted online – April 26, 2003
The Register goes deep inside Apple’s Piles – April 23, 2003
Mac OS X Panther ‘Piles Preview’ author comments on rumored ‘Piles’ implementation; can’t do this on Windows – April 17, 2003
Readers not happy with ‘Piles’ name suggest Panther ‘Stacks’ instead; link to preview ‘Piles’ here – April 16, 2003
Preview shows the promise of rumored Mac OS X Panther ‘Piles’ – April 15, 2003