Flip3D is a “productivity addition” in Microsoft’s forever forthcoming Windows Vista. “The biggest influence is clearly that of Exposé on the Mac – a utility attempting to help the user stay organized by seeing every open window at once – but Microsoft has gone in an entirely different direction in how they are presenting everything,” Ryan Smith reports for AnandTech.
Smith writes, “Activated via Win+Tab, Flip3D works like a rolodex of windows, with a mouse wheel (or repeated pressing of the TAB key) allowing the user to flip through the windows until they find the one they’re looking for. However, this is one major case where we wish Microsoft would have just completely copied Apple, rather than trying to create their own implementation.”
“Flip3D in its current incarnation is not at all a useful productivity tool because the rolodex design means that it can’t really show everything at once like Exposé can. Having to wheel through things further hinders its effectiveness, as it’s not as smooth an operation as simply using the mouse to select the desired window. For all you true nerds and geeks out there, Flip3D is an O(n) operation where Exposé is O(1),” Smith writes.
“Lastly, for such a great emphasis on eye-candy in Aero, the rotated view of the windows is poorly thought out; by rotating the windows it creates aliasing which in spite of the power of modern video cards is not being removed. The artifacting around the window borders and the illegibility of the text simply make Flip3D ugly to look at and ugly to use. In this case, Microsoft simply would have been better off not implementing Flip3D than using this. We like Exposé, and a version of it in Windows would be very nice, but Flip3D is a second-rate copy at best, and ultimately does not function nearly enough like Exposé to be useful,” Smith writes.
“Even with the massive improvements Microsoft has shown with Vista, we still feel they aren’t quite ready to beat Tiger in a fight. Tiger still offers a more refined experience that doesn’t come with nearly as many quirks as Vista does (beta quirks or otherwise), and there’s a great deal of functionality that Tiger has that isn’t replicated by Vista at all, such as drag and drop application installation or a Unix shell. Ultimately switchers are going to find that Vista is similar to Tiger, but it’s not enough to surpass Tiger and cause them to switch back,” Smith writes. “And then there’s Leopard…”
Full article here.
Watch a QuickTime video from Apple of Exposé in action: http://www.apple.com/macosx/theater/expose.html
MacDailyNews Take: We’d be surprised if Microsoft didn’t botch a copy job of yet another Mac OS X feature. See, when Microsoft copies, they can’t steal it outright or they’ll run into legal issues. This is why Windows is an upside-down and backwards Mac UI instead of a direct copy (Microsoft’s users pay for the lack of innovation every time). Since Apple did it first and they focus so intently on the user experience, they spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to implement it, so the copy, in order not to be a direct copy, has to be bastardized and diminished in some way by definition. Because this is Microsoft’s modus operandi, they are predictably consistent at bastardizing and diminishing Apple’s innovations in Windows. F9
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I saw a demo of flip3D several months ago and thought exactly the same thing. Seeing all the windows at once is exactly why expose is such a good tool. As for flip3D, guess it was made by tools instead
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I wouldn’t call it a botch job.
Having used Visat Beta 2 myself (and being relaly impressed), I would say that Flip 3D is pretty cool, and (for me) more intuitive than Expose
Here’s a video of it in action
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6219108055179715875
“Flip3D ugly”
Wouldn’t that make it “flugly”?
Won’t be noticed by your average PC user – “You have to remember, these people had never seen fire before”.
When they first announced this I couldn’t figure out how it could be of any real use. Since you can only view one window at a time it’s effectively like clicking through all the windows on your taskbar one at a time anyway, maybe marginally quicker. That said, I can imagine instances where it’s slower.
PS. Sorry for all they typos…
Billy, you’re correct with your demos: 3-4 windows open. However, I sometimes have dozens if not more windows open (you should see what it looks like when I invoke expose!). In that instance it would be REALLY slow to scroll through each window one at a time. That’s the situation where expose would kick the snot out of flip3D.
Thanks for the video Billy but I can’t see everything at once, I am using an external monitor for my 3 year old powerbook in dual screen mode and expose spreads all the windows evenly to both screens.
Vista is lacking.
Billy:
Gee, nice video. Love that shaky quality. It’s oh so Cinema Verité.
Wow 2 windows. THAT’S an impressive show. I’d like to see how it does with 15 or 20 windows and 4 or 5 applications… what it’s like working in the real world.
Exposé not only shows you ALL open windows, but identifies them when you move the cursor over them. Flip3D doesn’t come close. It doesn’t even identify what the window is.
Besides, OS X has a similar feature TODAY… You can toggle through open windows in the active application (usually) by using Command-`. So, essentially, Mac OS X has BOTH Exposé and a simpler iteration of Flip 3D.
MDN magic Word: LEAVE it to Microsoft to kludge-ify something simple and elegant.
Billy,
I don’t know what’s uglier, that video or windows vista. Man, having to scroll through all those windows is anything but intuitive. If you like using the keyboard instead of the mouse expose can do that with the arrows and return.
Just my two cents
I concede that Flip 3D is going to get pretty messy when you use many windows.. but it’s still quite usable.
The point being that it’s not as shite as some people here would like to make out.
Clearly, Apple have the better solution, overall, but Microsoft’s is certainly the kind of thing you would expect Apple to come out with.
I’m just trying to be balanced in my assesment.
And then there’s leopard . . . .
I love it!
As in, “That’s the tech that’s been here a year so what are they going to do when the new cat comes to town”
If your going to plagiarize, to it right, and do it fast!
Apple NEVER copsies Microsoft huh?
Well, I’ve got three words for you all.
FAST USER SWITCHING
Honestly, it’s no surprise that Microsoft copies anyone who does something successful. They’ve been doing it for years.
However, Apple’s not without fault: Apple’s Dashboard was obviously, er… “inspired” by Konfabulator (now Yahoo Widget Engine). However, it was a realtively weak rip-off initially, in my opinion.
Hmmm… I wonder why Smith failed to mention that…
:~)
For us multiple monitor users – just how would 3-D Flip work in that instance. Expose works great, I can’t imaging windows flipping on different monitors at the same time. Confusing?
Maybe MicroThought doesn’t know what good taste in a UI is.
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Fast User Switching:
Apple took what existed before (in UNIX first, not Windows, BTW) and made it better:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/theater/fastuserswitching.html
What do you call Steve Ballmer and Rob Glaser when they finally dump Windows and move to Mac OS X?
Fat Users Switching.
Quote DW, “….Apple’s Dashboard was obviously, er… “inspired” by Konfabulator…..”
Rubbish. The idea was around with Desk Accesories in Apple’s System 6, which is some 15 years ago.
Tacitus
Drunk Cheney
I actullay use flip 3D on a dual monitor setup.
What happens is that the wondows all move to the flip-3d layout on the main monitor.
Monitor 1 has the flip-3d windows in centre
Monitor 2 displays the desktop
MDN Word “Eye”, as in, it’s all eye candy anyway
My problem with Exposé is that it only works with currently visible windows and not the hidden ones.
Is anyone else out there a hider like me? I can’t stand seeing windows that are not in use or that I’m not about to drag & drop from. I am constantly using command-H to hide an application which I’m done with for the moment, or also the “Hide Others” command which I have globally remapped to the F1 key because I use it all the time. I sometimes switch to another application by holding down the option key before clicking on the application’s dock icon; this also has the effect of hiding your former application while switching to another.
Thus, the dock, command-tab, and command-` (cycle through an application’s windows/documents) are my most useful forms of navigation. Apple should include an option to make Exposé activate all hidden windows, or am I missing something and it’s possible now? I’ve tried it with a hot corner (set literally as “All Windows” even though that’s not entirely true) and F9 through F11.
MW: see. I don’t “see” all my windows through Exposé.
What do you call Steve Ballmer and Rob Glaser when you wire them up to a 10,000 volt power cable…
Fat Users Twitching.
“more intuitive than Expose”
How can something be more intuitive than a feature that just presents everything to you to choose from? This sounds like MS apologists at work to me.
It’s akin to saying “well all those viruses on Windows are an advantage because it makes people learn to install and uninstall their software more”
Billy,
The point has been made by EVERY post, but yours – Flip3D IS as SHITE as it appears. And it is NOT the kind of thing Apple would come out with – they came out with Expose.
DW,
Using good ideas that others create is important in this industry. Apple does it all the time. For example, mighty mouse right clicks, apple trackpads are scrollable, Mac OSX has a dock (which resembles the start menu), just to name a few. But Apple uses ideas sparingly, tastefully and always improves on them.
Microsofts problem is that nearly their entire OS is copied, and they do it in a poor fashion.
“FAST USER SWITCHING”
That same little feature is far overused for
citing an example. Quit regugitating the same
crap. Fast User Switching vs. 1001 other things
that MS copied. Get over it.