“Ars Technica’s Infinite Loop blog has, in my opinion, unraveled one of the top secret ingredients in Apple’s upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 release, aka Leopard: complete 3D graphics and animations. Given what we know and have seen of Leopard features such as Time Machine and the new iChat and in existing apps like FrontRow, this would make perfect sense, especially if it were implemented in OpenGL. Applications get their own canvases in a 3D world, and the OS is responsible for keeping those canvases updated and visible in various orientations. One visual 3D imaging model for all apps that the OS manages and keeps sorted. Sweet,” Carl Howe writes for Blackfriars’ Marketing.
Howe writes, “What this means for Apple users is that we can expect a new Finder in Leopard. I’ve written before that I believe that Leopard will also support Multi-touch gestures and new sensors to take the user interface the next step for users. From a competitive point of view, this 3D Finder will probably be the biggest shot across the bow for rival Microsoft. Why? Because the Aero 3D interface is the major differentiator today for Vista over Windows XP; most of the other features of Vista are significantly less visible to average users. But on Vista, these features are usable only on the highest end PCs, while I believe that Apple intends its 3D features to become a part of every device it builds. That means we’ll see 3D features on iPods, iPhones, Apple TV boxes, and of course in Leopard.”
Full article here.
Iljitsch van Beijnum writes for Ars Technica, “Obviously the OS can simply move windows to the front and to the the back without support from the application itself, much like how Exposé works, but to really flabbergast us, applications would have to support the new 3D user interface and have different windows, inspectors, and requesters move around through Leopard’s three dimensional space. Core Animation takes care of the movement, and resolution independence makes sure text and UI elements align and look good at different zoom levels. The only thing missing is an easy way to manipulate virtual objects in three dimensions. Or do we just pinch them?”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Number 5” and “LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
RUMOR: Some Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard ‘top secret’ features leak out – January 26, 2007
RUMOR: Apple Mac OS X Leopard to replace ‘Aqua’ with ‘Illuminous’ – December 11, 2006
Apple confirms ‘resolution independence’ and more coming in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard – October 23, 2006
Now THIS I beleive!
ahhh being first is good.
Thisis starting to sound like the interface in “Minority Report”. Amazing!
And second post too.
Am I special or what?
Sloppy seconds
What a lame article.
*shucks*
Well it has been well known for years that Mac OS X was supposed to evolve into 3D, the icons, the desktop and everything,
The horsepower is there with these new processors.
wow (if it turns out to be true)
we’d be talking about the biggest advancement of UI design since the original macintosh.
This I don’t believe. A 3D interface is quite simply counterproductive in most common applications. It might be usable in the Finder to some extent but it would have to be miles ahead of current 3D interfaces to be really usable.
Very cool!
Jeff? Is your last name Peterson by any chance?
Sucks to have a PowerPC chip
Now they have gone and done it. If apple releases leopard with just a few tweeks to the finder, we will all be furious.
Pinch? Like what one does with those extra buttons on the side of the “Mighty Mouse”?
This is easy… You just take the mouse from the tail and then throw it to some direction and pinch the mouse by the tail. Instant 3D mighty mouse. That is how you get cheese.
Have anyone seen the Spielbergs AI?
All I want are tabbed Finder windows.
I hope Apple does something with Finder. It’s the single, ugliest, clunky piece of the OS. Aside from Spotlight, Windows Explorer is more useful and usable.
This I don’t believe. A 3D interface is quite simply counterproductive in most common applications. It might be usable in the Finder to some extent but it would have to be miles ahead of current 3D interfaces to be really usable.
No, I understand what you’re saying, but this makes sense to me. At first, it’s just a few neat tricks to strengthen visual feedback of used actions — windows zoom backwards in 3d space when deselected, and forwards when selected, etc.
But putting the Finder in a 3D space opens up a new way of thinking about the virtual locations of files and folders — much in the same way the desktop metaphor changed the command-line way of thinking. The more the new paradigm is out there, the more there will be uses discovered for this space.
Talk about pie in the sky! I’m not convinced, but if this is true, it could be really cool.
This article was based on this blog entry from Mac developer Huibert Aalbers. I think that the author totally misunderstood the original article. What Huibert said (among other things) was that the delay in releasing iWork/iLife was probably due to the fact that these apps would use the new APIs available in Leopard (in order to bootstrap their use by other developers) and that the new “secret” features would probably not be new APIs but instead new end-user oriented “applications” like time machine that have no impact whatsoever over third party applications. Nice read.
Welalthie Industrialite:
Sucks to have a Power PC inside?
Well…now that i think, the trend is, nowadays, to have an intel inside (please, sing that intel music here, when reading the name of the brand)…yeah, that intel everybody despised before….yawn.
What would be the benefits of a 3-D finder? I so don’t get it.
This is the future. Bet on it.
MW: ‘know’
All I ask for is the return of HotSauce/Project X (or something like it), if anyone can remember that far back.
Since HotSauce was originally developed, we now have a combination of OS, CPUs and GPUs that makes the concept practicable in the real world and being able to fly through the filesystem based on Spotlight metadata would be truly extraordinary.
For instance, you could fly through iTunes based on multiple sort classifications such as artist within genre within year or you could fly through iPhoto or Aperture using the various metadata parameters like keywords or film speed/sensitivity data.
True 3D interfaces are confusing.
My G4 Mac Mini is jealous!
MDN word= planning
As in “I wasn’t planning on needing CoreImage to do basic navigation!”
I agree with Dutch. A totally new user interface cannot be rolled out without involving third party developers well in advance, since they would need to modify their apps in order to support the new capabilities.
This is just wishful thinking. Leopard APIs have been frozen long ago. What we have seen in AppleInsider and ThinkSecret is what will make it into the final release (with additional goodies, small apps like iSync or iChat).