“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
Thanks, TT! And good luck milking those D’s for all they are worth.
I can see how many people see a 3D desktop as disruptive, but that can safely be said to be only for users who cant or dont want to learn to do things in a new and different way. Apple should allow for its users to turn off the 3D UI if the user would be held back the way linux allows for complete customization how the user wants to work. I can imagine that this new UI would be similar to Beryl/compiz. The UI is meant to make life simpler for the user, many people do not take full advantage of the full functionality of their machines. One has to make the effort to learn every way of getting things done and make a conscious effort to use each of them. I think that it would serve customers if Apple included links to how to videos more publicly especially for new users/converts. Anyone who uses Quicksilver will know what Im talking about, the hooks into the OS are great time savers but the user has to make the effort to understand and experiment with actions. I will personally love a new file manager that is light and easy to manage with easy to remember key commands instead of mostly mouse actions.
Will do TMF.
It gets hard occasionally,
but that’s the best time to handle them…
3D interface sounds interesting. Considering what Toyota has been doing with stereo camera on automobiles in Japan, may be Apple will introduce new computer with stereo camera and use it to move files from one folder to folder by detecting the hand motion.
@2Shae,
Microsoft even says their next OS is two years away. And by 2 years, they mean the better half of the next decade away.
Wow, now it will be even easier for Finder to find Bill Gates!
bah, i have been working on a 3D OS for 8 years 🙁
it goes “a bit” further than this, but it makes things just a bit harder for me.
Stereo cameras sound like a very interesting idea! I already thought about how a mac could use its camera to see you, and let you control things with hand gestures, similar to they Eyetoy. But if they had two cameras, it could be much more precise, and 3d. It would be like using a wii controller, except it will recognize your movement without a controller.
If this is more idle speculation, I’m over it.
3D makes sense in Time Machine, it probably doesn’t make sense in most other things.
think the usb port in the ATV is for the addition of a cheap overlay device for your tv screen?
Apple would have gotten Microsoft completely of guard. Now if it’s true or not M$ will of course try to implement this with there next OS
It’ll take until at least 10.9 before MS answers any 10.5 surprises.
MS just barely managed to grunt out Vista. If they don’t New Coke it and go back to XP (won’t happen even if it should), MS will be spending the next couple years just band-aiding Vista.
It’ll be 2010-2012 before MS does anything significantly new with Windows.
TRUE 3d interfaces are LESS confusing. However, this is impossible on a screen… which is always 2d.
Unless there’s a holographic screen.
Well there have been rumors of new displays to go along with Leopard’s debut…
Hey, it’s free to dream.
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Blobert,
My namesake in spirit – welcome to MDN.
Cubert-
I think his real name is ‘Bert’.
Maybe this will happen at some point, but I doubt it’s coming in Leopard. Can you imagine how much testing this would require? They haven’t released this to developers, and they’re shipping in < 3 months. I don’t see how this is possible.
Cool! OS X will finally catch up with Linux and Beryl in this area! And because they’re Apple, we can be reasonably sure that it will be stable.
Seems Vista looks pretty ordinary already.
Perhaps this is insanity but don’t you think they woud allow you to use either finder?