Someone has created a Flash preview of what he thinks Apple’s new “Piles” features could be like. My Take: It is worth checking out, but it seems lacking- as implemented in the preview, it doesn’t seem very useful; the author also mistakenly claims that such a feature couldn’t be done on Windows.
– such a feature couldn’t be done on Windows –
He never said that. read the article. He said you could do it but it wouldn’t look as cool cause windows doesn’t have the built in support in the GDI for all the effects. and he’s, get this, RIGHT. You *could* do it, but it would be a bitch.
seems like a really good way to get more organized. I like the idea of being able to get an idea of whats inside of a folder without having to open it. XP does this (sort of) for the pictures folder, and KDE 3.1 has a nice feature of displaying a small icon of the folder contents over the folder icon itself. I must say that it looks great, but this guy needs to get his head of the sand:
Quote:
> Why nobody else will ever be able to implement Piles in their OS: as you can see from the demo above, they are heavily graphically intensive. Unless you’ve got Quartz pushing it, you’re gonna be out of luck! Rock on, Apple!
I dont know if he meant QE instead of Quartz, but still … what a crappy attitude!
This is a future feature of OS X, **IF** the rumors are true.
However, don’t forget that Microsoft has already announced 3D support for their 2D GUI (a’la QuartzExtreme) to debut around 2005. Sure, it is 2 years away, but it is a no brainer that sooner or later all graphics subsystems will be 3D based.
Can we please focus our discussion on the very feature of Piles instead of bitching over what AaronR thinks or not?
if i remember well, Apple has a patent on this, so i think, that’s why it would be difficult to get it on windows.
else it’s nice way of browsing (however hope they keep other ways
How do you add, copy, rename or delete files from your pile?
Would that be not more difficult then say with a folder?
left mouse click open the pile, right mouse click givis you
the options? oh shit my Mac only has 1 mouse button!
I think this would be more easier to use under Windows or Linux..
Hold down control and then hit your mouse button – that gives you the context menu.
Why wouldn’t Win32 be able to do this?
Seems rather strange, the stuff doesn’t seem very complex (shadow, etc can be done with a simple alpha blit, rotated file can be done very easily with a matrix applied to a GDI+ graphics, or by hand…).
And the flash demo runs on Windows.
Did anyone see text file in thepile about some iTablet specs. Is this just a conversation starter or something with a bit more meat?
All those who think transparency and vector effects could not be done on Windows should take a quick glance at Macromedia Flash…
‘Piles’ is a terrible name. It’s a still relatively common slang term for hemorrhoids, and “Apple’s piles” brings to mind so many simultaneous negative images that I don’t want to contemplate it.
I’m an atheist, but I’m praying they don’t call it “piles” in the finished product.
This is one “idea” of how piles (iPiles:) will be implimented.
The D3D based UI compositor that will be implemented in Longhorn will be able to do it.
I agree with you here. “iPiles” makes it sound like Jobs has a medical problem.
I much prefer the name “iStacks”, or just “Stacks”.
it’s gonna be pretty useless once your folder gets a dozen or so files inside, which most folders do.
So if Apple does decide to do something like that, it’s probably gonna be pretty different to that flash file
Maybe the stack will only show most recently accessed files “left click”, initially it will be somewhat out of control(what if you had a folder with 100 files). But once the session retains files access on that stack, it only display those. Then “right click” on stack shows all files – those recently accessed and those not.
These files will be colour coded: Red for accessed, blue for not etc.
my two cents…
I would presume that this view could be switched on and off for individual folders. In fact, the piles metaphor would only useful for folders that are displayed as icons. That usually means folders of only a few items. Folder with many items would normally be viewed in list mode anyways, in which case the piles metaphor would be irrelevant.
Another thing that people need to remember is that new paradigms like this are not meant to be drop in replacements for old paradigms. To make best use of piles, you would have to adjust your organization scheme to favor lots of folders with few contents instead of few folders with many contents. If you don’t want to go through that trouble, don’t expect to use piles on a wide scale.
As the article stated, probably would not look as good on Windows. And I could easily see this being used in OS X taskbar, desktop, folders or whatever else we may soon see. Let us see, a stack for that new demo/video for your garage band; a shortcut for Deck or iTunes and iMovie. Song lyrics and scores, a few midi and or audio files. Another stack for that presenation you have to give for work/school. Another for resumes, Quicklinks to web/network/disk filed items. Kind of like “popup folders” on steroids, with Apple’s eloquence. Yep, I’m for it.
While it requires atleast a 1.5GHz or better processor to function smoothly, WindowsFX from Stardock can make the genie effect in Windows. WindowsFX pushes GDI+ to its limits but I can’t imagine this would be impossible to do in Windows long before Longhorn is released. Stardock also, by the way, has a dock-like application available for free. Mix this with Icon Packager, WindowBlinds and WindowFX and you could have a Windows system that looks and acts a lot like MacOS X.
Geez .. if you can’t keep your folders organized to the point where you would actually need this shit, I’d hate to see what your house looks like
I can instantly tell what my folders are just by looking at the names.
And somebody actually put a patent on this ??
Even if this could work in Windows, it would only be slightly faster than actually opening up the folder in Explorer with all of the crap turned off.
This little flash presentation is really a poor representation of Piles. If you’re truly interested, read the original paper:
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/graphics/courses/csw4170/resources/p627…
why do kApps, gApps, and xApps all get flamed for being unoriginal (which it sorta is…), but no one ever seems to gripe about apple for putting an ‘i’ in front of everything? I don’t even understand the logic. What’s the ‘i’ stand for, anyway? internet? I must have missed the memo.
Does anyone remember (I just got rid of his book on parallel processing …Linda) the brilliant professor nailed by the unibomber some time back that developed a similar filing system – only the files flew across the screen L to R.
Don’t ya just HATE it when you can’t remember these things.
(Oh yeah, THAT’S why we have computers)
If the user can organize their “piles” based on subject matter and dates of creation, it will be an awsome way to file individual documents in a coherent manner. I supposed folders will still be there with a variety of piles in them. By the way, piles means stacks or batteries in the French language.
Look, “All those who think transparency and vector effects could not be done on Windows should take a quick glance at Macromedia Flash…”
There is a difference between drawing in your own window “Micromedia Flash” and changing the WHOLE windowing system to suport alpha bits. Right now windows doesn’t do lay composition, so drop it, it wouldn’t work the same as is right now.
It’s sort of amusing that the author assumes piles are impossible/difficult to implement on other OSs, especially with MS hard at work on their next gen GPU accelerated GUI.
I thought that he was referring to the fact that Apple has patented piles. Presumably that could enable Apple to charge absurd fees for anyone wanting to use it which *could* prevent the feature from showing up in other OSs.
I’m looking forward to seeing what Apple has done with piles. Should be good.
I don’t know who copied who but Longhorn offers the ability to “stack” documents. Didn’t read the comments so I don’t know if someone pointed this out already.
Longhorn also has the ability to “stack” (screenshot) files into groups. Stacking files creates pseudo-directories namely to simplify organization of documents.
link:
http://content.cachenetworks.com/cache/402/_1/images/longhorn/stack…
I still know I will be reading “it can’t be done in windows” comments for the next 3 months.
I’m not certain that I can get my head around this pile concept, but somehow it reminds me of the “groups” and “lists” of EPOC, Psion’s OS. I only discovered those yesterday while playing with my newly revived series 3a, but it certainly seems to have something in common with Apple’s innovation.
I posted this link in the comments about Panther and Piles and I took that link from slashdot. And somehow, someone from this site just stumbled apon them. Riiigght.
Why would anyone want to use piles on any OS, they look like crap and they look awkward. Even if Windows could do it I would disable it and if I do upgrade to Mac OS X v 10.3 on my Mac I hope they have a way to disable it.
I thought having Tabs in Safari was a waste of time until I used them, I have feeling using piles will change my mind about their use.
Piles does look like a mess, at least the icon does. Hopefully Apple implements in a manner better than the flash demo. I don’t see anything compelling about icons stacked on top of each other, I can do that now.
[quote]why do kApps, gApps, and xApps all get flamed for being unoriginal (which it sorta is…), but no one ever seems to gripe about apple for putting an ‘i’ in front of everything? I don’t even understand the logic. What’s the ‘i’ stand for, anyway? internet? I must have missed the memo.[/quote]
because they do not have iFinal Cut Pro or iShake of iDVD Studio Pro. It is not iEverything there. Only digital hub software has i in front of the name. keverything does suck.
…that an earlier commenter linked to. If you actually do, it makes the idea of the “piles” clear–and also makes it clear that the Flash animation the person put together demoing them has almost nothing to do with what the originators of the idea intended. (It has the idea of stacking documents together, but his idea of how those documents might be viewed/retrieved is neither the “view cone” nor the “spreading” concept described by the authors.)
The “self-organizing piles” described in the paper, interestingly, may well be a different take on the idea of “live query folders” seen in some email programs and at the OS level in BeOS.
Bas shows the level of the typical Windows user:
” How do you add, copy, rename or delete files from your pile?
Would that be not more difficult then say with a folder?
left mouse click open the pile, right mouse click givis you
the options? oh shit my Mac only has 1 mouse button!
I think this would be more easier to use under Windows or Linux.”
Sure, you bet, it would be much easier to use under Windows or Linux…..OR…YOU COULD JUST BUY A FREAKIN’ TWO-BUTTON MOUSE FOR YOUR MAC, GENIUS!!! (not that I’m under any illusion that you have actually used a Mac anytime recently)
“I see stupid Windows people…..everywhere!!!”
There’s an old false myths that is being repeated:
That works on Microsoft widows too… and
It can be done on Microsoft Windows to…
Now we have Photoshop, video editing, GUI… on Microsoft Windows too….
Well it just kida works on Microsoft Windows, and you just kinda can do that under Microsoft Windows… most things under Microsoft Windows is just a cheap rip-of of the original.
I guess that yuo kinda could make piles under Microsoft Windows, but that would be a dung pile in that case.
Piles could be implemented on almost any platform, for sure. It would certainly be harder to do on Windows than on OS X, with Cocoa, but the author of the Flash demo, seems to think that it couldn’t be done. He cites a dynamic shadow being incredibly hard to rend and requring Quartz Extreme.
Apple certainly wouldn’t add a usability feature to OS X that relies on QE. After all, it would leave behind plenty of current OS X users, including me, who don’t have a Radeon in their Macs.
Call me crazy, but I’d be willing to dump a dynamicly resized shadow for the functionality of Piles. There are a number of ways that graphic elements could be used to add to the usefulness of Piles- colors, age marketc, etc, but in all my brainstorming, I’ve not thought of one that really would be CPU intensive.
Quartz is an awesome compositing engine, and Quartz Extreme is pretty cool. However, even alpha can be done in Win2k/XP. I must admit, if I weren’t so busy with Dynapad ( http://spe.sf.net ), I’d love to code up an implementation of Piles for Dynapad. Not only could the graphics engine of Squeak handle the single graphics required, it would be a lot easier to code certain aspects of Piles, considering that Dynapad uses an object database for data storage- rather than files with disparate file formats- binary, text, documented or completely unknown. It’s a lot easier to group documents into a pile based on content when you can get at the information and its structure so much without hassle.
RevAaron = Aaron R