BumpTop for Mac: does anyone use this?
http://bumptop.com/mac/
I'm trying to like it. I really am. It's great fun and it offers a refreshing take on desktop activities. But that's just it: it's built around desktop activities. That seems to be the problem.
This is important software. It's important because it's another attempt to test the 3D desktop paradigm waters. Apple has applied for a patent for something similar to BumpTop. This might be the future of interface design. If BumpTop is any indication, then it seems we still have a ways to go. Perhaps one day Apple will do it right. Or BumpTop will evolve into something far greater than what it is today. There is real potential here, it's just not executed well enough. Or it's executed as best as it can be today.
We use folders and the Dock and Stacks and Spotlight to organize ourselves and find things. That's the whole point of the current desktop paradigm: organization in folders and accessibility via shortcuts or other aliased items in different locations around the interface. It might be nice to switch quickly to a 3D view in order to sort through photos, and use BumpTop's momentum physics to toss things to the other edge of the screen with a little flick of the wrist. The standard desktop paradigm seems faster for most other tasks, however. And switching between the 3D desktop and 2D windows can be quite jarring and interrupts that sense of continuity and expectation.
I do like the *feel* of BumpTop, however. Being able to pin things to the walls is genius. Why can't I pin things to the OS X desktop? Why can't I enlarge certain icons in order to emphasize them? Why can't I make Stacks on the desktop itself? Oops, that last bit would again fly in the face of basic organizational paradigms like folders and Dock Stacks and the idea of "putting our toys away." But pinning things to the desktop might be nice.
If we use BumpTop, what's the point of a Downloads folder? What's the point of pinning folders to walls? Just pile it all on your desk. Even if you're only working on a couple of documents, you can manage them just as well on the regular OS X desktop and likely manage them in a faster, more efficient manner. Sure, I might feel like pinning a folder here or there with the knowledge that I'll eventually put things away into it. But BumpTop does not encourage this. BumpTop encourages a mind-set that is counter-intuitive to effective organization. No, organization is not piling papers and folders on your desk by type, unless you need to use all that at this very moment. Organization is putting things away, filing them, and labelling those files or the cabinet in which they sit. BumpTop encourages you to keep things on the desktop and use the desktop itself as your folder for nearly everything. So we're straightening out a mess without actually getting things organized. It might look good, but it's not actually organized. I'm not sure that's a good idea over the long term.
Even if you just want to organize your desktop in order to put files away, BumpTop still might not be worth it: in OS X open a Finder window, select the Desktop, select List View, then sort by Kind. Not as pretty as BumpTop, though.
Maybe if I'm working on a research paper and I need all my materials (provided they're in electronic form) at hand. All my related PDFs could sit on the BumpTop desktop and I can shuffle through them and either open them in Preview or use Quicklook on them. But what prevents me from just using Spotlight to find them or having them sitting in a folder on the desktop, or from just having them sit on the desktop in a grid? Do I really need to organize them into piles? These are questions of style as much as they are of utility. Once again, it might just come down to personal taste. Either way, BumpTop does make working with the desktop a fun experience and it all looks great, too (minus the 3D room mixing with 2D files - more on that below.) Perhaps this kind of gestalt is just right for some of us.
You'll notice that BumpTop mixes 3D and 2D elements. The room is 3D, views are in 3D, but icons themselves are still in 2D, and look odd at certain angles. Activate the floor level view and look at your piles. 2D files stacked on top of one another. It looks cool, but sloppy. Ditto for the blurry icons. When you choose to increase an icon's size, instead of using the icon's larger version, BumpTop simply scales it up. Doesn't look very nice at all. Something for the next version, hopefully. At least get the eye-candy right!
Then there are the potential performance issues. BumpTop is a bit more resource-intensive than I'd like. But you'll have to try it for yourself to see how it plays with your hardware.
If Apple were to take this idea and run with it I'm sure we'd see something better - that is, if Apple were to actually take such a concept seriously.
Who is BumpTop for?
BumpTop purports to mimic real-life use of a desktop. Yet it completely eradicates the need for folders. In real life, however, we also use folders to get things organized. We put things away in cabinets and drawers. We label containers. We might separate things into piles to serve our immediate needs, but these eventually get put away as well. Perhaps BumpTop is offerings us complete flexibility. You can put things in folders if you want to, or you can leave stuff lying around. Again, this might just end up encouraging us to fall into counter-productive habits. This is a problem best tackled by the user, however. I can't speak for everyone on this point.
Grape, anyone? http://tayasui.com/Grape.html
It might just come down to taste. Gestalt.
If you do decide that BumpTop is right for you, then to get the most out of it you'll need to get the Pro version. Without that it's even less useful than it already is (at least from my perspective.)
The weird thing, though, is that it's growing on me. I keep going back to it to play with it and organize things in tidy little piles. Then I look at the Dock and all my Stacks and wonder what the hell I'm doing. Maybe the next version . . .
Thoughts? Comments?
I'm trying to like it. I really am. It's great fun and it offers a refreshing take on desktop activities. But that's just it: it's built around desktop activities. That seems to be the problem.
This is important software. It's important because it's another attempt to test the 3D desktop paradigm waters. Apple has applied for a patent for something similar to BumpTop. This might be the future of interface design. If BumpTop is any indication, then it seems we still have a ways to go. Perhaps one day Apple will do it right. Or BumpTop will evolve into something far greater than what it is today. There is real potential here, it's just not executed well enough. Or it's executed as best as it can be today.
We use folders and the Dock and Stacks and Spotlight to organize ourselves and find things. That's the whole point of the current desktop paradigm: organization in folders and accessibility via shortcuts or other aliased items in different locations around the interface. It might be nice to switch quickly to a 3D view in order to sort through photos, and use BumpTop's momentum physics to toss things to the other edge of the screen with a little flick of the wrist. The standard desktop paradigm seems faster for most other tasks, however. And switching between the 3D desktop and 2D windows can be quite jarring and interrupts that sense of continuity and expectation.
I do like the *feel* of BumpTop, however. Being able to pin things to the walls is genius. Why can't I pin things to the OS X desktop? Why can't I enlarge certain icons in order to emphasize them? Why can't I make Stacks on the desktop itself? Oops, that last bit would again fly in the face of basic organizational paradigms like folders and Dock Stacks and the idea of "putting our toys away." But pinning things to the desktop might be nice.
If we use BumpTop, what's the point of a Downloads folder? What's the point of pinning folders to walls? Just pile it all on your desk. Even if you're only working on a couple of documents, you can manage them just as well on the regular OS X desktop and likely manage them in a faster, more efficient manner. Sure, I might feel like pinning a folder here or there with the knowledge that I'll eventually put things away into it. But BumpTop does not encourage this. BumpTop encourages a mind-set that is counter-intuitive to effective organization. No, organization is not piling papers and folders on your desk by type, unless you need to use all that at this very moment. Organization is putting things away, filing them, and labelling those files or the cabinet in which they sit. BumpTop encourages you to keep things on the desktop and use the desktop itself as your folder for nearly everything. So we're straightening out a mess without actually getting things organized. It might look good, but it's not actually organized. I'm not sure that's a good idea over the long term.
Even if you just want to organize your desktop in order to put files away, BumpTop still might not be worth it: in OS X open a Finder window, select the Desktop, select List View, then sort by Kind. Not as pretty as BumpTop, though.
Maybe if I'm working on a research paper and I need all my materials (provided they're in electronic form) at hand. All my related PDFs could sit on the BumpTop desktop and I can shuffle through them and either open them in Preview or use Quicklook on them. But what prevents me from just using Spotlight to find them or having them sitting in a folder on the desktop, or from just having them sit on the desktop in a grid? Do I really need to organize them into piles? These are questions of style as much as they are of utility. Once again, it might just come down to personal taste. Either way, BumpTop does make working with the desktop a fun experience and it all looks great, too (minus the 3D room mixing with 2D files - more on that below.) Perhaps this kind of gestalt is just right for some of us.
You'll notice that BumpTop mixes 3D and 2D elements. The room is 3D, views are in 3D, but icons themselves are still in 2D, and look odd at certain angles. Activate the floor level view and look at your piles. 2D files stacked on top of one another. It looks cool, but sloppy. Ditto for the blurry icons. When you choose to increase an icon's size, instead of using the icon's larger version, BumpTop simply scales it up. Doesn't look very nice at all. Something for the next version, hopefully. At least get the eye-candy right!
Then there are the potential performance issues. BumpTop is a bit more resource-intensive than I'd like. But you'll have to try it for yourself to see how it plays with your hardware.
If Apple were to take this idea and run with it I'm sure we'd see something better - that is, if Apple were to actually take such a concept seriously.
Who is BumpTop for?
- If you're a slob and have tons of icons strewn about your desktop and have trouble finding things in all that, then BumpTop is for you. Seriously. You know you won't ever really use folders or any of OS X's organizational tools. So just keep it all in some semblance of order on the desktop and have it all look good at the same time.
- If you love eye-candy and love to play in the 3D desktop paradigm, then BumpTop is for you (provided it can continue to hold your attention.)
- If you have a lot of documents and other things you are working on all at once or have a lot of documents that require your attention that you just can't get to, then BumpTop might be for you. But in this case the best thing to do might be to clear your desktop and just work on ONE THING according to priority and then move on to the next. Same thing in real life. Clear your desk of everything except the immediate task at hand. Then rinse, repeat.
- If you just want to get things done quickly and find real value in the Dock + Spotlight + Exposé + Spaces, and if you're already fairly organized and like to keep things that way, then BumpTop is fun to try for a few minutes before you uninstall it.
BumpTop purports to mimic real-life use of a desktop. Yet it completely eradicates the need for folders. In real life, however, we also use folders to get things organized. We put things away in cabinets and drawers. We label containers. We might separate things into piles to serve our immediate needs, but these eventually get put away as well. Perhaps BumpTop is offerings us complete flexibility. You can put things in folders if you want to, or you can leave stuff lying around. Again, this might just end up encouraging us to fall into counter-productive habits. This is a problem best tackled by the user, however. I can't speak for everyone on this point.
Grape, anyone? http://tayasui.com/Grape.html
It might just come down to taste. Gestalt.
If you do decide that BumpTop is right for you, then to get the most out of it you'll need to get the Pro version. Without that it's even less useful than it already is (at least from my perspective.)
The weird thing, though, is that it's growing on me. I keep going back to it to play with it and organize things in tidy little piles. Then I look at the Dock and all my Stacks and wonder what the hell I'm doing. Maybe the next version . . .
Thoughts? Comments?
Comments
Thanks for the review.
My pleasure.
Neat trick that might make some users feel more comfy with BumpTop:
Just use the overhead desktop view. Boom! The OS X desktop with some added features.
Also, we've heard feedback all over on the "Respect Yo" email, it was polarizing so we've listened and decided to change it to something more neutral.
So . . . they needed feedback to realize something was wrong with that??
http://www.christopherwelle.com/2009...r-support.html
Alright, not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but I'm left a little disappointed.
All in all: bumptop isn't worth it for me. It doesn't add one bit to my productivity. As a matter of fact it DEcreases productivity.
Nice idea in principle, but doesn't work IRL.