How about getting rid of the sidebar that shows up in every Finder window? Hiding absolutely everything with the button at the top right is not a solution and many of us need to work with multiple open windows. How many copies of the sidebar does a person need on the screen at any given time?
call me crazy, but if i just make a current mac osx window really small a long line, then make it an icon view, clean them up so they are in a row - then, make the window a tiny box - is this not the same as this?
i think companies patent all kinds of UI ideas, whether they are good or not, just to have a patent. apple UI design is generally decent, so hopefully they don't go crazy trying to make osx too much like iOS. we shall see.
As Marvin notes, one of the more important things shown in this patent application may be the lack of a menu bar. Replacing the menu bar with menus and control elements you call up in other ways, wherever the pointer is located, might also be seen as another step in merging OS X with TV screens--"normal" TVs don't have menu bars always onscreen since it would distract from what you're viewing, and so any merging of computer OSs with TVs will have to allow for menu access on screens without a persistent menu bar. While this could be accomplished more simply, by just including an option (like the OS X Dock's current auto-hide option) to hide the menu bar except when the mouse pointer is moved to the top of the screen, Apple seems to be taking the opportunity to experiment with other ways of accessing menus. If nothing else, Apple may have some pet idea that a menu bar at the top of the screen, even if it's auto-hiding, is too "computer-like" for TVs.
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Like many others here posting on this, no idea how it works in the Real World
But - that really doesn't matter much at this time
.
THE Idea is this:
Apple is constantly trying to invent new, and better, ways of doing things
(Microsoft, Sony, et al ... expect THEM to be on cutting edge of what really "works" ?
We're now moving into next phase of "computing/GUI" with the hybrids between "touch" and "mouse"
Let's see what Steve, Jony, and Crew come up with in The Journey
If they're true to form - all will be fine, in time
i think companies patent all kinds of UI ideas, whether they are good or not, just to have a patent. apple UI design is generally decent, so hopefully they don't go crazy trying to make osx too much like iOS. we shall see.
This is the third article I've read today on this patent application and not a one of them really explains it very well.
It looks groovy, but what the f*ck is it really? I like to see a good explanation of how this would actually work in practice.
Isn't the "multitasking" bar in iOS a perfect example of this patent?