Infinite Loop has an interesting speculative piece about what Leopard’s “top secret” feature (and the reason for the iLife and iWork delays) might be that Leopard will feature a 3D interface. Now, they’re not suggesting that images will float above the screen in 3 dimensions or anything, just that the desktop itself and the interface may be in a 3D environment.
I’m not sure what to think about this.
On one hand, it could be really cool. On the other hand, wouldn’t this be a really bad idea for Apple to announce without letting developers know about it before hand? I don’t know…I’m not a developer (except for the occational Dashboard coded widget), so if you are (and I know some of you are) what do you think about this as a possibility? Is it something they could keep under wraps and then release on you at the last second?
5 thoughts on “SPECULATION: Is Leopard’s “Top Secret” feature a 3D Interface?”
I think we will see a new 3D interface but not just yet. My money is on Mac OS 11, not X. So, new interface? Sure. 3D? Not so much.
I doubt 3D, it would be cool but I HIGHLY doubt it. I’ll eat a boot to that.
It is possible that Apple could just expand the existing interface. All cocoa and carbon applications should be updated flawlessly, and developers can turn it on in their applications via a single line of code in the Info.plist file. It shouldn’t be too hard, looking how developers transitioned their applications to universal binaries, which is a much harder task… Custom Writer
Good one, Steve. 🙂
I think it is possible, but not right now, unless they have some major hardware stuff planned. I think for Apple to do a 3D interface to Apple standards they are going to need to develop a near perfect way to interface it. Sure they could make some amazing 3D graphics, but I don’t think the current input options would allow for intuitive control of it. I could see maybe trackpad gestures coming into the picture, but desktops don’t have those so thats not really a universal enough option. But, if they plan on some major hardware updates, which aren’t out of the question, or come up with some kind of crazy new input device, I think we could see it in Leopard.