For years we've been complaining about lack of refinement in the Finder, little bits and pieces of things we remember were great in classic Mac OS and were missing in OSX. So many discussions on how the spacial views should be and how the browser view should be etc. But then we are confronted with multi-touch interfaces and openGL-driven UI from enthusiasts and I have to wonder, how can we settle at the little bits and not see the bigger picture?

The Bumptop Prototype is such a great example of a much richer set of gestures and behaviors applied to spacial objects, and even though it still needs a lot of work I think it's the right mindset for the much needed next gen file-management UI. My wondering is, why is Apple doing the little bits (such as adding overdue grids in Leopard after 7 years) instead of doing true innovation? Or are they too busy with cell toys to make a true change in the desktop industry?

We'll have that soon.

Core Animation ain't for mere gee-whiz effects. It's for interaction. Coverflow and iPhone UI are just teasers.

Bumptop looks promising, although not completely thought out yet. I'm impressed that people have found ways to use modern graphics technology to make better interfaces instead of just better flash for in-store demos.

Pushing the files around looks kind of like playing Oblivion.

quote:

Pushing the files around looks kind of like playing Oblivion.

If you want your company's software product to have an easy-to-use user interface game programmers are the obvious choice to hire and put in charge of that portion of the project. They have the experience, and having spent a long time thinking and discussing the problems, they know what the issues are. Best of all they recoil in horror at a clumsy implementation of a function and will push and complain to make it right.

The person in charge of user interface issues at our company is a former game programmer.