Sunday, July 11, 2010

OS X 10.7 UI idea: stacks on the desktop

I've sent some suggestions to Apple earlier, and they actually replied with "please don't send us suggestions" email. They are afraid of getting sued later, I guess.

Anyways, people should be able to give feedback and ideas of UI design. Hey, Microsoft proudly says they did this in making Windows 7 so good (which it is). SO, here goes Apple.

STACKS ON THE DESKTOP

The desktop is a perfect place to clutter your life. Position keeps different kinds of things apart - upper left corner for handy links etc. - left edge for to-be-done business things. Right edge for personals. Center for ASAP stuff.

Only, there's often more stuff than necessary when living this way. What is the way in OS X to hide such stuff, yet keep it "there". Stacks. :)

But stacks only exist in the Dock. So I'm supposed to place all my categories of stuff in different stacks in the same positional place. I'm losing something of the desktop arrangement, here.

So, make it possible to have stacks everywhere. Actually, make it possible to show a directory as a stack and that's it. This way, also command line usage would work fine.

Why not simply place folders on the desktop? It simply feels more elaborate. It opens new windows when the stuff is accessed. Don't like that.

If you know of an existing OS X tool that already provides "stack everywhere", pls. let me know.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

you shouldn't be putting more then a couple things on your desktop. It slows down your mac. window's computers have full desktops, not macs. Do not use your mac like a pc.

minimum said...

That's a good idea!
Maybe my vision is a bit different but here goes:
So Apple is starting to centralize their UI experience around Multi Touch right? Good.
So why not make stacks on the desktop like folders on iPad/iPhone, but just slightly differently, like the Photos app on the iPad. Imagine That you could just drag one item over another and it creates a stack. When you wish to open it up just hover the cursor over and pinch in open with your two fingers. Or just select the stack and press Space, but instead of opening the interface we have today it opens up something similar to grid view like in stacks we have today in our Dock.

Asko K. said...

That would suit me, Minim (nice name, btw).

What I've found myself doing is periodically putting everything on the desktop to "Old desktop " kind of folder, and then forgetting it (on the desktop). :)

This clears away stuff and if I miss something, it's not far away.