Google buys BumpTop, could target 3D interface at iPad

After the US launch of the 3G/Wi-Fi version of the Apple iPad, the tablet has passed the one million sales mark, prompting the firm's co-founder Steve Wozniak to say the PC-Mac war was over as the new formats took Apple well beyond its traditional user base. But other players will bid for the upper hand in the hybrid PC/mobile …

[SlabMan]

Stacks of files?

That'll be useful for all those Android and Chrome devices that don't have a file system. Or a desktop.

[Anonymous Coward]

The trouble with BumpTop...

Is that it looks and handles like arse. As a UI design it's terrible.

It might be popular with Windows users who know no better, but one would hope that the Apple crowd are somewhat more discerning. It's the software equivalent of those nasty plastic laptops one sees blinged up with useless LEDs and other bangin' (and utterly redundant) accoutrements.

[Anonymous Coward]

Disagree...

Actually moving to Surface while maintaining WIMP paradigms is terrible UI design. Bump Top was in effect the reverse of this and clearly Google saw that looking at the price. Piles and the various manipulations thereof are great concepts.

Also worth mentionning is that even though I bought Pro at least a year ago, because of the buy out they wrote offering me a full refund....usually its 'so long and thanks for all the cash' when this kind of thing happens.

[Rob]

Right up Apple's street

If the rumour mill is even remotely close with it's sale price then it should be perfect for the Apple market, seeing as it's a ridiculous price for what was bought.

[Jonathan White]

Waste of Money

As Bumptop itself has gone freeware for a limited period, I downloaded it to have a look.

It lasted about 30 seconds. It started up and I got the 'looking into a cardboard box with all the stuff on your normal desktop in it' metaphor. OK, I thought, let's follow this. Picked up a directory I had on my desktop, dropped it on another directory to make a 'stack' of folders. It moved one directory into the other one in the file system.

Quit. Delete.

[Subban]

Is it freeware?

I thought reading their homepage it was just the free version they were giving away for another week, not the full version.

Or did I misread ?

[Thomas 18]

BumpTop Accquisition

This is about accumulating additional patents to wack competitors with, nothing more.

For those interested, a video showing what the OS design does:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ

[Ivan Headache]

I just looked at the link.

It's very clever - but for me, utterly pointless.

I think you are right. Google has bought it for the IP.

[PaulH]

How does it scale?

The other day I had a folder of over 900 photos. I wanted to move my vacation images to another folder, so, click the date column, scroll to the first vacation pic and select, scroll to the last pic, shift-click, cut, paste, done.

I don't see how this desktop would cope with that quantity of files.

[Justin Clements]

erm no

Tried Bumptop, and then stopped it. Don't see the point of it personally.

[Mr Grumblefish]

Using the desktop

as a file manager is so 1984.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh super.

BumpTop users will be so excited to learn that their product is going the way of, say, Jaiku.

[bobbles31]

Okaayyyy

Watched the Youtube vid. Errr, I get the "You have unused Icons on your Desktop" annoyance from Windows and ignore that because my Desktop is a sandbox. If stuff is important, I organise it into folders. Maybe I don't have any vision!

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

Simple

"DumpTap" has been getting popular with Apple fanbois and so Google fancied sticking their oar in just in case Steve started getting ideas. Google only want to secure the IP, before someone else does.

Those who like "bling" on their desktops love BumpTop, to me it looks like a A-level student's CS project, nice work but hardly a "quantum paradigm shift in desktop GUI design"!