This is a week that shook up the computer industry, because, after Apple’s move to Intel chips earlier this year, this week they officially endorsed the running of Windows on their hardware with the release of Boot Camp. This is certainly a Big Deal™, for more reasons than one, and I’ll toss my opinions into the fray, having been a Mac user for 13 years now.

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Read the rest of New world order (1,386 words)

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Basically, the spatial Finder (which was copied and has been pretty much retained by Windows) refers to the idea that the organization of folders, files and so on on the computer have a spatial relevance, just like files and folders in real life, so that people can always find them, and so forth. Siracusa goes on in his article to basically list a laundry list of potential enhancements to the Finder, and then tries ‘real hard’ to make them fit into his “spatial” paradigm.

Then, we hear today that Apple’s upcoming Panther release of OS X (presumably 10.3) will contain new, groundbreaking features, like “piles” (what an awful name), and so forth, that also relate to a spatial paradigm (like piles of papers on your desk), from patented Apple technologies, some of which are discussed here.

I have a problem with all of this: computers aren’t real life, and it’s time we ditched these stupid spatial metaphors, and allowed computers to advance in terms of cataloguing information to a point way beyond spatial limitations. Allow me to elaborate.

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Read the rest of Time to ditch the spatial Finder (840 words)

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