[WEB4LIB] Re: The Future

[Alain D. M. G. Vaillancourt]

I frankly do not think it is THE wave of the future but a possible
realisation of the first aspects of a true virtual desktop within the
next five years, since the question here is in a 5 year time frame.  In
a 10 year time frame I would have mentioned wall sized OLED screens. 
People like Mackinlay and Heer and Royer and others note that the
multiple monitors are a "temporary" measure pending the development of
the polymer based technologies that will permit economical wall sized
monitors.

Mac had the hardware capacity for multiple monitors a long time ago but
they never followed on with the appropriate seam-evading software, or
even some basic or applied research on future software to support
features for them (as Microsoft Research is now doing) or offer
applications with the multiple monitor desktop in mind.  Sure, there
was always their interface guru or evangelist Bruce Tognazzini who
never neglected to point out the incredible usefulness of a two monitor
Mac, but he was a voice crying out in the Apple wilderness.

Just how many Mac users did any of you know who actually had several
monitors making up a large desktop?

In theory they would have been ideal for doing some serious Web work in
the last 9 years.  One monitor with a Web browser, another one with the
email inbox and another one with a pad open for taking notes and
cutting and pasting.  But as usual most Mac users are not aware of what
Macs can do (the capacity to change any image on any document icon
being the one which dazzles me the most but there are others) and those
who are for the most part do not exploit these features.

Alain V.

 --- Edward Wigg <e-wigg at epl.org> a écrit : 
> 
> On Jul 28, 2004, at 4:21 PM, Alain D. M. G. Vaillancourt wrote:
> 
> > Triplemons, or if you will triple monitor setups.
> 
> Maybe I'm just a Mac bigot, but it seems strange to me to be
> trumpeting 
> multiple monitor setups as the wave of the future when we've had them
> 
> for the last fifteen years or so. Doing it with LCD monitors and 
> software that takes the seams into account looks to me like an 
> incremental improvement rather than a radical change in the multiple 
> window desktop metaphor.
> 
> Edward.
> 
> 
>  

__________________________________________________________
Lèche-vitrine ou lèche-écran ?
magasinage.yahoo.ca