Recently-published patent applications have revealed that Apple's been looking into a 3D desktop redesign. Rather than just doing some fancy visual tricks to emphasize how windows stack on top of each other, Apple's design uses 3D objects that you can manipulate to affect their function. For instance, instead of square icon representing a program, it might be represented as a cube. Picking up the cube on-screen and turning it to rest on different sides could trigger different ways of interacting with the program, giving you the sort of options you get now from a separate context menu. The applications show the proposed desktop as a cube, projected into the space "behind" the screen. By dragging windows to the edges of this cube, you could keep programs that you're running but not focused on visible, freeing up space in the center for what you're concentrating on.

Now to be fair, just because a company patents something doesn't mean it intends to make it into a product; by filing an application for this 3D desktop design, Apple may just be covering its intellectual property bases, protecting against a competitor from coming out with a product based on the concept first. Do you think it'd be worth Apple's time to actually implement this sort of system in a future OS? Does a 3D desktop sound useful, or do you think it would be mostly eye candy?

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