Apple to replace Cover Flow with the Spiral interface

Apple to replace Cover Flow with the Spiral interface

Patently Apple is reporting that Apple is planning on replacing Cover Flow with the “Spiral” GUI that was introduced in a patent back in September. According to a new patent, the new design will work on multi-touch devices and likely be included in OS X Lion next summer.

Patently Apple explains,

Apple’s patent describes methods and arrangements for manipulating a playlist by providing a graphical user interface in the form of a receding spiral made up of a collection of icons representing media items in the playlist having an icon in the center of the spiral representing the entire playlist. By way of selecting and dragging a representation of a media item or playlist into the center of the receding spiral, a new receding spiral based on the media item or playlist currently in the center of the spiral is created and displayed.

It looks like Cover Flow’s days might be numbered. It’s hard to imagine displaying album artwork on an iPhone or iPod touch with the Spiral interface. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d expect these two GUIs to both be present in iOS and OS X in the future. Cover Flow works really well for things like displaying album artwork on iOS devices.

The Spiral looks cool, but just how functional would it be? Only time will tell. What do you think? Is Apple trying too hard to bring 3D GUIs to their platform?

Article and Image Via Patently Apple

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About Joshua Schnell

Man, Myth, and Legend, Joshua is the Editor-In-Chief, and founder of Macgasm. He produces two podcasts, Macgasm TV, and The AppOrchard, and can be heard on CBC Radio once every couple of years.

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JoeNorth5

Check out the new Spirals-Like demo that patently Apple just put up. Cool.

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JoeNorth5

Apple likes to Think Different and Joris is a bore.

For data, the v-shape style would be likely better as we could see more. I use Cover Flow and this seems to be better thought out. For fun, spirals on the ipad seems like a winner. It's obvious that touch is what spirals is about and that's just great. Bring it on.

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Bruce

When you have ideas like the v-shape and spiral ui that are superior than the current design, and Apple keeps working on it, there's a great chance of it coming to fruition. Yeah Joris, they patented the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, iLife apps and they patent everything that comes to market. And your point is what?

The idea is to improve on an existing ui principle and this does it in spades. It takes an idea made for music and makes it better for music, at least as an optional form, and it betters it for data in the finder. I like Apple's "Think Different" approach even in the face of chickens like Joris who doesn't like change and likes to "Think the Same." Piss on that.

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Joris Witteman

Nothing could be more premature and assumptuous than to state that this is going to replace CoverFlow, as if it were a fact. Apple patents concepts all the time.

I never use CoverFlow myself, and if this makes it into a product, I don't see myself using this much either.

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  1. Tweets that mention Apple to replace Cover Flow with the Spiral interface | Macgasm -- Topsy.com says:
    December 16, 2010 at 11:32 AM

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Joshua Schnell, Brodie Beta, Tom Anderson, Kevin O'Halloran, M. Iqbal Aribaskara and others. M. Iqbal Aribaskara said: RT @macgasm: Apple to replace Cover Flow with the Spiral interface http://mcgsm.co/gn0Sh9 [...]