Object Desktop - next-gen OS features today!
A look at through the years..
Wednesday, August 2, 2006 by Frogboy | Discussion: OS Customization
For over 11 years, Object Desktop has been delivering future technologies to users long before they show up for the mainstream. If you want to know what's going to be in the OS someday, get Object Desktop.
Going back to 1994/1995, the earliest days of Object Desktop for IBM's OS/2 gives hints on things to come to the mainstream years later.
Take a look at these screenshots:
Look at Object Navigator. Designed before there was a Windows Explorer (anyone remember File Manager?) it boasted things that people today take for granted. Look at the ZIP files -- they're folders and are treated like any other folders and were totally seamless to the user. Again, remember the time frame 1994/1995.
The icon labels are easy to ignore but this was one of the many innovations that users often miss or taken for granted. Similarly, Windows Vista will have a "sidebar" with "gadgets" on it. Apple users argue that the Sidebar is taking from them. One can pull up a screenshot of System 7 (the version of the Mac OS from the same period) and try to find something as similar as Control Center which allowed users to plug in their own functionality.
Not that Microsoft borrowed from Control Center. Stardock always considered it an obvious feature.
One feature we haven't been able to do on Windows -- yet that we did on OS/2 was Object Package. Object Package allowed a user to package a program or an entire desktop and take it to another machine with all the necessary classes and "registry" settings automatically applied.
It took awhile for Keyboard LaunchPad to make it to Windows but it did. This is another example of how seamless the ZIP handling was and how flexible Control Center could be.
Over the years many features first seen in Object Desktop found their way into the OS. .ZIP integration, GUI Skinning, even a "Control Center" like bar. And each new OS provides Stardock with new opportunities and new technologies to help create the next version of Object Desktop such as Object Desktop 2007:
...10 years later...
Now you have total control over the icon size on the desktop, can create your own labels, the right-click desktop menu can now be configured, minimized windows can be turned into interactive-tiles on the desktop, users can create their own gadgets and widgets, virtual desktops are faster, more powerful and able to be seamlessly integrated into the Start bar on Windows. The UI is easier to skin and can look a lot better. And by moving to Windows, with its much larger market, Stardock was able to lower the price from $89.95 to $49.95.
Users can build their own desktops from scratch, disposing entirely of what comes with Windows if they so choose.
Updates don't come yearly. Instead, they come in real-time. Users can continually download new updates to the different programs as Stardock makes them.
And even as the visuals improve, so too does the utility. Object Desktop is more than a pretty face, it provides the tools and enhancements to Windows needed so that users can make Windows work the way they want to.
And even as cutting-edge as this all looks today, someday, some of these features may seem like old hat as new features and programs that haven't even been imagined are developed.
If one looks at programs from 1994/1995 in other software arenas, they can compare how much has changed and how much has stayed the same. Object Desktop continues to evolve and influence the market in ways far greater than its developer size would normally imply.
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Reply #1 Wednesday, August 2, 2006 8:18 PM