For those who do not know about it, Bumptop is software to create a three dimensional desktop on your computer. There are windows and mac versions, well there were. At the start of May the company was bought by Google and the software has now been withdrawn and is no longer being supported.
The mac version lets me lasso together files into piles, pin up material on virtual cubicle walls, and employs a physics engine so that items 'bump' into each other. Though I have never found the 'bump' effect to be particularly noticeable.
There was a ted talk on bumptop, and they have clearly had a lot of venture capital funding as they have been working away for a while now, with only a discretionary charge for the pro version.
Bumptop is a marmite product. You either love it or hate it. It will inevitably slow down your computer and it is just a metaphor on top of the desktop metaphor. It only applies to the very top-most desktop, so you don't actually see or work with it much. Personally I find it a useful way to organise my desktop and to date have been happy to live with the inevitable slowing of initial boot-ups.
It is difficult to figure out what Google have bought, presumably they are not going to keep Bumptop going as the same sort of product, a desktop enhancement, but it seems unlikely that any existing patents would be so wide ranging as to cover entirely new devices on which it could be installed. Even if Google think it is the best thing since sliced bread, why buy it when you could just copy it.
In any event a lot of mac users hate it, and mac users are far more attracted to eye-candy than PC users, perhaps Google think that this is the way to add an iPhone like tactile appeal to their devices?
Anyway, I am sorry that Bumptop is no longer being supported, I enjoy using it, and would have liked to see it develop further.
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