[mortenjorck]

I can never prove it, but I like to think I'm the one to credit/blame for inspiring Apple to "inexplicably restrict [spaces] to a horizontal line only" in Leopard. I produced a concept video in 2009 that prominently featured a linear window manager with gestural navigation, and while it's mostly forgotten today, it was covered by all the tech press at the time and inspired a few attempts at adapting some of its idioms into proofs-of-concept in the early 2010s.

While linear window management is clearly not to everyone's taste, I still think it's a valid idea! It was heartening to see this launch and its reception, as I'm actually working on something in the same area right now...

[willtemperley]

I like the concept. Assuming you were the inspiration for this (very possible) how do you feel about the usability?

I spent an hour today trying to get it working the way I’d expect and it still does odd things, like after disabling automatic reordering based on usage the order is different when 3 finger swiping previews as opposed to actual windows. The visual order is as expected but the swipe order is not linear.

[mortenjorck]

My criticism of MacOS Spaces is one I have of all Apple's window management efforts over the years: It's a great start and a foundation to build upon, but they never really followed through with iterative improvements informed by real-world usage.

In Spaces' case, the problem is a combination of an overly rigid model (only two full-height windows per space) and high friction to management (the process of moving full-height windows from one space to another requires multiple steps). Traditional free-form windows are a little better, but it's easy to lose track of them because the overview itself requires two steps to access (open Mission Control, hover the top bar to expand thumbnails). These could have been gradually improved over the past 14 years, but Apple has somewhat frustratingly left these core workspace features to wither on the vine.

[nsagent]

PaperWM is the closest to this approach. There's also a macOS port:

https://github.com/mogenson/PaperWM.spoon

[wodenokoto]

Is the video still around? Share a link!

[quadhome]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf03YBxCyGI

[jadeopteryx]

Ah, I remember that video, seeing it as the future of window control. Very nice.

[airstrike]

FWIW your video is amazing. make it 2D and add hotkeys to go to spaces and I'll use it right away

[Shorel]

Thank you for confessing!

I hate that design and what it has done to Gnome.

A grid was so much better.