Want more evidence that tradition in user interfaces has blinded us to the possibilities for making graphics fluid and intuitive? Just look at the first known GUI, Dr. Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad. His 1962 PhD thesis at MIT, Sketchpad represents a whole bundle of firsts: the first object-oriented programming project, the first use of a toolbar, the first real-time graphics system, the first drawing program, the first GUI, the first use of instances, the first use of draggable vector graphics … and yet, that’s not what’s impressive about this. What’s really impressive is that the work of this one man still holds up in 2008, and not all of what he does here has been fully answered by modern UIs. (Sometimes the past turns out to be more futuristic than the present, perhaps because people doing modern development work don’t know enough of their history.)

The video here is introduced by Xerox PARC’s Dr. Alan Kay, who was later an Apple Fellow (among other things), and made his own contributions to UI history.

This is doubly interesting to me, because the simplicity of this kind of project makes it ideal for people writing their own interfaces into tools like Processing. And notice how nice it is having a persistent physical interface — something that might not be practical for Adobe, but could be perfectly practical for a DIY electronics builder and live visual performer. You can read his full thesis, and for more UI history with Alan Kay, there’s a full 1987 documentary that traces this and many other developments (including the mouse) on the Internet Archive.

Ivan Sutherland celebrated his 70th birthday last week, as described by Java creator James Gosling:
Happy Birthday, Ivan! [James Gosling: on the Java Road]

Gosling points out that even more interesting than this interface is what Ivan has to say about technology and courage. It’s well worth reading if you’re embarking on a research project of your own.

Okay, I spoke too soon. Just one day after a ZDNet blogger announced he could build a cheaper version of Apple’s high-end Mac Pro, Apple themselves have announced they can make their Mac Pro significantly faster and cheaper. I think the ZDNet machine still works out to be cheaper, but not by nearly as large a margin. Some of you wrote in to say you still want, you know, a cool case design, system-wide warranties, the Mac OS, and not having to, um, build your own system. Whatever. That sounds boring. It might even work out of the box. I’m just glad one of you mentioned hacking Mac OS support in. Needlessly risky and difficulty hacky methods? Now you’re speaking my language!

So, what about this new Mac Pro? It’s better and faster and cheaper and stuff. And it doesn’t have a Blu-Ray drive, whatever that’s worth.

Mac Pro

Seriously, Apple makes a really terrific, high-end system. You can get a number of PCs for significantly less that don’t match up spec-for-spec — and the PC market generally gives you more choices — but there’s no question the Mac has a small selection of really good choices that run both Windows and Mac OS X. You know what you want.

Apple is sticking with ATI graphics by default: the Radeon HD 2600 XT. I think the 8600-series NVIDIA is an all-around better 3D card, but for the Mac’s content creation-geared workflow, the Radeon makes sense. For 3D pros, there’s the NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600, which is of course overkill price/performance-wise for all but high-end applications. But the real story here is the Xeon architecture from Intel. Think dual 45-nm Quad-Core Xeon processors up to 3.2GHz, starting at US$2799, with 1600 MHz front side bus and 800 MHz memory. I like Apple’s description: “the ideal system for creative professionals, 3D digital content creators and scientists.” I think we should just opt for the “scientist” description, fellow visualists.

One thing I’m not going to repeat that many blogs are is Apple’s hyperbolic-yet-obvious tagline, “fastest Mac ever.”

Actually, wait a minute: oil prices rising, polar ice caps melting, the potential of running out of oil, global terrorism and the potential collapse of the world economy — maybe some day we will see “The New Mac Green: Much Slower and More Expensive Than Last Year’s Model!”

No, scratch that — Obama’s campaign is gaining momentum. I’m sure we’ll avoid all of that; it’s like one of those nasty alternate realities in the sci fi movies we manage to escape.

Wow. Pretty nerdy sounding, but this technology is quite impressive, and could be incredibly useful for aspect ratio conversion, object removal, rescaling, etc.

The object removal is very very impressive. I can think of a bunch of interesting uses for this, especially if you artificially mess with the weights for effect only. Id love to see this on a sequence of frames.

via reddit

Update : here is Dr Ariel Shamir’s homepage, with PDF and higher quality Quicktime.

Apple has finally delivered on the Intel Mac towers for which we’ve been waiting. The new machines give you basically everything you wanted: the slick, cheese-grater chic of the old Aluminum G5 towers, plus the expansion options missing on those machines, all with Windows dual-boot capability and top-of-class Xeon Woodcrest architecture. US$2500 isn’t pocket change for everyone, but these machines are very price-competitive with Woodcrest PCs; as with Apple’s Intel laptops, a customizable single configuration lets Apple ship in greater volume than some of its larger PC competitors by focusing on one model.

My full take is available at CDMusic:
WWDC: New Mac Pro Towers Blaze Through Logic, Soundtrack, Offer Better Storage Options, Says Apple [Create Digital Music]

But let’s talk specifically about what these machines mean for creative visual work. The new Mac Pros offer two significant benefits, beyond the additional expandability and Windows booting: they’ve got even more computational muscle than the mighty Quad G5 towers, courtesy Intel, and they feature beefed-up video card options for playing Unreal 2007— I mean, um, serious graphics work. Add to that new, cheaper, brighter Cinema Displays, and I expect even some PC lovers may go Mac.

(PS, anyone else note the irony of the image above, Apple’s promotional image taken from Apple Aperture, resembling Adobe box art? Is Apple trying to send a subliminal message about Intel-native compatibility of Creative Suite, or is it just me?)

I love mice. They’re still a great way to do many things, and while some may think they’re anachronistic, they still do the job for a lot of interface tasks quite nicely. But they’re also painfully awkward for many tasks in 2D and 3D graphics. The folks at 3Dconnexion have been rethinking input devices in ways that tailor them to the software we use, and they have some interesting-looking solutions.