Mac OS X Panther Feature? 'Piles' (The Patent Description)
This US Patent Application (appears better in IE than Safari) gives the nitty-gritty details of Apple's implementation of 'Piles' (AKA 'Method and Apparatus for Organizing Information in a Computer System'):
The patent was filed in 1994, but has gained interest with recent rumors that the next major revision of Mac OS X (Panther) will utilize this design.
The function of a pile is, of course, the grouping of documents. While a good description was provided by this AskTog article, it spawned a surprising amount of confusion regarding implementation amongst readers.
For those interested, the Patent description provides more details on the actual implementation and also describes advanced sorting/searching functions, including:
- analysis of the content of a document in a pile
- automatically filing new documents according to criteria (date, content etc...)
- piles looking neat or disheavled per user preferences
- create/sort into subpiles based on criteria (date, content etc...)
- script based sorting of documents
Popular Stories
Benchmark testing has indicated that the 256GB variant of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M2 chip offers slower SSD performance than its M1 equivalent, and now real-world stress testing by YouTuber Max Yuryev of Max Tech suggests that the 256GB SSD in the 13-inch MacBook Pro is also underperforming in day-to day-usage.
The M2 MacBook Pro with 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM was slower than the M1 MacBook ...
Fifteen years ago to this day, the iPhone, the revolutionary device presented to the world by the late Steve Jobs, officially went on sale.
The first iPhone was announced by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, and went on sale on June 29, 2007. "An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator... these are not three separate devices," Jobs famously said. "Today, Apple is going to reinvent the...
The redesigned MacBook Air with the all-new M2 Apple silicon chip will be available for customers starting Friday, July 15, MacRumors has learned from a retail source. The new MacBook Air was announced and previewed during WWDC earlier this month, with Apple stating availability will begin in July. The MacBook Air features a redesigned body that is thinner and lighter than the previous...
Apple last week launched an updated version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and it is the first Mac that is equipped with an updated M2 chip. As it's using a brand new chip, we thought we'd pick up the M2 MacBook Pro and compare it to the prior-generation M1 MacBook Pro to see just what's new.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. For the video comparison, we're using the...
With many customers choosing to upgrade their iPhone every two or three years nowadays, there are lots of iPhone 11 Pro users who might be interested in upgrading to the iPhone 14 Pro later this year. Those people are in for a treat, as three years of iPhone generations equals a long list of new features and changes to look forward to.
Below, we've put together a list of new features and...
The Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern today shared a new documentary about the evolution of the iPhone ahead of the 15th anniversary of the device launching on June 29, 2007. The documentary includes an interview with Apple's marketing chief Greg Joswiak, iPhone co-creator Tony Fadell, and a family of iPhone users.
One segment of the interview reflects on Android smartphones gaining larger...
TSMC will manufacture Apple's upcoming "M2 Pro" and "M3" chips based on its 3nm process, according to Taiwanese industry publication DigiTimes.
"Apple reportedly has booked TSMC capacity for its upcoming 3nm M3 and M2 Pro processors," said DigiTimes, in a report focused on competition between chipmakers like TSMC and Samsung to secure 3nm chip orders. As expected, the report said TSMC will...
For the last several years, Apple has been working to develop its own 5G modem chip so that it won't need to rely on Qualcomm as a supplier, but according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple's efforts "may have failed."
Kuo says that his "latest survey" suggests that development on the chip has stalled, which means Qualcomm would remain the exclusive supplier for 5G chips for the 2023...
