Appleinsider points to a recent patent application published from Apple which explores the use of different sized icons within one window. The relative size differences in the interface are said to reflect the relative importance of each icon.
Right now, users can globally change icon sizes in Mac OS X in all windows, but with the newly described system icon sizes could be used to adjusted based on user preference.
"To this end," Apple wrote, "a user's arbitrary sizing of various icons in accordance with the present invention generates icon representations that can advantageously represent categorization of application or file importance, and/or the size of a file represented by an icon."
Apple's files patents for many ideas that are never actually implemented, but Apple's early multi-touch patents did first reveal technologies that made their way into the Apple iPhone.
