BumpTop Mac: simple and beautiful

If you happen to be a Mac user that’s suffering from the organizational condition known as “cluttered desktop” then boy, is this the app for you. If you happen to be a Mac user that has an insatiable lust for eye-candy, then boy, is this the app for you.

I’ve seen this before on Windows, and on the Mac it’s just as mind-blowing. BumpTop is the desktop reinvented, so they say; in a nutshell, BumpTop transforms your desktop to make it more like an actual desktop, 3D et al. Aside from the “floor”, which would be the traditional “desktop” portion of BumpTop, there are four additional walls. Icons can be tossed around like real objects, pinned onto the walls, or even stacked on one another. Icons can be piled according to type, and you can enlarge (or shrink) icons based on their relative importance. BumpTop isn’t just eye-candy: it serves purpose in both uncluttering your desktop and increasing your productivity. Watch the screencast below to get the gist of what I’m talking about.

After testing BumpTop for the past few hours, I think it has some great potential in changing the way you do your desktop computing. As mentioned in the video, BumpTop completely eradicates the need for folders, and finding things couldn’t be easier with the desktop-wide spotlight-esque search. Quick Look is seamless and it even supports multitouch gestures. Double-clicking on any wall will focus in on it with a 90-degree view angle. Why would you need to do that, you ask? There is one more feature BumpTop has that isn’t mentioned in the screencast.

Notes are a clear winner here, truly completing the BumpTop productivity package. They are like dashboard stickies, but unintrusively integrated into the desktop. Another benefit is that the walls can give your stickies context, such as putting reminders on the sides and to-dos in the front, for example.

All in all, BumpTop is good to go as it is, though there are a few things that I believe need to be ironed out. For one, growing and shrinking icons using the trackpad gesture isn’t as smooth as zooming in Finder. It zooms in increments, just like clicking on the buttons would. Secondly, BumpTop doesn’t use an icon’s larger version when you grow it. Instead, it will scale the smaller icon and leave it slightly blurry. It isn’t very noticeable, but since Snow Leopard supports icons that go up to 512 x 512 pixels, it only seems natural to use the larger ones.

As for the future of BumpTop? The app is currently in a private beta and they are open to feedback, so here goes: First of all, finding something is as easy as typing it on the desktop, but it would be great if you had a choice of what to do with it. Like a simplified version of Quicksilver, for instance. Secondly, I think it would be just awesome if BumpTop were able to display other widgets besides sticky notes, such as a calendar. That way you’d be able to view your iCal events right on the desktop. It looks like the Windows version already has photo feed, Twitter, and Facebook widgets, so I expect that it’s only a matter of time before this is implemented in the Mac version. An API for third-party plugins might not be a hot idea, but I’d like to throw it out there as well. And lastly, I wish there was a way that would facilitate designers to easily create more themes. The default gets boring fast, and the theme repository looks like it could use more themes than the handful it has right now.

Be sure to check it out BumpTop—I for one was definitely floored. The pro version with unlimited stickies, search, and multitouch costs $29, and the free version can be downloaded here. BumpTop offers an intuitive, easy to learn interface that’s as practical as it is beautiful.

Check out a few more screenshots below.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under Mac Apps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.