VirtueDesktops

I’ve been sitting on a fairly big decision (for me) for the last few weeks. The writing has been on the wall for VirtueDesktops since last year’s WWDC, and I had intended to release a nice, stable version for 10.4 users before I stopped work on the project.

I’ve decided not to finish that version - http://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?t=12392.

Needless to say, it wasn’t easy to make this call - I’ve loved working on Virtue, and I think it has some features that Spaces won’t match. The sad fact is, that since June last year, it has all been effort poured into a product that has no future.

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I don’t normally hold off on pushing builds via auto-update, but I want to make sure I take care of as many issues with the next build as I can, so I’ve released a beta version in the forums.

The builds available there significantly enhance the existing builds of VirtueDesktops, and fix more bugs than I care to note. If you have issues with any of the previously released versions, you should give the beta a go.

You can download the build from the forums, but be sure to read the release notes before installing. With these builds, you have the option of discussing problems in the forum thread, or filing issues via VirtueTrac, however I’ve been receiving reports that people (including myself) cannot access Trac. Apparently it’s just a DNS issue (we switched servers about a month ago), but it’s taking a long time to right itself.

Thanks for your patience this year - I’m hoping this new build will become the basis for a stable release before christmas!

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Hey guys, I’ve had a number of people asking me what impact the Apple’s Spaces announcement at WWDC this year is going to have on VirtueDesktops. Basically, for the near future — not much. Leopard is not due out until sometime in Spring, 2007 - that’s likely to be well over a year from now, and I for one am still going to use virtual desktops in that time. I have a semi-major update to the source tree coming in the next week or so based upon a whole slew of fixes and advice I received from friends and peers at the conference this year, including a big one: VirtueDesktops is now a single Xcode project (yes, you heard me right - mere mortals should now be able to compile and contribute to the VirtueDesktops codebase). Changing the codebase in the manner I have means that it’s time to tag the current, broken tree and push my new work into trunk.

Beyond the release of Leopard, I’m not really sure what I intend to do - everyone I ran into at WWDC asked me my plans. I can’t say very much about the technical side of things (everything except the Keynote at WWDC is covered by a non-disclosure agreement), but it appears from an early glance that there may still be a place for a tool like VirtueDesktops.

Personally, having used Apple’s Spaces, I am very impressed - it is very well implemented, addresses many of the current usability issues that seem inherent to existing desktop management tools and it looks slick to boot

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