OS X Mountain Lion: The Missing Manual

Cover Flow View

Cover Flow is a visual display that Apple stole from its own iTunes software, where Cover Flow simulates the flipping “pages” of a jukebox, or the albums in a record-store bin (Figure 1-23). There you can flip through your music collection, marveling as the CD covers flip over in 3-D space while you browse.

NOSTALGIA CORNER: Everything Old Is New Again

To many observers, OS X’s column view was one of the most radical new features of the operating system. The truth, however, is that it’s not new at all.

In fact, column view’s most recent ancestor appeared in the NeXT operating system, which Apple bought (along with Steve Jobs, its CEO) in 1997. But column view is even older than that.

As you can see in this sketch from May 1980, the idea of a single-window, multiple-column view had been kicking around at Apple long before the Macintosh debuted.

In the end, this view was deemed too complex for the original Mac, which finally appeared (with only list and icon views) in 1984. Column view took 17 more years to find its way into the standard Mac OS.

The idea is the same in OS X, except that now it’s not album covers you’re flipping; it’s gigantic file and folder icons.

Figure 1-23. The top half of a Cover Flow window is an interactive, scrolling “record bin” full of your own stuff. ...