Today’s unveiling of OS X v10.5 included a demonstration of Apple’s new implementation of virtual desktops, known as ‘Spaces’.

About bloomin’ time Apple!

The more we subscribe to the ‘digital lifestyle’, the more we multitask – it’s common practice to have our email, a web browser, instant chat, photos, and music open at once – and I’ve always felt OS X provided a very cramped environment to do all this. Moreover, I never found Expose a particularly good method of navigating these windows, and I consider it another bit of not-very-useful eye-candy akin the Dock.

It’s much more useful to logically group tasks together on the expanded area that virtual desktops provide, and this is something that been part of Linux window managers for years.

So Spaces is, for me, a welcome addition to OS X.

On the subject of eye-candy, have a look at the H.G. Wells-esque ‘Time Machine’ feature, which allows you to ‘go back in time’ and restore accidentally deleted files. I wonder if it allows you to go forward in time and show you files you haven’t created yet. That would be neat.