VirtueDesktops is no longer being developed.

The developer’s moving on to other things since with Leopard, Spaces will solve most people’s issues.

I’m a little sad about this. I see this pattern of events:

  • Apple releases software.
  • Someone notices a glaring omission and starts to write a solution
  • Apple sees this (I assume) and decides to incorporate it into its next release
  • Original developer abandons project
  • Apple’s implementation is never as good (somewhat surprisingly) as the original developer’s idea.

Examples:

  • I used to use uControl to remap my Caps Lock key to Control, and remap my “Enter” key on my powerbook to be a second Fn key (since I like to have one on both sides). Along came Tiger with its ability to remap the modifiers, and the original developer abandoned it. Unfortunately, Tiger’s modifier remap ability omitted the ability to remap that pesky and annoying “enter” key to something useful.
  • I used to use a package called iScroll2 to allow me to do two finger scrolling on my old powerbook trackpad. But it had another neat feature I could enable — if I laid one finger on the trackpad and clicked, I got a right-click. If I laid two fingers on the trackpad and clicked, I got a middle click. Awesome one-handed three button mouse emulation — I started missing my Thinkpad less. But along came the newer machines with built-in two finger scrolling and some options, but implemented in a way totally useless to me. If I wanted to emulate secondary mouse buttons, I needed to enable tap-clicking. Can I say how much I hate tap clicking? Almost as much as I hate mouse gestures. Neither work when I want them to, and almost invariably trigger when I don’t want them to.
  • I could point to Dashboard and Konfabulator, but I won’t since I never really bonded with Konfabulator and it wasn’t free. Also, I hate Dashboard. :)
  • Now, VirtueDesktops, which is thoroughly useful is giving way to Spaces. I’ve not yet played with Spaces, but I’m sure there’ll be some cool things I hadn’t thought of. I’m equally sure a month into it I’m going to miss something really nice about VirtueDesktops.

I’m sure there are other examples of this — I’ve only been part of the Apple world since late 2003.

I now fear that the next to go will be Quicksilver. I’ve no basis for this fear, other than I now rely on it, and therefore Murphy’s Law dictates it should be the next one to go.