By Staff Writer – John Federico (@gadgetboy)

Have you ever wondered why your Mac or Windows desktop doesn’t look and behave more like a real desktop? On your physical desk, you can stack things, put up sticky notes, move your current tasks in front of you and perhaps making them more prominent in your mind. Not so much on your standard computer desktop.

BumpTop wants to change all that by making your computer desktop more like your physical one. A full three-dimensional desktop awaits you when you launch BumpTop on your Mac with a desktop surface and three “walls” in which to pin things.

Surprisingly, it is a well-integrated replacement for the existing Mac OS X desktop in that sits completely in the background, out of your way until you want to use it. It even remains constant when you use OS X features such as Expose, Dashboard and Spaces.

As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve placed documents I want to read on the left and right “vertical” surfaces, organized some projects in groups and made one particular document larger and more prominent as a constant reminder to continue working on it between projects.

I downloaded the limited version of BumpTop so it doesn’t include one of the most compelling features: flipping through Piles. Piles let you clutter your Mac desktop, just like your real one!

All joking aside, I can see why the company uses this feature as the motivator to entice upgrades to the Pro version. The ability to flip through Piles is very natural.

Also included in the Pro Edition are Unlimited Sticky Notes, Find-As-You-Type searching for files, Multi-Touch Gestures for newer MacBooks and of course, Premium Support (though that’s not really well defined).

After a day of use, here’s what I can say about the BumpTop limited version:

• It’s enjoyable to use.
• It really can help make you a bit more organized – the three-dimensional perspective creates a very interesting user experience.
• The QuickLook feature (command-y) doesn’t seem to work while in BumpTop. Perhaps I’m missing something… I was missing something – just press the spacebar to launch QuickLook in BumpTop

Bottom line: I think it will be much more useful with Pile flipping and Search. That said, I’m not sure it warrants a $29 price point. I might pay half that much for the software but I’m still not convinced to upgrade. Perhaps when I get a Multi-Touch capable MacBook I will think otherwise.

[BumpTop for Mac]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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