A long time ago, I played with Codetek’s VirtualDesktop and DesktopManager. To be fair, it must emphasized that it was a long time and they may have matured since then. At the time though, they weren’t very smooth. They felt like a kludge, a hack.
When Apple announced Spaces, the chorus response seemed to always mention VirtueDesktops, a piece of freeware. Cyrus even wrote about it. I was skepticle, but I use virtual desktops constantly on HP’s CDE and wanted something similar for my Powerbook 12”. VirtueDesktops really rocks. It does everything I want, features Growl support and some terrific transitions between desktops (I like the slide).
While I can’t test it, the motion and light sensors in some Powerbooks and the MacBook line can also be used as triggers. What really put me over the edge on loving it though was the fact that when you use Witch at the same time, only the windows on the current desktop show up in the list. That is really cool.
VirtueDesktops may be very young, but it’s been stable, feels right, and looks beautiful, just like it belongs.
I tried the built-in motion sensor and light sensor feature, and the only thing I gotta say is that it sucks....
It senses my 'smack' only sometimes, even when I set the sensitivity really high....
I prefer the SmackBook program better. You can really adjust the sensitivity and change it to your preferences. And I can start it using my Visor Terminal (with a quake style console), which wows my friends.
And I also believe the ShadowBook also performs better than the one built into VirtueDesktops.....
Oh yeah, another thing.....I really hope apple will implement the light sensor and motion sensor thing into their Spaces, that'll be really cool.....
But they might get sued by users who broke their screen hinge by smacking their laptops too often
Oh well, litigation these days.....
Yeah, I've had VirtueDesktops for a while, and I love it.
I use VirtueDesktop, with one window for my main OS X stuff, one for RDC'ing into my work Windows machine, and one for whatever OS I'm currently running in Parallels, full screen, with one spare.
I find switching between them with the cube transition is cool, although my wife rolled her eyes when I excitedly showed her it for the first time. So maybe it's a geek thing.