Apple has just filed another Mac OS X related patent at the U.S. Patents and Trademarks Office. It describes a Multiple-Dashboards feature that uses 3D to switch between each dashboard.

You can basically imagine that your Dashboard is actually a cube containing a dashboard on each side. But the 3D geometrical shape that will hold the dashboards can be other than a cube the patent says, bringing the ability to the user to virtually create as many dashboards as he wishes.

The patent also says that dashboards may be given a title and be represented on a tabbed user interface.

In a general point of view, the feature described in this patent shows that Apple may be attempting to do with dashboards what "Spaces" did to the Finder's desktop.

If Multiple-Dashboard really make it for Leopard, we can also expect Apple to make use of CoreAnimation so as to create a "wow" factor on this feature.

We have to keep in mind though that not all the patent filings indeed become products or features so this remains nothing but a rumor. However it would not be surprising to see this feature revealed as one of the top-secret features of Leopard during the Word Wide Developers Conference this coming June.

Full analysis of the patent filing can be foung on MacNN's report.