Ubuntu's Unity does an interesting thing - dragging a window to the top panel maximizes the window, dragging it to the left/right borders will auto-tile it to that side of the screen, taking up either the whole vertical space or half of it.
It's very easy to arrange 2 windows side by side, or 4 windows in all 4 corners. And besides using mouse interactions that would work with screen touch gestures, it works with keyboard shortcuts too.
I'm also not convinced that having windows that can overlap is not desirable. Personally I like having windows that I can move around. Works great with multi monitor setups too. Have a window opened on this screen and you need to move it to the other screen? You just drag it from here to there.
The only problem with draggable windows on mobile devices is that you don't have enough screen real-estate, so having a top border for dragging is wasteful, or if that top border is too small it's painful to target it with your finger. But touch gestures can work - as in, a two or three finger swipe could mean a drag, or whatever.
I'm all for wheel reinvention and new UI paradigms, but when introducing something new, it has to be better and not inferior to the old UI paradigm.
It's very easy to arrange 2 windows side by side, or 4 windows in all 4 corners. And besides using mouse interactions that would work with screen touch gestures, it works with keyboard shortcuts too.
I'm also not convinced that having windows that can overlap is not desirable. Personally I like having windows that I can move around. Works great with multi monitor setups too. Have a window opened on this screen and you need to move it to the other screen? You just drag it from here to there.
The only problem with draggable windows on mobile devices is that you don't have enough screen real-estate, so having a top border for dragging is wasteful, or if that top border is too small it's painful to target it with your finger. But touch gestures can work - as in, a two or three finger swipe could mean a drag, or whatever.
I'm all for wheel reinvention and new UI paradigms, but when introducing something new, it has to be better and not inferior to the old UI paradigm.