The cube is too distracting for most people to be involved in regular daily work, but more subtle 3D desktop effects really do make the experience more pleasant and are an important part of a modern, functional desktop environment. The "Expose" functionality popularized by OS X is one example of one such widely used and fully incorporated effect. Others include smooth animations on minimization, smooth flyouts (e.g., Windows 10 Start Menu), transparency, and tiling effects.