It's annoying really, just like Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Core Animation opens up a lot of possibilities to create cool looking and animated user interfaces without having to learn the more complicated Direct3D or OpenGL API's. Having programmed with all four technologies, I'm surprised more developers aren't rushing out to use the new easier systems.
I can understand their reasons though. If you've already got a fully working, established interface for your program that you spent a lot of time on, why learn a whole new system from scratch and create a brand new interface just for the sake of using a new technology? Especially, for example, if only users of Leopard will be able to experience it.
I think that's one of the reasons why, on Windows and Leopard, there seems to be a lack of fully fledged programs that make use of WPF and Core Animation. Most of the time all I've really managed to find are developer examples. Even when you look at the video preview for the upcoming version of Yahoo! Messenger written in WPF and exclusively for Vista, it's not exactly mindblowing. Sure, it looks well designed but there doesn't seem to be any use of animations or graphical effects.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/windowsvista.php
http://messenger.yahoo.com/vista_popup.php
At the moment both technologies seem to be underutilised. However, WPF did come out a lot earlier than Core Animation and Mac developers do tend to care more about their applications' interfaces. So hopefully they'll be some cool stuff on the horizon.
Of course if you're REALLY desperate for Core Animation goodness, you could join the rest of us and install Xcode, learn Objective-C and start reading the Apple documentation on Core Animation ...
😀
