Leopard 9A303 Screenshots and Features

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)

AeroXP (http://www.aeroxp.org/board/index.php?showtopic=6763) and World of Apple (http://loop.worldofapple.com/archives/2006/11/14/exclusive-new-leopard-build-in-images/) have posted screenshots from the latest built of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

These screenshots depict some additional features from Leopard including:

Leapard's Firewall preference tab
The Firewall alerts you when an external machine tries to enter your machine
File Recovery is now included, allowing you search and restore deleted files

Apple seeded (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/11/20061109203449.shtml) the latest version of Leopard (9A303) to developers last week.

[macintel4me]

Isn't this a repost? I saw these pics already and I thought there were from here. hmmm

[dalvin200]

i like the calculations in spotlight!! awesome!

[dmw007]

i like the calculations in spotlight!! awesome!

I know, that is pretty cool. :D


I can't wait until Leopard is released. :)

[MacDonaldsd]

I do like the new spotlight features :)

[relimw]

File recovery as a standard feature has been needed for a long time, it's about time they put it in.

[MatthewCobb]

OK, either I'm dim and can't see why on earth anyone would want to do a calculation in Spotlight, or the rest of you are being ironic and I just haven't got it...

Which is it, folks?

[henrikmk]

OK, either I'm dim and can't see why on earth anyone would want to do a calculation in Spotlight, or the rest of you are being ironic and I just haven't got it...

Because it's a zillion times faster to press cmd-space 2 + 2 than going to Dashboard, click on the calculator and typing the numbers there?

[ziwi]

Please be ready in January...or very soon after ;)

[AndyR]

Would be so cool if Apple pulled a stormer and released this before "Virus Insecure Spyware Trojan Adware" and blew everyone away.

Sadly I don't think it will come out in time but its still gonna be cool!

[galstaph]

I can't wait for this this to be finnaly out and ready:)
soo many cool new features. Now I need to find the cash to buy me a new machine to make it worth my while....

[Compile 'em all]

i like the calculations in spotlight!! awesome!

Yeah, spotlight is starting to have that Google feel to it ;)

[bousozoku]

There seem to be substantial enhancements to the firewall in GUI. Maybe, they'll finish off the last of those things that have to be done behind the scenes.

Will the look-and-feel shown be seen everywhere? I hope so.

[hirenj]

Did anyone else notice how the Dictionary app is no longer called Dictionary and Thesaurus, but "Reference L(something)", probably Reference Library.

On that note, wouldn't it be cool to have Wikipedia/Encyclopaedia integration? And, since it would seem like a minimal bit of extra effort - add in searching for APIs and programming reference material. All from spotlight. That would really kick arse.

[Chef Medeski]

i like the calculations in spotlight!! awesome!

So, basically in OS 10.5, they are trying to make Dashboard less useful. That it figure out ways that marginalize the last release. But I do think $80 is just worth that feature. Two thumbs up. Especially since Calculator and Dictionary take up like 25MB of RAM.

[dalvin200]

did i hear somewhere that there would be integrated google search in spotlight?

[nagromme]

Nice! A hint at what res-independent Aqua UI elements will look like--see the stoplight dots on the window:

http://img179.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture6tc2.png

(Looks like they still need to add a vector stroke around those buttons though.)

[treblah]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)

AeroXP (http://www.aeroxp.org/board/index.php?showtopic=6763) and World of Apple (http://loop.worldofapple.com/archives/2006/11/14/exclusive-new-leopard-build-in-images/) have posted screenshots from the latest built of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

Unless the OP at AeroXP is the admin for WoA, they blatantly ripped off the AeroXP thread. And four days late too.

Poor form in linking to World of Apple. :(

[jlewis2k1]

the second this thing becomes available i am driving to my apple store and taking my little mac mini with me (getting a small upgrade). while it is being upgraded i am going to purchase leopard, apple care for my ipod and mac mini :-D. so i expect to pay around 600 or 700 bucks there.

[mkrishnan]

It is starting to sound nice!

Spotlight changes -- sweeeet! :D

The file recovery feature seems outstanding... very nicely designed and simple, yet functional. This sounds like it's a feature completely on its own besides Time Machine.

I like the firewall improvements, although it would be nice to see outgoing app firewalling also built-in. Nonetheless I like this a lot. I also hope that you can set whether you want that pop-up asking if you wish to accept an incident transmission, or automatically deny all incident transmissions of that type. Cuz god that could get annoying. :o

[ChrisA]

OK, either I'm dim and can't see why on earth anyone would want to do a calculation in Spotlight, or the rest of you are being ironic and I just haven't got it...

Which is it, folks?

The average user would never use the feature. BUT this is a DEVELOMENT preview. Developers use calculations inside queries all the time. For example (I paraphrase..)

Let X= 5
Find all gizmos where the size is between (size of a bus)-x and (size of a bus)+x

This will turn up some gizmos that are about the same size as a bus and we can adjust what "about" means be setting values to X. In the above I'm asking the system to look up the size of a bus an perform two calulations of the result.

One other example:

Let X be (number of time file was accessed this week)
set "rating" to current ratting + 0.1(X-5);

Not something you'd do unless you were making a script or automator action. Devalopers need a user interface so they can run the querries by hand and get them to work before putting the query in thier code. Spotlight has always had the ability to do complex querries but now in leopard it seems a little of that is prevented to the user.

[Markleshark]

One of the comments at WoA said something like 'It's nice to see Apple are securing the OS to make sure a widespread virus is never a possibily' and I couldn't help but agree fully and think thats one of the best points ever made. Ever.

If you think about it, if its secure in the first place all your resources can be put into making it even more secure and updating that security, rather than fixing things that aint secure, making it secure and then updating that shoddy security. But we knew this already...

Edit: Not use calculations in Spotlight? Have you seen how many 'Google opens' that will save me a day...

[hesdeadjim]

The average user would never use the feature. BUT this is a DEVELOMENT preview. Developers use calculations inside queries all the time. For example (I paraphrase..)

Let X= 5
Find all gizmos where the size is between (size of a bus)-x and (size of a bus)+x

This will turn up some gizmos that are about the same size as a bus and we can adjust what "about" means be setting values to X.

One other example:

Let X be (number of time file was accessed this week)
set "rating" to current ratting + 0.1(X-5);

Not something you'd do unles you were making a script or automator action

Does it really matter if "average" users would use it? I and most engineering studengs use google's calculator function all the time. It would be great to utilize spotlight instead to save some time.

[dukebound85]

Because it's a zillion times faster to press cmd-space 2 + 2 than going to Dashboard, click on the calculator and typing the numbers there?

i have always been a fan of pressing actual buttons on an actual calculator. guess im used to it

i cant really stand using a calculator app, i mean you got to move the mouse here and the allllllthe way over there to click the add button lol

[peharri]

I too like the idea of a calculator in Spotlight.

I think they could take it one step further, and maybe have other things you can do there just by typing in some letters. For example, if you want to copy a file from one place to another, rather than find it and click it and stuff you should be able to just say "cp" (for copy) "/path/to/file /path/to/new/file", etc. You could have a whole set of prefixes like cp, like mv (move), ls (list, you know, to see what's in a directory), and stuff like that.

Also it'd be kind of useful to have a record of the things you've typed, and what the results were, so maybe they could allow you to open a window, where you enter your "command" on a line at the bottom, let's call it a "command line" because that's what it'd be for, and then the results would scroll up above that line (together with what you typed. So you can see what it was you entered.)

That'd be cool.

[Catfish_Man]

Nice! A hint at what res-independent Aqua UI elements will look like--see the stoplight dots on the window:

http://img179.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture6tc2.png

(Looks like they still need to add a vector stroke around those buttons though.)

Heh, looks like they have quite a lot of stuff to fix for res independence still. Cut off buttons, weird dividers, blurry arrows, etc...

Hardly surprising though; I'm sure they're working their butts off to get it all done.

<edit>
The spotlight thing seems more like a demo to me; specifically a demo of applications being able to provide special results to spotlight. Dictionary providing definitions, calculator providing equation answers, and so on. I'd imagine it'll be a public API so other apps can provide stuff as well.
</edit>

[BlueRevolution]

I guess I'm the only one not excited by the Spotlight improvements. When I first got Tiger I used it a couple of times before shrugging my shoulders and going back to Quicksilver. But, honestly... continued support of Quicksilver is worth the $80 I paid for the upgrade right there. Now if only it would get a wee bit faster...

Can't wait for a resolution-independant GUI, though. I use zoom all the time. Although I hope there's a way to hit a button and see the rasterized version, since I often use it to get a close look at designs at a pixel level.

[peharri]

(It's the MacWorld keynote. The Steve glances at the audience. They like what they've seen so far. Will they like the iPhone with the two-way 50" screen though? Well, that's for later (http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=2984320&postcount=86). One last thing. But, first comes first...)

"Ok, so that's just one of the enhancements to Mail.app you'll find in Leopard. It's so simple. At the press of a button, every single email user in the world will get your message. Wow. Outlook can't do this. We can. We have the technology. Now, let's move on to one the best new features we've added to Spotlight. We're really excited about this. It's called Bash. It's going to be in Leopard."

The screen goes black, and the words "Bash", "Do anything. Fast." appear on screen.

"Now, I don't know about you, but I have a disk full of files, and it takes time clicking around the screen. Now, Bash makes it easy. You just need to learn a few simple key sequences, and your entire computer is under your control. Let me show you."

The screen changes to a Mac OS X desktop as Steve walks to the side, sits down in front of an iMac, and swigs from a bottle of water.

"Ok, first, Apple menu... Log out Steve Jobs... ok, now I enter ">console" at the username prompt. You have to enable this, just go into System Preferences and change the login options to "Name and password". Now, I'm prompted again for my username and password. (Tappity-tap on the keyboard) And I'm in. Bash."

Steve takes another sip of water and adjusts his chair.

"We've made it very simple. The screen only shows what you type, and what the results are. There are no confusing windows or menus. Simple."

The audience claps politely.

"Now, let's take a look. I'm in my home directory. I type "ls" and it shows me all the files there. It's that simple. L and S, for "list", and ENTER. Many of the commands are just two letters long. Makes them easy to remember."

The audience claps again.

"Now, I want to make a folder, a new one, and move all of the documents in my Documents folder that start with "iPhone" to the folder. So, I just type "mkdir "Hoax iPhone emails"", and now "mv Documents/iPhone* "Hoax iPhone emails"", and that's it. Took me five seconds. I try doing the same thing on the Finder, and it takes more like 30. Too much clicking around."

Audience claps wildly.

"Now, suppose I want to find all the files in my home area that have anything to do with iPhones, and make copies of them, moving them to a new iPhone directory. That'd be tough in the Finder. You can do it with the Finder and old Spotlight, but there's a lot of typing and clicking involved. Here's how we do it in Bash. Ok, make the directory, mkdir iPhoneStuff ; and now find dot dash-type eff pipe xargs grep dash ell eye iPhone pipe while read i semicolon do mv dollar eye iPhoneStuff/ semicolon done

"That took ten seconds to write. Pretty simple huh? And I hit ENTER, and... it's running, and in a few moments it'll be finished. Ok. Looks like it's done, let's have a look, "ls iPhoneStuff", and there are all the files."

Audience cheers and makes whooping noises.

"Once you're done, just type "exit", and you're back. It's that simple."

Audience is hysterical. Steve stands up, taking another swig of water, and walks back to the front of the stage.

"Ok, so that's Bash. Do Anything. Fast. So, now, let's talk about how you can't run Windows games in Mac OS X..."

[Alexander]

I think the best part is the comments in the AeroXP thread:

I can't wait to get my macbook
This is why I want a mac.
now only if i could afford a nice mac
wanting to get a Mac next year when 10.5 ships on them as standard.

These are people on a Vista message board.

[DrFrankTM]

We have the technology. Now, let's move on to one the best new features we've added to Spotlight. We're really excited about this. It's called Bash. It's going to be in Leopard."

Ouch! You know, if some people find it useful to have spotlight do basic calculations, then why not? Well, that's my take on it anyways. Different tools fit different people and/or different situations. Nothing wrong with that.

EDIT: I don't know if I'd use it though.

[Project]

The interesting thing about this to me is not just the calculator/definitions in Spotlight, its that these are features of Quicksilver. I think this is an indication of whats to come.

[Unorthodox]

did i hear somewhere that there would be integrated google search in spotlight?
Google can be integrated into spotlight via this app (http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/spotlight/googleimporter.html).

[peharri]

Ouch! You know, if some people find it useful to have spotlight do basic calculations, then why not? Well, that's my take on it anyways. Different tools fit different people and/or different situations. Nothing wrong with that.

EDIT: I don't know if I'd use it though.

Actually I think it's a good idea. Google has a lot of these kinds of hacks. You can type in things like "50 miles in km", "speed of light", many ten digit US phone numbers, tracking numbers from most of the US parcel companies, etc, and it'll list, before any appropriate search results if any, the definition.

Curiously I wanted to demonstrate the phone number thing and couldn't find any that still worked. I entered a three-year-old phone number for myself and got it, but my current number, and the famous 2024561414, didn't match anything. So I think their reverse-lookup database is a tad out of date.

[Analog Kid]

The screen goes black, and the words "Bash", "Do anything. Fast." appear on screen.


:D Exactly what I was thinking... "CommandLine: the next revolution in user interfaces"

[matticus008]

"Now, I want to make a folder, a new one, and move all of the documents in my Documents folder that start with "iPhone" to the folder. So, I just type "mkdir "Hoax iPhone emails"", and now "mv Documents/iPhone* "Hoax iPhone emails"", and that's it. Took me five seconds. I try doing the same thing on the Finder, and it takes more like 30. Too much clicking around."

Funny post, but I'm going to use it as a springboard for something else :). The time consuming part of using a GUI is having to switch back and forth between the mouse and the keyboard. If I had a third hand, there'd be a negligible speed advantage. Memorizing commands isn't the solution--an interactive, high speed, high sensitivity touch screen is the best step forward. People are visual creatures; we should work within that context to improve efficiency, not create a language and syntax that prevents people from using a computer without training.

As for the 25MB taken up by Calculator and Dictionary that I saw elsewhere in the thread: people do realize that Spotlight is going to have to have these apps running all the time in order to provide the results, right? There's no magic RAM-bonus to doing this. Now, obviously running them together and without their frontends is going to be more efficient, but you're not getting all or even most of that 25MB back.

[kalisphoenix]

I too like the idea of a calculator in Spotlight.

I think they could take it one step further, and maybe have other things you can do there just by typing in some letters. For example, if you want to copy a file from one place to another, rather than find it and click it and stuff you should be able to just say "cp" (for copy) "/path/to/file /path/to/new/file", etc. You could have a whole set of prefixes like cp, like mv (move), ls (list, you know, to see what's in a directory), and stuff like that.

Also it'd be kind of useful to have a record of the things you've typed, and what the results were, so maybe they could allow you to open a window, where you enter your "command" on a line at the bottom, let's call it a "command line" because that's what it'd be for, and then the results would scroll up above that line (together with what you typed. So you can see what it was you entered.)

That'd be cool.

Lilith:~ ndouglas$ 2 + 2
-bash: 2: command not found

This is proof of OS X's greatness. Those UNIX idiots have been working on bash since, like, the 1920's and they still haven't gotten such a simple thing right.

(*is pointing out, unless you've missed it, that 100% of all UNIX commands are made completely redundant by at least 75% of all the other UNIX commands, and allowing Spotlight to work as a quick calculator or dictionary-invoker isn't really detracting from the G5 Powerbook at this point anyway*)

[mkrishnan]

To everyone who would rather do everything in bash, tcsh, or any other shell they can imagine... 1) more power to you! :D and 2) although I am familiar enough, I'll take my GUI most of the time, thank you. :) It's nice to have a system with a competent shell and a good GUI. It's too bad Vista isn't getting its new shell after all. That's all I got to say about that. :)

[xJulianx]

Does it really matter if "average" users would use it? I and most engineering studengs use google's calculator function all the time. It would be great to utilize spotlight instead to save some time.

exactly, it's a nice feature never the less, if the average user won't need to use it, then the average user doesn't have to. Even if a single user uses a certain feature, it makes it worthwhile IMO.

[xUKHCx]

Because it's a zillion times faster to press cmd-space 2 + 2 than going to Dashboard, click on the calculator and typing the numbers there?

Currently in Tiger by doing this i get the result 2+2=5

Slight difference is that my answer has a .m4a at the end (radiohead)


i have always been a fan of pressing actual buttons on an actual calculator. guess im used to it

i cant really stand using a calculator app, i mean you got to move the mouse here and the allllllthe way over there to click the add button lol

When calculator app is open and even the widget (is the focus of dashboard, by clicking on it) you can just use the number pad to enter the buttons you do not need to mouse all the numbers and functions.

[wmmk]

i like the calculations in spotlight!! awesome!
i don't. i'd rather not let google know everything i search for on my HD.

Yeah, spotlight is starting to have that Google feel to it ;)
yep. kinda nice, kinda makes you worry.

[0010101]

Because it's a zillion times faster to press cmd-space 2 + 2 than going to Dashboard, click on the calculator and typing the numbers there?

Or.. maybe if you can't figure 2+2 out in your head, you could drag the calculator app into your dock and have a full blown calculator on the screen with a single click.

[SiliconAddict]

Still not seeing any major compelling reason to upgrade. $10 says that those top secret features Jobs was talking about was a result of his RDF. :rolleyes:

[manu chao]

Because it's a zillion times faster to press cmd-space 2 + 2 than going to Dashboard, click on the calculator and typing the numbers there?
I just press cmd-alt-c and then 2+2. Pretty fast as well. (cmd-alt-c start Calculator, and comes courtesy of user-programable shortcuts in DropDrawers, but any other app that allows system-wide shortcuts to start apps will do as well).

[mark88]

http://loop.worldofapple.com/wp-content/post-images/resindbuttons.jpg

these just look awful, like a flash SWF stretched to fill a huge monitor. I'm just not digging the resolution independence thing at all yet.

I'm also getting worried about the lack of interface updates and still no sign of a new Finder!!

Looking at this pic, http://img237.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture5wj3.png the new segemented control seems to be dark grey aqua, not white as it was previously? A hint perhaps.

[manu chao]

Does it really matter if "average" users would use it? I and most engineering studengs use google's calculator function all the time. It would be great to utilize spotlight instead to save some time.

Of all calculators, command-line based ones which allow to store values into variables are by far the most handy ones (e.g. Matlab).

All the GUI calculators are much more cumbersome to use.

[bousozoku]

Still not seeing any major compelling reason to upgrade. $10 says that those top secret features Jobs was talking about was a result of his RDF. :rolleyes:

They're still trying to figure out what the top secret features are. Maybe, now that Vista is complete, Cupertino has started its copiers.

http://loop.worldofapple.com/wp-content/post-images/resindbuttons.jpg

these just look awful, like a flash SWF stretched to fill a huge monitor. I'm just not digging the resolution independence thing at all yet.

I'm also getting worried about the lack of interface updates and still no sign of a new Finder!!

Looking at this pic, http://img237.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture5wj3.png the new segemented control seems to be dark grey aqua, not white as it was previously? A hint perhaps.

I suspect that Spotlight will be the new Finder when finished.

[matticus008]

http://loop.worldofapple.com/wp-content/post-images/resindbuttons.jpg

these just look awful, like a flash SWF stretched to fill a huge monitor. I'm just not digging the resolution independence thing at all yet.
What are they supposed to look like? (JPEG artifacts notwithstanding.) If you look at the sample image on a 50" display, it looks pretty good, aside from the triangular indicators. You're not going to see any advantage on a display where widgets at the native resolution look fine.

The whole point is that they be expanded to preserve a normal-sized output on a high resolution display. If you're making each button a half-inch tall and you have a 17" display, you're missing the point. The point is to preserve a reasonable size independent of pixel size. That is, abandoning fixed-pixel dimensions as well as fixed percentage parameters.

[Catfish_Man]

What are they supposed to look like? (JPEG artifacts notwithstanding.) If you look at the sample image on a 50" display, it looks pretty good, aside from the triangular indicators. You're not going to see any advantage on a display where widgets at the native resolution look fine..

Nah, regardless of where you look at that sample, it will look bad. It's very much a work in progress.

[matticus008]

Nah, regardless of where you look at that sample, it will look bad. It's very much a work in progress.
Oh, absolutely. But it's not a feature that a, say, PowerBook user can evaluate based on a JPG capture, is all I'm saying. Of course it's going to look silly on a normal size, moderate resolution display.

[Analog Kid]

To everyone who would rather do everything in bash, tcsh, or any other shell they can imagine... 1) more power to you! and 2) although I am familiar enough, I'll take my GUI most of the time, thank you. It's nice to have a system with a competent shell and a good GUI.

One thing that would get us a step closer to GUI nirvana is if Apple hired an intern to wrap an Automator interface around each BSD tool. Half the power in the shell is the ability to pipe these functions together, and most of it's weakness is the fact that it takes a lifetime of study to learn what commands are even resident on a system and the most common switches.

I don't think the point is that people want to do everything in the shell-- I think it's the irony that after all this time spent trying to refine and perfect graphical interfaces, people are pining for more control from the keyboard. Quicksilver, the Spotlight features, and dozens of smaller third party apps out there all cater this urge. One difference, of course, is that a lot of these apps are adding some interpretive intelligence and trying to guess your intent without requiring you to enter a command name.

exactly, it's a nice feature never the less, if the average user won't need to use it, then the average user doesn't have to. Even if a single user uses a certain feature, it makes it worthwhile IMO.
Stay out of Business...

Unless, of course, your single user is quite wealthy-- but in that case they're usually called a "patron".

[bobber205]

One of the comments at WoA said something like 'It's nice to see Apple are securing the OS to make sure a widespread virus is never a possibily' and I couldn't help but agree fully and think thats one of the best points ever made. Ever.


Why isn't M$ doing this? Is it b/c it's impossible? Or too many people make too much money off of anti-virus software? :D

[Analog Kid]

Oh, absolutely. But it's not a feature that a, say, PowerBook user can evaluate based on a JPG capture, is all I'm saying. Of course it's going to look silly on a normal size, moderate resolution display.
Has anyone heard any talk of Apple coming out with high density displays? This push for resolution independence seems to imply that Apple is planning to up their dot pitch-- have we heard anything on when?

[Analog Kid]

Why isn't M$ doing this? Is it b/c it's impossible? Or too many people make too much money off of anti-virus software? :D
The short answer is probably that they don't need to. People whine about security, but we've yet to see Microsoft's dominance threatened by the problem.

[Am3822]

It's nice to see that the builtin firewall is improving (will it make LittleSnitch obsolete?), but I do hope that they have an 'allow once' option in the application firewall.

[bousozoku]

The short answer is probably that they don't need to. People whine about security, but we've yet to see Microsoft's dominance threatened by the problem.

Free, pirated software > viruses + spyware, apparently.

The only thing I've seen that might have given anyone pause was when Sophos, the anti-virus vendor, said that consumers running a computer should switch from Windows to Mac OS X.

[sunfast]

Spotlight, already the hub of my mac use, gets even more powerful and useful.

I am so buying Leopard. :)

[Tayler]

Do you guys know if it will be possible to update from Tiger for low money? Im asking because I just (2 weeks ago) bought my absolutly famouse and impressive MBP c2d...

cheers Tayler

[Chundles]

Do you guys know if it will be possible to update from Tiger for low money? Im asking because I just (2 weeks ago) bought my absolutly famouse and impressive MBP c2d...

cheers Tayler

Leopard will most likely cost US$129. If you are a University student or teacher you can get an education discount that reduces the price to US$69. At least, those were the prices last time when 10.4 came out.

[MatthewCobb]

OK, so I wasn't completely dim about the point of doing calculations in Spotlight and very few people were being ironic (loved the Bash post though).

But I still can't for the life of me imagine using it - Calculator lives in the dock or, dare I say it, in my desk drawer (that's a real desk, made of wood-ish stuff, and a real calculator made of plastic and silicon).

But then I'm just a scientist. And I use Spotlight about once a week, if that.

The GUI stuff looks cool though.

[Chundles]

But then I'm just a scientist. And I use Spotlight about once a week, if that.

The GUI stuff looks cool though.

See, for me Spotlight was a god send. Searching through endless scientific journal articles for the snippets of information suitable for my labwork suddenly got a whole lot easier when I could just type in a phrase or name I remembered and go straight to it.

[Peace]

To help explain the calculator thing here.The only reason one sees the calculation in spotlight is because spotlight will be "spotlighting" everything.If you type in a calculation it naturally finds calculator so the calculation shows up.
Same with PDF docs..If you start to type in a sentence that happens to be in a PDF document it will show up also.

Not sure if Leopard has got to that point yet. ;)

[SiliconAddict]

They're still trying to figure out what the top secret features are. Maybe, now that Vista is complete, Cupertino has started its copiers.

A good idea is a good idea. I sure as heck hope MS or Apple never avoids adding a good feature because the competition's fans are ravonous about screeching that they copied Y's feature. As an example Fast user switching and hibernation mode are two examples off the top of my head that MS had first. Again a good feature is a good feature.

[bousozoku]

A good idea is a good idea. I sure as heck hope MS or Apple never avoids adding a good feature because the competition's fans are ravonous about screeching that they copied Y's feature. As an example Fast user switching and hibernation mode are two examples off the top of my head that MS had first. Again a good feature is a good feature.

Absolutely. I'd say that we should all be to the point where computers are tools and not religions and whatever helps us get out jobs done more accurately, quickly, and without bumps and bruises is a win for everyone.

I keep wishing that Apple would change the save dialog box so that you can at least rename an item. If they would add the capability to delete and include the open dialog box, it would save a lot of time. They changed the dialog boxes for Mac OS 8.x, and it really wouldn't hurt to change them 7 years later. It might also take some heat off fixing the Finder since they haven't found that one great idea.

[jhu]

Still not seeing any major compelling reason to upgrade. $10 says that those top secret features Jobs was talking about was a result of his RDF. :rolleyes:

i concur

[SFVCyclone]

its kinda weird how aeroxp is getting these screen shots I think.

[inkswamp]

If you think about it, if its secure in the first place all your resources can be put into making it even more secure and updating that security, rather than fixing things that aint secure, making it secure and then updating that shoddy security. But we knew this already...

It looks good but you can't really make it much more secure. They have created what appear to be safeguards against things we know exist already. The problem with security exploits and viruses is that they take advantage of the things nobody saw coming. As obvious as that sounds, stop for a second and consider that.

The more complicated an OS gets, the more likelihood there will be little holes and problems that someone can take advantage of. So in a sense, the more they add features, the better the chances are that someone will find some way to get in there and cause problems.

I enjoy working in OS X and Apple makes great products, but I'm always vaguely concerned when I see Mac users being lulled into this sense of false security. Make no mistake, someday, somewhere, someone will figure out a way to take OS X down.

[Marky_Mark]

I too like the idea of a calculator in Spotlight.

I think they could take it one step further, and maybe have other things you can do there just by typing in some letters. For example, if you want to copy a file from one place to another, rather than find it and click it and stuff you should be able to just say "cp" (for copy) "/path/to/file /path/to/new/file", etc. You could have a whole set of prefixes like cp, like mv (move), ls (list, you know, to see what's in a directory), and stuff like that.

Also it'd be kind of useful to have a record of the things you've typed, and what the results were, so maybe they could allow you to open a window, where you enter your "command" on a line at the bottom, let's call it a "command line" because that's what it'd be for, and then the results would scroll up above that line (together with what you typed. So you can see what it was you entered.)

That'd be cool.

Eh? Kinda like DOS? Yeuch! No way! Didn't Apple bring windows and drag and drop copying and the like to the masses to make life easier? :rolleyes:

[bousozoku]

Eh? Kinda like DOS? Yeuch! No way! Didn't Apple bring windows and drag and drop copying and the like to the masses to make life easier? :rolleyes:

Drag and drop copying is easier with few files but with many files, you can end up trying to copy some twice and others not at all. If there is a certain pattern, it's much easier to use cp to copy files. Also, you can programatically, automatically, and repeatedly copy files using a shell script.

You might not need such things but other people do and thankfully, Mac OS X gives us the ability to do it without having to add anything to the system. If they were available from Spotlight, it would be useful, especially since we'd already generated the search pattern.

[twoodcc]

nice pics, bring on Leopard!:cool:

[madog]

i have always been a fan of pressing actual buttons on an actual calculator. guess im used to it

i cant really stand using a calculator app, i mean you got to move the mouse here and the allllllthe way over there to click the add button lol

There is a nice thing called the number pad on full sized keyboards for that reason =)

[charkshark]

suspect that Spotlight will be the new Finder when finished.

Well put. Spotlight is evolving into what Finder is now. I think apple is going to step finder up to a more advanced, as well as user friendly system. I personally use Pathfinder to essentially replace finder in a variety of situations, and prefer it over it's default counterpart quite heavily.

[potatis]

when will osx supportr x11 mouse cursors? http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=5533

[lalcan]

To help explain the calculator thing here.The only reason one sees the calculation in spotlight is because spotlight will be "spotlighting" everything.If you type in a calculation it naturally finds calculator so the calculation shows up.
Same with PDF docs..If you start to type in a sentence that happens to be in a PDF document it will show up also.

Not sure if Leopard has got to that point yet. ;)

Well, my tiger spotlight has been indexing and searching PDF's for the last 14 months... i certainly hope Apple doesn't take that feature away ;)

Following the thread, i also think spotlight will eventually replace finder, it could do it by using multiple key combinations to search and open automatically different items, let's say, apple-space for the common spotlight, apple-a for applications, apple-f for files, apple-s for web pages, etcetera...

Leo