A Closer Look At Today's Leopard Revelations

[MacRumors]

As the dust settles from today's announcements at WWDC, we take some time to make a few additional notes on some details of Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard."

Where's Screen Sharing?
One feature that was present in previous Leopard builds but is no longer advertised is screen sharing via iChat.

This is would not be the first time a previewed feature of Mac OS X has been axed prior to launch. Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther's" Home On iPod feature was mentioned on Apple's site, but then pulled without explanation. Currently, all Leopard pages feature a disclaimer stating that "all features referenced in the Mac OS X Leopard website are subject to change."

Performance Optimizations
The addition of the 8-core Mac Pro saw benchmarks that demonstrated diminishing returns with some applications. Barefeats had speculated that this was due to inefficiencies in Tiger's scheduler. It appears that Leopard will be addressing this with a scheduler further optimized for multi-core systems, as well as built-in support for Message Passing Interface (MPI) 2.0.

In addition to multi-core enhancements, Apple states that other various portions of the OS have been optimized including a self-tuning TCP stack (eliminating the need for specialized tools such as Broadband Tuner), and a multithreaded 'autofs' filesystem layer.

Apple states that all these technologies are universal, meaning both Intel Mac users and PowerPC users will benefit from the enhancements.

[Chaszmyr]

I was a little nervous that screen sharing wasn't in the keynote and this is making me more nervous. That was my favorite of the new Leopard features that we saw last year.

[donlphi]

Today's announcements average at best, but there are still 290(ish) features left to see. I can't wait.

[theheadguy]

I'm trying to be nice by saying today was only slightly disappointing. I wanted the screen sharing feature... hopefully it stays.

[zwida]

Originally Posted by donlphi

Today's announcements average at best, but there are still 290(ish) features left to see. I can't wait.

Yeah, but they use some funny math to add up that list of features to 290(ish). I doubt there will be any headline features other than what they announced today.

[EricNau]

Originally Posted by Macrumors

This is would not be the first time a previewed feature of Mac OS X has been axed prior to launch. Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther's" Home On iPod feature was mentioned on Apple's site, but then pulled without explanation.

I'm still waiting for this feature!

[lancestraz]

Screen sharing is still in Leopard. It's just been moved to the Finder.

[Chaszmyr]

Originally Posted by lancestraz

Screen sharing is still in Leopard. It's just been moved to the Finder.

http://images.apple.com/macosx/leopa...ac20070611.jpg

Good find!

[ChrisA]

When do the people at WWDC get their copies of Leopard? I suspect will will get the real story about Leopard about 30 minutes after the first disk is handed out.

What about ZFS? Is it there. Can it be on the boot disk?

[samh004]

Originally Posted by Chaszmyr

I was a little nervous that screen sharing wasn't in the keynote and this is making me more nervous. That was my favorite of the new Leopard features that we saw last year.

I was banking on it in case my mum needed help with something when I was on the other side of the world, now it may not be there

We'll have to wait for some leaks.

[kriskkalu]

Go over to Apple.com and watch the Finder demo. Screen sharing is still there. Pay close attention to when they clicked on shared computers.

[Mr Fusion]

Originally Posted by donlphi

Today's announcements average at best, but there are still 290(ish) features left to see.

The ten Steve chose to display make me think the other 290 are along the lines of "Feature #183: Touch of lavender added to Universal Access icon."

[Art Vandelay]

The screen sharing button is still visible in the screenshots of Leopard's iChat too.

[akonradi]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

When do the people at WWDC get their copies of Leopard? I suspect will will get the real story about Leopard about 30 minutes after the first disk is handed out.

Well, those 30 minutes came and went a long time ago. The 10.5 beta copies were available to attendees right after the end of the keynote.

[TheAnswer]

Originally Posted by lancestraz

Screen sharing is still in Leopard. It's just been moved to the Finder.

Originally Posted by Chaszmyr

Good find!

Originally Posted by samh004

I was banking on it in case my mum needed help with something when I was on the other side of the world, now it may not be there .

Yeah...if it worked via an iChat connection, then long distance support, tutoring and collaboration seemed possible. If it's limited to local machines in a LAN, it's a lot less useful (for me at least).

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by donlphi

Today's announcements average at best, but there are still 290(ish) features left to see. I can't wait.

i agree. but i did expect more today though

[lancestraz]

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay

The screen sharing button is still visible in the screenshots of Leopard's iChat too.

I'm just assuming here....

(it's on the bottom right-hand side of the iChat Buddy List window)

[Brandon Sharitt]

I'm glad to see the UI refresh. Ever since OS X came out they've been adding little things here and there until there were several differnce UIs to choose from and it was just starting to look cluttered and stuff. Hopefully with the cleaned up UI, we will see a return to some sort of HIG standards.

[kainjow]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

When do the people at WWDC get their copies of Leopard? I suspect will will get the real story about Leopard about 30 minutes after the first disk is handed out.

We got them immediately after the keynote. Mmm Leopard

[Mgkwho]

Can someone please count up the features listed on the website please!?

I'm curious as to how much is listed, but I don't want to do the dirty work! haha

-=|Mgkwho

[stompy]

Originally Posted by lancestraz

Ah. Didn't see that one.

(it's on the bottom of the iChat Buddy List window)

I hope it still works as (previously) advertised. It's odd that it is no longer featured on Apple's Leopard iChat pages, as it used to be. The only Leapord feature I was excited enough about to show to other people.

[lucas]

so what happened to resolution independence? are we getting it in leopard or do we have to wait another 2 years?

[kriskkalu]

The new Apple site is dope! It probably will win an award soon. Web 2.0 in action!

[pdpfilms]

This is the function I'm most excited about for 10.5, undoubtedly. Whether it's in iChat (easiest for Moms) or in the finder (might take a little more effort), it better be there.

Nevertheless, the new .Mac feature discussed today sounds extremely promising... I would love to have access to my ~2TB from anywhere in the world.

...After rereading that, it made me think... Will there be a way to access your home mac via .Mac on any computer? Or does the client computer have to be registered with your account...

[SiliconAddict]

I was originally poo pooing on Leopard because of the more in your face features being somewhat yawn inducing. IMHO the under the hood improvements are MUCH more exciting then Stacks, Quick Look, Time Machine, etc. If Apple finally FTFF. . . I'll be happy.

One thing I was hoping for and surprised that they didn't do. Was something a bit more inventive with the dock. Its a waste a space IMHO when not in use. Sure you can hide it but it would be nicer if say (Just off the top of my head.) the finder lays flat but still takes up about 1/4 of an inch of space", and any screen above it has a reflection of the finder along the base of it. So you could still somewhat see it, yet the window is still the main focus until you drag your cursor to the bottom where the finder window not so much pops up but goes from laying flat to upright. (sorry for the run ons.)