First Hand Reports on WWDC's Leopard 9A466

[MacRumors]

With WWDC in full swing, few first hand reports of Apple's Mac OS X Developer Build of Leopard have been leaked beyond what was shown at the WWDC Keynote. The reason for this is that beyond the keynote, the remainder of Apple's conference is under a strict non disclosure agreement. A few tidbits, however, have been posted publicly online:

First Hand with Leopard

One blogger posted these positive impressions

• Mail is really great, seems super fast
• Spotlight much more responsive, no pauses as you type
• Safari seems faster and now has that styled text editor as in FireFox (used in blogger for example)
• New Finder, not as new as I had expected, seems solid and sensible.
• Coverflow everywhere, yeah, whatever..
• Quickview is useful I think, certainly seems fast.
• Time Machine looks like it works really, really well.

The blog post, however, has since been removed.

Meanwhile, a few forum posts (unverified) report the following about the new Leopard beta:

•
• Completely new mail client. Much faster, better calendar support, keep notes
• Stacks are fantastic.
• Dock works fine on the sides, 3D but the icons are sideways (proper) with shadow. Looks awesome on the side. I'd post pictures but I'd rather not be in Apple prison.

Benchmarks

A Geekbench submission benchmarked new Developer Preview of Leopard on a 3.0GHz Mac Pro (Score 5335), which didn't show a substantial difference compared to results from similar configurations on Mac OS X 10.4.9.

Requirements?

This post lists the requirements of Leopard that are listed in the ReadMe that comes with the developer's preview:

• an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 or G5 processor
• a DVD drive
• built-in FireWire
• at least 256 MB of RAM for a Power-PC based Mac and 512 MB for an Intel-based Mac (additional RAM is recommended for development purposes)
• a built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer
• at least 6 GB of disk space available, or 8 GB if you install the developer tools

As a developer build, this may or may not reflect the final requirement set for Leopard.

Build your Own

Finally, for those who want to pretend that they are running Leopard now, you can download the background image or you can download these applications to approximate the Leopard desktop.

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Blogs and forum posts not linked for their own protection

[66217]

Faster spotlight and redesigned printing services are big improvements. The printing menu was terrible, it was very confusing.


What do they mean with this? Safari now has that styled text editor as in FireFox

[SheriffParker]

Awesome! I'm glad we are getting some good feedback about Leopard.

[NewSc2]

• New Finder, not as new as I had expected, seems solid and sensible.

Meh, I've been hoping for a more vertically integrated Finder. Horizontal browsing isn't bad, but get tedious through all the subfolders.

[4God]

I can't seem to be able to download the background image from flickr.

[aleksivic]

DVD player has been able to play HD-DVDs for a long time. It has blu-ray and HD-DVD settings in prefs now.

I find that hard to believe =) If that's true, I'm buying an external Blu-ray burner soon.

[Avicdar]

I really don't know how to feel about this cover flow thing.

On the one hand it seems like it could be useful. On the other hand it seems like Apple going out of its way to make the O/S look more and more like iTunes.

If thats the case, what is their motivation? Is it a subtle marketing ploy, are they being somewhat self congratulatory on iTunes success and therefore saying 'if its in iTunes, it must be good'?

Dunno. Someone else here said in another thread that cover flow in iTunes is of very limited value if your artwork isn't perfectly up to date, and in spite of Apples efforts to get the right album artwork to me, its still all a big mess.

Of course, cover flow in a documents scenario will be vastly different.

I guess I wished they had called it something else. My PDF's, videos, images etc don't have 'covers' so the name of this feature isn't even correct.

[Rivix]

• DVD player has been able to play HD-DVDs for a long time. It has blu-ray and HD-DVD settings in prefs now.

Wait, does this mean we will be able to play HD-DVD's and BlueRay Discs?

[mymacluvsme]

Originally Posted by 4God

I can't seem to be able to download the background image from flickr.

same here; right-click doesn't do anything.....

help????

[arn]

Originally Posted by 4God

I can't seem to be able to download the background image from flickr.

sorry... wrong link. updated the link. try again.

arn

[mikeyrogers]

Originally Posted by 4God

I can't seem to be able to download the background image from flickr.

Same here. Let me know if you figured it out.

[slughead]

This is great news, spotlight doesn't even work on my computer--takes way too long and doesn't find anything.

I can't wait for leopard.

Originally Posted by Rivix

Wait, does this mean we will be able to play HD-DVD's and BlueRay Discs?

We've been able to play HDDVD for some time. using the DVD Player.app

with leopard, you can do both

Of course, if you're not attached to DVD Player.app, you can probably just use VLC right now with a 3rd party drive.

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by SheriffParker

Awesome! I'm glad we are getting some good feedback about Leopard.

yeah me too. hopefully we'll hear more soon

[4God]

Originally Posted by arn

sorry... wrong link. updated the link. try again.

arn

Thanks Arn, you're the best!

[jcaplan]

Originally Posted by Avicdar

If thats the case, what is their motivation?

I seems fairly obvious to me. They are making Leopard multi-touch friendly.

[Luis]

Originally Posted by Macrumors

• Redesigned printing servics, and dialogs, no more of that HORRIBLE 60 dropdown items. Preview of your document (thumbnail) is in every print dialog, and page setup can be reached from this window. Also printing does not put up a dialog covering the screen while it spools pages. No more stopping your productivity, while you wait to spool.

THANK GOD! This could be the only feature in Leopard and I would still buy it only for it.

[blueflame]

I have to say, I agree, I think 10.6 will be multi touch, and right now they are making the interface already mainstream. by 10.6 we will all be accustomed to "3d-ish" interfaces.
A

Originally Posted by jcaplan

I seems fairly obvious to me. They are making Leopard multi-touch friendly.

[mrwilly123]

From the keynote:

[66217]

Originally Posted by blueflame

I have to say, I agree, I think 10.6 will be multi touch, and right now they are making the interface already mainstream. by 10.6 we will all be accustomed to "3d-ish" interfaces.
A

Sometimes I think it would take more time for this to happen. But who knows, technology is changing so fast.

When you say multi-touch in 10.6, do you mean no more physical keyboards? This is something that always confuses me, in the iPhone it might be practical, but in a laptop I am not so sure.

[gwangung]

Originally Posted by Avicdar

I really don't know how to feel about this cover flow thing.

On the one hand it seems like it could be useful. On the other hand it seems like Apple going out of its way to make the O/S look more and more like iTunes.

If thats the case, what is their motivation? Is it a subtle marketing ploy, are they being somewhat self congratulatory on iTunes success and therefore saying 'if its in iTunes, it must be good'?

Dunno. Someone else here said in another thread that cover flow in iTunes is of very limited value if your artwork isn't perfectly up to date, and in spite of Apples efforts to get the right album artwork to me, its still all a big mess.

Of course, cover flow in a documents scenario will be vastly different.

I guess I wished they had called it something else. My PDF's, videos, images etc don't have 'covers' so the name of this feature isn't even correct.

Folks with lots of graphics, photos, etc. to be throwing around might find this feature very useful.

[rendezvouscp]

10.6 is probably three years away from right now, so I think that it'd be feasible to have multi-touch as a way to interact with the system. I don't think we'll get rid of our keyboards with the introduction of multi-touch on desktop/laptop computers because it's probably not practical for entering lots of data.
-Chasen

[maxp1]

Originally Posted by Macrumors

[url=http://www.macrumors.com]Requirements?

This post lists the requirements of Leopard that are listed in the ReadMe that comes with the developer's preview:

• an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 or G5 processor
• a DVD drive
• built-in FireWire
• at least 256 MB of RAM for a Power-PC based Mac and 512 MB for an Intel-based Mac (additional RAM is recommended for development purposes)
• a built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer
• at least 6 GB of disk space available, or 8 GB if you install the developer tools

As a developer build, this may or may not reflect the final requirement set for Leopard.

(edit, deleted. I'm a dumbass.)

Question, built in Firewire will probably be the cut. What machine doesn't have that? I think every G4 machine does.

[Luis]

I think multi-touch will be more like a compliment to the input methods we have today instead of becoming the only method for input...

[jcaplan]

I bet the first multi-touch Mac they make will have both a multi-touch screen and a standard keyboard, all in a new combined form factor.

[aliquis-]

Originally Posted by Rivix

Wait, does this mean we will be able to play HD-DVD's and BlueRay Discs?

No they are only there to confuse people.