Apple Seeds Mac OS X 10.6.7 Build 10J846 to Developers

[kingtj]

Fair enough, except ....

You declared it "done", essentially - which made it sound like as long as they added the scalable fonts, you didn't see a reason for any other work or improvements.

If you're demanding true innovations? I think most of that will only come from re-thinking the hardware as well as the software (so we probably agree there, as far as the keyboard and mouse interface creating some hard limitations).

But one man's "small improvement" is another's "innovation" sometimes, too. It's somewhat relative. For example, I've heard people throwing around the term "innovation" in regards to Windows 7's new ability to "snap" application windows to the left or right 50% of a given display screen automatically, by simply dragging them off the edge of a screen and letting go of the mouse button. Really, it's not a BIG change, yet I can see where it's a very cool addition for someone who regularly runs 2 apps side-by-side on the same display.

All of these are fine and dandy but NOT what I'd consider "innovations". They're improvements at best or simply things OSX should have to begin with (e.g., file management).

Again, you have a mouse and keyboard. Not many more ways to interact with OSX than has already been established. The rest is eye candy.

 

[EGOvoruhk]

The Mac OS has plateaued. No more ground-breaking innovations on the horizon IMO. There's only so much you can do with the human interface.

There's more to an OS than the interface. One glaring example that could use some work is the file system. HFS+ won't cut it forever, or even now for some. They may have abandoned moving to ZFS, but there are still other options. Btrfs, being one

 

[RichardBeer]

I really hope for better OpenGL and new graphics drivers. 3D performance in OS X is behind Windows.

 

[balk]

ehrm,
hopefully the one click app purchase mechanism receives a make-over in the MAS.

 

[Mattsasa]

I really hope for better OpenGL and new graphics drivers. 3D performance in OS X is behind Windows.

Amen to that! Yea I agree, shouldn't be that hard for apple! especially when valve and others are pumping out great games for OS X, apple should catch up to windows, or maybe even surpass

 

[RedTomato]

Off-hand, I can think of PLENTY of things that OS X could offer in the future to vastly improve the operating system!

..

4. MANY file management tasks could be made easier if OS X got creative, offering new tools for them! For example, did you ever want to rename a whole list of files in a directory so they all started with a certain prefix, or maybe move/copy all files in a folder starting with certain letters (or ending with a certain extension)? Right now, I see no good way to do it in the Finder. I guess you could write a whole Applescript or Automator script to accomplish it, but that seems like way more work than it's worth - for something you probably won't need to do again the exact same way in the future. Heck, in good old MS-DOS on the PC, decades ago, you could do much of this with a simple command line! Like "MOVE *.TXT C:\MYTEXT" to move all files with a .TXT extension to that folder.

Er? You really want to run with this?

Unix has done this for decades, since before DOS was invented, and what underlie the guts of OSX?

Almost that exact same command will work in OSX Terminal and has done for every single version of OSX right back to the start.

I suppose you're looking for a way to do it via a GUI, but text-based wrangling is one of the biggest weak points of a GUI.

 

[iBug2]

I really hope for better OpenGL and new graphics drivers. 3D performance in OS X is behind Windows.

And it always will be. 3D performance in Linux is behind OS X and it always will be.

 

[iBug2]

Amen to that! Yea I agree, shouldn't be that hard for apple! especially when valve and others are pumping out great games for OS X, apple should catch up to windows, or maybe even surpass

The market share for mac gaming is probably less than 1% of Windows. There's no way for hardware companies like Nvidia or AMD to spend enough cash for windows-like driver development for Mac.

 

[iBug2]

Er? You really want to run with this?

Unix has done this for decades, since before DOS was invented, and what underlie the guts of OSX?

Almost that exact same command will work in OSX Terminal and has done for every single version of OSX right back to the start.

I suppose you're looking for a way to do it via a GUI, but text-based wrangling is one of the biggest weak points of a GUI.

Exactly. And if one is not familiar with bash syntax, just use automator. I don't think something like that can be done through GUI anyway. There are way too many variations in such scripts and many different scripts for desktop tasks.

 

[SandynJosh]

The Mac OS has plateaued. No more ground-breaking innovations on the horizon IMO. There's only so much you can do with the human interface.

Give me scalable fonts and call it good.

Then it must be time to close the patent office too.

 

[MrNomNoms]

I'm just guessing here but since Lion will probably change less, under the hood, and may not offer as many new API's as SL did, it might have a shorter developer phase. They can seed the first build before WWDC, and release it at the end of August like they did with SL.

They still need to finish off QtKit which is what many developers including Apples own are waiting on because right now QtKit provides only very basic functionality thus many are resorting to using a bridge between Carbon QuickTime and their 64bit application. With that being said, I agree - I don't think we'll se a major change in terms of brand new technologies given that Mac OS X is already pretty mature as it is. There will be a BSD subsystem update as they do with every release, probably move to LLVM-GCC as their default compiler or maybe even more to Clang/LLVM, XCode 4.0 will be released, OpenGL and OpenCL updated, drivers optimised, maybe even a greater mainstream access to the 64bit kernel, some refinements to the GUI now that everything is moved to Cocoa thus making it not adding to a black hole which is what adding to a Carbon Finder would have been like.

Personally I'd prefer to see less radical under the hood changes and more focus on refinement - heck, I'd be happy if Apple said that they're going to push releases out to 2-2 1/2 years if it means longer development times and longer times for support.

The Mac OS has plateaued. No more ground-breaking innovations on the horizon IMO. There's only so much you can do with the human interface.

Give me scalable fonts and call it good.

Meh, if they want something to keep themselves occupied then they can always go through the numerous open source bugzillas that list all the bugs that developers keep tripping over when developing for Mac OS X - if the only thing they did was address all those complaints by developers then I'd be more than happy to plonk down US$129 for a copy if it means third parties lives are made a lot easier.

 

[fastasleep]

Aside from the points that you can do exactly this in Terminal, for batch renaming files just grab an app like Name Mangler, which works great:

http://manytricks.com/namemangler/

4. MANY file management tasks could be made easier if OS X got creative, offering new tools for them! For example, did you ever want to rename a whole list of files in a directory so they all started with a certain prefix, or maybe move/copy all files in a folder starting with certain letters (or ending with a certain extension)? Right now, I see no good way to do it in the Finder. I guess you could write a whole Applescript or Automator script to accomplish it, but that seems like way more work than it's worth - for something you probably won't need to do again the exact same way in the future. Heck, in good old MS-DOS on the PC, decades ago, you could do much of this with a simple command line! Like "MOVE *.TXT C:\MYTEXT" to move all files with a .TXT extension to that folder.

 

[3282868]

The Mac OS has plateaued. No more ground-breaking innovations on the horizon IMO. There's only so much you can do with the human interface.

Give me scalable fonts and call it good.

God I miss the days when the Leopard beta's were consistently released with new features and MacRumors was abuzz with OS X news.

I loved the "Answering Machine" feature in iChat that was in a Leopard beta; you could record a voice or video away message and your friends could leave you recorded video messages. There was talk about incorporating phone numbers via VoIP/Landlines into the system, allowing access to your messages through another computer/mobile device. Now "FaceTime"? It seems half arsed, at least in iChat it made sense and utilized more features such as SMS, MMS, etc from desktop/OS X/Windows systems to mobile platforms.

What has become of Resolution Independence, ZFS, improved graphics? I've grown tired of iPhone/iPad/iOS news and development. Apple seems to be cutting away at their professional desktop line. First their dedicated independent 20", 23", 30" ACD CCFL LCD line is cut and replaced with a stripped down iMac panel with cords too short for desktop systems. Then xServe, and where are the steady 10.7 beta releases for developers as with previous releases?

Jobs said the desktop isn't dead, but with so much focus on consumer grade electronics while hacking away at the once professional end of Apple products, I fear iOS will replace OS X.

 

[ravenvii]

Speaking of the answering machine, that NEEDS to be added to FaceTime!

 

[RedTomato]

Speaking of the answering machine, that NEEDS to be added to FaceTime!

+1

I'm deaf and I'd love for my signing mates to be able to leave video messages for me on Facetime.