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iMeowbot said:
Spotlight does have the ability to refine searches. Use its Cmd-F interface from the Finder, it's far more powerful than the menu bar tool!
It's still not mature enough. It's too complicated and not flexible enough. I can't quantify that, but I can feel it.
 
Analog Kid said:
It's still not mature enough. It's too complicated and not flexible enough. I can't quantify that, but I can feel it.
Yes, the boolean syntax is strange, for starters. I do feel as though it's really some smallish interface tweaking, rather than a major overhaul, that it really wants.
 
I am sure all of the "cool" features in 10.5 will probably require an Intel processor. I am sure it will still run on PowerPC, but will probably not be optimized for it and will run slower. Apple will find a way to make sure we all upgrade soon.
 
Abercrombieboy said:
I am sure all of the "cool" features in 10.5 will probably require an Intel processor. I am sure it will still run on PowerPC, but will probably not be optimized for it and will run slower. Apple will find a way to make sure we all upgrade soon.
I don't know about that... Apple has a pretty good track record of supporting legacy hardware. There's things like Quartz Extreme where older hardware simply can't handle it, but they back off the functionality very gracefully for older systems.
 
looks like they are keeping Dominic Giampaolo nice and busy over there. the Finder is becoming more and more BeOS-like with every release. awesome.
 
Abercrombieboy said:
I am sure all of the "cool" features in 10.5 will probably require an Intel processor. I am sure it will still run on PowerPC, but will probably not be optimized for it and will run slower. Apple will find a way to make sure we all upgrade soon.

I don''t think so...as someone said, they did but that is hardware restriction, they will make it run great on PPC's as well (People with Quad G5's not being able to use all features...nah)

I got the Rev C iMac with FrontRow etc...they will make Leopard do just fine and much better than Tiger on both the PPC and Intel CPU's ;)
 
Instead of all these really cool add-ons, I simply want a Mac operating system that can handle right-to-left text without problems. Is that too much to ask? I want to write in Hebrew in Pages & Keynote and have the cursor move in the right direction and have the text shown correctly. It would be great to have a fully translated right-to-left OS X in full Hebrew/Arabic menus, FROM RIGHT TO LEFT. I want to import right-to-left word documents and have them shown correctly. I want to surf right-to-left sites IN SAFARI (instead of firefox) and have them shown correctly.

In this very specific one aspect, Microsoft is light-years ahead of Apple. Too bad, they're loosing a population of over 1 billion potential customers.

Oded S.
 
If you go to airliners.net and do a search for some planes' pictures, you can then select one of your choice and perform a "view similar" search. This method searches for similar pixels on other photos that are in their database. It is amazingly accurate!!

I'd love if Mac OS X Leopard and may be iPhoto could have a "view similar photo" capability.

This method is called "Semantics-sensitive Retrieval for Digital Picture Libraries"
more info
 
Tiger was mostly little extras, these 200 new features. I hope Leopard comes with something revolutioning. Perhaps the iKillWindows? :D
 
I want to see the removal of finder and a spotlight like facility that uses all smart folders (course keeping the underlaying structure). Also, added support for alternative window managers or themes, (Aqua's the best, but I always want choice). Also, get rid of NetInfo and binary config files and let me edit me customise my system like I want to!
 
neoserver said:
Just looked at the images... looks very cool.

One thing though... in the images the windows have "iFinder" as their title. I certainly hope they aren't going to take the whole "i" thing to the finder. I much prefer just "Finder."

I agree. But companies do this because 'made-up' names are easier to protect than plain English.

Trying to protect "Crispy Cream" would be very hard. Both words are standard, common-use terms. But "Krispy Kreme" is not.

monkeyandy said:
Just when MS releases Vista, Apple will drop this bombshell! :cool:

I'm not sure an updated Finder - or even an iFinder - qualifies as a bombshell....
 
neoserver said:
One thing though... in the images the windows have "iFinder" as their title. I certainly hope they aren't going to take the whole "i" thing to the finder. I much prefer just "Finder."
Yep, I'm sure everybody here would agree. iFinder would be awful.

Oh, and give us emblems that will help people to recognise individual folders quicker and show you what is executable or dangerous etc.
 
Josias said:
Tiger was mostly little extras, these 200 new features. I hope Leopard comes with something revolutioning. Perhaps the iKillWindows? :D

Not really. Despite Dashboard and Spotlight, Tiger was a developmental release. An awful lot of technollogy went into Tiger, but it was left unexposed by the GUI. That my friend, is what Leopard will do. Make full use of this technology.

Take Spotlight for instance. The GUI hampers its potential massively. I mean, open up Terminal for isntance and type mdls then drag any media file onto there. Look at the metadata it contains. Spotlight technology also alloows for arbitrary metadata to be entered into a file too, but this is basically rubbish at the moment in terms of implementation. The Spotlight technology is quite powerful, but the key is making it useable. "spotlight comments" is something of an insult. As are the "smart folders". I need to use complicated syntax in order to make it useful. These patents however give me hope. The fact there is a Projects and Keywords category exposed directly within Finder is a good thing. The key is to make assigning metadata to files as painless as possible, much like it is in Vista. Having to right click a file, tab to Spotlight Comments and enter information is useless. I want to set up my own fields! Like a "Lecturer" field, or a "Project" field, and assign files to those by simply dragging them onto a *hotspot*, that automatically tags it as necessary. I want a Rating field, so I can assign ratings to pieces of research or articles depending on the quality, much like iPhoto has at the moment. I should also be able to easily search for photos rated 5 stars from within Finder too.

Spotlight has massive potential and thats why a lot of people are disappointed, especially because iTunes metadata implementation is beautiful.... but I am of the believe that Apple just wanted to get Spotlight out there as a precursor to Vista, and the REAL Spotlight that is fully featured will be coming in Leopard. Its hard to think otherwise when you have geniuses like Giampaolo in your ranks.
 
Stridder44 said:
The pics of the finder look just like the...well, finder. I don't see any difference. (except the "iFinder" thing...God forbid they're going to call it that)

Pffttt... Your giving Apple too much credit. Apple is good at finding really dumb names for products lately eg: Bonjour, MacBook Pro (although I'm kind of used to this name now) and now possibly iFinder.
But at the end of the day you have to brand a product with a name and I doubt we will even notice the Finder rebranding much. The MetaBrowse title in the other screenshot sounds cooler, more geeky but not a good choice for something trying to appeal to the consumer space.
 
Josias said:
Tiger was mostly little extras, these 200 new features. I hope Leopard comes with something revolutioning. Perhaps the iKillWindows? :D


Tiger was honestly a boring upgrade but just like Project said in post #67 is was all about getting the foundations right. There was a lot of changes that were not apparent to most people in the interface as it was very much in the background, core data, core image, launchd, H.264, xgrid, Device Aggregation, Fine Grain Locking, , Access Control Lists, 64bit frameworks and metadata to name a few of the most relevant. Of course Apple still managed to screw a few things up only like Apple is capable such as re-implementing resource forks in more places, binary plist files and completely unnecessary messing with standard unix tools such as cp and mv when we already had ditto but overall it sets something up that is going to work well in the future when you start getting proper access via the UI.
 
encro said:
Tiger was honestly a boring upgrade but just like Project said in post #67 is was all about getting the foundations right.

That's a result of how Apple's OS teams have worked for the last few years.
Every second "major" release was a major technology update (Jaguar introduced Quartz Extreme, Rendevous, the Address Book API and many more), Panther by and large just took advantage of those features to a greater extent, then Tiger was another technology release (Spotlight, Core Image, Core Video, Quartz 2D Extreme etc.).

However, reportedly the teams have been merged now, which is why I expect Leopard to be a 'big bang' release, and to leverage the new Tiger APIs to a large extent.
 
whooleytoo said:
Not that I'm aware of.. not sure I understand though, what are you trying to do?

I'm not trying to do *anything*... I was responding to a comment on the first page. To be honest, I've never had a complaint about the audio performance of my Macs...except perhaps that the BONG is too loud (fixable) and the clicks for changing the volume of brightness level lag on my iBook G4/800 (I'll live with it). But beyond that, I was just responding to the previous poster, clearly in an area in which I am way over my head. ;)
 
I really doubt all the "cool" features would be Intel only because they just started shipping the first Intel Macs two months ago. They're too new, not everyone bought them, plus Power Macs and xServes haven't made the transition yet so they'll be leaving out all those people. I really hope Apple isn't stupid enough to make everyone have to upgrade to Intels. The only hardware I see them dropping is the PoerPC G3. All Macs have had G4s or better for years now and enough people now probably have a G4/G5/Intel to justify dropping G3 support. And look at Panther and Tiger: Panther needs built-in USB so bye-bye to beige G3s. Then Tiger needed built-in Firewire so bye-bye first G3 iMacs. Dropping G3s would be the next logical step. Plus, this would allow Apple to better optimize all of Mac OS X to use Altivec or SSE. I really doubt Mac OS X would be Intel only until 10.7, 10.6 maybe. If 10.6 still allows PowerPCs, it would probably need G4s or better and something like AGP graphics.
 
Drop the "cute" stuff

encro said:
Pffttt... Your giving Apple too much credit. Apple is good at finding really dumb names for products lately eg: Bonjour, MacBook Pro (although I'm kind of used to this name now) and now possibly iFinder.
But at the end of the day you have to brand a product with a name and I doubt we will even notice the Finder rebranding much. The MetaBrowse title in the other screenshot sounds cooler, more geeky but not a good choice for something trying to appeal to the consumer space.

True, though I think Apple should drop "Finder" all together and call it "Desktop". If Apple hopes to make it big with business they have to drop the "cute" stuff (e.g. smiley face Finder). Replace the Finder icon with the Desktop icon and rename to Desktop.
 
backdraft said:
True, though I think Apple should drop "Finder" all together and call it "Desktop". If Apple hopes to make it big with business they have to drop the "cute" stuff (e.g. smiley face Finder). Replace the Finder icon with the Desktop icon and rename to Desktop.

I think the simley face would make the business world less boring and cold, and more happy.

And if not... well it's a lot nicer than a generic desktop icon. Just my opinion.

I think it's fine in the business world. Even if it's a little "cute", but it's not overly so. It's just nice.
 
I've read some papers on analyzing recorded music for metadata. they are just not up to par enough to distribute to the masses.

it is possible.... Using FFT or frequency analysis alone to do it totaly BS. that would be like taking those "jazz" "rock" "pop" settings on your stereo and applying it to one of the hardest most diverse things to analyze on your computer...

44100 samples a fricken second

on the other hand, there have been some papers on working on audio DIRECTLY in the compressed domain HOLY CRAP!!!!!! so anythings possible.
 
odedia said:
Instead of all these really cool add-ons, I simply want a Mac operating system that can handle right-to-left text without problems...It would be great to have a fully translated right-to-left OS X in full Hebrew/Arabic menus, FROM RIGHT TO LEFT.

Just look at it in the mirror. Then everything would be right to left! :)
 
Its funny...most of the posts I am reading have more to do with the UI. What got me most excited was this idea of 2nd processing the metadata. Maybe its because I am a HUGE geek, but this seems like an awesome "why the h@ll didn't they do this before" idea!

Picture taking a picture, and the OS automatically discovers the word "nike" on your hat, that it was taken in the afternoon, etc, etc. Or saving the words to an MP3 song so that you can search your drive for lyrics. That just blows my mind!

To heck with the UI...I want some of that metadata processing power in my Mac!
 
I for one am most excited about the thinking and the changes.

Spotlight is very promising in Tiger, but falls woefully short of its potential. Tiger, in general is pretty rough with many missed opportunities.

But I hope Jobs, Ives, and the power crew at Apple are spending a lot of time to make Leopard leapfrog Vista. This is OS battle is one for the history books since Jobs was not around in 95.
 
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