Holy Crap Leopard stuff

[Mavimao]

How bout this list for starters...

1) Fix OS X's networking and filesharing

To do what?

2) Allow full screen in QuickTime (free version)

This I can understand

3) Allow QuickTime to play most all video codecs as does MPlayer & VLC.

OK.

4) Make a real Calendar app. iCal SUCKS!

Great answer. It sucks. But WHY? HOW could it be improved?

5) Make a real email app. Mail SUCKS!

Ditto

6) Fix & Modernize the Finder and OS X GUI - I run accross finder/ui bugs quite often in OS X.

Please specify! What is "modernizing" the finder? What bugs are you talking about?

7) Advanced Search features in Spotlight

8) Paths in finder - like in Windows where you can see or enter the path to files or directories.

I think you can just hit an arrow button in spotlight and see the path. Or the info button. Can't say, I only have 10.3.9

Now remember, I'm not trying to belittle your opinion, I just want some substance with your answers.

500th post! woot!

 

[OldCorpse]

Basic reading comprehension

Folks, we need basic reading comprehension, because the straw man is tired of getting beaten.

huck500 wrote:

I'm curious, Corpse, why are you using a mac at all? According to your post, you think Windows does everything better, so why not use that? I'm not criticizing, I'm just curious.

McGarvels wrote:

Amen. Go complain somewhere else Corpse.

NaMo4184 wrote:

Old Corpse, I haven't read a lot of your post, but you are coming off as unreasonably anti-mac too.

OK, take a deep breath, put down your guns and turn on your brain.

Pay attention. The subject of this threat is: will Leopard be as revolutionary vis a vis Tiger as Vista is vis a vis XP. My anwswer was: NO. And that Leopard will be a minor update to Tiger and not particularly exciting. I never said XP was "better" than OS X. I merely said, that some of the Leopard features that are touted are not only not revolutionary but are merely catching up or yet to catch up to XP/Vista. That's all. Not that "Vista/XP is better than OS X". You expressed your opinion, you said what excites you about Leopard, and my response was: fine, some will get excited by Leopard, but my reaction to those points is as follows (not excited, and why). I'm merely expressing my opinion and giving grounds for it. That doesn't make me "anti-mac", or "pro-XP" or any other of your childish schoolyard name-calling. Grow up.

Pay attention. The drivel here is unbelievable.

jsw wrote:

I'm happy you found a different solution. Mail works well for me, and the improved Exchange compatibility in Leopard means I can eliminate using Entourage.

My point is not that Mail does or does not work for you me or dupree. My point was that we are discussing if Leopard will be a revolutionary leap over Tiger, or merely an evolutionary refinenemet - and that by that standard it is clearly not a revolutionary leap. A revolutionary leap means you are compelled by it's unique advantages you simply can't find anywhere else - and I showed why I felt zero such compulsion because there's nothing special about Mail, and Gmail + Gmail Notifier + RSS + Notes does all that better for me. Now you are welcome to argue how Mail in Leopard is revolutionary compared to Mail in Tiger. I'm arguing that it's not revolutionary at all - not compared to Tiger, and not even compared to what's out there cross-platform. It's a small refinement at best - that's what I said, and that's what I claim.

The same points regarding the drivel about Safari and othe apps you mentioned.

jsw wrote:

As mentioned, VLC does this fine

Actually, VLC does not play all of the content out there - or do I need to bring up certain formats which sadly are not possible to play on VLC? You know, like it or not, there are some Microsoft formats which are used on the net and which don't play on macs. I may not like it, but it's a fact that if you want to be an equal denizen of the internet, you need that capability, period. I wish it wasn't so, since I don't want to reward Microsoft, but it's a fact of life, and there's no reason why a mac user should be penalized - as he/she is today.

But first of all, this misses the point. My point was that APPLE is coming up with a viewer that we actually don't need - in part because VLC does the job - and that if they do come up with such an app, I'm only interested if it's better than f.ex. VLC, so that we gain parity with windows users when it comes to displaying all media formats. Comprende?

jsw wrote:

Yeah, it's not incredibly advanced. Power users use Terminal for most such things. But it's hardly "rudimentary" - perhaps you're unfamiliar with the definition of that word or with how to use Spotlight.

Learn to use Terminal, or ?-F in Finder windows.

We're discussing the shortcomings of Spotlight and your defence is that I can use the Terminal instead??? The mind boggles. "This is a poor shovel as it's shaped like a ball which makes it hard to dig - it's a poor shovel, I'm not buying it" - "why, why, it's a great shovel, cause you see, you can use another tool to dig, but it's a great great shovel anyway!!!". No, it sucks. I'm fully aware of what rudimentary means - when you discuss a search utility, and it doesn't even accept the most basic boolean search terms - that my friend, is a classic application of the word "rudimentary" for a search utility.

jsw wrote (re: my iCal remarks):

Don't use it then. Clearly, you must require some awesome calendaring capabilities. And the built-in XP/Vista equivalent is better... how?

Sigh. I don't use it, but that's not the point. The point is that the other guy was excited by iCal - and I explained why I (and folks who agree with me) am not excited. Remember the point of the discussion: is this a revolutionary leap over Tiger? I'm not discussing XP/Vista/Linux/SkyOS/Minix/yourcurrentobsession. I'm focusing on the shortcomings of iCal - and why this malware is not going to get many people excited, because it's fundamentally flawed. It needs a page one re-write. That's my opinion.

And so on with the rest of your points - really, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Read, and comprehend, so you don't keep attacking straw men - learn what the argument is about, and what it is not about. Only then respond - on point.

 

[skunk]

To do what?

Fix networking so it doesn't hang everything for ages simply because a connected machine gioes to sleep or can't be found. That would not in itself be revolutionary, but it's a particularly poorly-implemented feature which costs a lot in downtime.

Great answer. It sucks. But WHY? HOW could it be improved?

In oh so many ways. Boxes in which you can actually read what is written, a week view where you can scroll over a weekend and into the following week, a layout which behaves logically and does not place appointments at weird default times, to name but a few. iCal has been appalling ever since the day it was introduced, and has not got any better. It's a disgraceful application.

I think you can just hit an arrow button in spotlight and see the path. Or the info button. Can't say, I only have 10.3.9

Spotlight is unreliable, fails to find anything if you don't type in the first letters, requires far too many clicks to narrow down a search, and as often as not produces a meaningless hierarchy of results.

 

[huck500]

Comments:

huck500 wrote:

I'm curious, Corpse, why are you using a mac at all? According to your post, you think Windows does everything better, so why not use that? I'm not criticizing, I'm just curious.

McGarvels wrote:

Amen. Go complain somewhere else Corpse.

NaMo4184 wrote:

Old Corpse, I haven't read a lot of your post, but you are coming off as unreasonably anti-mac too.

Response:

Folks, we need basic reading comprehension, because the straw man is tired of getting beaten.

OK, take a deep breath, put down your guns and turn on your brain.

Pay attention...

... your childish schoolyard name-calling. Grow up.

Pay attention. The drivel here is unbelievable.

Comprende?

...really, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Read, and comprehend, so you don't keep attacking straw men - learn what the argument is about, and what it is not about. Only then respond - on point.

Ah... a troll. Welcome!

 

[skunk]

Ah... a troll. Welcome!

Surely it's not a prerequisite of being a member of MacRumors that you have to blindly accept every shortcoming of the OS as a positive bonus? Is this a case of "If you're not with us, you're against us"? That approach has been tried before, not very successfully either.

 

[72930]

Surely it's not a prerequisite of being a member of MacRumors that you have to blindly accept every shortcoming of the OS as a positive bonus? Is this a case of "If you're not with us, you're against us"? That approach has been tried before, not very successfully either.

What do you define as trolling? Because in my book this guy is just dismissing the whole OS, and I am in doubt whether he actually uses it, or just wants to stir up an argument...

 

[skunk]

What do you define as trolling? Because in my book this guy is just dismissing the whole OS, and I am in doubt whether he actually uses it, or just wants to stir up an argument...

I'm afraid I agree with many of his points. I use the OS, in fact I have never used anything else (except 7, 8 and 9, which I actually preferred), and I find many aspects of it irritating, ugly or poorly implemented. I stay with it because I have invested in a lot of hardware and software, not because I regard it as the faultless acme of functionality and style. Old Corpse is not dismissing the whole OS any more than I am, but there is much to criticise. Nor is Leopard, from what little I've seen, much to get excited about. I don't suppose it's going to improve my workflow much, if at all, but it would be nice if it worked properly. I'm certainly not expecting to be blown away by any revolutionary features.

 

[NaMo4184]

Oldcorpse. You comments on Jsw are rediculous. How can you call everything he wrote dribble. You are in fact a troll. You sound just like Ecohead2 off of arstechnica. and Macvault is Venture.

You are arguing out of ignorance. You don't know what you are talking about. flip4mac is a free windows media plug in for the mac. And guess what, its for quick time. There are 7 different quicktime plug in to play xvid and divx for the mac. the mac has flash. What are all these formats that you can't play. There are AC3 plug ins for quick time.

I recommend you edit your post stating that quick time can't play all these video formats. If you continue to say quicktime can't play formats to which there are free plugins for it that work great, it speaks volumes about you.

This is the second time I am correcting your obsession with spewing the factually incorrect statement that macs can't handle video formats.

go to www.macupdate.com and search all the quicktime plug ins you want. If you are actually on a mac that is.

 

[huck500]

Surely it's not a prerequisite of being a member of MacRumors that you have to blindly accept every shortcoming of the OS as a positive bonus? Is this a case of "If you're not with us, you're against us"? That approach has been tried before, not very successfully either.

Did you read my other posts? I politely disagreed with him, as did most of the other posters, and then he followed with insults and condescension. The others who posted the things they don't like about the OS aren't trolls because they make their points with a polite, reasonable tone. He is one because he seems to be picking a fight.

 

[skunk]

Did you read my other posts? I politely disagreed with him, as did most of the other posters, and then he followed with insults and condescension. The others who posted the things they don't like about the OS aren't trolls because they make their points with a polite, reasonable tone. He is one because he seems to be picking a fight.

You may have been reasonably polite, if dismissive of his valid complaints, but others were not.

 

[jsw]

Folks, we need basic reading comprehension, because the straw man is tired of getting beaten.
...
OK, take a deep breath, put down your guns and turn on your brain.

Pay attention. The subject of this threat is: will Leopard be as revolutionary vis a vis Tiger as Vista is vis a vis XP.
...

Pay attention. The drivel here is unbelievable.
...
And so on with the rest of your points - really, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Read, and comprehend, so you don't keep attacking straw men - learn what the argument is about, and what it is not about. Only then respond - on point.

Interesting that you point out that the subject of this threat is "will Leopard be as revolutionary vis a vis Tiger as Vista is vis a vis XP" and then fail to in any way discuss how Vista improves on XP. Without any argument to that effect, what you were left with was a series of attacks on the lack of improvement to OS X features and bundled applications. So, we're left with nothing to really argue against except for your points about how certain improvements failed to be "revolutionary".

Also interesting is an appeal for logical and on-point argumentation from someone who originally compared using iCal to living in a death camp.

It'd be nice to hear why you feel Vista is more of a leap over XP as well as why you consider the Tiger->Leopard leap to be comparable the the XP ->XP SP2 leap.

I agree in general that Leopard is not "revolutionary", but I'd say the same thing about Vista. It's exceedingly difficult for any popular OS to do anything revolutionary between versions.

One can nitpick about why certain applications and features are or are not noticeably better in Leopard than in Tiger. But where's the defense of Vista? Why are Vista's improvements better?

I agree that there are many aspects of OS X which need to be fixed. I have gripes about it. I don't like things about Finder, about the way windows work, about some over simplifications, etc.. But... that doesn't mean Leopard isn't as much of an advance over Tiger as Vista is over XP. Perhaps it isn't - but you've provided no evidence of that.

This isn't about mindless defense of Leopard. This is about complaining against your posts which argue that it is, in essence, a useless upgrade without in any way answering the topic posed by the thread.

My main excitement about Leopard is based upon the massive improvements to the development environment, including Objective C advances, better Xcode, fundamentally improved and expanded frameworks, etc. Is the OS itself stunningly different? No, although it'll probably have some visual enhancements not yet seen and so compete with Vista on that front. I think, as it is released, it'll be as impressively - or not - different from Tiger as Vista is from XP. But... I think that the new development environment will produce revolutionary - or at least nicely evolved - apps that were impossible in Tiger.

And to me, that is the cause of the excitement I feel about Leopard - I feel that massive improvements to the development environment (which aren't part of the XP -> Vista jump) are what's revolutionary, and they'll lead to revolutionary apps shortly after Leopard is released.

 

[djellison]

What I can't understand is why people who clearly hate OSX - even brandishing parts of it Malware and describing it as unuseable....why these people have a 12" Powerbook and a fairly new C2D MB? If OSX is just so terrible - why would you buy a new MB? That's crazy. 100% serious here - if it's all so terrible and broken - why do you use it - why have you bought a new machine with it - there must be something that utterly blows you away to justify using OXS when you have so many negative things to say about it?

FWIW - I'm an XP user intending to switch in the summer. I've tried Vista and found it totally without benefit over XP and infact - I found Vista to be a less productive platform, more awkward, more intrusive and more annoying than XP so I have no plans to ever use Vista. It offers NO benefits for what I want to do in any way - and indeed, Vista is the best piece of marketting for Leopard I've ever seen.

Doug

 

[shortyman]

What I can't understand is why people who clearly hate OSX - even brandishing parts of it Malware and describing it as unuseable....why these people have a 12" Powerbook and a fairly new C2D MB? If OSX is just so terrible - why would you buy a new MB? That's crazy. 100% serious here - if it's all so terrible and broken - why do you use it - why have you bought a new machine with it - there must be something that utterly blows you away to justify using OXS when you have so many negative things to say about it?

FWIW - I'm an XP user intending to switch in the summer. I've tried Vista and found it totally without benefit over XP and infact - I found Vista to be a less productive platform, more awkward, more intrusive and more annoying than XP so I have no plans to ever use Vista. It offers NO benefits for what I want to do in any way - and indeed, Vista is the best piece of marketting for Leopard I've ever seen.

Doug

Im going OT im afraid, but its good to see you here Doug - recognised the name straight away from good old RSC. Welcome to the world of Apple and Mac, you won't regret making the switch!

 

[ksgant]

I'm afraid I agree with many of his points. I use the OS, in fact I have never used anything else (except 7, 8 and 9, which I actually preferred), and I find many aspects of it irritating, ugly or poorly implemented. I stay with it because I have invested in a lot of hardware and software, not because I regard it as the faultless acme of functionality and style.

Really? You preferred System 7, 8 and 9 over OSX? Wow. I too used the mac all the way before they were even calling them "System"...even before Multi-Finder and while I enjoyed them better than the Microsoft alternatives, no way would I consider going back to 7, 8 or 9. They were buggy, crash prone beasts. If they weren't for you, that's fine. But in all the pre-press shops I worked at, they crashed all the time. Granted, most computer desktop OS's crashed back then but that's beside the point.

I applauded when OSX came out. It was different, but it was better....for me at least. And unlike others, learning a new OS was nothing for me. I guess I'm extra special or super-smart because I didn't really have that hard a time switching from System 9 to OSX or even using Windows XP or Linux. Ok, no, I'm not special or smart...because it's not rocket science and anyone can do it. But meh..to each their own.

But expanding on what you've said above...since you have so much invested in Mac hardware and software...if it was all stolen today, would you go out and buy Mac hardware and software again? Or would you switch to Windows or Linux instead? I'm just curious as you seem to have grown into not liking the Mac at all.

 

[SMM]

Amen. Go complain somewhere else Corpse.

I agree - Corpse must be one of those chronic complainers, or MS paid bloggers. He does little more than promote anti-Apple sentiment.

 

[skunk]

Really? You preferred System 7, 8 and 9 over OSX? Wow.

I never had to network with other people's computers, I never worked in an office environment, I never worked in pre-press, so all I needed was a logical system where everything worked.

I applauded when OSX came out. It was different, but it was better....for me at least. And unlike others, learning a new OS was nothing for me.

I applauded too, thinking the OS would be more modern and more capable, but it wasn't until 10.3 that the OS matched the capabilities of OS 9 as far as I was concerned, and even then with more glitches and incompatibilities. I still find the file structure annoyingly irrational: how can you have a folder in two places at once? I have lost or overwritten more vital information with OS 10 than I ever did with OS 9.

But expanding on what you've said above...since you have so much invested in Mac hardware and software...if it was all stolen today, would you go out and buy Mac hardware and software again?Or would you switch to Windows or Linux instead? I'm just curious as you seem to have grown into not liking the Mac at all.

I might well go back to using a typewriter. I have no illusions that any alternative system would please me more. I find the whole thing a necessary evil, and one which becomes less necessary and less attractive as each new time-consuming glitch and incompatibility steals my time and concentration.

 

[volvoben]

OK OK, the rotting corpse fellow may have been a bit negative, but there are still good points buried in there. It's a prerequisite that we all use MacOS, and if anyone seems to be anti-mac, we can always ask what OS they prefer. If they don't like mac, they don't belong here. If they chose and use macintosh os then no biggie, OSX has plenty of flaws, but we still use it because we all believe it to be the best option available.

My personal hopes for Leopard:

Finder: show paths somewhere, please, my brain needs to understand where things "physically" are.

Spotlight: nothing radical, just a few more options, also including showing paths automatically and some buttons up top for file type (photo, document etc) which give you appropriate icon schemes for results.

Finder: a useful "view" option for photos and videos. Windows has it (thumbnail view), linux has it (photo view mode etc.), just give me a nice 4th option on those 3 existing buttons that gives tiled previews of reasonable size, including video. Using command-J and setting up every folder that contains photos is ridiculous. I spend a lot of time browsing around folders of photos and sometimes videos, and I must admit something terrible: i often use a 6 year old windows xp box because the thumbnails show up at reasonable size without any tweaking on every network and local machine, the full path is shown, and any video format i know except RealMedia thumbnails flawlessly.

File Sharing: simplify network sharing...let me share a folder, i don't need the entire computer shared (what happens when you enable windows file sharing). Let me map network drives easily and automatically (i have workarounds for this now, but it has required static IPs, shortcuts for every share etc.)...I just want my 3 shared folders from Mac, Windows & Linux to show up underneath the local HDDs every morning, even if one of them changed its IP, that's all.

Preview/QuickView: This already looks promising...I've searched in vain for an equivalent to Windows Photo and Fax Viewer, and it appears Mac will finally have one. It's so nice to be able to open a folder of photos anywhere on CF Cards, Network Shares, Local Drives etc., see nice quick thumbnails, and then double click on a shot, have a tiny app open the file and allow you to scroll through any other photos in the folder. No fooling with dragging the photos into preview, no 'importing' into iphoto, aperture or lightroom, those programs have their place, but not in casual browsing to narrowing down what you need to import.

GUI Look: I don't mind aqua much, but it's old. The stoplight colored buttons are so hideous, they really ruin good looking apps like itunes. And the 'aqua' blue on everything, it just looks very...toyish. All i want is the look of itunes or FCP or something similar, simple non-colored buttons and perhaps some customizability (make the dock transparent black instead of transparent white for instance). All i want is a skin without running third party apps.

Spaces looks very good, and time machine is a classic 'yup, it's gonna take windows 5 years to help the average schlub back up their data' idea. Their system restore or whatever it's called is classic "works ok but regular users will never understand or use this" microsoft.

The 800 pound gorilla is the 'secret features'. I'm not sure what they could be and still be hidden from developers, but if there are NONE, then Leopard is a little step forward. Less than tiger was from panther, and the average user shouldn't toss $130 at it. But with some good fixes in finder etc etc, plus a secret something that makes my life easier or more productive, and I'll get a family pack without complaint.

wow, that got ranty...guess I shouldn't post during lunch breaks...

 

[smitty078]

There seem to be a few standard complaints about Tiger that keep showing up here and I just can't understand some of the comments...

1) iCal - Ignoring comments like "it sucks" or "google calendars is waaay better", I have found only one post with legitimate claims as to why it is bad.

"Boxes in which you can actually read what is written"
I use iCal extensively and I've never had a problem reading anything anywhere. What boxes are you talking about?

"a week view where you can scroll over a weekend and into the following week"
Isn't the point of week view to look at one week? If you want to go to the next week while still in week view, click the left or right arrow buttons at the bottom that are part of the view selection and that takes you to the next week. I don't see how this is any different than what you want.

"a layout which behaves logically and does not place appointments at weird default times"
Where do you expect it to put new appointments? It always puts them wherever I last clicked, or after the last appointment I just entered. This seems logical to me. It is also easy to just drag it to a new spot, or enter the time yourself.

The one shortcoming I have noticed with iCal is the only one not mentioned here... It's to-do support is very basic. It lets you enter to-dos but there are no reminders and they are not accessible outside of ical in any way. This is one things that has been fixed with Leopard, as Leopard seems to have a system-wide to-do/notes system.

2) iChat - I agree with many people that I do not use or like iChat. It is simply a matter of preference though, as iChat works for what it is. It is a basic chat program for average users. It also has some admittedly nice features (like video conference that works). It has gotten better with every release and with Leopard it will gain screen sharing and tabs. For power users and/or users who don't care about it's video capabilities there are "better" clients, but again this is preference, iChat is by no means a bad app.

3) OS X Networking - anyone who says OS X networking needs work is retarded. Because of OS X's unix roots, it has some of the best network on any platform, period. I think that most of the people saying networking needs improvement are people experiencing problems with the Finder and the Finder hanging on server disconnects or other networking problems. This is NOT because of OS X's networking, it is because of the Finder.

4) The Finder - yes, it has many longstanding bugs and problems. It hangs if a network connection is lost, it hangs if a disk is improperly removed, it's webDAV support (used for iDisk) is so slow it's embarassing, and it only supports reading over FTP (no write access period). It's read/write speed both to local and network volumes is also amazingly slow. There are also many others I'm sure I over looked mentioning. I do not think it is at all behind what is available on windows though. Windows explorer (I'm talking about XP) crashes constantly on most windows systems I have used. A network server disconnecting, unplugging an external drive without ejecting it, and sometimes even just a file copy will crash explorer. While explorer may have a few more abilities (it can do FTP both ways for example), I think it's frequent crashes make it no better or worse than the Finder overall. Also, someone mentioned they'd like to see the ability to see and enter a path in the Finder, like you can do in explorer.. well you can see the path (in a menu format) by command(apple)+clicking on the title of the window, or by adding the path item to the toolbar. You can enter and go straight to a path by pressing command+shift+G in the finder and it will give you a box to type in a path.

5) Spotlight - spotlight is fine. It does what it's supposed to do and does it adequetly for most users. If you need more or different, use any of several other similar utilities (quicksilver and launchbar come to mind). Some people complain that it doesn't find accurate results or no results at all... well it definitely does work. Most likely you need to clear your disk's spotlight index and let it re-index your drive. A quick google search will reveal how to do this. For those that want boolean search and other such things, spotlight is capable. Visit macosxhints.com and you will find an assortment of spotlight related tips including how to do boolean search.

6) Media player - I agree that this is a situation that needs addressing. First of all, there is iTunes and there is QuickTime Player, both of which play video, but Quicktime Player is mostly unused by apple (all purchased iTunes videos play in iTunes, and iTunes can play anything quicktime will play since it uses quicktime). iTunes can also play quicktime full screen. About the only thing quicktime pro gets you is full screen in QT Player (iTunes and many third party apps do this for free) and some basic editing abilities in QT Player (just use iMovie, FCE or FCP depending on needs). What they should do is get rid of quicktime player entirely and roll movie playing into iTunes. iTunes could use a rename to iMultimedia or something of the sorts in this case. On the subject of the ability to play anything... Apple has chosen the codecs that ship with quicktime very carefully.. they are all standard formats that follow standards rules. It plays anything from apple and most basic formats, assuming they are standards complaint formats. If you want support for anything else, there is the option of adding codecs or using a third party player. Right now the only format impossible to play on mac is windows media 10 with DRM. That is because microsoft has not made a player for mac to decode the DRM, and doesn't seem interested in doing so. This is not in any way Apple's fault or control.

7) Mail - I can't find anything wrong with it myself, except I know it doesn't have exchange server support. Besides that I haven't seen anyone say anything besides "it sucks"... what is everyone's problem with it?

 

[NaMo4184]

Here are some screenshots of Leopard. There are a lot of things we haven't seen yet.

Leopard WWDC06
Leopard9a283
Leopard 9a321

Here is an AeroXperience
break down of the new developer features.

Apple Computer's recently previewed Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard" has made quite a stir, not because of what was shown at the World Wide Developer Conference but of what was excluded from show, cited "Top Secret". However, the build released to attendees at the conference includes a huge number of ground-breaking changes to the underlying technology in Mac OS X and the APIs exposed to developers.

As a world wide exclusive, AeroXP has received information detailing several of the API improvements to Leopard, detailed below:

* Complete 64-Bit support for Intel and PowerPC through all frameworks excluding QuickTime C, QuickDraw, Sound Manager, Code Fragment Manager, Language Analysis Manager and QuickTime Musical Instruments. These modules are deprecated and one should use the modern equivalents instead.

* Leopard will feature resolution-independent user interface and there are several functions to get the current scaling factor and apply it to pixel measurements. It is a good idea to use vector controls and buttons (PDF will work fine) or to have multiple sized resources, similar to Mac OS X icon design, so you can scale to the nearest size for the required resolution.

* Address Book adds support for sharing accounts, allowing an application to restrict content according to user.

* Automator includes a new user interface and allows things such as action recording, workflow variables and embedding workflows in other applications.

* Time Machine has an API that allows developers to exclude unimportant files from a backup set which improves backup performance and reduces space needed for a backup.

* A new Calendar Store framework allows developers access to calendar, event and task information from iCal to use in their applications or to add new events or tasks.

* Carbon, the set of APIs built upon Classic MacOS and used by most 3rd party high-profile Mac OS X applications, now allows Cocoa views to be embedded into the application. This could provide applications like Photoshop and Microsoft Office access to advanced functions previously only available to Cocoa applications.

* A new control for creating matrices of views is available, NSGridView. This allows a grid to be created from any view in the system, including OpenGL or Web Views.

* Core Animation allows layers to be used as backing stores for a view, windows to use explicit animations when resizing (can be three dimensional, akin to the Time Machine view). Any view can now be put into fullscreen mode and a CoreImage transition effect can be used. Using Core Animation you can create anything including GPU-accelerated Front Row-style user interfaces without having to write OpenGL code. A Core Animation layer can include OpenGL content, Core Image and Core Video filter effects and Quartz/Cocoa drawing content, like views and windows.

* Text engine improvements include a systemwide grammar checking facility, smart quote support, automatic link detection and support for copying and pasting multiple selections.

* Core Image has been upgraded to allow access to RAW images directly.

* Apache 2.0, Ruby on Rails and Subversion are included, and support for script-to-framework programming is available, allowing Python and Ruby scripting to access Mac OS X specific APIs.

* The iChat framework allows a developer to add shared content to an active iChat session, for example a video, an image slideshow or even an online multiplayer game.

* "Sharing accounts" are possible, with users being restricted via an access control list (ACL) to certain applications or files. Developers can integrate with this by restricting access to a specific piece of content by connecting it to a sharing account. Sharing accounts have no home folder.

* An Image Kit is included, to allow a developer to easily create an application that can browse, view, crop, rotate and pick images, then apply Core Image filter effects through an interface. A slideshow interface is also open to developers, allowing any application to display a fullscreen slideshow of images.

* Leopard also gives developers access to a "Latent Semantic Mapping" framework, which is the basis for spam protection in Mail. It allows you to analyze text and train the engine to restrict items with specific content (like spam e-mail for example).

* Mail stationery is open to developers, allowing any web designer to create fantastic-looking Mail templates, with defined areas for custom user content.

* A new framework is included for publishing and subscribing to RSS and Atom feeds, including complete RSS parsing and generation. Local feeds can be shared over Bonjour zero-configuration sharing and discovery.

* Quicktime 7.1 is included, and the underlying QTKit framework is greatly improved. There is improved correction for nonsquare pixels, use of the clean aperture which is the "user-displayable region of video that does not contain transition artifacts caused by the encoding process", support for aperture mode dimensions, improved pitch and rate control for audio and a number of developer improvements, like QuickTime capture from sources like cameras and microphones, full screen recording or QuickTime stream recording. Live content from a capture can be broadcast as a stream over the network.

If you go to Apple.com/developers, sign in and you can download videos of Leopard developer improvments. There are even more things listen and the demonstrations are pretty amazing.

 

[Fukui]

There are lots of things that aren't mentioned, but make a huge difference for developers.

Leopard is huge in that respect.

 

[NaMo4184]

In that list you forgot that in addition to *every (un-depreciated) framework* getting 64-Bit clean implementations, they are also making them all garbage collectable, including Core Foundation (pure C).

That should lead to even more stable and secure applications for end users.

Thanks brother. Its easy to forget how good Leopard's 64 bit implimentation is. You can run 32 bit and 64 bit apps at the same time. Unlike windows where you have to chose eigther or.

It reminds me that there are also cocoa improvments on taking advantage of multiple CPUs. Thats in the nideo i mentioned earlier.

 

[Fukui]

Thanks brother. Its easy to forget how good Leopard's 64 bit implimentation is. You canb run 32 bit and 64 bit apps at the saem time. Unlike windows where you have to chose eigther or.

It reminds me that there are also cocoa improvments on taking advantage of multiple CPUs. Thats in the nideo i mentioned earlier.

Yea, one would expect one or the other, but enabling both is a lot of work and a lot of testing, there's so much stuff being put into leopard, its quite exciting. And the nice thing is, like you said, 64/32 +/- GC , it doesn't matter. Thats real nice.

 

[MarkCollette]

Meh. Spotlight needs a top to bottom redo - it's crippleware at this point. I want not just Boolean searches, I want to see the darn path to the found objects right there in the search - no more of this tooltip nonsense that takes ages and doesn't work half the time.

Revolutionary: hardly. A tiny, tiny refinement, a bandaid on a pimple while we need surgery for a terminal cancer.

Umm, while Spotlight could in theory do more than it currently does, it still completely blows away any alternatives. So, to refer to it as terminal cancer, makes absolutely no sense.

 

[Project]

^ Agree.

Spotlight in the Terminal is incredible. Its just let down by a rushed and limited GUI

 

[Zwhaler]

Keep in mind, these "secret features" must be really really cool, or Apple wouldn't have made such a big deal about Welcome to 2007 and how this will be such an amazing year for Apple. And you can't act like the only reason it is is because of the iPhone. I think Steves gonna whip out those secrets and blow us all away (at least to a certain extent) He wouldn't have lied about them being there, if they aren't there.