I've seen it
Okay, guys, I've just seen an early build of Jaguar. I think it was called 6-something-35. It ran on a 800 MHz iMac.
Speed was exactly the same as Puma, so no news there, though the guy who showed me said that he thought it was perhaps a little bit faster. Obviously, there was no sign of Quartz Extreme: that would probably come later; I'm not sure if anyone outside Apple has seen that. Did SJ even demo it? That feature had better be huge...!
This build also didn't have Sherlock 3 due to some screwup.
But what it did have is a few niceties. Here's my list.
Docked documents
This was rumored before, but no reports I've read confirmed it, so I had to try myself. After you minimize a document to the Dock, you can drag it out of the Dock, and it will float on your screen, on top of everything. It will still have the miniature application icon superimposed over it. You'll be able to move the minimized document, and also close it by CTRL-clicking or clicking and holding (a contextual menu will come up). (You can close a Docked document the same way.) Double-clicking a minimized document will restore it to its original size.
I hoped there would be a way to minimize a document in-place directly, but looks like you need to dock it first, and drag from there. I couldn't find a preference anywhere to change that behavior, hopefully a Terminal trick will at least be available. Minimization in place would be a great replacement for window shades.
Find File is back!
Those of you who think Sherlock is quickly evolving into bloatware, and becoming largely useless for searching local volumes, should rejoice: pressing Command + F in the Finder now brings up a streamlined, simple Find File dialog, similar to what Mac OS 8 had! Sherlock is now an Internet search utility (though I couldn't test it myself). You can also enter search criteria in a Finder window, but you'll need to press Return to begin the search (unlike in iTunes or Mail). If you click on the word "Search" below the search box, the Find File dialog will appear. These two are the ways to look for files -- and I love both, especially compared to the bloated and stupid Sherlock.
Get Info changes
As seen on screen shots, Get Info can now display all of its panes simultaneously, you can control that with disclosure triangles. You can also open multiple Get Info windows, just like in OS 9 and before: changing your selection in the Finder won't change any open Get Info windows. There are some other subtle changes I didn't memorize -- go look at the screen shots.
ZoomRects everywhere
Actually, they are opaque zooms; I think you can hack Puma to have them as well?? Anyway, whether you open or close a folder, you'll see this animation. Spring-loaded folders have them too.
There were some other subtle changes too, most of them have been documented elsewhere. There are big things as well, like network protocols and such. I looked for interface changes mostly, and never connected to the Internet, so I don't know anything about that.
Feel free to ask questions, I must have forgotten a lot of stuff. I played with Jaguar for about an hour and a half, will go back tomorrow.
