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Leopard Development Roadmap Revealed?

For those of you considering installing the WWDC beta version of Leopard, know that it is *not* feature complete. Also, know that it is useable but certainly buggy. That said, here are my observations.....

I like the new Menu Bar. I like the transparency because it takes on the color of whatever wall I happen to have up. I would also like to see the option of having the menus that cascade down from the Menu Bar be transparent as well. I like the square corners. I read a post which stated that by having rounded corners, it provides a millimeter or so of desktop which one can use to go back to the desktop in the event of a maximized window and the spinning beach ball. I can count on one hand how many times I have had this problem and I would much prefer to force-quit the offending app. and return to the desktop in this manner.

I like the unified look. I suppose grey is not everybody's favorite color but it works for me. That said, I would also like to see themes available which would allow the user to switch from grey to other colors. I would think something like this would be relatively easy to implement in an OS and I wouldn't be surprised to see this feature in the final release.

I am glad to see that the Finder will not be completely revamped. I have always liked the Finder and I can't see changing something that works. CoverFlow within the Finder looks really good but I think it will prove to be more eye-candy than anything else. Mind you, it's simply another option and that's not a bad thing.

I like the look of the new dock. I think Apple is shooting for a more 3-dimensional desktop and the tray beneath the icons certainly creates this effect. I also like the glowing orbs beneath open apps. I find it easier to distinguish which apps. are actually running.

I like the minor changes made to iCal. For instance, when you click "Info" on and event the modify box pops up immediately next to the event instead of in a sidebard. This is a small change but a welcome improvement.

I like the way the window in the forefront is more pronounced by way of shadowing. The effect looks really cool and it makes it much easier to see which is the active window.

Stacks is not fully functional in this build (WWDC) so I can't really comment too much on it. That said, I think it's pretty obvious where it is going and I think this will be a great feature. I would like my dock to have the Finder, Safari, Mail, Preferences and a stack with frequently used applications as the only icons which reside in the dock.

Those are my observations for now. IMHO those of you who are thinking that Leopard will be a major departure from Tiger will probably be disappointed. I see Leopard as improving upon an already awesome OS with features that will provide additional functionality and eye-candy.
 
hotdamn said:
I don't know what else I'd want, seriously. If they iron out all the bugs this is as close as any OS comes to perfect.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's been said already in this thread but is worth repeating: if all we're talking about are UI tweaks, and not issues with filesystems or security or other vulnerabilities, this is a very good thing.

An OS that "really works!" IS a killer "secret feature" -- one that has not been copied yet. :)
 
wait....
i thought almost all (if not all) mac os x apps were written in cocoa and objective-c.

ur telling me most 3rd party apps are carbon? wasnt that used to port OS 9 apps to OS X?

forgive my stupidity
 
BRLawyer said:
Cocoa is the future in Apple's dev environment. If people use Carbon, this means they are either one of the two: lazy or stuck in the past.
Click to expand...

hotdamn said:
you tell 'em.
... and by them I mean Adobe. And they will care.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

Given the market share, were in no position to be arrogant. We can, however, damn well hope we get the best software for the latest systems. Imagine Adobe flat out stopping making any software for Apple...who's stock do you think it would effect the most?
 
skinnylegs said:
That pretty much sums up my feelings as well.
Click to expand...

Ditto for me as well...just a question for you guys out there...does anyone have the same issue that I've experienced for some months?

It's about the httpmail plugin in Mail (for Hotmail account POP access)...whenever I check my account in Mail, it takes a long time "logging in"/finding the Hotmail account, and this causes some good freezes in Safari...10.4.10 seems to have solved this, but I am not sure yet...anyone with a similar issue?
 
Counter said:
Exactly.

Given the market share, were in no position to be arrogant. We can, however, damn well hope we get the best software for the latest systems. Imagine Adobe flat out stopping making any software for Apple...who's stock do you think it would effect the most?
Click to expand...

Easy solution: Apple buys Adobe. They are small peanuts compared to Apple's current cash/stock value might. A 50% stake in Adobe sums up to some 13 billion...this is children's candy for Apple, and would stop any arrogance by that MS-wannabe called Adobe.
 
Isn't Cocoa written in Carbon?

DanB91 said:
wait....
i thought almost all (if not all) mac os x apps were written in cocoa and objective-c.

ur telling me most 3rd party apps are carbon? wasnt that used to port OS 9 apps to OS X?

forgive my stupidity
Click to expand...

Seriously, doesn't the Cocoa framework use Carbon APIs where appropriate?

This whole "stuck in the past" idea is nonsense, in that case. ;)
 
As someone who has used Leopard 9A466, it seems a fairly stable OS but has some room for improvement. I've become used to the transparent menu bar, but there is no option to make it opaque. I wish Apple would give in already and allow for more user customization of the GUI. The only thing I liked about windows was the ability for the user to customize certain aspects of the user interface.

Also, cover flow it fantastic, but only when you're searching in a folder with varied files. When searching through folders, the monotonous icons don't make it easier as cover flow is mostly dependent of the physical characteristics of the icon to find it. If folder icons changed to represent their contents, it might facilitate the use of cover flow for most file searching.

As subtle a feature as it might seem, I do like that Leopard has spell check for most, if not all, of its native programs (such as iChat, Safari, etc.). Makes blogging much easier. It's definitely fast, no complaints there. I love that iChat allows for an "invisible" mode, and the backdrops with video conferencing are fun (especially the "ghost" hologram mode). I sized the dock down so the 3D style isn't nearly as intrusive as some may believe. The only thing I don't like is that stacks puts an image of the first file in the dock (depending on how you have the files arranged in the folder, by name or date added). For example, I have the applications folder next to my trash can ordered by name, so the only icon that shows is the Address Book. It'd be nice if the user could choose between a folder icon or the icon of the first file/application in the "stack".

IChat has an "invisible" mode, and I like the backdrops with video conferencing (esp. the "ghost" hologram mode). One thing I noticed is that "screen sharing" doesn't work with other users (i tried with OS Tiger users and Windows). Must be only Leopard to Leopard?

I LOVE that networking is fast. Logging onto other computers is FAST, no more beach ball. Awesome!

Otherwise, a lot of it is under the hood improvements most users will appreciate upon use. :)
 
BRLawyer said:
Easy solution: Apple buys Adobe. They are small peanuts compared to Apple's current cash/stock value might. A 50% stake in Adobe sums up to some 13 billion...this is children's candy for Apple, and would stop any arrogance by that MS-wannabe called Adobe.
Click to expand...

How about Microsoft buys Adobe? Would that put an end to your arrogance?
 
BRLawyer said:
Cocoa is the future in Apple's dev environment. If people use Carbon, this means they are either one of the two: lazy or stuck in the past.
Click to expand...

Whoa whoa... let's slow down a bit a look at the details. I take it you've never done any Mac development because if you had, you'd know that there is still (at least the last time I checked) functionality from the Carbon APIs that Apple has yet to port over to Cocoa. I have at leat two Cocoa projects that rely on Carbon APIs because Apple offers no other way to into those things without it. If developers are still forced to use Carbon, it's more appropriate to say Apple is lazy or stuck in the past.

And also bear in mind that there are a lot of developers out there who had put in literally hundreds of their own hours into their projects. Porting an app over to Cocoa is not a trivial task. Carbon is procedural and Cocoa is OOP which means it's not a matter of moving your code over to a new project a recompiling. You have to restructure the code and practically rewrite every function.

Maybe some of those devs are just too busy earning a living to worry about porting older apps.
 
skinnylegs said:
IMHO those of you who are thinking that Leopard will be a major departure from Tiger will probably be disappointed. I see Leopard as improving upon an already awesome OS with features that will provide additional functionality and eye-candy.
Click to expand...

Exactly. People who are expecting too much will be disappointed, but Leopard is a strong system with more "under the hood" improvements than anything else. I likey. :)
 
BRLawyer said:
Originally Posted by AidenShaw
Seriously, doesn't the Cocoa framework use Carbon APIs where appropriate?

This whole "stuck in the past" idea is nonsense, in that case.​

As obvious, it only uses Carbon APIs when a developer wants to be STUCK in the past and not in line with a pure Cocoa development environment...:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear enough. My question is:

"Isn't it true that the Cocoa framework itself is layered on top of the Carbon APIs - the Cocoa implementation itself calls Carbon APIs when useful (as in, "why reinvent the wheel")."

This is not the same as an application that calls both Carbon and Cocoa, Mr. Lawyer.

http://tim.oreilly.com/pub/a/mac/2001/05/23/cocoa_vs_carbon.html?page=last&x-order=date

Cocoa uses quite a bit of Carbon functionality. For example, the Print dialogs are Carbon functionality. But this is really an impelementation detail from an application developer point of view.

As Scott Forstall, Apple's director of application frameworks, said, having two complete APIs with their own implementation would be wasteful, and it's important to maximize reuse in the system. In addition, Carbon is a growing API that is still under active development. Each release will bring more new APIs that expose even more functionality.

After Monday's presentations, it seemed to me that the right way to look at the two frameworks is not side by side as all of Apple's marketing material would indicate, but as Cocoa building on top of Carbon.

When looked at this way, it becomes apparent that Carbon is the procedural native framework, and that Cocoa is the object-oriented native framework of OS X building on Carbon.​

So yes, the whole "stuck in the past" idea is nonsense....
 
Counter said:
How about Microsoft buys Adobe? Would that put an end to your arrogance?
Click to expand...

That's perfectly possible, but it wouldn't change what I said above, sorry. You seem to worry too much about Adobe, and I proposed a solution for that. If MS wants to outbid Apple, go on and make my day.

They are already buried in too many blunders, so one more won't hurt. Besides, if that's REALLY the case, Apple is in a much stronger position in the market to either create its own alternatives, find other software providers or squeeze Adobe to do it...it's in their interest much more than in Apple's.

Would that put an end to your arrogant remarks as well, or you'd prefer to have Adobe buying Apple too?
 
inkswamp said:
Whoa whoa... let's slow down a bit a look at the details. I take it you've never done any Mac development because if you had, you'd know that there is still (at least the last time I checked) functionality from the Carbon APIs that Apple has yet to port over to Cocoa. I have at leat two Cocoa projects that rely on Carbon APIs because Apple offers no other way to into those things without it. If developers are still forced to use Carbon, it's more appropriate to say Apple is lazy or stuck in the past.

And also bear in mind that there are a lot of developers out there who had put in literally hundreds of their own hours into their projects. Porting an app over to Cocoa is not a trivial task. Carbon is procedural and Cocoa is OOP which means it's not a matter of moving your code over to a new project a recompiling. You have to restructure the code and practically rewrite every function.

Maybe some of those devs are just too busy earning a living to worry about porting older apps.
Click to expand...

AidenShaw said:
Sorry, I didn't make myself clear enough. My question is:

"Isn't it true that the Cocoa framework itself is layered on top of the Carbon APIs - the Cocoa implementation itself calls Carbon APIs when useful (as in, "why reinvent the wheel")."

This is not the same as an application that calls both Carbon and Cocoa, Mr. Lawyer.

http://tim.oreilly.com/pub/a/mac/2001/05/23/cocoa_vs_carbon.html?page=last&x-order=date

Cocoa uses quite a bit of Carbon functionality. For example, the Print dialogs are Carbon functionality. But this is really an impelementation detail from an application developer point of view.

As Scott Forstall, Apple's director of application frameworks, said, having two complete APIs with their own implementation would be wasteful, and it's important to maximize reuse in the system. In addition, Carbon is a growing API that is still under active development. Each release will bring more new APIs that expose even more functionality.

After Monday's presentations, it seemed to me that the right way to look at the two frameworks is not side by side as all of Apple's marketing material would indicate, but as Cocoa building on top of Carbon.

When looked at this way, it becomes apparent that Carbon is the procedural native framework, and that Cocoa is the object-oriented native framework of OS X building on Carbon.​

So yes, the whole "stuck in the past" idea is nonsense....
Click to expand...

In answer to both posts above, I just need to clarify a few points:

1 - I didn't say Cocoa covers it all; I just say that serious developers with large budgets are able to employ it to almost everything an app needs. From Apple's Cocoa Fundamentals:

"Carbon. Cocoa taps into Carbon for some of the services it provides. This is because various Carbon frameworks are situated as system-wide services in the Core Services and Application Services layer. Carbon Core is a particularly important one of these frameworks; for example, it has the File Manager, which Cocoa uses for conversions between various file-system representations."

This means that Cocoa TAPS into Carbon for a few aspects...not that it's BASED on Carbon. Apple clearly explains that in its architectural framework:

osxlayers.gif


Last but not least, BOTH Cocoa AND Carbon are supported in Leopard's 64-bit computing...so the whole debate about 64-bit capability is moot. From Apple's pages on Leopard development technologies:

"Leopard brings complete 64-bit support to all of the Mac OS X frameworks, allowing you to create Carbon and Cocoa applications that can take full advantage of the latest hardware now and well into the future."

Again, BOTH Carbon and Cocoa have FULL 64-bit support, even if Cocoa is obviously Apple's recommended framework. Thanks for your attention.
 
BRLawyer said:
That's perfectly possible, but it wouldn't change what I said above, sorry. You seem to worry too much about Adobe, and I proposed a solution for that. If MS wants to outbid Apple, go on and make my day.

They are already buried in too many blunders, so one more won't hurt. Besides, if that's REALLY the case, Apple is in a much stronger position in the market to either create its own alternatives, find other software providers or squeeze Adobe to do it...it's in their interest much more than in Apple's.

Would that put an end to your arrogant remarks as well, or you'd prefer to have Adobe buying Apple too?
Click to expand...

If MS bought Adobe it wouldn't change what you said above? It would still be an 'easy solution' for Apple to buy Adobe? Errr. Right. Or you'd still tell Adobe, now owned by MS, that if they use carbon they're 'lazy or stuck in the past'. Thank god you're not at the helm of Apple.

There's a reason Adobe Photoshop has no competitors whatsoever. The chance of anybody else coming up with an equal is slim to none.

Oh, I'll play the random question to end with game. Would you prefer if Apple bought Levi?
 
inkswamp said:
Think back to when Steve Jobs returned to Apple and all that has happened since.

Mac clones: gone.
Icon garden: gone.
Beige boxes: gone.
Floppy disks: gone.
Multicolored logo: gone.
OS 9: gone.
Smiley faced Mac at startup: gone.
Windowshade: gone.
Customizable Apple menu: gone.
PPC: gone.
Single-button mouse: gone.

And every step of the way, people have dug in their heels and claimed that the essence of the Mac was gone and screamed that there was no way they could live without that. And yet, somehow the world kept turning and we all dealt with it. And somehow, the Mac just keeps getting better, despite Jobs' apparent disrepect for the past. Seriously, if the rounded menu bar disappeared with Leopard, would you be that bothered by it?

I like was Jobs said about that during hs interview with Walt Mossberg at D:-- (paraphrased) "That's the past and we don't want to live there." I love that.

My only gripe is that I hope this damn @#$%& annoying startup chime is on the kill list. I used to think it was cool back in the late 80s, but nowadays... meh. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Probably the best post I've read in my short time at Macrumors. But you did forgot one: the horizontal lines in the application title bar and menu bar. I remember reading quite a bit about those disappearing, just like the cornered menu bar.
 
About Desktops/Wallpaper...

G-Force said:
At first I didn't like the transparent menubar, but I realise that Apple has made a big mistake with that grass wallpaper. The menubar looks like crap if you ask me on that wallpaper, but after seeing it in front of some other wallpapers, i actually like it very much. :)
Click to expand...
Does Apple at least include the Desktops that we've come to know and love in LEOPARD or did they totally take them out?

If so, is there a way to find them on the computer and keep them so that I'll have them when the time comes?
 

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JGowan said:
Does Apple at least include the Desktops that we've come to know and love in LEOPARD or did they totally take them out?

If so, is there a way to find them on the computer and keep them so that I'll have them when the time comes?
Click to expand...

Yup, as of now they're all there, plus a few new ones. Under "Nature" desktops there is the infamous "Clown Fish" (from the iPhone), a "Golden Palace" photo (Japanese Tea Garden), "Rock Garden" (a zen garden picture), and a Zebra print. In "Plants" there is the addition of the infamous "Grass Blades" from the WWDC 2007 Keynote, "Leaves" (summer time photo of green tree tops), and "Roses". That's about it, aside from the usual Tiger fare.
 
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