Leopard Features

[deanbo]

Of course this is only speculation but here are some of the things I think we might see with Leopard.

1. Resolution independent bitmaps

Well not quite resolution independent but there are a few Photoshop plugins that allow you to blow up an image quite substantially, with little loss in resolution. iPhoto users should love a feature like this.

2. More XML (aka Spotlight)

I'm under the impression that XML is about content management, which is what I think Spotlight is. But instead of typing in a search, you click on a special icon representing say, applications. Every application, no matter where it is on your drive instantly appears. (In order of course).

3. Live column view

This isn't really a major, but when you're in column view you have to click on a folder to view it's contents. Just a mouse over should suffice. Would speed up navigation considerably.

4. Broadband connections and mobile phones.

People are increasingly favouring the "mobile office". A lot of people are also switching to broadband. Basically the land line phone as we know it is on the way out. VoIP and mobile phones are taking over. I expect to see something major from the next Mac OS X in regards to this.

 

[Abstract]

Oh my.....has the Leopard convos started already?

Well, #2, 3, and 4 can be added to Tiger as an update.

 

[macapple]

i think leopard should have a help assistant which is a leopard (but in 3d not like microsofts 2d clippy) which would be cool

 

[Heart Break Kid]

clippy's my homeboy

now that we got intel macs...he'd be perfect for a brushed metal environment

 

[wordmunger]

i think leopard should have a help assistant which is a leopard (but in 3d not like microsofts 2d clippy) which would be cool

Clippy's my homeboy

now that we got intel macs...he'd be perfect for a brushed metal environment

I seriously hope you people are joking. Clippy, regardless of his incarnation as einstein, a leopard, or whatever, is an abomination on humanity.

I have nightmares that begin with "It looks like you're writing a letter. Do you need help?"

 

[BWhaler]

What I want from Leopard:

1. Boolean searches in Spotlight and Smart Folders without it being a major pain using raw queries.

2. If the theme of OS X is now search, Apple needs to give us more built in options for searching and more corresponding actions in applications such as mail.

3. Make iCal a respectable program and put in the missing features that every other calendar application has had since 1992.

4. Make Spotlight actually work. If Spotlight can't find everything, you can't trust it. (Actually, this should be fixed in Tiger, but I am assuming the worst.)

5. FileVault is a great idea, but give us some options on what to encrypt. (I can't believe this didn't get fixed in Tiger.) Most people don't need their music and pictures encrypted. Give us some options outside of the entire user directory.

6. Consistent user interface. I am sure these four new interfaces make sense to someone at Apple, and there is an explanation for each, but in practice it simply seems inconsistent and sloppy. Tighten things up...

7. Widgets on the desktop.

8. Fix iSync (Again, this should be fixed before Leopard, but I am assuming the worst.) The need to keep the iSync app open, and the three different ways to sync which all cause different types of syncing is the type of thinking that comes from Microsoft. Apple took major steps back with the new syncing model.

9. More Apple quality screen savers and desktops and widgets. Yes, I know it is simply eye candy, but variety and beauty are good things and are part of the fun of getting a new OS.

10. Ability to run Windows programs and games on Intel Macs without loading--or, more importantly, buying--Windows. That would be worth the upgrade alone just to piss off Microsoft to no end...

11. iChat to have tabs rather than multiple windows. And have iChat remember last window locations for the love of God.

That's all for now...

 

[mkrishnan]

1. Boolean searches in Spotlight and Smart Folders without it being a major pain using raw queries.

See the part titled "Secret Logic" on this page...I don't know what a "raw query" is, but it doesn't seem so complicated to me.... It would be nice if standard boolean words could be used, though.

 

[mrgreen4242]

I forsee a couple things as the 'big adds' for leapard...

1) Windows compatibility layer, ala a modified version of Wine. Apple is going to break into the enterprise desktop market, and this is the first step.

2) The start of a move to vector graphics for the UI. Similar to the OPs requests for better scalability, a vector based UI will move objects smoothly from a mini-icon on a 12" iBook to full screen on a 30" ACD with just one set of graphics files, and perfect clarity.

3) More improvements to AppleScript/Automator - I predict that there will be a method to construct complicated AppleScripts/Workflows in real time while working with a program. There will be a menu item that looks like the AppleScript pull down that will have some basic commands that will allow you to drag data around in applications and create 'generic' rules or actions based on the context of the data being moved and the programs that are invovled.

4) Improved networking/data sharing with Longhorn. I am sure that Apple is a register MS developer and has the Beta copies of Longhorn already and are figuring out a way to have Bonjour work with Longhorn seemlessly, on the Mac end at least. Hopefully better (ie, more Mac-like) integration with Active Directory, or whatever the Longhorn equivalent is. This is step #2 for the enterprise market.

5) I HOPE that Apple will put considerable enegry into developing the most powerfull, flexible, and fast OpenGL implementation in the world. I'd like to see Apple pitch the Mactel as a BETTER gaming platform than Windows (faster, more stable, better multi-threading, and faster graphics API). Given Apples/Jobs' history, it doesn't look that good.

6) I'm also hopeful that Apple will offload even more work to the GPU. They already have the absolute best in the market utilization of the GPU for day to day tasks, and with the move to Intel systems, including the PCI-Express video bus, we will have access to the newest and (hopefully) cheapest GPUs out there. While I am hopeful that SSE3 will be as good or better than Altivec, we already have a great floating point unit in all our machines, and I hope to see it used more.

There has been some open source work in creating an API for programming non graphics tasks to GPUs, and I want to see Apple run with it. They are already doing this with Aqua and Motion, so I am just hoping they will add a standard API to Leopard that extends it further to and floating point operation that you want to run in parallel with other CPU or FPU tasks. (Mmmm... dual core, dual CPU, dual PCI-Express PowerMacs with direct access to the processing power of the GPUs).

Ok this is long enough...

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

5. FileVault is a great idea, but give us some options on what to encrypt. (I can't believe this didn't get fixed in Tiger.) Most people don't need their music and pictures encrypted. Give us some options outside of the entire user directory.

I agree with most points, but it actually makes sense to encrypting the whole user folder if you're running FileVault. If you only need one or two folders, then make a couple of encrypted disk images with Disk Utility. And the first thing I did when installing 10.3 and enabling FileVault for the first time (I've stopped using it now, as it eats several GB of precious HD space) was to move the iTunes Library folder out of the user folder. Having all the music in the user folder seems kind of stupid, anyway...

 

[mrgreen4242]

7. Widgets on the desktop...

Already there, see the sticky in this forum, personally, I find those useless, but to each their own, and it's nice to have options.

1, 3, and 8 I hope to see in tiger, still... but, ya plan for the worst...

 

[munkle]

Whatever is introduced with Leopard, I just hope we don't hear the word 'TRANSITION' involved...

 

[saccharine]

Whatever is introduced with Leopard, I just hope we don't hear the word 'TRANSITION' involved...

i would think that that phrase wont be thrown around until OS 11, wouldnt you?

 

[munkle]

We can only hope! But with OS XI supposedly a couple of decades away, I'm sure there are plenty more surprises in store yet!

 

[Sharewaredemon]

Of course this is only speculation but here are some of the things I think we might see with Leopard.

1. Resolution independent bitmaps

Well not quite resolution independent but there are a few Photoshop plugins that allow you to blow up an image quite substantially, with little loss in resolution. iPhoto users should love a feature like this.

I've been Resolution Independent all over the forums and I don't know what it is. Could you explain it to me?

 

[jcgerm]

1) Windows compatibility layer, ala a modified version of Wine. Apple is going to break into the enterprise desktop market, and this is the first step.

Bad, bad, bad idea. One of the reasons attributed to the demise of OS/2 was the fact that it ran Windows applications too well. People stopped writing OS/2 apps and just wrote Windows apps instead. If new Macs run Windows native through dual-booting that should be enough.

 

[jayscheuerle]

I've been Resolution Independent all over the forums and I don't know what it is. Could you explain it to me?

Resolution Independent bitmaps is an oxymoron, but the term is used generally to mean that your GUI would be able to scale up and down in size regardless of the pixel count on your screen. For example, if you find your menu bar and finder windows too small to read, you could increase their size without simply making the pixels bigger via decreasing your resolution. It's deemed possible with OSX because of the pdf-like Quartz underpinnings. As displays get higher and higher resolutions (and mostly because of higher pixels per inch), those with keen eyesight will want to use their GUIs in different ways than those with less than perfect sight. Some may want the basic GUI to be larger, but still want the crispness in the images that they use that come from having a tighter display.

Sorry. Not exactly elegant prose there! - j

 

[Sharewaredemon]

Resolution Independent bitmaps is an oxymoron, but the term is used generally to mean that your GUI would be able to scale up and down in size regardless of the pixel count on your screen. For example, if you find your menu bar and finder windows too small to read, you could increase their size without simply making the pixels bigger via decreasing your resolution. It's deemed possible with OSX because of the pdf-like Quartz underpinnings. As displays get higher and higher resolutions (and mostly because of higher pixels per inch), those with keen eyesight will want to use their GUIs in different ways than those with less than perfect sight. Some may want the basic GUI to be larger, but still want the crispness in the images that they use that come from having a tighter display.

Sorry. Not exactly elegant prose there! - j

Cool!

Thanks a lot, I just stumbled upon an open Apple insider page that I have no idea when I launched it (pop ups!!!) and it was about this very thing I was asking. So I think between that and your description I get it now. This seems like a really cool concept. Though I'm not sure I'd ever use it.

 

[mrgreen4242]

I've been Resolution Independent all over the forums and I don't know what it is. Could you explain it to me?

To add to this, the best way to do this, imo, is by getting rid of bitmaps alltogether, and using a vector based system.

Bitmaps store image information by recording what color each pixel of an image is supposed to be. You can enlarge a bitmap and it will, for example, take each pixel and turn it into a vlock of 4 pixels, making the image larger, but there isn't any extra detail, it's just bigger (that's why digital photos look poor when enlarged for example).

A vector image stores picture information in a descriptive way. So for example, a picure may be represented by a horizontal line that is 22% from the bottom of the image and 100% the width of the image. Then there is an 40 degree arc, that begin at 22% from the bottom of the image by 31% from the left, and spans until it is 29% as wide as the whole image. This seems complex, but vector image editors are common now, and handle all of these very well. The upside is that it doesn't matte what size you want the overall image to be, it will just as clear and crisp as a full sized screen image as it will for an icon sized image. I think/hope this is where OS X is heading for all UI elements.

Bad, bad, bad idea. One of the reasons attributed to the demise of OS/2 was the fact that it ran Windows applications too well. People stopped writing OS/2 apps and just wrote Windows apps instead. If new Macs run Windows native through dual-booting that should be enough.

I disagree. While I think that Apple shouldn't promote this as a long term strategy, I think it is something they need to do for a few years at least. The only markets that Apple isn't making money on, or increasing market share in is the corporate enterprise world. There's lots of money there, and it also feeds other purchases. (You get a new Dell with XP at work and think it's pretty neat, so you buy one for your next home computer. This happens, and is one of the reasons MS did so well in the home markets).

For that to work, there needs to be a transition period where companies can run their existing software on the new machines, and that means Wine-like translation layers.

I'd liek to see Apple get a 50%+ market share, and I think that this is how to get there. Just my opinion, of course.

 

[benpatient]

also, if you were to buy a new monitor in a couple of years that was...oh I don't know, a 300dpi LCD (or SED!) screen, then you would need a resolution-independent OS or things would look so small at your native resolution that you wouldn't be able to use the machine.

To put it in perspective, at 300 dpi, a 10 inch screen would have as many pixels as Apple's 30" Cinema Display does currently.

Basically, you won't be able to see individual pixels because they are so small.

every graphic designer in the world is waiting for this...

 

[joetronic]

I'd like to see a way to uninstall dashboard without a "hack." Maybe a sys pref to not load at startup.

 

[snickelfritz]

My 2¢

I'd like to see the Dock replaced with a more comprehensive and configurable Dashboard-like layer, accessible with a mouse gesture or hot-spot.
Currently, the Dock is a virtual minefield IMO.
ie: Dashboard meets Dragthing on steroids.

CoreImage effects for Window transformations.

Go back to a more basic and consistent GUI appearance.
Ditch the pokey dark metal and fussy shiny plastic, and use the light "aluminum" for all windows and system menubar as the default appearance. Optional skins would be nice for those who prefer the Tiger GUI standard.

A single Finder window style, with the "Tylenol" button opening a drawer with sidebar and window action UI.

A good way to access/maximize windows from the keyboard.
Similar to application switcher.

Segmented(Quads for example) Virtual Desktop workspace.
All files created within zones on the Desktop would be aliases to the originals residing in one of four pre-specified Directories.
Cleaning the desktop would never delete a file.

Fully comprehensive and automated backup solution.
ie: a better variation on the burn folder.

Optional dual-HDD system setup, with Home and System libs on separate controllers.
(better overall threading performance)
This is currently possible via terminal, but an official nod from Apple would be nice.

 

[crees!]

Spotlight Comments

When saving a file be able to add Spotlight comments directly from the save dialog.

 

[jayscheuerle]

To add to this, the best way to do this, imo, is by getting rid of bitmaps alltogether, and using a vector based system.

What would be essential here is not to limit the gui by the vector's efficiancy. A vector-based representation of a very rendered element (like the stoplight buttons at the upper left of the windows) would be much larger, memory-wise, than a pixel-based one. There's not much sense in giving those buttons the ability to crisply scale to a 1cm diameter or higher when they'll never get bigger than half of that, especially if there's a substantial memory hit... Of course, if memory space is no option, there's no performance hit and you can achieve your look with no sacrifice to the tools, then across the board vectors would make sense.

 

[dirtymatt]

Bad, bad, bad idea. One of the reasons attributed to the demise of OS/2 was the fact that it ran Windows applications too well. People stopped writing OS/2 apps and just wrote Windows apps instead. If new Macs run Windows native through dual-booting that should be enough.

I think what killed OS/2 was that it was trying to be a "better Windows than Windows". And it basically was, for Windows 3.1 apps OS/2 offered true multitasking, memory protection, and a bunch of other features. OS/2 also had much higher requirements than Windows, especially with RAM which at the time was very expensive. Installing drivers was a royal pain. Even little things like leaving an OS/2 formatted floppy in the drive when rebooting resulted in an error message like "OS25944" instead of "Please remove disk and try again". Also, each copy of OS/2 sold included the cost of a Windows 3.1 license so it could never compete on price. OS/2 was a great OS from a technical stand-point, but just was not good for end users.

Mac OS X on the other hand is a great OS for end users, and has clear advantages over Windows. Try explaining pre-emptive multitasking to your grandmother. Now tell her that she won't get pop up windows that appear at random. Which one do you think will get her excited about a new OS?

OS/2's problem wasn't that it ran Windows applications too well, it was that it was expensive, resource hungry, in some ways very difficult to use, and didn't have any obvious advantages to end users.

 

[dirtymatt]

I want hardware accelerated video decoding. I'm pretty sure Mac OS doesn't support this at the moment, despite using the GPU for just about everything else. I know on Windows pushing some of the decoding off to the GPU dropped the requirements for decoding HD resolution video streams significantly. IIRC a p3 800 could handle an HDTV MPEG2 stream, without the video card support the requirement was somewhere around a 3Ghz+ p4.