Leopard Mac OS X 10.5 9A321 Screenshots

[mkjellman]

I shouldn't do this but let me clear up a few things:

-for context, when Tiger went GM I tried to tell everyone it was really buggy, everyone wanted it, Now in retrospect everyone wished apple had waited until 10.4.2 until they went GM but thats a different story

-there are LOTS of small refinements all over the OS, I mean lots, even Remote Desktop is getting some UI changes. It is all these small things that is really ironing the quirks out of Tiger. Personally, other than the current bugs, the current builds are as stable as our current Tiger release.

-there may be a lot of incompatibilities because Apple seems to be playing clean up with this build (libraries are being changed in every build)

-Speed is the name of the game. Programs are launching 2x faster on my MacBook C2D, opening before they even finish bouncing for the first time. Lots of little speed makes a big difference.

-Personally, I like the current UI, and if Apple was to go dark I would be upset. I like the current refinements they are making. I however am a strong member of the FTFF club and it looks like Apple has made very little changes to the Finder. However the About menu in the finder now says "10.5 The Macintosh Experience" and in previous builds it was 10.4. So, I think thats strong information that if they went to the trouble of changing the about menu we won't see a radically different finder. If they can fix networking, and it looks like they are working on AFP right now, that's all we need really. THe network should not hold up a machine for 2 minutes...!

-MacVault, don't even know where to start. But you will NEVER see the Ludica Grande font change. Personally I love the font and we all know Apple has been tied to it for years. Steve has an agenda of his own and wants a look. If you want a radically different UI then there are a lot of themes. That milk theme may work well for you but in black (i think they have it). Dark themes make doing every day work harder but if you want them, themes do exist.

-iKenny: if it is reprogrameed in Cocca it will not actually make it better. Carbon is actually a very extensive language. However, Apple needs to spend the time getting the bugs out of it instead of spending it on RSS feeds. And my finder has never crashed, it hangs on networking all the time though, especially if i sleep my laptop that is connected to a share and then go off network with it. If your finder is crashing a lot (more than microsoft word with moderate usage) then you may want to try an archive and install.

-ZFS will never be used for much in Leopard because it isn't finished at this time at Sun. According to Wikipedia, no OS can boot off it, so Apple is not going to fix that. I bet however, when Sun does fix it, Apple will implement that in the next major cat.

 

[patseguin]

I'm using Tiger and I honestly don't see anything (except maybe "Spaces") that makes me want to upgrade to Leopard.

I really hope that "top secret" stuff is compelling because so far the prospect of upgrading is lacking that killer element.

I 100% agree.

 

[colocolo]

Yea, I've tried that, but ShapeShifter still works within the fugly constraints of Apple's UI.

MacVault is to Aqua as DHM is to GMA950

 

[MongoTheGeek]

The black transparenty window looked like something that pixar demoed at WWDC. It was an inhouse app that they were showing off to talk about development practices there. Just a thought.

As for iCal, yeah it needs a lot more. Its being totally redone and there is a bunch of cool stuff coming. Not working as of WWDC demo. (man I need to get the new build installed.)

 

[50548]

I think Leopard is looking really nice! Time Machine looks awesome and the new screensavers look like fun. As for all you people complaining about no new Finder interface... calm down. Didn't Steve say on stage at WWDC that there are some "top secret" features we have yet to see? Be patient...

Honestly...there will be no top secret features apart from those improvements in Leopard...there will be NO UI change in Leopard at all.

 

[Aniej]

Dude, I think you need some valium or something. The UI in these screenshots really don't look all that different than the current UI.

Yea - you got that right! Go from the calendar in Microsoft Outlook to iCal and it's like going from the Space Shuttle to playing with a baby's toy. iCal sucks and Apple could do way better. Is the Apple campus just full of pot smoke 24/7? Don't get me wrong, I love pot smoke, but there's a time and a place for it

Obviously motulist was not reading all of your posts or he would know Valium is surely not needed.

 

[Nym]

Yea, now you're gettin it. I don't like the look of the menu bar or the fonts it uses, and I don't really like the idea of the menus being in the menu bar as opposed to in the windows themselves. And I don't like the dock, the scroll bars, the round bubbly buttons, the scroll bar arrows, etc. etc. etc.

Isn't that a little bit like saying "I HATE OSX!" ?

I think the GUI could be a lot better, but to remove the Dock? that's like one of OSX trademarks and will always be improved, but never removed IMO, at least while we are in 10.x .
I love OSX the way it is now, and I do see the need for a GUI refresh but not a complete rebuild.

 

[Manic Mouse]

Honestly...there will be no top secret features apart from those improvements in Leopard...there will be NO UI change in Leopard at all.

You never know! Steve himself said there would be some "top-secret" features, who knows what they may be? I would put money on a complimentary UI (Aqua still being an option) and a redesigned Finder. Apple must know about the deficiencies in Finder and that people want them fixed. As for the UI, Apple seems to be getting tired of Aqua if iTunes 7 is any indication. Perhaps iTunes 7 is designed to work with the new UI and the current horribly plain one is simply a placeholder?

 

[SiliconAddict]

Yea, now you're gettin it. I don't like the look of the menu bar or the fonts it uses, and I don't really like the idea of the menus being in the menu bar as opposed to in the windows themselves. And I don't like the dock, the scroll bars, the round bubbly buttons, the scroll bar arrows, etc. etc. etc.

Sounds like you want windows.

My biggest complaint about the menu bar is that when you have 6+ windows on screen there have been times I've gone to the menubar to do [insert action here] and I've had the wrong window\app active. when its integrated into the window its just there. That being said I like the way its integrated into the menubar because IMHO its a waste to have the same menus spread across multiple windows. There are pros and cons to both ways of doing it. I haven't decided which I like the best. There must be a happy medium between the two designs but what?

As for the buttons and scroll bars. Huh? What's wrong with the scroll bars?

PS-Don't even get me started on how even when a Window isn't the active window it's cursor a text field is still blinking. In Windows the cursor stops when the window isn't active. Which is a tell-tail sign.

 

[neven]

Steve Jobs doesn't read this forum, nor does anyone with decision-making power at Apple, nor would they agree with you or listen to you if they did. You're not making points, you're yelling.

Sorry, had to get that out of my system.

Leopard is looking very nice. I hope Quick Look and Preview merge in some way so that Preview isn't a useless app with 2 unique functions that could just be moved over to Quick Look (like Sherlock was for a while).

Here's something to keep in mind regarding Time Machine: laptops are selling like hotcakes nowadays, and their market share is only going to increase (compared to desktops). Continuous backups don't make much sense on a portable computer - hence the insistence on external hard drives, I believe. That's my current backup method - iBackup to an external drive every... whenever If this happened automatically when I plugged in the drive - with a notice saying, hey, this will take 5 minutes, don't unplug the drive (or Cancel), that would be really sweet.

To whoever said that going from Outlook to iCal was a step DOWN - one daily Outlook user to another - yes, that's correct. It's like stepping down from captaining a whaler ship to driving a Honda Civic. Guess which one I want to be doing on a daily basis. What iCal needs is not the feature jungle of Outlook's calendar, but FEWER UI options. Give me a Google Calendar-like quick entry box, an onclick mid-level box with basic info about the event, and a contextual-menu detailed mode. Keep features, but hide them if I'll be using them 2% of the time.

We've seen few iLife changes in previews so far. My guess is we'll see more of those come January.

 

[hob]

IF there is a UI change coming, which I doubt somewhat, then why would they ruin the surprise and put it in the DEVELOPER preview. All a developer needs at this stage is to make sure their apps run fine in Leopard.

What's wrong with the current UI anyway?!

 

[ready2switch]

Yea, I've tried that, but ShapeShifter still works within the fugly constraints of Apple's UI.

Just get some finger paints and fix your screen the way YOU want it. Then it will always be how you like, no matter which OS you use.

 

[Aniej]

You mean like this?

No, not like what that at all. That screenshot shows just what I am highlighting is not there. the ability to take lets say 5 different news feeds, splice 3 of each sites newest stories to make 15 and have them all update like the current rss screensaver. You can do everything I have listed, but you are not able to ever to remain current, it freezes in time; maybe time machine can fix that too ahah

 

[MacVault]

Honestly...there will be no top secret features apart from those improvements in Leopard...there will be NO UI change in Leopard at all.

How do you know? I hope you are wrong, but I'm affraid you'll be proven right

 

[SiliconAddict]

What's wrong with the current UI anyway?!

Nothing as long as you are happy with a 7+ year old UI. I mean seriously. They have had close to a decade to work on new UI's. You see concept UI's coming out of Sun, MS, MIT, etc all the time. What REAL changes have we seen between 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, and now maybe 10.5? Not a whole heck of a lot. Usually a new coat of paint. Minor tweaks here and there. Its almost as if Apple is turning into MS. Sitting on their fat butt, patting themselves on the back for a UI that is closing in on being a decade old. OS X is now at the halfway mark. Something new really should be debuting with Leopard. Instead, if we are to believe that the current builds are feature locked, it’s more of the same old, same old. Add a few new spiffy features. Dink around with the color scheme yet again, probably more optimizing to give us a bit more of the ‘ol “snappy”. And call it NEW AND IMPROVED!

Well I for one am disappointed and unless those “top secret” features debut at MWSF I’m going to be outright pissed that Jobs once again mouthed off with BS to its userbase. We’ll see.

 

[mkrishnan]

The black transparenty window looked like something that pixar demoed at WWDC. It was an inhouse app that they were showing off to talk about development practices there. Just a thought.

Uberryinteresting!

I'm still kinda hoping that iTV or some other Apple device ends up being able to act in conjunction with Time Machine as a NAS that is really built to work well on Macs. That would be sweet. Wireless backups of my notebook!

 

[MacVault]

Nothing as long as you are happy with a 7+ year old UI. I mean seriously. They have had close to a decade to work on new UI's. You see concept UI's coming out of Sun, MS, MIT, etc all the time. What REAL changes have we seen between 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, and now maybe 10.5? Not a whole heck of a lot. Usually a new coat of paint. Minor tweaks here and there. Its almost as if Apple is turning into MS. Sitting on their fat butt, patting themselves on the back for a UI that is closing in on being a decade old. OS X is now at the halfway mark. Something new really should be debuting with Leopard. Instead, if we are to believe that the current builds are feature locked, it’s more of the same old, same old. Add a few new spiffy features. Dink around with the color scheme yet again, probably more optimizing to give us a bit more of the ‘ol “snappy”. And call it NEW AND IMPROVED!

Well I for one am disappointed and unless those “top secret” features debut at MWSF I’m going to be outright pissed that Jobs once again mouthed off with BS to its userbase. We’ll see.

Yes! Awsome post, SiliconAddict!!! Just plain awsome! 100% on the mark! I've been trying to say the same things but you've said it perfectly!

 

[MacFloyd G5]

Calm down about the UI for a moment

I think that a lot of you guys (and gals) are really worrying far too much about not seeing any UI tweaks in Leopard yet, especially in terms of the Finder. It seemed obvious to me at WWDC that Apple is planning on doing significantly more in the way of improving Mac OS X's interface going forward, and it seems especially ludicrous from a business perspective for Apple not to freshen up Aqua after the release of Vista and its new Glass UI. Apple has the tools, such as Quartz, OpenGL, and now Core Animation to wow and amaze users with new beautiful and elegant UI elements, which seems, to me, like a major improvement that Apple would want to keep from Microsoft. Steve said very clearly that a number of features are not going to be detailed yet (likely until MWSF), even to developers. Because Leopard 9A321 is a developer release, and we have yet to reach MWSF, I'm not sure what everyone is getting upset about, at least until January.

And MacVault, if you despise everything about Aqua and the way it works, then why on Earth do you use a Mac?

 

[MacVault]

Uberryinteresting!

I'm still kinda hoping that iTV or some other Apple device ends up being able to act in conjunction with Time Machine as a NAS that is really built to work well on Macs. That would be sweet. Wireless backups of my notebook!

Yes - Apple needs to offer an inexpensive, high capacity, network storage device. But NO - it should not be part of iTV. A house needs one central storage device, but might have 5 different TV viewing locations. If iTV was the storage device you'd have 5 network storage devices around your house, paying extra money for that functionality when you only really need one storage device.

 

[mkjellman]

Yes! Awsome post, SiliconAddict!!! Just plain awsome! 100% on the mark! I've been trying to say the same things but you've said it perfectly!

you sure as hell weren't saying that before

 

[ChrisA]

I thought you were going to take your gripes to a "real non-Mac IT forum" where they respect important concerns like the fugliness of interfaces?

Hopefully all the promised improvements to the firewall really are there and this new interface (which seems to rather lack options) is much more intuitive than it looks.

Love the new printer setup dialog...not that I really set up a lot of printers. The parental controls, which I also won't use, look nice too.

As they're changing security features, I really wish they had a simple feature that allowed FUS to the login screen on sleep or screen save and/or did away with the wake password dialog and used the login screen (perhaps with a master password override to let other users log in).

One of the Ten Commandments of setting up a secure system is the idea that a password belongs to one and only one real person. A "master password" violates that rule. You want to require an Admin user to type in both his username and his password. The "commandment" flows from a requirement to know who did what when. Actions need to be tracable to one specific real human.

There are a few places already where Mac OS X violates an industry rules. iPods don't mix well with fast user switching and the Mac's treament of external drives is almost as bad. Kind of big holes I hope get fixed.

 

[Eidorian]

I just noticed the install to USB.

 

[ChrisA]

Yes - Apple needs to offer an inexpensive, high capacity, network storage device. But NO - it should not be part of iTV. A house needs one central storage device, but might have 5 different TV viewing locations. If iTV was the storage device you'd have 5 network storage devices around your house, paying extra money for that functionality when you only really need one storage device.

Here is my "workaround". Get older G4 Mini. Place this on top of RAID box and connect it with FW400 cable. Now i have a real nice NAS device.

Did you read about Apple working to make an embedded version of Mac OS. Likely it will run on some non-Intel Architecture like maybe the ARM (That's the CPU inside the iPod) then you could put an ARM cpu inside a box of disks and sell a "poor man's Xserve". Apple neds to address storage issue before the can market the iTV to home users.

 

[Georgie]

Can you boot from a Time Machine backup?

Right now I backup using SuperDuper, which I like because I know that if my hard drive fails, or if my laptop is stolen, I can boot directly from my backup firewire drive on another Mac, and basically be up and running without any downtime. I wouldn't want to do this for long because of the speed issue, but it's nice to know I could get by in a crunch.

Does anyone know if this will be possible with Time Machine? Will Time Machine backup to an external hard drive in such a way that that drive is bootable? When I first read about TM I had the impression that that would not be possible, that it is basically storing old files in a proprietary database. But these screenshots show it's posssible to back up and then restore an entire hard drive. So maybe it is possible to ditch SuperDuper and only use Time Machine. I would gain the ability to retreive deleted files (to some extent). I don't actually care much about that feature, but if it comes free with a quality backup solution, sure I'll take it.

 

[MongoTheGeek]

I think that a lot of you guys (and gals) are really worrying far too much about not seeing any UI tweaks in Leopard yet, especially in terms of the Finder.

In my experience, UI updates are the last things that make it into the betas. They seem to float around inside of Apple but get stripped out of developer seeds until the RC stage where things magically look different.