Leopard Mac OS X 10.5 Screenshots and Features

[PetMac]

I haven't ventured into the HD world yet so I'm not up to speed on the screen res needed for HD. I do however seem to recall posts lamenting for higher res screens for HD playback. If that is the case, then resolution independence would be a must. Otherwise the UI would become so small it would become unusable. Am I way off base here?

 

[Marlor]

This is probably old news, but I just noticed from the screenshots that there will be adjustable grid spacing for the Finder in Leopard. I am really happy about this.

 

[Chundles]

I haven't ventured into the HD world yet so I'm not up to speed on the screen res needed for HD. I do however seem to recall posts lamenting for higher res screens for HD playback. If that is the case, then resolution independence would be a must. Otherwise the UI would become so small it would become unusable. Am I way off base here?

For full HD playback you need at least 1080 pixels vertically and 1920 pixels horizontally. So the current res for most screens is 1920x1200.

Resolution Independence would allow for say, a MacBook, with a 1920x1200 13.3" screen to display the User Interface at the same size as it appears on today's 1280x800 screen but everything would be markedly clearer.

Also, it would allow for native HD video playback and show every pixel of a 2.3MP photo.

It's a Very Good Thing™

 

[Rister]

- Have an address bar so I can copy and paste file locations. Really useful to a developer, especially with working between the Finder and Terminal.

Drag-n-drop file/folder in terminal (you can drag icon in title bar too)

- Have a way of seeing how much disk space directories and their children take up, both with number sizes and graphically.

Info window? You won't have the graphical view, though.

 

[Rister]

I want to be able to see the size (in Bytes) of the 8 photos I selected. Right now, Finder tells me that I have selected 8 files, but also tells me the total HD space remaining rather than the size of the 8 files.

Inspector window? (Command-Option-I)

 

[decksnap]

Anyone who for some reason doesn't understand resolution independence just needs to know one thing: there isn't a downside. Don't worry about it. A lot of computer games are resolution independent these days (including the UI) and nobody freaks out about that, eh?

--Eric

I would imagine that the internet will present it's share of problems. Having the OS scale won't solve the problem of everything on the internet being 72 dpi. Yes, we can scale the text, but I'd imagine it will still be a huge mess once they start cranking up DPIs on the monitors.

 

[digitalbiker]

I would imagine that the internet will present it's share of problems. Having the OS scale won't solve the problem of everything on the internet being 72 dpi. Yes, we can scale the text, but I'd imagine it will still be a huge mess once they start cranking up DPIs on the monitors.

I don't understand the huge mess part of your comment. You can always display things at a size that is comfortable for you. It was when screen resolution was fixed that everything was a huge mess.

With fixed resolution a designer never knew if his product was going to be displayed at 640X480, 800x600, 1280x1024, widescreen, etc. etc. Now a designer can design at a suitable resolution and the user can scale to a size that is pratical for them.

It is a good thing people. Don't worry.

 

[mikeyrogers]

OpenGL Improvements
Leopard also provides a dramatic increase in OpenGL performance by offloading CPU-based processing onto another thread which can then run on a separate CPU core feeding the GPU. This can increase, or in some cases, even double the performance of OpenGL-based applications.

Does anyone know if this is only for Core 2 Duo or does it include Core Duo as well?

 

[bretm]

I don't understand the huge mess part of your comment. You can always display things at a size that is comfortable for you. It was when screen resolution was fixed that everything was a huge mess.

With fixed resolution a designer never knew if his product was going to be displayed at 640X480, 800x600, 1280x1024, widescreen, etc. etc. Now a designer can design at a suitable resolution and the user can scale to a size that is pratical for them.

It is a good thing people. Don't worry.

Ah, but YOU'RE missing the point completely. As resolutions inscrease the interface can scale up because it is resolution independent in 10.5. Web pages are NOT resolution independent for the most part. Photos, graphics, interfaces are not. So, when you're looking at your killter 3000x2000 monitor yes your icons and OS interface can scale up and your photos will look very crisp BECAUSE they are vector or have extra resolution to draw from. Websites on the other hand will be fixed at 800x600 or whatever and unless you want them to be miniscule on your screen as they are shown pixel for pixel, they will have to be blown up in some way.

So the res independence IS a good thing and just fine UNTIL the monitor resolutions go through the roof for the same physical screen sizes.

There are too many things outthere that are desinged WITHOUT the independence. Icons inside nearly every application for example. All kinds of stuff. My guess is that this won't affect too much too quickly. It just addresses some issues with the current interface on high screen monitors.

 

[mac 2005]

Please, for the love of all that is holy.

Turn off the "Positive" or "Negative" voting system.

How is it that more than 10% of the people ranking this post can determine that news of the new Mac OS is negative. Especially when said OS is on-time and will offer way more functionality than we quite yet know. Not to mention the fact that this OS will natively enable another competing OS -- all without blinking the proverbial eye.

I've read the posts, and I don't see a single objection of substance. While I wish that Macs were free and there was no war, poverty or disease, I also think that people shouldn't be allowed to take the fun out of this site simply because their parents haven't yet asked them to:

1. Get a job
2. Move out of the basement
3. Get a place of their own
4. Pay their own bills
5. Realize there is more to life than PSP3, XBox 360, SecondLife.com, World of Warcraft, etc.

🙄

 

[AHDuke99]

so does anyone here believe that this is all we are getting in leopard? i just dont see anymore top secret features coming out unless apple hasnt released them in the builds they seeded. i just want overall system speed to be improved and i'll be happy.

 

[savar]

QuickTime now 64-bit!!!

Even more of a reason to get the new MBP😀

Hmm, I wonder what the point of 64bit quicktime is. The notes did say that 64 bit mode has more registers available... that doesn't necessarily mean speed improvement if quicktime is moving a lot of data around (which it is).

But I guess everything is slowly going to move towards 64 bit.

 

[digitalbiker]

Ah, but YOU'RE missing the point completely. As resolutions inscrease the interface can scale up because it is resolution independent in 10.5. Web pages are NOT resolution independent for the most part. Photos, graphics, interfaces are not. So, when you're looking at your killter 3000x2000 monitor yes your icons and OS interface can scale up and your photos will look very crisp BECAUSE they are vector or have extra resolution to draw from. Websites on the other hand will be fixed at 800x600 or whatever and unless you want them to be miniscule on your screen as they are shown pixel for pixel, they will have to be blown up in some way.

So the res independence IS a good thing and just fine UNTIL the monitor resolutions go through the roof for the same physical screen sizes.

There are too many things outthere that are desinged WITHOUT the independence. Icons inside nearly every application for example. All kinds of stuff. My guess is that this won't affect too much too quickly. It just addresses some issues with the current interface on high screen monitors.

There is no reason that internet images can't scale right along with everything else. Just because something is bitmapped doesn't mean it can't scale nicely. There are a million decent algorythms for scaling bitmapped images.

If an image is designed to look nice with a 72 dpi resolution and your monitor is at 144 dpi, then the image will be the identical size, shape and appearance as a 72 dpi monitor when the image is scaled 2 to 1 on the 144 dpi monitor.

Where is the problem? The resolution independence will come from the browser rendering not from the website design. In otherwords, if a user scales safari up on a high-res monitor then the contents will scale as well regardless of what the contents are, bitmap image, vector image, etc.

 

[decksnap]

There is no reason that internet images can't scale right along with everything else. Just because something is bitmapped doesn't mean it can't scale nicely. There are a million decent algorythms for scaling bitmapped images.

Yeah I don't think so. Unless you scale it to an exact multiple, it's going to look like crap.

 

[dr_lha]

The real deal on resolution independance, is that instead of the UI being made up of images, PDFs I believe, it will be drawn using vectors. so a OS can scale anything to any size, and it will never become pixalized, because it's being drawn fresh using math instead of images.

Quite simply: No. Resolution independance has nothing to do with vectors. Images in Leopard such as icons will continue to be bitmaps. Its how those vectors are scaled which is the important thing.

Note that you can already change the DPI scaling of your apps in Tiger using Quartz debug, if you want to get a preview of how resolution independance works.

 

[dr_lha]

Yeah I don't think so. Unless you scale it to an exact multiple, it's going to look like crap.

Do me a favor. If you don't already have it turned on, turn on Dock magnification and move your mouse pointer slowly across the icons. See how they scale smoothly, and yet don't look like crap? Those icons are 256x256 bitmaps. Its all about doing things properly.

 

[lord patton]

so does anyone here believe that this is all we are getting in leopard? i just dont see anymore top secret features coming out unless apple hasnt released them in the builds they seeded. i just want overall system speed to be improved and i'll be happy.

I think Finder will be completely overhauled, but that's just speculation.

As for how long can Apple wait before spilling the beans in it's dev builds, I don't know. Good question.

 

[savar]

Ah, but YOU'RE missing the point completely. As resolutions inscrease the interface can scale up because it is resolution independent in 10.5. Web pages are NOT resolution independent for the most part.

Fear not sir, the WebKit team is already working on resolution independence. I'm pretty sure that some of the web specifications are being upgraded to provide resolution scalability as well. (For instance providing a choice between two resolutions for the same image on the page.) Alas, the web is such a clusterf* of randomly assorted technologies, most of which were never intended to scale to hi-res displays, so I expect the transition to be long and painful, but I trust that the Web Kit team will come up with clever ways to carefully scale up the content.

 

[savar]

Yeah I don't think so. Unless you scale it to an exact multiple, it's going to look like crap.

With subpixel anti-aliasing (how OS X does it now), it will scale well to any size. Naturally it will get a little blurry, but it depends how you define "look like crap" as to whether it will be acceptable or not.

The real problem is that this antialiasing is an expensive operation. Maybe they can do it all on the GPU now...but they're going to have to cache those pictures somewhere. This why its a good thing that # of cores are going up and memory is getting cheaper, we will be using lots more of each when we turn on all the candy in 10.5

 

[Dokter_Mac]

Does anyone know if this is only for Core 2 Duo or does it include Core Duo as well?

What about PPC-chips? Dual Core PPC or Dual PPC?😕

 

[psionic001]

Ah, but YOU'RE missing the point completely. As resolutions inscrease the interface can scale up because it is resolution independent in 10.5. Web pages are NOT resolution independent for the most part. Photos, graphics, interfaces are not. So, when you're looking at your killter 3000x2000 monitor yes your icons and OS interface can scale up and your photos will look very crisp BECAUSE they are vector or have extra resolution to draw from. Websites on the other hand will be fixed at 800x600 or whatever and unless you want them to be miniscule on your screen as they are shown pixel for pixel, they will have to be blown up in some way.

You will still - for example on a 144dpi screen - be able to double the size of the original web page and see what the designer intended to display at 72dpi without any loss. Display quality between 100% & 200% however will be up to the linear interpolation algorythm that the app (or core image) uses.
Any further than that, a regular 72 dpi image will be subject to the normal interpolation rules of graphics scaling i.e. it will get blurry. IMO.

Edit: I havn't tried to put a hi-rez jpeg on a web page for a while, but last I checked, the browser will force it to display at 72dpi if it's not constrained by widths & heights.

 

[digitalbiker]

Do me a favor. If you don't already have it turned on, turn on Dock magnification and move your mouse pointer slowly across the icons. See how they scale smoothly, and yet don't look like crap? Those icons are 256x256 bitmaps. Its all about doing things properly.

Thank you. Sometimes you explain things until you are blue in the face but people still don't get it until they see an example.

Even people that know the difference between vector and bitmapped graphics have the misconception that screen resolution indepenence depends on vector images. I don't think they are aware of where the GPU technology has gone in the last few years.

It won't be long and we will be rendering all graphic displays lke 3D game engines with virtual worlds and holographic displays.

 

[mikeyrogers]

What about PPC-chips? Dual Core PPC or Dual PPC?😕

Yeah, sorry. Those too.🙂

 

[digitalbiker]

Yeah, sorry. Those too.🙂

What do you mean? Are you talking about Leopard? Leopard will work with Core 2 Duo, Core Duo, PPC, probably everything back to about a 1997 model imac.

However Leopard will only provide 64 bit support to 64 bit capable chips, that would be G5 PPC and Core 2 Duo only.

 

[Chundles]

What do you mean? Are you talking about Leopard? Leopard will work with Core 2 Duo, Core Duo, PPC, probably everything back to about a 1997 model imac.

However Leopard will only provide 64 bit support to 64 bit capable chips, that would be G5 PPC and Core 2 Duo only.

He's talking about the OpenGL update that allows one processor to deal with OpenGL instructions whilst the other does, um, other stuff. It supposedly gives OpenGL performance as much as a 2x boost in speed.

I'm guessing it only works with Mac with multiple processing cores.