Leopard Previewed

[mkrishnan]

I'm surprised res-independent UI was not discussed, but Apple has already said that is coming, so maybe it's just not polished enough to bother showing yet. (Or maybe it's better to show when new displays come out? Today's new low prices on Cinema Displays might hint at new displays to come later.)

I am not entirely clear on what all CoreAnimation does and does not do, but I'm wondering if it and RIUI are not related at some level.... some of its feature set sounds like exactly what one would need to make the RIUI easy to implement.... We'll have to wait and see.

I voted Time Machine. I'm not even sure I'd really use it. But it's a neat idea, and the implementation looks to be nothing less than stunning. When I first saw it, I too thought system restore, but it's clearly substantially more sophisticated and (what a shock) oriented at enhancing your experience doing actual stuff with your computer, rather than at undoing the mess Windows updaters make when they fail to do what they're supposed to. 😀

To me overall it seems like I'll be excited to get my next Mac with Leopard pre-installed but I will not rush out to purchase a copy....

 

[IlluminatedSage]

i love the changes they made.

now if only they can merge ical into mail so it can fully compete against entourage and other apps.

I want my full telephone book, contact data management, with calendar in one program.

easier for me that way.

 

[icloud]

Lots of things changed from the first views of tiger to the creature it is today. I think their a lot more hiding in leopard then we found out today

P.s. I hope to god a new finder and the death of brushed metal is one of those "secrets"

 

[Neb154]

I'm real excited for the new iChat and Spaces, along with these new "top secret features..." They better be good!

The finder is definately my bet for something to be revamped, along with probably iLife which will be revamped for leopard.

Edit : Also something more with virtualization (boot camp area) as they did not touch that really.

 

[Tomaz]

The top secret features better be REALLY good, this was disappointing and nothing was really new! Cupertino started it's photocopiers.... (The Vista banners are an actual joke after this keynote) 🙁

 

[jonharris200]

I can exclusively reveal that the top top secret feature of Leopard will be... inbuilt photocopying! 😀

 

[ArkabaS]

Why does no one ever mention the Dock? It is a HUGE part of OS X and hasn't changed since Jaguar. It could be so much more useful if it allowed for dividers, more customization, etc. I hope the Top Secret stuff includes major improvements to Finder, the Dock, and Expose.

 

[Tanglewood]

I guess I would be underwhelmed if I had mistaken WWDC for Macworld or something, and expected a bunch of major new product announcements.

I agree. Release Mac Pro and just enough of Leopard to keep us going until January. Besides whats the point in Apple showing its entire hand with a release window 7-9 months out?

I do like that they'll be updating Mail. Having templates will be handy for what I use the program for.

 

[dernhelm]

Hey nice to see osx will have system restore =D

YOU MUST BE KIDDING. Have you actually used System Restore to restore a single file? Oh that's right, you can't. All you can do it reset your system back to a point where the file existed.

This is MUCH more powerful, and more like something users would actually want.

System Restore is great for those times when you want to apply a system patch that could be iffy, and you are willing to "snap" a restore point, apply the patch, and roll back if something didn't fly.

But for the normal user, it is much more useless.

 

[GorillaPaws]

I was impressed w/ the new iChat features. It will really help me troubleshoot w/ my mom, who is less-than-tech-savy. I'm a good two hours away from her when I'm up at school, so it'll be nice to be able to show her stuff. Plus with the new backgrounds she won't be able to see how filthy my apartment is 😀 .

Time machine was cool looking, although I'm not sure how often I'll truly use it.

The other thing that popped out at me (after just glancing at the website) was the really cool core animation vid they had up. That would be an amazing screen-saver, I hope they add that in to Leopard for impressing my PC friends. I'm still not sure what the potential uses are for developers are, other than eye candy. I haven't seen many apps that take advantage of core video yet so i wonder how useful this will be to developers. I'd love to hear what you all think about core animation and if it will have any utility.

 

[DPazdanISU]

Video feed will be here

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/aug_2006/event/index.html

 

[Dave00]

Time Machine

Well, looks like Apple has figured out what to do with all that extra space most of us have on our hard drives. Even though only changes are saved, it seems like this will take up an enormous amount of space, especially for multimedia files like movies, etc. Plus, if only changes are stored, it would seem that to restore a file would entail starting with the original, and applying all the changes since then - wouldn't that take quite a long time? And saving a file would probably take longer too... smells like alot of system slowdown. Still, I'll be very impressed if this actually works without a huge number of bugs - it has to be a phenomenally complicated task to keep track of everything. And it LOOKS really cool. 🙂

Dave

 

[Westside guy]

Hey nice to see osx will have system restore =D

Time machine isn't even similar to MS's System Restore. Time Machine is basically like having CVS or Subversion underneath the file system. It rocks. I don't believe there's ever been anything like it on a client-type computer (a similar feature was present in the server OS VMS, I believe).

You might want to do some reading about CVS and Subversion.

Edit: Now that I think about it, it wouldn't be surprising to find that CVS/Subversion code is the foundation for Time Machine.

 

[ZildjianKX]

YOU MUST BE KIDDING. Have you actually used System Restore to restore a single file? Oh that's right, you can't. All you can do it reset your system back to a point where the file existed.

This is MUCH more powerful, and more like something users would actually want.

System Restore is great for those times when you want to apply a system patch that could be iffy, and you are willing to "snap" a restore point, apply the patch, and roll back if something didn't fly.

But for the normal user, it is much more useless.

I'd also like to point out I've never actually gotten XP's system restore to work, I've tried about 10 times over the past 5 years. Maybe I'm the exception, but you really can't rely on it.

 

[dernhelm]

I am not entirely clear on what all CoreAnimation does and does not do, but I'm wondering if it and RIUI are not related at some level....
I voted Time Machine. I'm not even sure I'd really use it. But it's a neat idea, and the implementation looks to be nothing less than stunning.

These were my top two as well. I just didn't have quite enough information on how Core Animation is actually set up to vote for it. It's also hard to get real excited about a developer-enabling feature, but it could certainly lead to some cool apps. It's also great that they're eating their own dogfood and using it to code Time Machine.

Time machine was my vote mostly because of its wide appeal. This looks awesome, and if it is as effortless as it sounds, may even be a reason to buy some NAS storage and hook it up at home. The demo I saw was simply amazing.

Great work apple. Now get those Core 2 Duo chips in the iMac and I'll be all set. 🙂

 

[70355]

What I like to say to PC fans that rip on Macs is this: Buy a Mac, use it for a year, and come back to me. Then if you still don't like Macs then at least you have supporting evidence, however I doubt that will be the case!

That's quite an offer. I'm sure you get a lot of takers.🙄

 

[shelterpaw]

i love the changes they made.

now if only they can merge ical into mail so it can fully compete against entourage and other apps.

I want my full telephone book, contact data management, with calendar in one program.

easier for me that way.

Yeah, that'd be cool. Just imagine if you could grab certain things from other apps, like that widget web clip feature and paste together your own app in whichever way you please. Would probably confuse the heck out of some novice users, but would be great for advanced users. Elastic applications.

 

[Analog Kid]

All in all, it looks good. Time machine, if it works how I hope it will, is going to be a killer. I like the iChat features-- interesting mix of useful business like features with toys for the teenagers...

CoreAnimation has be a little wary. I have a bad feeling we're going to get a run of really cheesy applications before this gets taken under control...

 

[Tomaz]

Time machine isn't even similar to MS's System Restore. Time Machine is basically like having CVS or Subversion underneath the file system. It rocks. I don't believe there's ever been anything like it on a client-type computer (a similar feature was present in the server OS VMS, I believe).

You might want to do some reading about CVS and Subversion.

Edit: Now that I think about it, it wouldn't be surprising to find that CVS/Subversion code is the foundation for Time Machine.

Maybe not in a client type computer but it exists in Windows Server 2003 and it is called Volume Shadow Copy.

Of curse it doesn't look as nice !

 

[polyesterlester]

From the Xcode 3.0 page:

"Project Snapshots

"Record the state of your project anytime, and restore it instantly. Experiment with new features without spending time or brain cells committing them to a source control system. Like saving a game in Civilization 4, Xcode 3.0 lets you go back in time without repercussions. If only reality worked this way at the Pentagon..."

I love you, Apple.

 

[dernhelm]

I'd also like to point out I've never actually gotten XP's system restore to work, I've tried about 10 times over the past 5 years. Maybe I'm the exception, but you really can't rely on it.

I've had it TRASH a machine at my home before. But I've used it successfully at work once or twice. For the disk space, though, I often turn it off. It is a complete pig, and if I'm tight at all, it's the first thing to go.

 

[jonharris200]

Will Time Machine mean that you can't permanently delete any file? What about something confidential which you want to "e-shred"?

 

[dudemac]

Features I want:

-iChat screen sharing (awesome idea!) and video effects
-Spaces (finally a Apple OS-level implementation)
-Time Machine (I want a friggin wormhole on my computer!)

I wish they'd show us the Top Secret features.

But seriously, so one even saw Time Machine coming. That was a surprise!

Actually if you keep up with the rumors you will remember that there was something about Apple licensing SUN's ZFS file system. Which has all the Time Machine features built into the file system. So I would say that this is more a long time coming feature then a smack in the head one. In fact with every OS version I have personally submitted requests for built in back up/ restore/ syncing software. So this is even better if it is built into the file system.

The rest of the features are pretty much just incremental upgrades. Not much to see other than Time Machine. But that seems to be the way it will be with Vista and all the latest OS versions we are at a point where most people don't have a compelling reason to upgrade. So I really hope there is some really killer new feature that I will want but I probably won't upgrade this time. Unless I buy a new laptop next year.

So I am kind of ho hum about it all.

thedude

 

[freeny]

Guess we now know what this was all about now.. (Web Clip)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/151828/

Out of all the predictions I think I was the closest (post #29)😎

perhaps this button will produce a widget for the page you have open? sort of like having your favorite sites in your dashboard? you wont need to open safari to check your sites or even wait for someone to create a widget for the site. safari will author its own widgets.
Even better would be the ability to frame just the part of the site you want to see like a weather bar or team score using a cmd+shft+4 like command..... any takers?

 

[m-dogg]

Time Machines sounds interesting, though I think I'd have to buy an external drive to ever use it.

What about Safari? Doesn't sound like there was any reference to this, except related to widgets. I'd love to have more control over tabs, like moving/rerranging thier order, adding a second row of tabs instead of the annoying arrow to see what doesn't fit on one row, moving a tab from one open Safari window to another, tab expose, alerts like Ollie's Tab so you don't accidentally close a window with multiple tabs, and a new unified UI to name a few...