Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

What was your favorite feature shown in Leopard?

  • Time Machine

    Votes: 281 48.1%
  • Enhanced Mail

    Votes: 28 4.8%
  • Enhanced iChat

    Votes: 56 9.6%
  • Spaces (Virtual Desktops)

    Votes: 108 18.5%
  • Enhanced Dashboard

    Votes: 18 3.1%
  • Enhanced Spotlight

    Votes: 12 2.1%
  • Enhanced iCal

    Votes: 8 1.4%
  • More Accessible

    Votes: 6 1.0%
  • Core Animation

    Votes: 38 6.5%
  • Increased 64-bit support

    Votes: 29 5.0%

  • Total voters
    584
  • Poll closed .
NickCharles said:
Yes, absolutely:

Enhanced 64-bit Support
Leopard delivers 64-bit power in one, universal OS. Now Cocoa and Carbon application frameworks, as well as graphics, scripting, and the rest of the system are all 64-bit. Leopard delivers 64-bit power to both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs, so you don’t have to install separate applications for different machines. There’s only one version of Mac OS X, so you don’t need to maintain separate operating systems for different uses.

Bridge the Generation Gap
Now that the entire operating system is 64-bit, you can take full advantage of the Xeon chip in Mac Pro and Xserve. You get more processing power at up to 3.0GHz, without limiting your programs to command-line applications, servers, and computation engines. From G3 to Xeon, from MacBook to Xserve, there is just one Leopard.

Wait. Does this mean that the Leopard doesn't support current MBP or MB? the ones that use 32 bit Yonah based Core Duo CPU.
 
SiliconAddict said:
Give me a fracking break. Intel has NOTHING to do with this. NOTHING.


Well I wouldn't say "Nothing" as obviously it required a lot of programmer time to move the OS to Intel, create the new XCode compiler, create & debug rosetta, re-write all of the iLife, and Pro-Apps offered by Apple, etc. etc.

But it didn't have anything to do with stifling innovation. I think Apple is just running out of innovative ideas. It happens companies go through dry spells.

Really, I haven't seen much innovation out of Apple since the move from OS 9 to OS X. That was a major leap. Automator actually has a lot of potential but so far I think it is being under used. As far as the GUI is concerned, I think there are a lot of things that could be revamped to improve that area.

By the way has anybody tried Quiksilver for OS X. It is spectacular. I recently downloaded it, freeware, and have been loving this addition to the OS. Not only does it replace launchbar, spotlight, and others but has a nice verb feature that lets you quickly do all sorts of things and have access to OS X services under the hood.
 
Gurutech said:
Wait. Does this mean that the Leopard doesn't support current MBP or MB? the ones that use 32 bit Yonah based Core Duo CPU.

No, it doesn't mean that at all. It works with both 32 and 64 bit CPU's. The only thing you won't be able to do is run 64 bit apps in 64 bit mode.
 
gosh, the finder looks the same 🙁 I dont want the brushed metal anywhere anymore!! Also, they should just integrate address book/ical/mail into one app!!!
 
digitalbiker said:
Well I wouldn't say "Nothing" as obviously it required a lot of programmer time to move the OS to Intel, create the new XCode compiler, create & debug rosetta, re-write all of the iLife, and Pro-Apps offered by Apple, etc. etc.

But it didn't have anything to do with stifling innovation. I think Apple is just running out of innovative ideas. It happens companies go through dry spells.

Really, I haven't seen much innovation out of Apple since the move from OS 9 to OS X. That was a major leap. Automator actually has a lot of potential but so far I think it is being under used. As far as the GUI is concerned, I think there are a lot of things that could be revamped to improve that area.

I agree, although I wouldn't phrase it the same way. I don't think they have run out of ideas per se (a star wars themed back-up service is certainly an idea), but it seems that they feel the need to add more ideas instead of improving what they have.

The earlier versions of Mac OS X were focused on improving the UI and frankly making the system bearable to use (that's why I think it's not quite fair they keep mentioning how many updates they have had......up until 10.2, Mac OS X was pretty slow).

Apple wanted to create a beautiful, elegant, modern OS. I remember how I fawned over the pre-release Mac OS X screen-shots. But, in my opinion, Mac OS X has gotten uglier and is not on track based on today's keynote to getting better. Just look at a safari window juxtaposed against the menu bar. It's complete incongruence. I think Apple's third party developers have lately been making nicer looking apps than Apple has. The screenshots I have seen of Vista look cleaner than Mac OS X.

Bring back Aqua!
 
digitalbiker said:
Well I wouldn't say "Nothing" as obviously it required a lot of programmer time to move the OS to Intel, create the new XCode compiler, create & debug rosetta, re-write all of the iLife, and Pro-Apps offered by Apple, etc. etc.

Eh, they didn't create Rosetta, Transitive did. The creation of XCode was already done, they just added a package so Intel compiling was possible. They didn't rewrite all of iLife or any of the pro-apps, did they? All they did was fix anything that relied on PowerPC in order to make them Universal.

However, I want to know if the developers are getting a copy of Leopard within the next few days!
 
iMikeT said:
I don't believe that we have to wait until Spring 2007.😡

Oh well. Wait or not, Apple will still be way ahead of Microsoft!

I loved the Vista bashing. Better yet, it came from a French guy!😀

The French have been particularly strong lately. First Landis, Now M$. What happened to the white towel? 😀 ....sorry couldn't resist.
 
Time Machine

When I first saw this feature I thought great. I do regular back ups, but some of my AW docs keep corrupting (probably something to do with keep duplicating the same old document and modifying rather than starting anew). Time Machine will help me no end. I was also thrilled that windows had nothing like this........ until I read through these posts.

Then it seemed very similar to what was coming in Vista and I felt a bit dissapointed that Apple had made such a point about M$ copying them, but seemed to do the same themselves with Time Machine.

However on closer examination this is not the case and my confidence in Apple's innovative skills is restored.

Firstly, there has always been back up and restore apps, so if you want to take this copying thing to a ridiculous level, of course you can do. Copying in my book is when an app does and looks the same (just like the screenshots in the presentation, safari RSS/IE7 RSS, ical/M$ calender etc). It appears to me Time Machine does much more than anything before it and has it's own unique UI to boot.

Secondly, I would imagine work on Time machine started long before a beta of Vista was released, even if the two utilities were more or less identical it would be coincidence not copying.

Thirdly, it seems quite clear that Vista's restore (whatever it's called) will not do what Time machine will do. Ultimately you may well be able to restore any deleted or modified file in Vista, but it doesn't appear to occur with the same ease or functionality.

If I create a file, modify it and move it several times, rename it, convert it, modify it some more, move it several times and finally delete it, I rather suspect it would be an absolute nightmare to recover in Vista, whereas it seems that Time Machine would have little problem.

I don't see how it is possible in Vista to perform the recovery with either the same simplicity or pizzaz as Time Machine. Perhaps if M$ had not abandoned their intended file system for Vista it might have been possible, but as it is I doubt it.

Finally it does not appear that Vista has the option to restore within a database application (i.e. iphoto, mail, address book), no doubt if you understand how a particular database works, the possibility exists to restore a particular photo, but let's not pretend it will be easy or anywhere near the experience of time machine.

And finally, finally, although I agree the UI may appear a little childish, this is exactly the sort of thing that makes it so easy to use.
 
chasemac said:
Time Machine won't mean much when the HD fails. Back that azz up!

Actually - that's the exact scenario Apple talked about. HD goes down and with TIme Machine you can get all your stuff back. It backs up the system, files, apps - everything. That's almost verbatim from Apple's mouth.
 
ChrisA said:
Lots of ways it COULD be implemented. Looks at Suns new file system ZFS. It is basically "Copy on Write". With a file system you can do things even fancier then with a DBMS. For example a "block" (i-node) exists physicaly on the disk only once but it could be maped into any numbr of files. If a file in only an orderd set of block numbers then to copy a copy all you need to copy is the set of numbers which is on the order of 1000 times shorter then the data itself.


Ahem, a modern relational database system can do everything a file system can. In fact, they are both databases, but optimized for different tasks and slightly different semantics. The same behaviors can be achieved with both; it is a matter of design bias, not capability. File systems like ZFS actually converge on normal MVCC database behavior, which durably journals all writes but with more flexibility with respect to atomicity and version cleanup than a file system. File system semantics, even versioning ones, are more primitive and less capable than database ones, but with substantially increased performance over what would be possible from an MVCC database for the same task.

Same theory, different optimizations. The balancing act has always been between the power fully ACID-compliant MVCC semantics and the basic speed of simple file system semantics. Apple and Sun are burning some excess performance capacity to deliver features that are closer to the database ideal.
 
Address Book & iCal

I had hoped for the ability to link files and folders with contacts in my address book, I can only hope this is one of those top secret items.

I would also have liked some way of sharing my appointments in ical with the windows people I am meeting, to date ical will send them an email with an ical attachment, but they are unable to do anything with it.

Someone please tell me I can already do these things or that I have a chance of doing them in X.5
 
Alright, I'll take these one by one...

Time Machine: Nice feature, nice implementation, nice eye-candy - but I don't see it as a heavily used feature. I mean, you should hope that it doesn't have to be heavily used. I think I can count the number of instances on one hand where I deleted a file that I regretted deleting later, and I've never screwed up my install to the point where I would need to revert the system back to a previous state. Others may have had different experiences from me and this is a nice "insurance policy" utility to have, but overall I don't see it as having a major impact on the majority of Mac users in day to day usage.

Enhanced Mail: This is nice, but html mail composition was promised for Tiger and that turned into, for all practical intents and purposes, vaporware. Now here it is front and center in Leopard. Grrrrrr. (Now you know why they called it Tiger, lol)

Enhanced iChat: Nifty new features, but here's the deal: Apple needs to look beyond Cupertino and survey the IM landscape that exists outside of the US, because it's huge. Most PC-using kids and twenty-somethings overseas live and breath and depend on two kinds of software, an internet browser and an IM client. Overseas, Yahoo and MS Messenger are all that's used and the features that are provided by those clients are heavily depended upon by the overseas youth culture because they were born and raised on that stuff. If iChat (or any other client) at a minimum can't provide support for Yahoo and MS Messenger protocols with absolute one for one feature parity with PC's, you can forget about selling a Mac (or at least the Mac OS) to these kids, because it's just an absolute deal-killer without IM support that they are used to. The IM culture overseas is just that big, that integrated, and they (along with their IM friends) don't use AOL and they don't use .Mac and they aren't going to. The IM scene overseas and it's dependence on MS Messenger and Yahoo is practically a youth culture in and of itself now and ignoring that is simply bad business for Apple at this point.

Spaces: This one looks pretty cool

Enhanced Dashboard: The only thing that really needs to be enhanced with Dashboard is widget collection organization. With the sheer number of widgets that are out now, hammering on the little arrows in the Widget Bar and watching bar after bar after bar of widgets fly by while you're searching for a particular widget that you may or may not remember the name of just isn't working. The Spaces (virtual desktop) feature may come to the rescue here if different collections of widgets can be maintained on separate desktops, but is seems like Spaces is overkill just for that. Dashboard needs it's own "Spaces" (multiple Dashboard instances) or a better way of managing large widget collections.

Enhanced Spotlight: Its all good

Enhanced iCal: Okay...what else?

More Accessible: This is actually quite good as I suspect disabled access to computers will become more of a focus as time goes on particularly with disabled or handicapped employees. So it's great that Apple is leading the charge here.

Core Animation: Another avenue to the treasure chest of Apple OS eye-candy for third-party devs, just in case Core Image wasn't floating anyone's boat

Increased 64-bit support: Which will be great whenever we see increased 64-bit applications showing up.

But the overall impression is, so what? Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I think the so-called "secret" unseen, unknown features are the ones that will really matter for most users, what was shown today is by and large fluff. If Jobs says Apple isn't going to reveal some of Leopard's features for fear of MS pulling one of it's copy jobs, then they must be fairly significant features worth protecting until the last minute. So what matters with Leopard isn't what was seen today, what really matters is what wasn't seen.
 
digitalbiker said:
Well I wouldn't say "Nothing" as obviously it required a lot of programmer time to move the OS to Intel, create the new XCode compiler, create & debug rosetta, re-write all of the iLife, and Pro-Apps offered by Apple, etc. etc.


This should be pretty trivial for the most part, mostly just a rebuild of the code base plus a rewrite of some tiny core bits that will be in assembly code (like locking primitives) and a few drivers. The normal applications should require approximately no porting effort at all.

I would point out that the Intel compiler for OSX is much better than the PPC compiler for the same. I found a couple extremely irritating compiler bugs under XCode PPC, while I have never even seen a bug in contemporaneous versions of GCC for Intel. This by itself is worth something. Current versions of GCC for x86 and AMD64 are on par with the best commercial compilers. GCC for PPC was a usable but inferior pile of dog poo that gave me many problems.
 
dibble9012 said:
gosh, the finder looks the same 🙁 I dont want the brushed metal anywhere anymore!! Also, they should just integrate address book/ical/mail into one app!!!

Did you miss the part at the beginning where Steve Jobs made it pretty clear that a lot of the biggest secrets aren't going to be revealed yet?

Other people have confirmed that the Finders in the Leopard preview is the old one, and that the "new" Finder is being held back for the time being until it is closer to shipping.

So, it's very likely the reason the Finder looks the same is because what we are seeing publically now IS still the same, and we won't see the new Finder until later.

-Zadillo
 
This preview of Leopard seemed really like a glaze over of some "fun" little advancements, it did not look polished at all...to all those dissapointed in what leopard has to offer, not to be punny, but steve has barely let the cat out of the bag

tonne more to come
 
akac said:
Actually - that's the exact scenario Apple talked about. HD goes down and with TIme Machine you can get all your stuff back. It backs up the system, files, apps - everything. That's almost verbatim from Apple's mouth.

I think the people who are complaining are likely using a notebook and don't permanently attach it to an external HD. I have to say I have little sympathy with this argument, if you run a notebook you need to have some back up system in place and should be prepared to regularly connect to either an external HD or a desktop.

Personally I have a little script that ensures that when I have a wireless connection to my home network an automatic incremental back up to an external HD connected to my network is performed in the background.

I did note some mention of a sync in respect of time machine, so hopefully X.5 will take care of occasional connections to an HD or desktop.

Time machine however seems to have 2 functions, restoring deleted files and full back ups. Even if you don't have access to a desktop or external HD, Time Machine will still perform retreval of lost and deleted files within a functioning notebook.
 
icloud said:
This preview of Leopard seemed really like a glaze over of some "fun" little advancements, it did not look polished at all...to all those dissapointed in what leopard has to offer, not to be punny, but steve has barely let the cat out of the bag

tonne more to come

I don't know, I thought Spaces and Time Machine looked very polished, personally. Spaces in particular is one of those things that I actually think will be genuinely useful (like Expose before it), and I like that it seems to be an even more useful implementation of the virtual desktops concept than what I've seen in Linux.
 
Zadillo said:
I don't know, I thought Spaces and Time Machine looked very polished, personally. Spaces in particular is one of those things that I actually think will be genuinely useful (like Expose before it), and I like that it seems to be an even more useful implementation of the virtual desktops concept than what I've seen in Linux.

I hope that Spaces will integrate nicely with the Mighty Mouse...somehow...
 
Running the preview now... some nice developer level stuff that I cannot ebelish on however beyond what was talked about in the keynote.

The new Core Animation stuff looks simple yet powerful and will increase the visual effects and feedback that application can do with only minor work on their part.

Also new Xcode Tool capabilities are well... great to have (need to review what is available publicly before I can comment more).

Next spring Apple will have a good answer to Vista with little disruption to end users and developers (unlike Vista).
 
ical/address book/mail

I've seen many posts calling for a unified mail, address and calender app, this is so 2003, please Apple take no notice, I want seperate apps.

Simplicity is what makes Apple software what it is. I would however wish to see tighter integration, such as exists between itunes, iphoto, iDVD, iMovie, Garageband and iWeb.

I would also like to see the address book integrated with pages. (but that's another topic)
 
Zadillo said:
I don't know, I thought Spaces and Time Machine looked very polished, personally. Spaces in particular is one of those things that I actually think will be genuinely useful (like Expose before it), and I like that it seems to be an even more useful implementation of the virtual desktops concept than what I've seen in Linux.


I was refering to things such as the finishing touches, ala unified interface and what not. I remember seeing how much dashboard evolved in the previews to what it is today...dramatically different
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.