WWDC: Leopard Details

[Aniej]

21 pages of posts, so please forgive if already posted.

Have you tried using "find" in the safari 3 ("S3")? It is really a major major improvement and will make your life so much easier, especially if you are a student or someone constantly searching for specific items on the internet. Try searching a slightly length document with a word that repeats, you will be pleased i think.

 

[luminosity]

21 pages of posts, so please forgive if already posted.

Have you tried using "find" in the safari 3 ("S3")? It is really a major major improvement and will make your life so much easier, especially if you are a student or someone constantly searching for specific items on the internet. Try searching a slightly length document with a word that repeats, you will be pleased i think.

This and the warning you get when you try to close a window with unsubmitted text are two of the biggest additions, I'd say.

 

[John-S]

another thing. I keep reading as if Steve ONLY showed 10 of the 300 features. This is surely wrong. Steve showed 10 NEW KEY FEATURES as I believe was stated on the keynote. In showing those 10 KEY features he probably showed about 150 of the 300 new features...

 

[Iroganai]

i know you can resize the dock..im just quoting that guy coz he says the new dock is smaller than the old one. we can clearly see that the new one takes more space than the old one. at least thats what i see in the pic..

I meant it as a joke but thanks for the explanation.
Let's hope there's a slider which changes how 3d the Dock is !

 

[clevin]

didn't transparent menu bar exist in linux since last century? Top secret? photocopy?

 

[MBX]

here my pro's & con's:

pro's:

- 64bit
- like the quicklook a lot, very useful.
- stack feature is nice too


con's:

- dock, too pseudo-3d: no need for that reflective eyecandy stuff. i hope the dock is still resizable and one is able to hide it. i hope also that it's shiny floor can be hidden. it doesn't make sense at all because there's no use for it. if the desktop itself was real 3d and one would be able to arrange icons in 3d then it would make sense to have a vanishing point. but not like this.

- menubar: why still the same ugly rechtangular dropdown & blue menu selections? what about nice rounded corner dropdowns or at least rounded selections like many shapeshifter themes?

- over all i'm a little disappointed with the look and the fact that they didn't take a chance to make a step towards something new. how about making everything look a little more like quicklook-interface? standard leopard ui is still better than the standard tiger ui though, i must say.

- i like the current frontrow so much better than the apple-tv interface. beside the blue glow around the selections are ugly and something windows would do.

- why doesn't spaces show the actual desktop wallpapers? and will there be other transition options?

- what about those top secret features? the only new thing seems to be the stack feature in the dock and the coverflow in the finder. a bit lame.


other than that it's cool i think aslong as the eyecandy doesnt take up too much ram and hopefully it will give us some options to modify the ui.

 

[Lonon]

aehm, the menue bar is part of the application because there select what i want to do. how can it be less important. it is the application.

Exactly.

 

[iZac]

Let's hope there's a slider which changes how 3d the Dock is !

HA, i'm hoping for the same thing! I'm not sure how enthusiastic i am about my dock taking design cues from time machine.

Although the reflections are 'luverly'

 

[Val-kyrie]

So... The million dollar question: What's the story with ZFS in Leopard? What was the Sun CEO talking about the other day? Someone please tell me the secret to this whole ZFS thing. It sounds so good.. but not one mention of it today

Does anyone know if knowledge about ZFS is even pertinent to programmers at this stage or if it is something that only needs to be known to Apple for the purposes of the OS? I wonder if Sun shot its mouth off to try to force Apple to commit when Apple might be trying to work out some bugs with it--a half truth by Sun, so to speak. If Leopard was not currently booting off of ZFS or if there were major bugs to be overcome--e.g. updating OSes from HFS+ to ZFS without requiring a backup, for which Apple has a related patent--then if I were in the place of SJ, I would not announce ZFS either. I will bet that just like the Intel rumors before Apple went with IBM chips only to return to Intel, Apple may be running two builds of Leopard with both HFS+ and ZFS. In this case, they would pick which ever version is most stable at a certain date. I still think ZFS has a chance to be announced in September, especially if it is not critical for most developers. Any developers care to comment???

 

[p0intblank]

I have to be honest here... these "top secret" features were not mind-blowing. Yes, the new interface looks nice (I do hope the MenuBar's transparency can be adjusted, however), but nothing really wowed me like last year. That aside, I'm still really looking forward to Leopard when it comes out in October. I can't wait to play around with the new interface.

 

[MBX]

oh by the way. this is what i wish the entire ui (finder windows, menubar, etc.) would look like: http://images.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/images/ical_availability20070611.gif

pretty slick.

 

[SheriffParker]

Seems to me that 64 bit and the need for a real graphics card to get the most of Leopards eye candy - Finder, Quick Look, iChat, Spaces, etc.

So by or for October;

Mac Mini needs an upgrade or redesign for 64bit, wireless N and a graphics card.

MacBook needs a graphics card.

iMac could do with more graphics power to easily handle all this stuff.

I don't think so. These aren't really 3D effects. They are mainly 2D, and require processor power. The C2D is more than enough for these effects. 3D gaming/modeling is the only thing that suffers. Coverflow works fine on my intel mini, and I can watch 1080p trailers without hickups.

 

[Val-kyrie]

64 Bit Chipset Required Too???

Acconding to the statement .... Leopard is 64 bits, so you need a 64 bit CPU to run it.

However you do not need to upgrade your 32 bit applications, they can be run by Leopard in a 64 bit system (core 2 duo, G5, and above).

No G4, no G3, no Core duo, need apply.

Weird that Apple would not permit 5 Mill users or so to upgrade to Leopard.

If Leopard needs a 64 bit chip, does it need a 64 bit chipset to match? Only asking because if so, only the SR MBPs and MacPros qualify. All other macs are currently running on Napa chipsets which are 32 bit chipsets.

EDIT:

Leopard WILL run on G4, G5, Core Duo and Core 2 Duo and Xeon based machines. Leopard does quad binary (32-bit ppc/intel, 64-bit ppc/intel). So, it is a 64-bit OS top to bottom. It is ALSO a 32-bit OS top to bottom ;-) Don't panic.

 

[Val-kyrie]

According to WHAT statement? I haven't seen this anywhere. Apple needs to be more clear about this, but since they talk about 32 bit support it sure sounds like it will run on 32 bit machines. Heck, Apple is still selling 32 bit machines today. And they only updated the laptops to 64 a few weeks ago.

Only MBPs are 64 bit. The MBs still use the 32 bit Napa chipset.

 

[Chef Medeski]

I'd like to throw my ring into the hat.

Just finished off the Keynote.

I thought overall; was originally disappointed with the feature set. NOTHING AMAZING OR SPANKING NEW.

But seriously its hard to expect so much grand aspirations when there is nothing like Time Machine, Spaces, Coverflow, the Dock outside of Linux.

So after watching the demoes and the Keynote I truley want Leopard. I'm not overly excited but it looks very nice. And a nice little refresh. A little newer. Plus finder looks nice and crsip. And it looks like this time its really optimized for those multi-cored Intel chips. Big renovation under the hood as well as body art.

I found the stacks, updated spotlight, coverflow, quicklooks, 3-d dock, webclips are all small but nice little features. And when all combined I will be more than happy to pay the $80 for EDU version. Will pick it up the first day.

Will be waiting though from further comments from users of the new Beta. So far the two people who have used it have wrote raving reviews. It just seems that some of these snoreville features will end up being whoah, oh so cool and so slickly implemented that you won't believe you ever lived without it.

Good job Apple. Its hard to build the iPhone, a totally new Leopard, and still design many different hardware lines. Kudos. Bring out that SR Macbook and you will have one very happy customer for another year or two.

Hopefully next year you can learn to be a little faster with development. I've been dying for some of these features. But overall I'm happy and a waiting.

 

[flopticalcube]

Only MBPs are 64 bit. The MBs still use the 32 bit Napa chipset.

Only in the same vein as the original Macs where 16bit.

Everything in the processor in the MBs is 64bit and that's what the OS will see.

The only current 32bit machine is the mini.

 

[aliquis-]

Atleast new finder seems like an improvement, I hope someone figures out a way to do the sharing without .mac thought, I don't want to pay for .mac, I rather set up my own .mac thank you. Faster and with more storage..

Quoting myself here...

Anyway, I don't know why I didn't thought about this but of course you can always set up Hamachi with your various machines, or your friends, and share between them as if they where on your LAN even without .mac. So no worries there.

 

[John-S]

MBX. I don't want to be rude but your post seems contradictory.

dock, too pseudo-3d: no need for that reflective eyecandy stuff....it doesn't make sense at all because there's no use for it.

But then the rest of your post you point out your idea/style of what eyecandy you would want. Is there really a use/need for rounded corners on the menu dropdowns?

- why doesn't spaces show the actual desktop wallpapers? and will there be other transition options?

Aren't other transitions useless eyecandy?

What is peoples problem with eyecandy? I have a mac mini and a 2002 g4 that handles this eyecandy fine. No ram problems even with 256. The only eyecandy that can't be used sometimes are a few of the 3d effects with a mac mini etc because of integrated graphics chips. But so what. Mainly they are reliant upon the graphics card and now we have core animations sweeting things up.

I use Maya Unlimited for 3D while having photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Motion you name it all left open while being on 1GB of ram and all they eyecandy in the world up and it doesn't effect me at all. They can add all the eyecandy in the world and it won't effect me. This isn't a windows world with a giant bloated Piece of Crap!

I don't know why people always have to mention anti-eyecandy when you know they end up liking it later. Its like hearing those people say how they wish the world was still using the amiga and/or windows 3.1 or something. Things were better then... LOL. Yeah right! Try doing ANYTHING of what you do today on one of those machines!

Ps. clevin. OS X had used semi-transparent windows etc since 10.1. I wouldn't call them photocopying or anything for doing it too their menu-bar. (which I don't love the look of but I will probably get used to it) If anyone is copying I believe that would be windows or linux am I wrong?

 

[tuskertusker]

from my perspective

From my perspective, the way I use my Mac, I feel apple has done a nice job at incorporating nice looking features while also adding some time saving / management tools (like spaces). Spaces is awesome - I can have photoshop up on one, mail and safari on another, word (or pages) and keynote up on another, and something like DVD player on the fourth. This is great! will it slow down your computer though?

Although Time Machine is "sweet" (as SJ said many times), I would only end up using this feature a few times. How often do files magically disappear from your finder? For me, not many. This app reminds me of my initial feeling about automater. When automater was first announced, I thought "this program is amazing...i'm going to use it everyday." In reality, I've maybe used it twice my whole Tiger career.

The transparent menu bar is a good idea - assuming that Apple wants their computers to be "media hubs" for average people. Since I fall into this category, I like the idea of your personal photos, videos, and so on taking the main stage. The green grass photo is a poor choice on Apple's marketing team. It makes the transparent bar look pretty ugly, although if you were to have a nice ocean photo or something, it would look a lot much better.

I personally hate the new Doc. I'm not trying to complain about Apple, but for me, the doc is something I try to visit as infrequently as possible. What's the point in making it bulkier and more flashy? It is completely counterproductive to the transparent menu bar. Maybe they should have had a transparent doc to top it off Well, hopefully it will still have its "hide" feature.

The new finder is great. And I personally love coverflow. It's such a great tool to flip through all your photos and see large thumbnails. Like I was saying, Apple is trying to market to college students and teens, so stuff like this does that. If you are a business person and don't like it, use a different mode...not a big deal.

Computer to computer sharing is awesome in the new finder...not that I use this much.

I thought it was embarrassing that Apple only made one new widget in the two or so years the dashboard has been out. Come on!...if they're so easy to make, why hasn't apple released a million new ones??

So, in conclusion, I think Apple was smart in having their fancy fun shinny additions to the OS system, but they also offered some solid time saving features (which happen to look nice at the same time). Next...a new version of iLife?? Anyone have any estimates about when this will be coming?

 

[MBX]

MBX. I don't want to be rude but your post seems contradictory.

But then the rest of your post you point out your idea/style of what eyecandy you would want. Is there really a use/need for rounded corners on the menu dropdowns?

Aren't other transitions useless eyecandy?

What is peoples problem with eyecandy? I have a mac mini and a 2002 g4 that handles this eyecandy fine. No ram problems even with 256. The only eyecandy that can't be used sometimes are a few of the 3d effects with a mac mini etc because of integrated graphics chips. But so what. Mainly they are reliant upon the graphics card and now we have core animations sweeting things up.

I use Maya Unlimited for 3D while having photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Motion you name it all left open while being on 1GB of ram and all they eyecandy in the world up and it doesn't effect me at all. They can add all the eyecandy in the world and it won't effect me. This isn't a windows world with a giant bloated Piece of Crap!

I don't know why people always have to mention anti-eyecandy when you know they end up liking it later. Its like hearing those people say how they wish the world was still using the amiga and/or windows 3.1 or something. Things were better then... LOL. Yeah right! Try doing ANYTHING of what you do today on one of those machines!

Ps. clevin. OS X had used semi-transparent windows etc since 10.1. I wouldn't call them photocopying or anything for doing it too their menu-bar. (which I don't love the look of but I will probably get used to it) If anyone is copying I believe that would be windows or linux am I wrong?

ok i guess it depends on what type of eyecandy (more taste differences stuff)

i just dont like the dock floor, looks cheesy. and in terms of nice ui design, just slight rounded corners (like in shapeshifter "stomp" theme) would be a nice little detail. the way the dropdown menu is now, in tiger & leopard just looks aged.

 

[Counter]

Steve mentioned one of the web clip > dashboard widget effects just got in the way (so he changed it to a simpler one).......

Check what they did to the DOCK Steve! There's an extremely ill fitting attempt at 3d and huge reflection underneath it!

Here's to hoping it's optional like the optional transparent menu bar.

Most of the audience laughed when the new desktop was shown. There's only one reason they could have laughed; they thought it was a joke thrown up as a copy of Vista. I absolutely cannot believe they used a wet grass desktop image, same as Vista. On top of the transparent menu bar and screwing with the dock.

Quicklook and Stacks, yay indeed. I think those come across as kinda minor things but things you will end up using all the time.

But christ....the desktop...that bombed.

 

[tuskertusker]

"Most of the audience laughed when the new desktop was shown. There's only one reason they could have laughed; they thought it was a joke thrown up as a copy of Vista. I absolutely cannot believe they used a wet grass desktop image, same as Vista. On top of the transparent menu bar and screwing with the dock."


Haha ya this was sooo bad. I immediately cringed and felt so bad for SJ, although it seemed as though he didn't notice. Thats really embarrassing to the new desktop though...

 

[Illan]

call me anything you want But a mac noob. but has anyone noticed that the Hard Drive icon(usually in the top right of you screen) is missing from all of the desktop shots of leopard?

 

[tuskertusker]

call me a noob or anything you want But a mac noob. but has anyone noticed that the Hard Drive icon(usually in the top right of you screen) is missing from all of the desktop shots of leopard?

good...I would love to an OS where nothing ever goes on the desktop. Maybe when you put a CD or DVD in, it will appear in the dock instead of the desktop. That would be great.

 

[Counter]

call me a noob or anything you want But a mac noob. but has anyone noticed that the Hard Drive icon(usually in the top right of you screen) is missing from all of the desktop shots of leopard?

Time Machine swallowed it for breakfast.

Sheesh, n00bs these days.