WWDC: Leopard Details

[nuckinfutz]

People are complaining because the "secret features" weren't worthy of waiting a year to see them not becuase the features are bad.

Yes because the keynote was so expensive(free).

Here's an interesting thing about those who need to be on Paxil post Apple Keynote. I've noticed that 8 out of 10 complainers never articulate exactly what they hell they were expecting. You will typically read this.

"I can't see anything in Leopard worth upgrading for" "There are no major features in Leopard that I'd use"

The next question is an obvious one that many of us want to know. "What exactly is missing?"

"Fix the ***** Finder" was the Mac Geek Mantra....it's been fixed.

Search has improved in speed and accuracy (Booleans)

Productivity nuts will like that 3rd party apps can read/write iCal data...finally unified calendar data.

Text heads will love the new Core Text features for faster rendering

Every user can enjoy improved multi-threading with core affinity

Because someone isn't savvy enough to understand and articulate their position doesn't make that position correct or incorrect. These are discussions boards. Feel free to expound.

BGil ..thanks for the post on WPF. Whether we have disagreements or not on these boards the key thing is that we have the opportunity to benefit from our discussion by learning something.

The one thing I detest on messageboards are high noise to signal ratios. Hell if you got a beef with a product tell us why and what ails you. This is MacRumorsCounseling

 

[wilster14]

Front Row Updates

Does anyone else foresee apple making updates to front row in terms of adding a youtube feature such as the one in apple TV

 

[PowerFullMac]

So did they REALLY revamp the finder or simply put more features on an already broken file browser? That's what I really want to know.
As far as I can tell Apple simply slapped a bunch of features on Finder and called it "all new".
Overall I'm unimpressed and won't be spending the money to upgrade to Leopard.

What is wrong with the Finder as it is now? Nothing.

Also, everyone stop moaning about the transparent menu bar! It can be turned off! Dont use that as a reason to do a bit of Leopard bashing! I think Leopards newly announced features are great, but not as big as we all expected.

 

[72930]

What is wrong with the Finder as it is now? Nothing.

It has dreadful networking...and image previewing isn't great...

 

[zweigand]

Wonder if the new finder has read/write FTP now?

 

[PowerFullMac]

Both those issues are fixed in Leopard, and people are still moaning...

 

[nuckinfutz]

What is wrong with the Finder as it is now? Nothing.

Also, everyone stop moaning about the transparent menu bar! It can be turned off! Dont use that as a reason to do a bit of Leopard bashing! I think Leopards newly announced features are great, but not as big as we all expected.

If people are complaining about the Dock "shelf" and transparent menu bar Apple has done well. Those have to be the most trivial of issues. I'm surprised people are extending such effort.

It has dreadful networking...and image previewing isn't great...

Quick look and improved Autofs

Both those issues are fixed in Leopard, and people are still moaning...

I'm guessing that some people just like to complain. It makes them feel good to release a bit of tension. This isn't always MacRumors it's MacCounseling.

As for Leopard. I'll say this bluntly. I could see not upgrading if you have a fairly slow G4. If you have a G5 and up and more imporantly a good GPU in your computer you are C-R-A-Z-Y not to upgrade.

The UI in Leopard is rendered over a dedicated thread to the GPU. OS X 10.4.x and other other version prior will NEVER be as fast as a Leopard Mac with UI rendering.

I use Spotlight sparingly because it's a bit slow. That's gone...it's fast and supports boolean searches. Plus I can search shared computers connected via Bonjour. That's a substantial upgrade.

Quick look. I think Preview basically sucks. The only reason why I use it is because it loads faster than Acrobat Reader or any other image viewer I have. With Quick look I don't have to open anything.

1. Choose file
2. Press Spacebar

Done. Come on folks this is a usability homerun.

I want to automate more of my computer and while Jobs didn't give any attention to it Automator 2 now is faster and more flexible and has a recorder that records your "actions" (like the old Applescript recorder but better). I'm definitely going to put it to use.

Finder- It doesn't beachball as much (yay) it doesn't freeze when umounting network volumes (double yay) and it manages my media better. Multithreading should improve so that large file copies don't suck either.

Quicktime- Not shown....new video capturing features based on new 64-bit API. Apple will likely talk about this more when Leopard officially ships.

Mail- forget the HTML emails..that's not what you should be looking at. It's the return of Apple Data Detectors. Being able to make calendar events, add contacts from email is huge to me. The easy way to make notes and To Dos is a productivity bonanza for me.

Now I understand peoples frustration. Steve Jobs said there would be "Top Secret" features and you started thinking about nuclear powered Macs with 42" OLED screens with Bluetooth 4.0. That's not happening. What "is" happening is an impressive sweeting of Mac OS X that easily exceeds the improvements we saw going from 10.3-10.4. I predict Leopard will be with us for 3 years. Apple's going to have to really make 10.6 very good if they want to get people off of a mature Leopard because it has so many features and new frameworks that are going to make app creation and performance keen.

This counseling session is Pro Bono...I may have to charge you guys next time

 

[ricksbrain]

It would be funny is Microsoft did a side-by-side comparison of Vista and OS X and pointed out how Apple ripped off their default background, the transparent UI-elements and the like . That said, I kinda do like the new Desktop. The transparent menubar does look a bit "meh" right now, but I'll reserve my judgement 'till I have actually used it.

In the grand scheme, I really think something like this may be in the cards, but from Apple. Imagine new Get-A-Mac ads where direct comparisons of apparently similar features reveal that Apple's are useful, whereas Windows' are basically cosmetic. This could be done very tastefully and come across as substantive. In fact, young Mac would appear more thoughtful and adult than PC who's concerned with coming across as hip.

 

[nuckinfutz]

It's blatantly obvious why Apple made the menu bar translucent.

Whenever you look at a good desktop the one thing that stands out like a sore thumb is the whitish greyish menu bar.

You can easily see the effect of adding a bit of translucenty in leopard. The desktop now feels like a cohesive picture yet the menu bar is still legible.

The Dock is a little awkward..I think they should shrink the shelf ever so slightly. It will still maintain the effect at any rate.

Funny thing about the Stacks as a demo of Core Animation. I've read some developers state that that was the most boring of CA demos. Basically Stacks is CA doing a simple list view or grid view. Apple has some spicier CA demos and I think they'll trot them out when Leopard actually ships.

We must not assume that Apple hasn't left some "meat on the bone"

They haven't demoed Resolution Independence
They haven't demoed the new Quicktime capture features
They haven't demoed Image Kit
They haven't demoed any audio features

People that have seen the keynote haven't even seen half of Leopard. There's a lot more changes.

 

[johngordon]

Stacks looked really cool, I love the downloads stack-brilliant. I hope that there is a preferences option to straighten the stack and get rid of the fanning effect. Not because I don't like it, I do. But so that people who don't like the fanning can override it.

The grid view?

 

[dgdosen]

I wouldn't call the menu bar translucent...

It's blatantly obvious why Apple made the menu bar translucent.

Sure, maybe they've doctored it to make it appear that way, but all they've done is adopt colors from the background.

There is no translucency. It would be cool of the app borders were translucent however...

 

[CoreWeb]

Sure, maybe they've doctored it to make it appear that way, but all they've done is adopt colors from the background.

There is no translucency. It would be cool of the app borders were translucent however...

You mean like Vista? No way. Now, there are other things Apple could do. I think that the show/hide toolbar button is a very very nice button, and wish it were in ALL software (such as Safari). I love having Mail open with the toolbar closed.

And, though it is impossible to size a window by grabbing its edges on Mac, I really like the edge-to-edge look, so if Apple could find a convenient way to do both, I would be very happy.

 

[BGil]

Yes because the keynote was so expensive(free).

Here's an interesting thing about those who need to be on Paxil post Apple Keynote. I've noticed that 8 out of 10 complainers never articulate exactly what they hell they were expecting. You will typically read this.

"I can't see anything in Leopard worth upgrading for" "There are no major features in Leopard that I'd use"

The next question is an obvious one that many of us want to know. "What exactly is missing?"

"Fix the ***** Finder" was the Mac Geek Mantra....it's been fixed.

Search has improved in speed and accuracy (Booleans)

Productivity nuts will like that 3rd party apps can read/write iCal data...finally unified calendar data.

Text heads will love the new Core Text features for faster rendering

Every user can enjoy improved multi-threading with core affinity

Because someone isn't savvy enough to understand and articulate their position doesn't make that position correct or incorrect. These are discussions boards. Feel free to expound.

BGil ..thanks for the post on WPF. Whether we have disagreements or not on these boards the key thing is that we have the opportunity to benefit from our discussion by learning something.

The one thing I detest on messageboards are high noise to signal ratios. Hell if you got a beef with a product tell us why and what ails you. This is MacRumorsCounseling

None of that is worhty of the "we have to keep some features secret so Microsoft doesn't copy them" crap that Apple was feeding us. Apple made it seem like all the "secret features" were going to blow Vista away and they didn't deliver on that... especially considering they delayed Leopard from it's original "late 2006/early 2007" to "Spring 2007" and then again to "October 2007".
The original promise of Leopard was that it would come out about the same time as Vista but now it's coming out about a year late and in reality MIcrosoft already have many of Leopards new features implemented in Vista (Time Machine, Icon Previews, Document Previews, Boolean and networked search, Remote Desktop, Remote Sharing, Support for Intel Roboson, res independent architecture, 64-bit).
That's so far from the impression they (Apple) painted for us that I can't help but be disappointed.

To me it looks like Apple has

 

[Scottgfx]

None of that is worhty of the "we have to keep some features secret so Microsoft doesn't copy them" crap that Apple was feeding us. Apple made it seem like all the "secret features" were going to blow Vista away and they didn't deliver on that..

Hmmm. Are you sure you've seen all of the "secret" features? Are you sure Steve isn't holding something back? I'm sure he is, because it's all about keeping you happy.

 

[72930]

You mean like Vista? No way. Now, there are other things Apple could do. I think that the show/hide toolbar button is a very very nice button, and wish it were in ALL software (such as Safari). I love having Mail open with the toolbar closed.

Try CMD+Shift+\

You can then press the combo again to have it back, or just CMD+L for a quick address or search

 

[Project]

WPF is NOT cross platform.

Silverlight is a subset of WPF, so please lets not jump ahead of ourselves.

 

[Benmossm]

Test Run

Just tried out Leopard at a friends house. Time Machine rocks my socks off

 

[Simon R.]

Hmmm. Are you sure you've seen all of the "secret" features? Are you sure Steve isn't holding something back? I'm sure he is, because it's all about keeping you happy.

That is just (fanboy) speculation, which has been going on since Leopard was first announced. Since then, whenever we hear news or rumors about Leopard and there are nothing of those "secret features", people go "oooh but they will be announced later." But really, seriously... even the most die hard Apple fanboy said it would be at WWDC we would see all those "top secret" new features. And now we didn't. Now the fan boys go "we will see it when it is released". C'mon... you don't seriously believe that do you...

 

[whooleytoo]

People that have seen the keynote haven't even seen half of Leopard. There's a lot more changes.

That's probably my chief complaint after WWDC - Leopard looks like a solid update, but the keynote did a good job of hiding that.

A 3D dock that takes up more space than it needs to? Distracting reflections? A view designed for browsing your album art used as an app launcher? The ability to put popup folders at the bottom of the screen (...like we had in OS8 and was taken out, to many peoples' disappointment).