Anyone else "underwhelmed" by 10.5 announcement?
Don't get me wrong, some pretty cool stuff, and yes, this was a developer-targeted show (and yes yes, there are a few 'top secret' things still to be showed off) but nothing really took me by surprise as a "MUST HAVE" feature that makes me wanna have 10.5, like, NOW
Time Machine: Cute and just cool to look at, but marginally useful (unless you're the most distracted and disorganized person in the world)
Mail: Finally catching up with Entourage, still, nothing really ground breaking
iChat: Nice, also not mouth watering. At least it finally has screen sharing.. yeay.. I can help my mom troublshoot stuff easier now..
Spaces: Nice, but just Apple's implementation thats been around for a long time (if they include the hack to allow you to change spaces by whacking the side of your Macbook, then that would be cool)
Dashboard, Spotlight, iCal... just updates...
So yeah, some nice stuff, but what about the juicy underlying stuff? Has filesharing been improved any (filesharing is just the worst crap in OS X imo), does FTP through finder actually usable? What about WinXP integration and the possibility of "parallels" type apps?
Anyway, nice stuff.. but 2 years to come up with this stuff? Hmmmm...
Time Machine: Cute and just cool to look at, but marginally useful (unless you're the most distracted and disorganized person in the world)
Mail: Finally catching up with Entourage, still, nothing really ground breaking
iChat: Nice, also not mouth watering. At least it finally has screen sharing.. yeay.. I can help my mom troublshoot stuff easier now..
Spaces: Nice, but just Apple's implementation thats been around for a long time (if they include the hack to allow you to change spaces by whacking the side of your Macbook, then that would be cool)
Dashboard, Spotlight, iCal... just updates...
So yeah, some nice stuff, but what about the juicy underlying stuff? Has filesharing been improved any (filesharing is just the worst crap in OS X imo), does FTP through finder actually usable? What about WinXP integration and the possibility of "parallels" type apps?
Anyway, nice stuff.. but 2 years to come up with this stuff? Hmmmm...
Comments
I Like Time Machine and Places but definitely nothing mind-blowing or completely new.
and sorry, but what the f(^% is corny email stationary doing in a keynote on osX??
I'm kind of expecting some good 'top secret' enhancements to osX not just incremental app and technology updates...
Oh, and one more thing: STOP the microsoft bashing, apple! It makes your company look like a spoiled 13 year old so cut it out!!
And if the "top secret" stuff is just a Unified UI across the entire OS, I'll continue to be seriously underwhelmed.
But it isn't. And I don't think I will be. But we'll just have to wait and see.
anyway, that's my take on it.
I just really hope they do something about file sharing... It was fine until MacOS 9.. then OSX just went off and killed the whole idea of "ease of use". Hell, Windows is a hundreds times easier in comparison! Right click folder -> share this folder -> ok, done.
I may actually wait a while before getting Leopard... at least as it stands today.
We'll see what the "top secret sauce" is whenever it comes out..
10.1: Should have been 10.0.
10.2: Sherlock, iChat.
10.3: Expose, Safari.
10.4: Spotlight, dashboard.
Among other things, of course. But, outside of the move from 9 to X, or maybe 6 to 7, I've never felt the earth move.
Time Machine: best backup mechanism I've seen anywhere.
Spaces: best implementation of Virtual Desktops I've seen (and I've tried a lot of really horrible virtual desktop clients)
64-bit top to bottom: big news for developers. I can't wait to use goobs of memory in my apps.
Core Animation: great developer tool to create super visually rich applications.
To-Do & Notes service: about time that Mail got these MS Outlook features. They are done right however as a service so any app can access them nicely.
Apple releases those features that developers can build upon. The snazzy UI stuff will come later.
Another thought: this preview presentation was pretty long and they only demoed 10 features. Maybe Apple just didn't have enough time to demo everything in one Keynote. It could well be that there is so much new stuff in Leopard that is has to be spread out over the next few months. We might be in for 10 new features every month until it is released. What do you think?
We might be in for 10 new features every month until it is released. What do you think?
I think you need different medication
Time Machine- Like any backup tool it's not that exciting until you have to recover that file that was deleted of corrupted. Then it's a freakin lifesaver. I love the UI it shows what Core Data can do if that's what's behind TM. I'd give it an A- right now.
Mail 3.0- I agree nothing groundbreaking but I think the To Do's that sync with iCal will prove to be very nifty for home users who don't need biz level contact/calendar/scheduling. I give it a C+
iChat- Nice support for Gmails IM tool and with iSight being built in the features here stand a better chance of getting used. The collaboration features are a nice start in the right direction. I'd give it a solid B
Spaces- With the popularity of Parallels or VMware I think managing a clean windowing system will improve with Spaces. It's not groundbreaking and has been around for a while but Apple will popularize this feature for all users. This one gets a C
Dashboard- Nice feature in the ability to turn a webpage into a widget. I"d love to see that the memory footprint of widgets drops but we'll see. Dashcode is nice. Solid C
Spotlight- Boolean searches(finally) search by filetype, keyword or Author (yes!) Spotlight Server on Leopard Server. Built in and improved app launcher. "Quick Look" allows you to preview results in an overlay including QT movies without launching an app. Solid B here.
Core Animation- - Wow! I asked for Core 3D previously and I got more in the bargain. Core Animation is layer based. You can put multiple items on multiple layers and then keyframe them. Then you can spin the animation around in 3D space. Foks not only is this going to enabled Motion with z axis but EVERY app that has a need for such control or output will be able to do so and it's core to the system which means speed and availability! Get ready for the possibility of data info increasing exponentially as it can be represented in 3D and on many levels/layers. Solid A
Accessibility- Any improvements to this feature are welcome. Alex is a nice and natural sounding voice. I give Apple a C+ here
Was I knocked out? Nah. Do I expect that Apple has few gonzo features for us later on? Yup. Core Animation is the crown jewel here. It's going to enable the 3D interface that we all have conjectured about. I'm excited....hasta la vista vista.