there useless, specially mail, cant do a bloody thing...
Maybe I'm wrong, but so far I think most people look at these apps too shortly to discover their desired functions and dismiss the app too early.
For example I had a discussion with someone about Keynote versus Powerpoint. He stated certain features were not present in Keynote but PP and for that reason PP would be more powerful and Keynote a toy. I explained him there is an easy way in Keynote to do what he wanted. That happend a few times and he gave up.
I think mail is the best e-Mail client I ever used. iCal is great, too. Addressbook fullfils it's purpose, but could be more beautiful. iChat is great, beautiful and works like a charme.
This feature will clearly benefit from Leopards integration of Resolution Independence (imagine this feature with crisp clear graphics and text). Another incarnation of this feature will change the screen-Dpi (small UI-elements=more space/big, but perfect crisp high-res UI=less space, but high res scaled UI)
Resolution independence does not make graphics crisper on a given display, in fact it does the opposite. Resolution independence tends to wash images out and make them blurry and harder to see unless you increase the DPI of the display. Why? Because most graphics is stored in raster format, and if you don't display them at 1:1 pixel-to-pixel, you're degrading the image. Once the entire UI of every app moves to SVG or something, then you MIGHT have something there, although getting a truly resolution-independent graphic even in SVG that looks good at all DPIs is really tough.
There's a reason this technology never caught on even though it's technically been around since the 80's. It makes things look worse.
Resolution independence does not make graphics crisper on a given display, in fact it does the opposite. Resolution independence tends to wash images out and make them blurry and harder to see unless you increase the DPI of the display. Why? Because most graphics is stored in raster format, and if you don't display them at 1:1 pixel-to-pixel, you're degrading the image. Once the entire UI of every app moves to SVG or something, then you MIGHT have something there, although getting a truly resolution-independent graphic even in SVG that looks good at all DPIs is really tough.
There's a reason this technology never caught on even though it's technically been around since the 80's. It makes things look worse.
You don't understand. The way you describe it is already present in Tiger. Partly as a simple zoom. Partly as the dpi-slider in the developer-tools (already present vektor elements in Tiger scale perfect and crisp!).
The big and necessary step forward in Leopard is to implement more elements as either vector-graphics or as bitmaps in different pre-scaled sizes (like the icons - look at the smooth scaling in the dock!).
My own wild ass predictions... (since MOSR is down and the rumors are mostly boring )
Licensing is the biggie for WWDC. Sony announces the new Playstation is a Mac. Well, not a full blown Mac but a media Mac (runs iTunes, iPhoto, Front Row, downloads and plays iTunes movies, etc.). Sony music players also work with iTunes. Apple announces that Leopard will run Playstation games.
It probably won't happen, but I'm thinking it might be time to open iTunes up. Wouldn't that knock MS's Zune plans for a loop? Oh, and here's a link that might be relevant...http://www.macsimumnews.com/index.ph...intel_platform
Resolution independence does not make graphics crisper on a given display, in fact it does the opposite. Resolution independence tends to wash images out and make them blurry and harder to see unless you increase the DPI of the display. Why? Because most graphics is stored in raster format, and if you don't display them at 1:1 pixel-to-pixel, you're degrading the image. Once the entire UI of every app moves to SVG or something, then you MIGHT have something there, although getting a truly resolution-independent graphic even in SVG that looks good at all DPIs is really tough.
There's a reason this technology never caught on even though it's technically been around since the 80's. It makes things look worse.
I think the dock icons and preview icons show that there's plenty of room in the technology, all those icons are generated at 128px square and downscaled to the user's preference. My desire for resolution independence is to open the way to higher DPI desktop displays but still allow the physical text size to remain as intended, at the native resolution of the screen. I'd love to get that 200dpi screen but I don't want micron text and UI elements.
Isn't the current support based on the Linux driver?
No, it's based on FreeBSD's implementation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Macvault
Ha! iCal, Mail, and Address Book are piles of junk compared to Microsoft Outlook! Apple seems to have a way of over-simplifying these apps to the point where they're not very usefull or totally lack the features, integration, and smootheness found in competing apps, such as Outlook.
When will Apple grow these apps up and give us reall, solid, enterprise features with a smooth UI????
As soon as iCal, Mail and Address Book are "enterprise" apps, which they aren't. Outlook is a business app, whereas Apple's suite is for consumers. Two completely different areas. A more suitable comparison would be Windows Calendar, Windows Mail (née Outlook Express) and Windows Address Book, all of which are roughly as featureful as Apple's counterparts.
I agree with the consensus that the "rumors" released so far don't amount to much. IMHO, that means Apple's got something big under wraps. I think we're in for some real "" next week.
actually, despite my own nonplused (1984 newspeak! ) reaction to the up-to-now stated sub-superhuman abilities of the update, the gut is sitting there chanting away that Apple isn't goofy enough to have publicly, as beta, announced their only really groovy bit of the update: BootCamp. Even as dry as the ground is, and as clear as the sky is, I can't help but think, "Tut, tut! Looks like rain!'
But we all know how accurate gut feelings are, right? ;-D
crap, I just had a big long post with lots of really good points in it, and accidentally hit the wrong red close button and lost it all. double-crap!
oh well: here were my main points:
1) I don't think this is going to be a world-shattering update. It seems more market-driven than technology-driven. I felt that way about Tiger--too many bugs in its main feature (spotlight) and too much eyecandy (dashboard), so I never upgraded. Panther is the only OSX release I've ever paid for (mostly because of the sidebar in the finder windows...I can't imagine working without it now).
2) People are mostly talking about app updates, not OS updates. Why, for instance, should RSS support in Safari be tied to the OS?
3) I like most of Apple's included apps and use most of them daily (Safari, Mail, iChat--btw, I have never had a problem with video-conferencing with my parents...who are the proto-typical technologically ignorant old folks; my biggest problem is when they forget to open the iSight's iris ).
4) I understand a lot of these apps could stand to have some major improvements if they are going to compete with, say, Outlook. But we need to remember that Apple needs to tread carefully with MS.
5) I honestly like and use iCal. I find it much more user-friendly than Outlook on my work PC. My biggest gripe is that I wish it were more flexible in what it displays. Again, I understand that individuals and small organizations need more things that should probably be done; I'm just not one of those people.
6) Address Book is a big problem for me. What I'd like is a type of organizational relationship web. For instance, when entering a contact, I'd like to be able to choose the type of relationship I have with that person (friend, wife/husband/etc, uncle, manager, employee, co-worker, mother, step-sister, client, secretary, etc.), and then be able to subcategorize this contact too; for instance, if I label "Chris" as a "brother," then an "of" would pop up and give me a list that includes "me," all my current contacts, and a "new contact" option. Then give a view option where you can view and edit/tweak a particular web graphically. For families, boom, instant family trees. Or instant lables for holiday cards or reminders for birthdays. For organizations, instant managerial flow charts. Editing in the graphical view would be necessary so that you could tweak or specify different relationships, say, for divorced or unmarried parents, or for different types of managers and underlings.
5) One easy thing to do with Address Book would be to add a few buttons: "Email contact/group"; "Text message" (with a few options like iChat, Blackberry, cell-phone, etc.). If Apple makes a phone, then an obvious addition would be "Call contact." (They could probably do this even without their own phone...just syncing with your own BT phone and dialling the # for you).
6) Finally, I'd like to see Apple be more flexible with .Mac. Since they seem to be integrating .Mac more and more, I'd like to see them give a year's sub with every new Mac and every new OS upgrade/purchase. They'd probably end up having loads more subscribers. In addition, they should also allow administrators to duplicate on a local server any of .Mac's abilities. As an alternative, they should offer an institutional .Mac rate for large customers, and offer free or reduced hosting for charities and non-profits. (This is related to my gripe that Apple has unnecessarily tied a lot of features in iLife '06 to .Mac; I have around 250MB avaliable from my ISP that I don't do anything with right now. If I could have used that space to publish web-pages and photocasts, I would have paid the $80; but paying $180 was too much for the priviledge.)
actually, despite my own nonplused (1984 newspeak! ) reaction to the up-to-now stated sub-superhuman abilities of the update, the gut is sitting there chanting away that Apple isn't goofy enough to have publicly, as beta, announced their only really groovy bit of the update: BootCamp. Even as dry as the ground is, and as clear as the sky is, I can't help but think, "Tut, tut! Looks like rain!'
But we all know how accurate gut feelings are, right? ;-D
Seems you don't really understand why they had to announce Boot Camp that early. Otherwise they would really have liked to hold even that boring POS back.
Ha! iCal, Mail, and Address Book are piles of junk compared to Microsoft Outlook! Apple seems to have a way of over-simplifying these apps to the point where they're not very usefull or totally lack the features, integration, and smootheness found in competing apps, such as Outlook.
When will Apple grow these apps up and give us reall, solid, enterprise features with a smooth UI????
As soon as iCal, Mail and Address Book are "enterprise" apps, which they aren't. Outlook is a business app, whereas Apple's suite is for consumers. Two completely different areas. A more suitable comparison would be Windows Calendar, Windows Mail (née Outlook Express) and Windows Address Book, all of which are roughly as featureful as Apple's counterparts.
Your comparison makes no sense.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!
Outlook is solid???!!!!
ROTFLMAOSMTIPMS
And yes, I use it every day too. :P
And yes, I three finger salute it every day too. :P
Multiple TIMES, every day.
"How many processes do YOU have running in the background?! Ha! I've got you beat! I'm up to 87! But I wonder why my computer is running so slow..." - Bill, from down the hall
For instance, when entering a contact, I'd like to be able to choose the type of relationship I have with that person (friend, wife/husband/etc, uncle, manager, employee, co-worker, mother, step-sister, client, secretary, etc.), and then be able to subcategorize this contact too; for instance, if I label "Chris" as a "brother," then an "of" would pop up and give me a list that includes "me," all my current contacts, and a "new contact" option. Then give a view option where you can view and edit/tweak a particular web graphically. For families, boom, instant family trees. Or instant lables for holiday cards or reminders for birthdays. For organizations, instant managerial flow charts. Editing in the graphical view would be necessary so that you could tweak or specify different relationships, say, for divorced or unmarried parents, or for different types of managers and underlings.
These are really good suggestions. Make the address book much more personalized. Count me in.
Hmm, how is that now? If I DID understand why they had to announce it early, then they would have held it back? Wow! I didn't know I was THAT special! But really, how do you figure that I don't understand the early announcement?
They would have held it back, if they could.
What you write sounds like: "They announced Boot Camp, because it's the only interesting feature."
Thats not true and makes me think you don't understand the circumstances around the bootcamp-announcement early this year.
And yes, I three finger salute it every day too. :P
Multiple TIMES, every day.
I use Outlook all the time at work (on a PC). Can't say that I give it the bird that often, but I honestly think it sucks (and when it does crap out on me, it's been impressive - I lost all of my e-mail when it froze on me once). Haven't used iCal enough to make a comparison, but if it weren't for the fact that Outlook is integrated into the rest of Office (which I use all the time), I'd be looking for something far less cumbersome.
IMO, Outlook is definitely the "ugly sister" of the MS Office suite.
Ha! iCal, Mail, and Address Book are piles of junk compared to Microsoft Outlook! Apple seems to have a way of over-simplifying these apps to the point where they're not very usefull or totally lack the features, integration, and smootheness found in competing apps, such as Outlook.
When will Apple grow these apps up and give us reall, solid, enterprise features with a smooth UI????
I have to use Outlook at work and I think it's an over cluttered piece of shit. When I go home on my Mac I breathe a sign of relief when checking my mail, etc...
Considering the very long time Apple has been working on Leopard I would expect a lot of major changes - many of them stuff that I (as a non-geek user) won't even try to understand. At my level of ignorance I would lump these enhancements/improvements into a group that relate to increasing speed for all Macs. Make the Mac run faster and Steve J will be happy.
As for the bits & pieces:
iChat. I've used this while traveling on overseas business trips and really enjoyed it - got to chat with the wife (and 4 year old granddaughter) from a hotel room in Korea. The problem is that not all hotels have high speed access. It would therefore be nice if there was a slower option for dial up lines. It would be rough on the video side, but worth it.
Virtual Computing. I would love to see Steve J mention that Apple now has an investment in Parallels. Just enough to keep MS from buying it and stripping it down like they did with VPC. The only way I was able to switch to a Mac was the ability to use VPC to demo a small proprietary app. I would hate to see Parallels screwed up like VPC.
General enhancements. Apple has had time to work on everything from Finder to Mail to iCal and I think we'll see enhancements to all of these type of apps. the improvements will, in part, be to convince the average user to spend the money on upgrades.
Overall, I really interested in seeing where Apple has been investing their time and dollars for 18 months. That's a long time in the OS X environment and I think (hope?) that this investment will life the entire OS X up a noticeable notch.
I except a new finder, complete recoded and hopefully on the intel side highly optimized OS X with the Intel compilers.
My Macbook flies, if you don't count the finder. There is now reason ever when loading files, browsing network shares, or anything like that i SHOULD ever see a beachball.
I expect apple to kill the beachball, by rewriting the finder from scratch.
Comments
i concur
there useless, specially mail, cant do a bloody thing...
Maybe I'm wrong, but so far I think most people look at these apps too shortly to discover their desired functions and dismiss the app too early.
For example I had a discussion with someone about Keynote versus Powerpoint. He stated certain features were not present in Keynote but PP and for that reason PP would be more powerful and Keynote a toy. I explained him there is an easy way in Keynote to do what he wanted. That happend a few times and he gave up.
I think mail is the best e-Mail client I ever used. iCal is great, too. Addressbook fullfils it's purpose, but could be more beautiful. iChat is great, beautiful and works like a charme.
What the hell are you missing in these apps?
This feature will clearly benefit from Leopards integration of Resolution Independence (imagine this feature with crisp clear graphics and text). Another incarnation of this feature will change the screen-Dpi (small UI-elements=more space/big, but perfect crisp high-res UI=less space, but high res scaled UI)
Resolution independence does not make graphics crisper on a given display, in fact it does the opposite. Resolution independence tends to wash images out and make them blurry and harder to see unless you increase the DPI of the display. Why? Because most graphics is stored in raster format, and if you don't display them at 1:1 pixel-to-pixel, you're degrading the image. Once the entire UI of every app moves to SVG or something, then you MIGHT have something there, although getting a truly resolution-independent graphic even in SVG that looks good at all DPIs is really tough.
There's a reason this technology never caught on even though it's technically been around since the 80's. It makes things look worse.
Resolution independence does not make graphics crisper on a given display, in fact it does the opposite. Resolution independence tends to wash images out and make them blurry and harder to see unless you increase the DPI of the display. Why? Because most graphics is stored in raster format, and if you don't display them at 1:1 pixel-to-pixel, you're degrading the image. Once the entire UI of every app moves to SVG or something, then you MIGHT have something there, although getting a truly resolution-independent graphic even in SVG that looks good at all DPIs is really tough.
There's a reason this technology never caught on even though it's technically been around since the 80's. It makes things look worse.
You don't understand. The way you describe it is already present in Tiger. Partly as a simple zoom. Partly as the dpi-slider in the developer-tools (already present vektor elements in Tiger scale perfect and crisp!).
The big and necessary step forward in Leopard is to implement more elements as either vector-graphics or as bitmaps in different pre-scaled sizes (like the icons - look at the smooth scaling in the dock!).
Ha! iCal, Mail, and Address Book are piles of junk compared to Microsoft Outlook!
I work with outlook 2003 everyday on my work pc and though it's allright there is not a single feature I use - ever - that Mail does not have.
the calendaring part quite frankly sucks to my taste. I just use google calendar. Simple. Just works. Available on any computer with internet.
iCal may be the weakest of the iApps, but it along with the others gets the job done with a style and ease Microsoft cannot approach.
Licensing is the biggie for WWDC. Sony announces the new Playstation is a Mac. Well, not a full blown Mac but a media Mac (runs iTunes, iPhoto, Front Row, downloads and plays iTunes movies, etc.). Sony music players also work with iTunes. Apple announces that Leopard will run Playstation games.
It probably won't happen, but I'm thinking it might be time to open iTunes up. Wouldn't that knock MS's Zune plans for a loop? Oh, and here's a link that might be relevant...http://www.macsimumnews.com/index.ph...intel_platform
Resolution independence does not make graphics crisper on a given display, in fact it does the opposite. Resolution independence tends to wash images out and make them blurry and harder to see unless you increase the DPI of the display. Why? Because most graphics is stored in raster format, and if you don't display them at 1:1 pixel-to-pixel, you're degrading the image. Once the entire UI of every app moves to SVG or something, then you MIGHT have something there, although getting a truly resolution-independent graphic even in SVG that looks good at all DPIs is really tough.
There's a reason this technology never caught on even though it's technically been around since the 80's. It makes things look worse.
I think the dock icons and preview icons show that there's plenty of room in the technology, all those icons are generated at 128px square and downscaled to the user's preference. My desire for resolution independence is to open the way to higher DPI desktop displays but still allow the physical text size to remain as intended, at the native resolution of the screen. I'd love to get that 200dpi screen but I don't want micron text and UI elements.
Isn't the current support based on the Linux driver?
No, it's based on FreeBSD's implementation.
Ha! iCal, Mail, and Address Book are piles of junk compared to Microsoft Outlook! Apple seems to have a way of over-simplifying these apps to the point where they're not very usefull or totally lack the features, integration, and smootheness found in competing apps, such as Outlook.
When will Apple grow these apps up and give us reall, solid, enterprise features with a smooth UI????
As soon as iCal, Mail and Address Book are "enterprise" apps, which they aren't. Outlook is a business app, whereas Apple's suite is for consumers. Two completely different areas. A more suitable comparison would be Windows Calendar, Windows Mail (née Outlook Express) and Windows Address Book, all of which are roughly as featureful as Apple's counterparts.
Your comparison makes no sense.
I agree with the consensus that the "rumors" released so far don't amount to much. IMHO, that means Apple's got something big under wraps. I think we're in for some real "
actually, despite my own nonplused (1984 newspeak!
But we all know how accurate gut feelings are, right? ;-D
oh well: here were my main points:
1) I don't think this is going to be a world-shattering update. It seems more market-driven than technology-driven. I felt that way about Tiger--too many bugs in its main feature (spotlight) and too much eyecandy (dashboard), so I never upgraded. Panther is the only OSX release I've ever paid for (mostly because of the sidebar in the finder windows...I can't imagine working without it now).
2) People are mostly talking about app updates, not OS updates. Why, for instance, should RSS support in Safari be tied to the OS?
3) I like most of Apple's included apps and use most of them daily (Safari, Mail, iChat--btw, I have never had a problem with video-conferencing with my parents...who are the proto-typical technologically ignorant old folks; my biggest problem is when they forget to open the iSight's iris
4) I understand a lot of these apps could stand to have some major improvements if they are going to compete with, say, Outlook. But we need to remember that Apple needs to tread carefully with MS.
5) I honestly like and use iCal. I find it much more user-friendly than Outlook on my work PC. My biggest gripe is that I wish it were more flexible in what it displays. Again, I understand that individuals and small organizations need more things that should probably be done; I'm just not one of those people.
6) Address Book is a big problem for me. What I'd like is a type of organizational relationship web. For instance, when entering a contact, I'd like to be able to choose the type of relationship I have with that person (friend, wife/husband/etc, uncle, manager, employee, co-worker, mother, step-sister, client, secretary, etc.), and then be able to subcategorize this contact too; for instance, if I label "Chris" as a "brother," then an "of" would pop up and give me a list that includes "me," all my current contacts, and a "new contact" option. Then give a view option where you can view and edit/tweak a particular web graphically. For families, boom, instant family trees. Or instant lables for holiday cards or reminders for birthdays. For organizations, instant managerial flow charts. Editing in the graphical view would be necessary so that you could tweak or specify different relationships, say, for divorced or unmarried parents, or for different types of managers and underlings.
5) One easy thing to do with Address Book would be to add a few buttons: "Email contact/group"; "Text message" (with a few options like iChat, Blackberry, cell-phone, etc.). If Apple makes a phone, then an obvious addition would be "Call contact." (They could probably do this even without their own phone...just syncing with your own BT phone and dialling the # for you).
6) Finally, I'd like to see Apple be more flexible with .Mac. Since they seem to be integrating .Mac more and more, I'd like to see them give a year's sub with every new Mac and every new OS upgrade/purchase. They'd probably end up having loads more subscribers. In addition, they should also allow administrators to duplicate on a local server any of .Mac's abilities. As an alternative, they should offer an institutional .Mac rate for large customers, and offer free or reduced hosting for charities and non-profits. (This is related to my gripe that Apple has unnecessarily tied a lot of features in iLife '06 to .Mac; I have around 250MB avaliable from my ISP that I don't do anything with right now. If I could have used that space to publish web-pages and photocasts, I would have paid the $80; but paying $180 was too much for the priviledge.)
actually, despite my own nonplused (1984 newspeak!
But we all know how accurate gut feelings are, right? ;-D
Seems you don't really understand why they had to announce Boot Camp that early. Otherwise they would really have liked to hold even that boring POS back.
Ha! iCal, Mail, and Address Book are piles of junk compared to Microsoft Outlook! Apple seems to have a way of over-simplifying these apps to the point where they're not very usefull or totally lack the features, integration, and smootheness found in competing apps, such as Outlook.
When will Apple grow these apps up and give us reall, solid, enterprise features with a smooth UI????
As soon as iCal, Mail and Address Book are "enterprise" apps, which they aren't. Outlook is a business app, whereas Apple's suite is for consumers. Two completely different areas. A more suitable comparison would be Windows Calendar, Windows Mail (née Outlook Express) and Windows Address Book, all of which are roughly as featureful as Apple's counterparts.
Your comparison makes no sense.
Outlook is solid???!!!!
And yes, I use it every day too. :P
And yes, I three finger salute it every day too. :P
Multiple TIMES, every day.
"How many processes do YOU have running in the background?! Ha! I've got you beat! I'm up to 87! But I wonder why my computer is running so slow..." - Bill, from down the hall
For instance, when entering a contact, I'd like to be able to choose the type of relationship I have with that person (friend, wife/husband/etc, uncle, manager, employee, co-worker, mother, step-sister, client, secretary, etc.), and then be able to subcategorize this contact too; for instance, if I label "Chris" as a "brother," then an "of" would pop up and give me a list that includes "me," all my current contacts, and a "new contact" option. Then give a view option where you can view and edit/tweak a particular web graphically. For families, boom, instant family trees. Or instant lables for holiday cards or reminders for birthdays. For organizations, instant managerial flow charts. Editing in the graphical view would be necessary so that you could tweak or specify different relationships, say, for divorced or unmarried parents, or for different types of managers and underlings.
These are really good suggestions. Make the address book much more personalized. Count me in.
These are really good suggestions. Make the address book much more personalized. Count me in.
I agree. These should be dropped off at Apple feedback. After Leopard, of course, in case it's already in there....
Hmm, how is that now? If I DID understand why they had to announce it early, then they would have held it back? Wow! I didn't know I was THAT special!
They would have held it back, if they could.
What you write sounds like: "They announced Boot Camp, because it's the only interesting feature."
Thats not true and makes me think you don't understand the circumstances around the bootcamp-announcement early this year.
Outlook is solid???!!!!
And yes, I use it every day too. :P
And yes, I three finger salute it every day too. :P
Multiple TIMES, every day.
I use Outlook all the time at work (on a PC). Can't say that I give it the bird that often, but I honestly think it sucks (and when it does crap out on me, it's been impressive - I lost all of my e-mail when it froze on me once). Haven't used iCal enough to make a comparison, but if it weren't for the fact that Outlook is integrated into the rest of Office (which I use all the time), I'd be looking for something far less cumbersome.
IMO, Outlook is definitely the "ugly sister" of the MS Office suite.
Ha! iCal, Mail, and Address Book are piles of junk compared to Microsoft Outlook! Apple seems to have a way of over-simplifying these apps to the point where they're not very usefull or totally lack the features, integration, and smootheness found in competing apps, such as Outlook.
When will Apple grow these apps up and give us reall, solid, enterprise features with a smooth UI????
I have to use Outlook at work and I think it's an over cluttered piece of shit. When I go home on my Mac I breathe a sign of relief when checking my mail, etc...
As for the bits & pieces:
iChat. I've used this while traveling on overseas business trips and really enjoyed it - got to chat with the wife (and 4 year old granddaughter) from a hotel room in Korea. The problem is that not all hotels have high speed access. It would therefore be nice if there was a slower option for dial up lines. It would be rough on the video side, but worth it.
Virtual Computing. I would love to see Steve J mention that Apple now has an investment in Parallels. Just enough to keep MS from buying it and stripping it down like they did with VPC. The only way I was able to switch to a Mac was the ability to use VPC to demo a small proprietary app. I would hate to see Parallels screwed up like VPC.
General enhancements. Apple has had time to work on everything from Finder to Mail to iCal and I think we'll see enhancements to all of these type of apps. the improvements will, in part, be to convince the average user to spend the money on upgrades.
Overall, I really interested in seeing where Apple has been investing their time and dollars for 18 months. That's a long time in the OS X environment and I think (hope?) that this investment will life the entire OS X up a noticeable notch.
My Macbook flies, if you don't count the finder. There is now reason ever when loading files, browsing network shares, or anything like that i SHOULD ever see a beachball.
I expect apple to kill the beachball, by rewriting the finder from scratch.