Snow Leopard screenshots show interface tweaks

[AppleInsider]

A gallery of screenshots from the latest build of Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system showcases a handful of minor design tweaks that have been reported around the web in recent weeks.

The screenshots, published by World of Apple, come from Mac OS X 10.6 build 10A261, which was released to members of Apple's developer connection earlier this month.

New Keyboard Shortcuts Preference Pane

While it's rumored that Apple is keeping some more significant interface changes close to its chest at this time, a handful of subtle refinements have cropped up in versions of the software provided to third party developers, such as a revised Keyboard Shortcuts Preference pane modeled after the Finder, with commands organized into categories displayed in the left-hand column.

[:: Description redacted at the request of Apple::]

Snow Leopard's Keyboard Shortcuts panel has been redesigned with clarity in mind | Source: World of Apple.

New Put Back function

[:: Description redacted at the request of Apple::]

Put Back will return items placed in the Trash to their original location in the Mac OS X file system | Source: World of Apple.

Navigating Folders in Stacks

[:: Description redacted at the request of Apple::]

Snow Leopard will offer an interface for navigating nested folders in Stacks view | Source: World of Apple.

A video demonstrating this functionality has also been published.

Early release unlikely

Meanwhile, rumors of an early release of Snow Leopard are unlikely to come to pass. A presentation slide from one Apple director had raised hopes for a public release sometime during the first quarter of 2009, though developers speaking to both World of Apple and AppleInsider suggest this won't be technically possible given the current state of the software, which still requires considerable refinement.

Another rumor that may not come true, at least in its reported form, is the inclusion of QuickTime Pro features in the complimentary version of QuickTime Player that's due to ship with Snow Leopard. Since reports on the matter first surfaced earlier this month, people familiar with previous Mac OS X beta tests have reported that Apple routinely enabled Pro features in versions of QuickTime Player seeded with builds of both Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard to provide developers unfettered access to test those functions.

QuickLook Icons

QuickLook Finder icons, a feature present in some of the first external builds of Snow Leopard, have also disappeared in recent seedings.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[amac4me]

The Put Back function is a feature I've wanted to see in prior versions in Mac OS X. With each passing tid bit of Snow Leopard, the OS is looking as though it's going to be a great release.

[SpamSandwich]

Oh, just give me the old drop-down menu from OS9. I'm not impressed with the push to accommodate big icon graphics everywhere. Productivity suffers.

[hillstones]

I miss the "Put Away" feature from OS 8 & 9. It was very convenient. Put Back does seem to be more appropriately named since the item is put back where it came from. It sure took them long enough to restore that "Classic" feature.

[Marvin]

Originally Posted by amac4me

The Put Back function is a feature I've wanted to see in prior versions in Mac OS X. With each passing tid bit of Snow Leopard, the OS is looking as though it's going to be a great release.

Trouble is, it's a minor feature. Why not include these improvements for 10.5 in an update? Same with the Stacks feature - that's how Stacks should have worked in the first place.

No Quicktime Pro would be disappointing but expected. They should make it free for Mac users.

[Guartho]

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

Oh, just give me the old drop-down menu from OS9. I'm not impressed with the push to accommodate big icon graphics everywhere. Productivity suffers.

You can always put your applications folder on the dock and ctrl-click and check "View Contact As: List." Then your apps pop up in a list much like the old drop-down menu.

[Abster2core]

Originally Posted by Marvin

No Quicktime Pro would be disappointing but expected. They should make it free for Mac users.

Let's hope not.

Snow leopard includes QuickTIme X. Why go backward?

"Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone™, Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, which optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback." http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008...owleopard.html

Now if there is a QuickTime X Pro, I would expect that it is not free. And I would gladly pay the $30 or so for the upgrade if it is as functionally different as the current QuickTime v.s. QuickTime Pro is now.

[digitalclips]

Originally Posted by amac4me

The Put Back function is a feature I've wanted to see in prior versions in Mac OS X. With each passing tid bit of Snow Leopard, the OS is looking as though it's going to be a great release.

Command Z does a 'put back' now of sorts in Leopard if you need it but presumably it is a fuller functioned version of this. Yes I agree it looks like it will be a worthwhile upgrade.

[macosxp]

The site's not loading the video.

These features would be really cool, I've missed the limited stacks in Leopard, but I would still like those quick-look icons.

I was wondering when there was going to be a put back feature for the trash. I've used it many times when I was in XP but never saw it in Mac.

And, when are they going to give it a good wallpaper?! I mean dark pink outerspace?!

[wizard69]

There are a couple of things I'm very interested in seeing in Snow Leopard listed below.

1.
Will it enable GPU acceleration of video play back on my early 2008 MBP. There are obvious benefits here but I'm concerned that Apple may not support older hardware in this manner.

2.
Closely related is how far back will OpenCL support go?

3.
There are more questions too about the development environment such as what has changed. Specifically will Apple adopt Python 3. A quick move to Python three on Apples part would be huge in my mind.

4.
The issue with networking, via WiFi, on MBP - is it fixed yet? The constant hunting for a connection is still a huge use for it machine making some networks unusable. Worst the last update actually made WiFi worst on my machine. Is there any evidence that they threw in the towel here and implemented something new?




That video acceleration is important because it doesn't look like a replacement Mac will be had this year. As a side not it would be very interesting to know if people have seen GPU acceleration in the various parts of the OS yet. For example has the Finder or PDF rendering been accelerated by the use of GPUs in these prereleases?

It is sad that we have months to go before SL release, but I'm really hoping they focus real hard on quality control this time.

Dave

[dagamer34]

Originally Posted by wizard69

There are a couple of things I'm very interested in seeing in Snow Leopard listed below.

1.
Will it enable GPU acceleration of video play back on my early 2008 MBP. There are obvious benefits here but I'm concerned that Apple may not support older hardware in this manner.

2.
Closely related is how far back will OpenCL support go?

3.
There are more questions too about the development environment such as what has changed. Specifically will Apple adopt Python 3. A quick move to Python three on Apples part would be huge in my mind.

4.
The issue with networking, via WiFi, on MBP - is it fixed yet? The constant hunting for a connection is still a huge use for it machine making some networks unusable. Worst the last update actually made WiFi worst on my machine. Is there any evidence that they threw in the towel here and implemented something new?




That video acceleration is important because it doesn't look like a replacement Mac will be had this year. As a side not it would be very interesting to know if people have seen GPU acceleration in the various parts of the OS yet. For example has the Finder or PDF rendering been accelerated by the use of GPUs in these prereleases?

It is sad that we have months to go before SL release, but I'm really hoping they focus real hard on quality control this time.

Dave

PDF viewing has always been hardware accelerated, as that's the essence of Quartz Extreme introduced back in OS X 10.2. It's full hardware acceleration of video playback and custom-coded software routines that should be in OS X 10.6 (though newer Macs with the 9400M chipset already do 1080p playback on chip).

[elroth]

Originally Posted by digitalclips

Command Z does a 'put back' now of sorts in Leopard if you need it but presumably it is a fuller functioned version of this. Yes I agree it looks like it will be a worthwhile upgrade.

I think the point is that you can "Put Back" an item in the Trash even if you moved it there last week, or last month. That's cool.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by Marvin

Trouble is, it's a minor feature. Why not include these improvements for 10.5 in an update?

I can't figure out why this basic and very useful feature was not included with all versions of OS X. Perhaps their inclusion with SL is to give some user seen features that will get people to pony up the $129 for the update.

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by Marvin

Trouble is, it's a minor feature. Why not include these improvements for 10.5 in an update? Same with the Stacks feature - that's how Stacks should have worked in the first place. ...

I don't think you know if it's a "minor feature" or not.

Sure it seems trivial, but the fact that they dropped this popular feature when they moved to OS-X, and haven't implemented it since even though people have been asking for it, kind of argues against the idea that it's a minor feature or easy to do.

Maybe it's hard to do (or to do right). Maybe they had to wait for a Cocoa finder to do it.

[gmcalpin]

FAKE.

Oh, wait, I thought we were still talking about the Mac mini.

[8CoreWhore]

WOA is DOA - all the hits have knocked them offline. AI now wields the digg effect.

[Cubert]

Me thinks I spy a few new Utilities icons.

Don't have my Mac here at work to check the Leopard icons to see - stuck on Winblows, as usual.

[Richard Hallas]

Regarding stacks navigation...

Somebody please tell me that Apple has restored the ability for List-style stacks (i.e. the menus, like we had in earlier versions of Mac OS X) to resolve aliases.

That's the single most annoying lost feature in Leopard for me. If Apple has allowed stacks to follow sub-folders, could it possibly have restored alias functionality in dock menus as well? I do hope so. Perhaps someone with the Snow Leopard beta could say...?

[wizard69]

Originally Posted by dagamer34

PDF viewing has always been hardware accelerated, as that's the essence of Quartz Extreme introduced back in OS X 10.2.

Interesting! Ive only gotten back into using Macs last year and was under the impression that quartz Extreme only accelerated the lower level primitives. But if the GPU is doing more than that then it is a pleasant surprise.

It's full hardware acceleration of video playback and custom-coded software routines that should be in OS X 10.6 (though newer Macs with the 9400M chipset already do 1080p playback on chip).

Yeah this I understand and I would expect them to support new hardware going forward. What I'm hoping for is that old hardware (relatively new actually) like mine will be supported. I've seen nothing so far indicating how far back OpenCL and video acceleration support will go. I know my video card is capable but that is not the same thing as saying Apple will support OpenCL on it.

Dave

[TenoBell]

Nope their will be no Quicktime X Pro. They are cutting out most of the 18 years of bloat that few people use, such as Quicktime VR. QT X will be slimmed down to a simple media player.

Originally Posted by Abster2core

Let's hope not.

Snow leopard includes QuickTIme X. Why go backward?

[tyrnight]

I have tried it and i must say that Adobe flash works SOOO much better and faster when watching flash internet video.. it doesn't lag when you click on other things and video is allot smoother. I can click on a dialog box and the video doesn't skip. This is a welcome change.

I have had issues with .Mac syncing. even though I synced, it keeps coming up with conflicts.. but thats the only issue I have come across

[tylerpearce2001]

I really hope that the price will be affordable. As a college student in the American Economy (and in ministry) I have a limited amount of money, none to be exact. Since it will not be a total revamping of the OS, I hope they won't make the price as a new OS.

[Marvin]

Originally Posted by wizard69

Interesting! Ive only gotten back into using Macs last year and was under the impression that quartz Extreme only accelerated the lower level primitives. But if the GPU is doing more than that then it is a pleasant surprise.

Some things were only enabled in Leopard though. PDF rendering is part of Quartz 2D but wasn't hardware rendered until 10.5 where Quartz 2D Extreme was enabled but named Quartz GL. If you compare opening a complex PDF between Tiger and Leopard, the difference is quite significant. 10.4 can hang for a few seconds rendering pages and stutters dragging through the document but Leopard is very smooth.

Originally Posted by wizard69

Yeah this I understand and I would expect them to support new hardware going forward. What I'm hoping for is that old hardware (relatively new actually) like mine will be supported. I've seen nothing so far indicating how far back OpenCL and video acceleration support will go. I know my video card is capable but that is not the same thing as saying Apple will support OpenCL on it.

Basically any series 8 Nvidia Geforce card or higher is supported and any ATI card that Apple have used in the Intel machines besides the X1600 is supported. No intel integrated chips are.

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

I don't think you know if it's a "minor feature" or not.

Sure it seems trivial, but the fact that they dropped this popular feature when they moved to OS-X, and haven't implemented it since even though people have been asking for it, kind of argues against the idea that it's a minor feature or easy to do.

Maybe it's hard to do (or to do right). Maybe they had to wait for a Cocoa finder to do it.

They are minor in the same way that Finder grid spacing is minor.

The move back into place is trivial. File meta data makes this easy. Inside the Finder app, you just check if destination is a trash folder and store the source path in meta data. When you move back into place, read in the meta data again.

You could store the changes in a file somewhere but then you have to track movements inside other folders. In fact, it doesn't even have to be limited to movements to the trash folder, each file could just remember the last path it was moved from. This way the undo stack knows where every file was.

The Stacks behavior is easy too as it's just filesystem navigation and they've done it better in previous systems. Stacks doesn't work for me as it doesn't do shortcuts. I want to be able to make a Stack out of a pile of files I drag to the Dock. For example a group of favorite documents that are scattered all over the place.

[ecking]

Navigating folders in stacks is going to be so much better, it's about time!

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by Marvin

... They are minor in the same way that Finder grid spacing is minor.

The move back into place is trivial. File meta data makes this easy. Inside the Finder app, you just check if destination is a trash folder and store the source path in meta data. When you move back into place, read in the meta data again. ..

Granted, but this is what Ctrl-Z does now though.

I was assuming that it would be a "true" restore in the sense of remembering the folder hierarchy, and replacing that hierarchy etc. and that this might of course be harder. It seems to me this would require a data store somewhere or snapshots or some such, but I am not up on the technical details so perhaps you are right.

[Lafe]

Originally Posted by tylerpearce2001

I really hope that the price will be affordable. As a college student in the American Economy (and in ministry) I have a limited amount of money, none to be exact. Since it will not be a total revamping of the OS, I hope they won't make the price as a new OS.

If it's a free update, Apple could make a fortune, because the current Mac owners
dancing in the streets would attract the attention of millions of drowsy Windows users,
who would then buy shiny, new Apple products just to get in on the party!

[jamisen.sc]

the video won't load! i guess it looks cool for those who can watch it

[jmndos]

New Keyboard Shortcuts Preference Pane
-Looks like they rewrote the carbon library, as it contained the functionality hide the dock and the taskbar. I wonder if they will fix the misisng documentation on the apple site, as it raises a 404. Good that there are some decent objective-c (extremely FEW) that backup their dev resources.


New Put Back Function
-Wow, this is missing ??, even windows has had this functionality since 1995.
-Another way apple is becoming windows

Navigating Folders in Stacks
-What use is this, I friggin hate the stacks, and I thought the program folding in linux and windows pissed me off.


Quicklook
-Gone !? WTF, even windows has these preview icons.
-I guess this will be a $29.95 addon

Quicktime Pro Inclusive
-This would be surprising, since apple remode desktop by itself is $500.

[Erunno]

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

I don't think you know if it's a "minor feature" or not.

Sure it seems trivial, but the fact that they dropped this popular feature when they moved to OS-X, and haven't implemented it since even though people have been asking for it, kind of argues against the idea that it's a minor feature or easy to do.

Maybe it's hard to do (or to do right). Maybe they had to wait for a Cocoa finder to do it.

Over on the Linux side they developed a completely new file manager (Dolphin) for the latest version of the desktop environment KDE 4 and it had a restore functionality since its initial release. Oh, and the software was developed by a single developer in his spare time. So Apple with its hundreds of developers and billions of cash is not capable of implementing a feature which other file managers had for over a decade?

[VL-Tone]

Originally Posted by jmndos

New Keyboard Shortcuts Preference Pane
-Looks like they rewrote the carbon library, as it contained the functionality hide the dock and the taskbar. I wonder if they will fix the misisng documentation on the apple site, as it raises a 404. Good that there are some decent objective-c (extremely FEW) that backup their dev resources.

I don't see what carbon libraries have to do with a pane in System Preferences. You could always change the Show/Hide Dock shortcut to whatever you want, it's just that the interface is now different.

Originally Posted by jmndos

New Put Back Function
-Wow, this is missing ??, even windows has had this functionality since 1995.
-Another way apple is becoming windows

This feature existed (known then as "put away") in Mac OS 5.x-9.x, if not before. It was gone from OS X for some reason, now it's back. It was pretty lazy from Apple that it took so long to "put back" this feature (pun intended?) but this point about Windows 95 having it before Snow Leopard is pretty moot considering that the Mac OS had it at least 6 years before. In this particular case, it's not the OS X becoming more like Windows, it's like OS X becoming like the Classic Mac OS in this respect.

Originally Posted by jmndos

Navigating Folders in Stacks
-What use is this, I friggin hate the stacks, and I thought the program folding in linux and windows pissed me off.

Then don't use it, set your stacks to display as lists. It's not like Apple spent 10,000 man/hours to add this particular feature.

Originally Posted by jmndos

Quicklook
-Gone !? WTF, even windows has these preview icons.
-I guess this will be a $29.95 addon

Preview icons are not gone, they're still working just like Leopard, what's gone (maybe temporarily) is the ability to play videos and audio directly in the icon without having to open Quicklook. (Not that useful if you ask me)

Originally Posted by jmndos

Quicktime Pro Inclusive
-This would be surprising, since apple remode desktop by itself is $500.

Apple Remote Desktop is a full featured remote managing program that is meant to use across large networks. It certainly does more than a dumb VNC client/server combo.

If you simply want to control your Mac remotely, you don't need Apple Remote Desktop, any Leopard system can be controlled with a standard VNC client (or via iChat screen sharing) without having to install/buy anything on the host Mac.

[Snafu]

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

Granted, but this is what Ctrl-Z does now though.

The advantage would be that you can "put back" a misplaced file that you have noticed several hours or days of Finder navigation and manipulation later. Command-Z undoes the last file-folder manipulation only.

[Booga]

New Put Back Function
-Wow, this is missing ??, even windows has had this functionality since 1995.
-Another way apple is becoming windows

Apple had this in 1995 as well. It didn't start going missing until around 2001.

[Dr. X]

Originally Posted by macosxp

The site's not loading the video.

These features would be really cool, I've missed the limited stacks in Leopard, but I would still like those quick-look icons.

I was wondering when there was going to be a put back feature for the trash. I've used it many times when I was in XP but never saw it in Mac.

And, when are they going to give it a good wallpaper?! I mean dark pink outerspace?!

Just right click or control click on the video link and download it to your computer. It plays fine in QuickTime. Here is the link: http://s.worldofapple.com/snowleopard_stacksfolders.mov

[jmadlena]

Originally Posted by jmndos

New Keyboard Shortcuts Preference Pane
-Looks like they rewrote the carbon library, as it contained the functionality hide the dock and the taskbar. I wonder if they will fix the misisng documentation on the apple site, as it raises a 404. Good that there are some decent objective-c (extremely FEW) that backup their dev resources.


New Put Back Function
-Wow, this is missing ??, even windows has had this functionality since 1995.
-Another way apple is becoming windows

Navigating Folders in Stacks
-What use is this, I friggin hate the stacks, and I thought the program folding in linux and windows pissed me off.


Quicklook
-Gone !? WTF, even windows has these preview icons.
-I guess this will be a $29.95 addon

Quicktime Pro Inclusive
-This would be surprising, since apple remode desktop by itself is $500.

So... Apple adds a feature to OS X that it had previously, just has chosen not to implement yet and it is becoming Windows? If you want to say 'copying' or whatever, be my guest. But I don't think you know what you are talking about when you say Mac OS X is becoming Windows. More the other way around.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by jmadlena

So... Apple adds a feature to OS X that it had previously, just has chosen not to implement yet and it is becoming Windows? If you want to say 'copying' or whatever, be my guest. But I don't think you know what you are talking about when you say Mac OS X is becoming Windows. More the other way around.

Not to mention that it is a feature present in Apple's OS prior to OS X.

[:-|]

Cmd - Z already works like the put back function within finder, well sort of.

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by Erunno

Over on the Linux side they developed a completely new file manager (Dolphin) for the latest version of the desktop environment KDE 4 and it had a restore functionality since its initial release. Oh, and the software was developed by a single developer in his spare time. So Apple with its hundreds of developers and billions of cash is not capable of implementing a feature which other file managers had for over a decade?

Well I did say "maybe" and I don't think this is a good comparison. Different code, different OS, different development tools etc.

I was just posing a possible reason why something has been on Apple's to do list since 2001 hasn't been done. I find most people usually assume "because they don't care" as the answer in cases like this, but that hardly ever turns out to be accurate in the end.

Everyone that has used OS-X for any length of time knows that the Finder kinda sucks and was basically cobbled together out of gum and old string. The fact that it's being re-written in Cocoa right now and this feature is finally coming back *might* be significant is all I'm saying.

[lightstriker]

I love interface tweaks.

[Wonderkid]

...and could give Apple at least a decade head start over the competition. Mind blowing innovation in human factors that finally makes computers usable with the same instinctive nature as pen and paper.

Not.

Oh dear.

Now where is my 7" iPod Touch?

[akhomerun]

I'm glad quicklook on the icons is gone, that feature looked pretty useless and confusing to the average user.