Top Secret Features (leopard)

1. More iPhoto templates
2. More Dashboard widgets
3. A Not-To-Do list
4. iTunes 14.

More advanced Applescript integration.

Also something I hope for is Quartz Composer like layout. So you can have many different things happening in parallel, with many results being passed through and events taking in more than one value. To me it's been an obvious step since I played around with Quartz Composer...

whats ZFS that hmurchison wants?

the kid 05

Check this out.

http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/feature/

ZFS meets the needs of a file system for everything from desktops to data centers. Designed with the administrator in mind, ZFS is the only self-healing, self-managing general-purpose file system. It offers:

Simple administration
ZFS automates and consolidates complicated storage administration concepts, reducing administrative overhead by 80 percent.

Provable data integrity
ZFS protects all data with 64-bit checksums that detect and correct silent data corruption
.
Unlimited scalability
As the world's first 128-bit file system, ZFS offers 16 billion billion times the capacity of 32- or 64-bit systems.

Blazing performance
ZFS is based on a transactional object model that removes most of the traditional constraints on the order of issuing I/Os, which results in huge performance gains.

Apple feel free to add ZFS in 10.5.5

thats pretty cool, a self fixing file system yes apple include.

this quote is scary though

LOL that is scary but that's all you can east seafood right there.

I think ZFS is pretty nice SUN is already using in in this Gonzo storage device they recently announced so it is in production.

Whether or not Apple decides to utilize it depends on how limiting HFS+ regarding where they want to go in the future vs how difficult getting ZFS to boot and meet all the freatures of HFS+.

I'm not filesystem fan but I do like data protection because every decade hard drive expand by a factor of 100x meaning by 2016 we're going to be routinely seeing desktops with 30-50TB storage systems. That's the avg so imagine what corporations will be managing. Petabytes.

Well, that would be AWESOME!!
When I first heard of automator, I thought of something like QC, even though I had not seen either.
I BELIVE, that something like QC would be included for widgets, at least that's what i heard from a freind...

eh, the LAST word on file systems? almost. Boil the oceans? What? Why is that a problem? I'd like to direct attention at this time to the book entitled, "Redemption Ark" by Alastair Reynolds. Actually, go read the prequel to that book. Yes, read the whole thing.

Yeah. Sci-Fi is fun. And it tends to predict the future, in a rather generic sort of way.

Why NOT use a planet or planetoid for data storage? Or as a whole computer? *Waves at Douglas*

There is a patent for a system called "radiated information" that is essentially a data storage method where data is bounced between two or more stations to increase storage. Imagine bouncing info between the moons of a planet or between the planets themselves...

As far as quantum entanglement for information storage or transfer, I don't think volume is the issue. If I understand correctly (and I'm not saying I do) the information is destroyed once it's observed, or the act of observing it changes it.

I would like better iCal integration with iMac, so I can view my callanders & edit them on-line from any computer, including a PC (which I have to use at work with a direct link from iMac

Spring-loaded Dock folder
Uhh, its existence is confirmed already.

Seriously:
I'd love to label files within the save dialog.
I'd love to see a better/improved save to PDF function, say, much smaller files.
I'd love to see tabbed Finder windows

Do you guys remember the old classic functionality of dragging
an extension onto the system folder and the extension is put right
into the proper location automatically by the OS?
I'd love to see a similar functionality in Leopard.

I'd love to see/hear some awsome names like "Time Machine".

The name alone is amazing, and tells me a lot about the
ingenious suits, who came up with such an idea.
Hey "Time machine" sounds a lot better than
"restore from date blablabla", does it not?
It is marketing at its best, is it not?

Btw, adding an Empty button inside the new Trash window
is just lame. It is just a concession to long time Windows Users,
if you ask me.

Does it seem like Apple is slowly moving ICal and Mail into like a PIM type suite (w/ iChat/iSight support)?

Ew no.

HEAR, HEAR....8)

After traveling a lot overseas on business I've learned that not all hotels have high speed internet. What I would love to see is a slower, reduced resolution for iSight chats using the dial up lines that are available in hotel rooms - even when you have to jury rig the connection. It would also appeal to potential customers who live in the country and don't have the ability to get a high speed line, as well as those that want to be able to attach their mobile phone now and then. Sadly, Apple is tending to forget that the world is not all high speed and they are moving away from the potential of this market.

text chat??

new finder

surely it's time.

I am not sure, whether location manager as found in Classic is
needed any more. But by hearing location manager i'd had to think about
briefly how many lightyears ahead Mac OS 8/9 was compared to Windows
in these days.

cheers

umm... we have a location menu in the Apple menu. It's controlled under Network Prefs.

I think there is little doubt that there is an all-new Finder. The Finder was basically not shown in the WWDC keynote at all.

Or could it be that the level of load/save/search in all the iApps and in the Open and Save dialogs makes the Finder obsolete and it does not exist as a separate app any more?

That would be ironic, given that open and save dialogs only exist because the original Mac OS couldn't run the Finder and another app at the same time. With the advent of Mac OS X I wondered if the open and save dialog would go away now that the OS really could multitask, but I suppose the file dialogs are just too entrenched in user expectations, and in cross-platform code.

It could also be that they didn't show Finder because they have nothing to show, and we'll be greeted with the same old Finder we know and, uh, love. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, if Apple's intention is to make the Finder less and less necessary over time. The more metadata-rich files become, the less useful a general-purpose file manager is. Nevertheless I imagine Finder will be around for a while, simply because there will always be some tasks which require you to manipulate files on disk simply as files on disk, and the most sensible interface is one which sees all that rich content through that simple lens.

As for the thread topic: AppleScript 2.0, finally.

Heh. OS X Location only controls the network settings. OS9's Location controlled... everything. You could set up your printers, audio, mounted drives, you name it, and they'd be set when you changed locations. It did a *lot* more.

That's like having a separate login, no? I never really used System 9 (except for Classico) having jumped from system 7 to Jaguar so I don't really have a feel for what location was like...

In a way, yes, it was rather like having a whole other login environment - without the file permissions hassles. It's one thing I kind of miss from 9.

There are a couple of solutions out there, for pay, but you can try this approach for free: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...query=location

It's a rough way of triggering other actions (any actions) when you change Locations. Requires command line and script work, but it's doable.

IMHO it was very cool and a big thing for laptop users.

thanks Kickaha -- didn't know people had made versions location manager for OS X.

this looks interesting, but i cannot help fell that apple should be doing it themselves. after all, they wrote location manager to serve the growing numbers of laptop owners in the first place!

I'm guessing we won't see a new finder in Leopard. Why would they waste the time to add grid spacing to icons in the current finder if it was going to be replaced with something else? I may be wrong about this, but sadly I'm not expecting much to happen in finder land.

A new Finder = an upgraded Finder

There's nothing wrong by adding some features to the Finder in the WWDC seed and then add more later on.

Apple won't drop the name Finder. Although the functionality changes
a bit from time to time. Anyway, if Apple would get rid of the Finder as
it is now, and there will be only one Spotlight based well,... environment.
How would you call that ...er...environment...er... GUI. Let me guess: Finder?

Quicktime 8

and another £19 to go Pro.

Virtualization
Redesigned Finder / UI Overhaul
Resolution Independance
Stickty Widgets (widgets floating on screen without dashboard open
Heavily meta data based Finder[/QUOTE]



Wow, this was a great thread start, but I was totally disappointed with the answers. I think the problem is you are all Mac users. As a PC user, I can tell you exactly when Leopard needs to give Apple the big juicing it needs to stop being a geekland and go mainstream like the iPod.

VIRTUALIZATION: There's now 2 cores running x86, and maybe 4 in the near future. We already have Boot Camp and Parallels, niether of which is what non-Apple buyers want. Boot Camp requires the dreadful reboot, but good side is Windows runs native to processor. for instance, when a website doesn't work on safari, you're going to want to open IE (or Firefox) immediately to get the job done, but if you have to reboot, that's a lot of precious time wasted that non-geeks don't have. Reboots aren't an option for the masses, remember this all you geeks, and niether is a complicate installation such as Boot Camp. I don't care HOW easy it is, it's still a pain for the common simpleton like me.
Parallels doesn't run Windows properly, close, but no cigar. What new-to-Mac users want is the ability to go from Apple OS to Windows with the press of a "Switch" button on the keyboard that's big and green and simple. Can't get a website to work in Safari? SWITCH. The software you want only comes in Windows flavor? SWITCH. Boom, you are done. Apple became a real company again based on ONE single decision: Jobs finally got smart and ported the iTunes to run on Windows machines. This was the best decision he's made since the early 80s. So now he needs to take the final step, and allow all us Apple-phobiacs to be able to walk into the Apple store, and buy a very cool looking iMac fully knowing it can run either Windows (for Dad) and Apple (for the kids and Mom), and both at the same time. No reboots, no complicated installs, SWITCH. Right on the keyboard so my 75 year old father can do it without even knowing what he's doing. Maybe it doesn't have to be a button on the keyboard, but it better be damn easy, as easy as switching from Firefox to IE browser. Why else would Apple have waited until Vista is shipping a couple of months to release Leopard? It's not because he's trying to hide stuff from Microsoft, he's doing it so he can ship the dual-OS system to run Vista and QA the computer so its seemless. This is what I hope anyway, and I hope it for Apple, even though it's a company I've never liked, and run by a guy who never learned marketing until recently. If Apple pulls this off, you will see your world change quickly. If not, this board will continue to have geeky comments posted by the same APPostLE crowd that's always followed this company like a religion-- small beans.

Microsoft makes IE for Mac. Also there are FireFox and Opera available. Of those three, Safari has been found to be the most compatible with web pages which use web standards. Only the rogue pages who do stupid customized stuff tend to not work.... there was a post somewhere around here about that.... Go wiki Acid_2 test.

One of the wonderful aspects of BootCamp is that it walks us right through the process. It's really (no, I mean REALLY. Like, literally) just as easy as installing a fresh copy of windows. Oh, right. Ok, never mind then.

BTW, the more opinionated a post is around here, the more the writer gets flamed. Just thought I'd give ya a heads up.

I take the flames well.

First of all, I am not a geek, so I don't reload operating systems, that's something the people in the factories at Dell and HP and Apple do. If I EVER have to reload an operating system, the computer goes in the trash. This is a geek forum, I"m trying to give you all a view of what it is like to not spend 100% of my time trying to figure out technology, but 100% of my time USING technology. You already lose when you say Boot Camp is good enough, or the websites that don't work on Safari are stupid. They are NOT stupid, they optimize for a standard that hits 80-95% of us, and that standard is IE 6 & 7. What's stupid is if you think Apples work when you try to bastardize them with Office for Macs or IE for Macs. It's shaky stuff at best. However, putting Windows onto a Mac in the box shouldn't be shaky, and would address 80% of the market, just as iTunes did when they wrote the software for Windows. This isn't rocket science, but perhaps to a tech geek it is. Engineers get paid less than salesmen, because engineers don't listen to salesmen when they are told what the general public wants. THE GENERAL PUBLIC WILL NEVER LEARN WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO LEARN, STOP TRYING. This is the whole idea behind user-friendliness. Any ass can operate an iPod having never touched one before. The same must be true of the dual-OS Mac.

The bottom line is, Apple won't win the war until it "joins them". Without cuddling the general public by making a machine they can buy and not worry about all the Apple incompatibilities, Apple will stay at around 5% market share in computers. Eventually, MSFT will design hardware and software and services that work well, and that will be the end of Apple's run. But right now there's a wide open window for Apple to make a killing. But it must try to appeal to people like me, who refuse to buy a Mac until a Mac has no downside, i represent that 80%.

I was in an internet cafe and tried using the Mac to do some transactions on a website I use a lot. The pages wouldn't load properly. I couldn't complete my task, Apple and Safari left me high and dry. The website I was using was used by millions, and this was only a year ago. End of story people, I'd never buy a Mac for that reason alone. Who writes software for Mac first and then Windows, almost no one. Windows first, then Apple OS if your product is really killing it. Heck, even Google knows this. Everything comes out Windows first, Apple maybe later, MUCH later. The general public doesn't have the patience of an APPostLE. We want stupid simple, and we vote with our wallet. We buy iPods, and we connect them to Windows and we have no reason (right now) of changing. It's a shame really, cuz Apple makes a better looking machine, and maybe even it operates better, but if you allow me to buy both, run both at will, quickly, then I'll pay the extra $100 or $200 for a 2nd OS so that I can be the cool guy that has it all with no downside.

This whole thing reminds me of the band "The Cure". Tons of wierdos loved the Cure in the early 80s. Then the Cure created some pop music that the general public really liked. This was viewed as a sellout for the Cure devoted. However, the members of the Cure made a LOT of money, and made some really great "pop" songs that people love, and the guys/gals that were on the bandwagon early moved on to something else (probably U2, or the Grateful Dead). Apple is the Cure in the early 80s right now. They just need to right the pop music that the masses want. If the APPolytes want Apple to remain a 5-10% market share rogue state, that's great. But somehow I would think Jobs & Co would like to hit the big time one day, so they don't have to be so bitter towards Steve Ballmer.