I think many of you guys need to watch the Mac OS X State of Union video.
Go to http://developer.apple.com/ and sign-up for for the free ADC Online Membership (If you haven't already.) Then go to http://developer.apple.com/adconitunes/ and log-in. If everything goes well, iTunes will open-up a secret section of the iTunes store with some videos available. Download the "Session 000 - Mac OS X State of the Union" video.
Many interesting tidbits can be found about Leopard in this video that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere.
There's a nice demo that shows that Core Animation will bring concrete improvement to the UI. It's certainly more than an easy way to access OpenGL. The demo shows how easy you can create a grid of picture elements (for a picture album) that will smoothly rearrange itself according to the sort-order if you remove, add or rename an element for example. Core Animation in this case will take care of automatically animate thumbnails moving around to their new location (reminds me of the Nintendo Wii photo album grid view).
Then, there's a part where they discuss the transition to Resolution Independence. Personally I think many people underestimate what it means.
First it means that Apple has to vectorize every UI elements. They'll have to modernize and reorganize the UI back-end, which despite some visual changes over the years, has been stuck in a very archaic Extras.rsrc resource file, dating back to the ResEdit days. Leopard hopefully will replace the Extras.rsrc file with something more modern and modular. While they are doing this they might as well make some big change in the UI look itself, or at least unify the interface.
Currently, the Extras.rsrc file has to contain 2 sets of bitmaps, one for the Aqua/Blue elements, and the other for the Graphite theme. With vector elements, this wont be needed as it's trivial to re-color vector images. But then why stop at two themes? Why not give the user the ability to re-color the whole interface to suit their mood? Maybe you could optionally tie the color of the interface to outside temperature? Or make a window glow in red when it requires your attention? Tons of new possibilities will be opened by the move to Resolution Independence.
I've seen many comments saying that Apple won't change the UI because we would've known by now because of the time required for developers to make the transition to a new UI.
Here's what Apple says to developers regarding Res-independence.
Be ready by 2008? Hopefully that doesn't mean Leopard will be pushed back to 2008...
I'm not sure what it means though, will we see cosmetic glitches with apps that are not ready by Leopard's launch?
If anyone has a theory about this "Be ready by 2008" statement, I'd like to hear it.
If problems occur because of the transition to RI, Apple will have to show us that it's worth the pain. I expect Apple/Jobs to make a nice demo showing how nice it looks, and how useful it can be.
While many seem to regard RI as simply a way to keep a constant UI size with high-resolution monitors, it will have other uses. Note that the slider in Quartz-Debug not only shows DPIs, but also the magnification factor.
The ability to blow-up the UI elements to a huge size will be pushed as a feature, not as a side-effect of mismatching the DPI of your monitor. Pros will care about setting the right DPI amount, while others, like people with mild to severe vision problems will see that as a God-send. And no the Universal Access Zoom feature doesn't cut it for now, and setting an LCD screen to an intermediate resolution is a clunky solution that result in distorted images.
I realize I am a newbie around here, but has anyone mentioned the idea that maybe Leopard will be installable on any Intel product and could potentially displace Windows on any Wintel machine. Yes I know it would hurt hardware sales - just a thought.
Newbie out!
In a word? No.
Why? Apple would have a support nightmare on his hands if every Tom Dick and Harry was installing OS X on his latest 1337 rig. Driver support has been simpler for Apple due to the fact it keeps a tight rein on hardware.
Having said that, I think it would be far more likely that Apple would partner with a PC maker first to offer the option. As OS X demands EFI it would only be a subset of hardware that it would be able to support, and it would be easier for Apple to provide the OS as an OEM install to that PC maker; then the PC maker could worry about ensuring it was installed on hardware that had the correct support.
FWIW, Apple has always stated that they could care less if you get it running on your 1337 rig. They just don't want to know about it.
That we won't see any displays > 150 ppi until then?
Like I said you don't need ultra high-res monitor for resolution independence to be useful.
I know a few people that find current interface elements to be too small on current 96 dpi monitors when they're set at the native res. Some screens on current Apple notebooks are even higher than 96 dpi. The Mac OS still assumes that your display is 72 dpi, even though all monitors sold today have a higher pixel density.
Apple doesn?t charge much for OS upgrades (compared to, say, Microsoft) so it balances out.
Yes it does. Microsoft doesn't charge anything for their OS upgrades. XP was released in 2001 and that license could be upgraded to SP2 and beyond cost free. Apple charges ~US$129 for each upgrade. Cheetah was released in 2001 as well and each subsequent upgrade (Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger) requires a new license (with the exceptions mentioned by others above). So if I bought a Mac with Cheetah and skipped Puma I would still have paid ~US$400 for the other three upgrades vs zero for the XP upgrades. I'm not defending Microsoft, just pointing out the truth.
I'm not defending Microsoft, just pointing out the truth.
Except you are comparing Apples and Oranges. XP service packs are not equivalent to 10.x "upgrades". They are closer to 10.x.y upgrades, which are also free.
kukito's right. All this nonsense about how much Vista cost?
I got it for free. I don't know what people were talking about.
kukito was talking about service packs, which usually isn't the same thing as a system upgrade. For the most part, service packs fix bugs.
If you have Vista legitimately, then its cost is factored into something else. Maybe your employer or educational institution paid for it. If you bought a new computer, the cost of Vista is factored into the total, they just don't show you the itemization.
kukito was talking about service packs, which usually isn't the same thing as a system upgrade. For the most part, service packs fix bugs.
If you have Vista legitimately, then its cost is factored into something else. Maybe your employer or educational institution paid for it. If you bought a new computer, the cost of Vista is factored into the total, they just don't show you the itemization.
Interesting Forum here - I love it! I just want to say that Leopard will be worth the wait. From what I have seen of it - its very seamless and smooth. Granted there will be some bugs but Apple is NOT going to make the same mistake that MicroSquish did. The other day I was in Best Buy and copies of XP were still selling faster than Vista. In fact someone mentioned that XP was outselling Vista 4 to 1, if not that, greater.
I am still kicking myself for not investing in Apple 10 years ago.
I was planning on buying a MacBook Pro in April when I thought it was go ing to be out, but I will just buy an upgrade when it arrives.
Well, you're making a pretty sweeping assumption there about the "top secret" features, aren't you?
Yup.
Quote:
What? Just like 10.3 and 10.4 didn't ship with serious bugs on first release? Oh wait? they did.
BS. There was nothing that terribly wrong with 10.3 or 10.4. A few minor annoyances bubbled up to the surface for some people. Big deal. I was a Mac consultant and a member of Apple Consultants Network (used to be Apple Solutions Expert) back then and I don't recall having to deal with anything major.
I think Leopard will be out on or before WWDC or between May 19 and June 9. Yeah, I think it'll be in stores on a Saturday. I also think the iPhone will also be available right after Leopard ships. Apple says June. Since the iPhone uses Leopard, what does that suggest?
There was nothing that terribly wrong with 10.3 or 10.4
O.K. maybe I exaggerated with 10.4, but 10.3.0 had a firewire bug that caused data loss (there was a firewire 400 bug, and an even worse Firewire 800 bug, whereby just connecting the drive to the Mac could hose the whole drive). That is a serious bug.
First it means that Apple has to vectorize every UI elements.
Or simply provide higher resolution (Apple says 4x) artwork. You do not have to use vectors, and I doubt Apple will for most of the OS. They're good for little symbols and stuff but not good for complex, lickable widgets.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kukito
Yes it does. Microsoft doesn't charge anything for their OS upgrades. XP was released in 2001 and that license could be upgraded to SP2 and beyond cost free. Apple charges ~US$129 for each upgrade. Cheetah was released in 2001 as well and each subsequent upgrade (Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger) requires a new license (with the exceptions mentioned by others above). So if I bought a Mac with Cheetah and skipped Puma I would still have paid ~US$400 for the other three upgrades vs zero for the XP upgrades. I'm not defending Microsoft, just pointing out the truth.
You're not honestly telling me you think Windows service packs are equivalent to MacOS x.1 upgrades? They're more like x.x.1 upgrades, which are free!
Yes it does. Microsoft doesn't charge anything for their OS upgrades. XP was released in 2001 and that license could be upgraded to SP2 and beyond cost free. Apple charges ~US$129 for each upgrade. Cheetah was released in 2001 as well and each subsequent upgrade (Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger) requires a new license (with the exceptions mentioned by others above). So if I bought a Mac with Cheetah and skipped Puma I would still have paid ~US$400 for the other three upgrades vs zero for the XP upgrades. I'm not defending Microsoft, just pointing out the truth.
SP2 offered very little to existing Microsoft customers. it was primarily a security upgrade, but it was not a noteworthy feature upgrade. I would not consider it the sort of major upgrade users should be expected to pay for, but Microsoft has charged for things such as this in the past. More to the point, Macintosh users did not need to upgrade every OS increment. A user of 10.2 could upgrade to 10.4 and skip 10.3 entirely. It is a choice. So you?ve got Microsoft, going many years from XP to Vista with no noteworthy upgrades, and Apple, progressing significantly in steps. There?s no reason why your single $129 upgrade shouldn?t be comparable to the excessive cost of Vista Ultimate.
Sorry, that's a bad theory. Ignoring the whole stripped out 'secret' features, there's no reason for apple to strip out bug fixes for all these components. Since the releases are for testing your software (and to test the OS itself), how can you be sure your software will work if you can't even access network shares reliably, or certain conditions always cause a crash?
And who are they trying to throw off? The only competitor is MS, and are they sitting around going "Hey, Leopard still is buggy, we can goof off for a week...Wait! Its been released??? Arrrgggghhhh! We're screwed now!
Guess I should have made one thing more clear in my original post. Apple stripping features from the OS is what created a lot of the current bugs. Try taking any software and dropping major features and subsets of the code out of it and see what problems it will create. From a programatic standpoint, Apple keeping its "secrets" under wraps is THE major reason that we see the bugs in the developer releases.
Guess I should have made one thing more clear in my original post. Apple stripping features from the OS is what created a lot of the current bugs. Try taking any software and dropping major features and subsets of the code out of it and see what problems it will create. From a programatic standpoint, Apple keeping its "secrets" under wraps is THE major reason that we see the bugs in the developer releases.
Or simply provide higher resolution (Apple says 4x) artwork. You do not have to use vectors, and I doubt Apple will for most of the OS. They're good for little symbols and stuff but not good for complex, lickable widgets.
You're right that Apple will not turn everything into vectors. Photo-realistic icons for one thing will remain bitmaps.
But you're wrong about using bitmaps for "complex, lickable widgets". First, even if you use 4x bitmap artwork, scaling them to arbitrary sizes will result in blurriness, especially around the edges, and that even if you use the best interpolation process.
Second, composing variable width buttons with bitmaps is needlessly complicated compared to what you can do with vectors. For a standard button, you need a bitmap for the left part, then another one for the middle part that has a variable size, then another for the right part. Also, like I said, using vectors makes them much easier to colorize, so you don't need two sets of bitmaps for the Aqua and Graphite theme.
Many "complex, lickable widgets" are already vectorized in current Leopard builds.
As you can see, some parts are still using low-res bitmaps, but it's a work in progress, those will likely be converted to vector, if they aren't already (this screenshot is somewhat old).
The following is extracted from a recent Apple patent. While many Apple patents go unused, this is obviously some version of the tool Apple is using to make the vector Aqua buttons in Leopard.
Comments
Go to http://developer.apple.com/ and sign-up for for the free ADC Online Membership (If you haven't already.) Then go to http://developer.apple.com/adconitunes/ and log-in. If everything goes well, iTunes will open-up a secret section of the iTunes store with some videos available. Download the "Session 000 - Mac OS X State of the Union" video.
Many interesting tidbits can be found about Leopard in this video that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere.
There's a nice demo that shows that Core Animation will bring concrete improvement to the UI. It's certainly more than an easy way to access OpenGL. The demo shows how easy you can create a grid of picture elements (for a picture album) that will smoothly rearrange itself according to the sort-order if you remove, add or rename an element for example. Core Animation in this case will take care of automatically animate thumbnails moving around to their new location (reminds me of the Nintendo Wii photo album grid view).
Then, there's a part where they discuss the transition to Resolution Independence. Personally I think many people underestimate what it means.
First it means that Apple has to vectorize every UI elements. They'll have to modernize and reorganize the UI back-end, which despite some visual changes over the years, has been stuck in a very archaic Extras.rsrc resource file, dating back to the ResEdit days. Leopard hopefully will replace the Extras.rsrc file with something more modern and modular. While they are doing this they might as well make some big change in the UI look itself, or at least unify the interface.
Currently, the Extras.rsrc file has to contain 2 sets of bitmaps, one for the Aqua/Blue elements, and the other for the Graphite theme. With vector elements, this wont be needed as it's trivial to re-color vector images. But then why stop at two themes? Why not give the user the ability to re-color the whole interface to suit their mood? Maybe you could optionally tie the color of the interface to outside temperature? Or make a window glow in red when it requires your attention? Tons of new possibilities will be opened by the move to Resolution Independence.
I've seen many comments saying that Apple won't change the UI because we would've known by now because of the time required for developers to make the transition to a new UI.
Here's what Apple says to developers regarding Res-independence.
Be ready by 2008? Hopefully that doesn't mean Leopard will be pushed back to 2008...
I'm not sure what it means though, will we see cosmetic glitches with apps that are not ready by Leopard's launch?
If anyone has a theory about this "Be ready by 2008" statement, I'd like to hear it.
If problems occur because of the transition to RI, Apple will have to show us that it's worth the pain. I expect Apple/Jobs to make a nice demo showing how nice it looks, and how useful it can be.
While many seem to regard RI as simply a way to keep a constant UI size with high-resolution monitors, it will have other uses. Note that the slider in Quartz-Debug not only shows DPIs, but also the magnification factor.
The ability to blow-up the UI elements to a huge size will be pushed as a feature, not as a side-effect of mismatching the DPI of your monitor. Pros will care about setting the right DPI amount, while others, like people with mild to severe vision problems will see that as a God-send. And no the Universal Access Zoom feature doesn't cut it for now, and setting an LCD screen to an intermediate resolution is a clunky solution that result in distorted images.
Be ready by 2008? Hopefully that doesn't mean Leopard will be pushed back to 2008...
I'm not sure what it means though,
That we won't see any displays > 150 ppi until then?
I realize I am a newbie around here, but has anyone mentioned the idea that maybe Leopard will be installable on any Intel product and could potentially displace Windows on any Wintel machine. Yes I know it would hurt hardware sales - just a thought.
Newbie out!
In a word? No.
Why? Apple would have a support nightmare on his hands if every Tom Dick and Harry was installing OS X on his latest 1337 rig. Driver support has been simpler for Apple due to the fact it keeps a tight rein on hardware.
Having said that, I think it would be far more likely that Apple would partner with a PC maker first to offer the option. As OS X demands EFI it would only be a subset of hardware that it would be able to support, and it would be easier for Apple to provide the OS as an OEM install to that PC maker; then the PC maker could worry about ensuring it was installed on hardware that had the correct support.
FWIW, Apple has always stated that they could care less if you get it running on your 1337 rig. They just don't want to know about it.
I wonder how many people in this forum still use 10.3?
Take the poll and find out!
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=72388
That we won't see any displays > 150 ppi until then?
Like I said you don't need ultra high-res monitor for resolution independence to be useful.
I know a few people that find current interface elements to be too small on current 96 dpi monitors when they're set at the native res. Some screens on current Apple notebooks are even higher than 96 dpi. The Mac OS still assumes that your display is 72 dpi, even though all monitors sold today have a higher pixel density.
Apple doesn?t charge much for OS upgrades (compared to, say, Microsoft) so it balances out.
Yes it does. Microsoft doesn't charge anything for their OS upgrades. XP was released in 2001 and that license could be upgraded to SP2 and beyond cost free. Apple charges ~US$129 for each upgrade. Cheetah was released in 2001 as well and each subsequent upgrade (Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger) requires a new license (with the exceptions mentioned by others above). So if I bought a Mac with Cheetah and skipped Puma I would still have paid ~US$400 for the other three upgrades vs zero for the XP upgrades. I'm not defending Microsoft, just pointing out the truth.
I'm not defending Microsoft, just pointing out the truth.
Except you are comparing Apples and Oranges. XP service packs are not equivalent to 10.x "upgrades". They are closer to 10.x.y upgrades, which are also free.
I got it for free. I don't know what people were talking about.
kukito's right. All this nonsense about how much Vista cost?
I got it for free. I don't know what people were talking about.
kukito was talking about service packs, which usually isn't the same thing as a system upgrade. For the most part, service packs fix bugs.
If you have Vista legitimately, then its cost is factored into something else. Maybe your employer or educational institution paid for it. If you bought a new computer, the cost of Vista is factored into the total, they just don't show you the itemization.
kukito was talking about service packs, which usually isn't the same thing as a system upgrade. For the most part, service packs fix bugs.
If you have Vista legitimately, then its cost is factored into something else. Maybe your employer or educational institution paid for it. If you bought a new computer, the cost of Vista is factored into the total, they just don't show you the itemization.
I have Vista sarcastically.
I am still kicking myself for not investing in Apple 10 years ago.
I was planning on buying a MacBook Pro in April when I thought it was go ing to be out, but I will just buy an upgrade when it arrives.
I have Vista sarcastically.
I hadn't thought of that, my mistake.
Well, you're making a pretty sweeping assumption there about the "top secret" features, aren't you?
Yup.
What? Just like 10.3 and 10.4 didn't ship with serious bugs on first release? Oh wait? they did.
BS. There was nothing that terribly wrong with 10.3 or 10.4. A few minor annoyances bubbled up to the surface for some people. Big deal. I was a Mac consultant and a member of Apple Consultants Network (used to be Apple Solutions Expert) back then and I don't recall having to deal with anything major.
I think Leopard will be out on or before WWDC or between May 19 and June 9. Yeah, I think it'll be in stores on a Saturday. I also think the iPhone will also be available right after Leopard ships. Apple says June. Since the iPhone uses Leopard, what does that suggest?
There was nothing that terribly wrong with 10.3 or 10.4
O.K. maybe I exaggerated with 10.4, but 10.3.0 had a firewire bug that caused data loss (there was a firewire 400 bug, and an even worse Firewire 800 bug, whereby just connecting the drive to the Mac could hose the whole drive). That is a serious bug.
A year ago, jobs said that 10.5 would be out around the end of the year, or so. Apple has already pushed it back.
No it hasn't. They said Spring '07, which ends in June.
First it means that Apple has to vectorize every UI elements.
Or simply provide higher resolution (Apple says 4x) artwork. You do not have to use vectors, and I doubt Apple will for most of the OS. They're good for little symbols and stuff but not good for complex, lickable widgets.
Yes it does. Microsoft doesn't charge anything for their OS upgrades. XP was released in 2001 and that license could be upgraded to SP2 and beyond cost free. Apple charges ~US$129 for each upgrade. Cheetah was released in 2001 as well and each subsequent upgrade (Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger) requires a new license (with the exceptions mentioned by others above). So if I bought a Mac with Cheetah and skipped Puma I would still have paid ~US$400 for the other three upgrades vs zero for the XP upgrades. I'm not defending Microsoft, just pointing out the truth.
You're not honestly telling me you think Windows service packs are equivalent to MacOS x.1 upgrades? They're more like x.x.1 upgrades, which are free!
Yes it does. Microsoft doesn't charge anything for their OS upgrades. XP was released in 2001 and that license could be upgraded to SP2 and beyond cost free. Apple charges ~US$129 for each upgrade. Cheetah was released in 2001 as well and each subsequent upgrade (Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger) requires a new license (with the exceptions mentioned by others above). So if I bought a Mac with Cheetah and skipped Puma I would still have paid ~US$400 for the other three upgrades vs zero for the XP upgrades. I'm not defending Microsoft, just pointing out the truth.
SP2 offered very little to existing Microsoft customers. it was primarily a security upgrade, but it was not a noteworthy feature upgrade. I would not consider it the sort of major upgrade users should be expected to pay for, but Microsoft has charged for things such as this in the past. More to the point, Macintosh users did not need to upgrade every OS increment. A user of 10.2 could upgrade to 10.4 and skip 10.3 entirely. It is a choice. So you?ve got Microsoft, going many years from XP to Vista with no noteworthy upgrades, and Apple, progressing significantly in steps. There?s no reason why your single $129 upgrade shouldn?t be comparable to the excessive cost of Vista Ultimate.
Sorry, that's a bad theory. Ignoring the whole stripped out 'secret' features, there's no reason for apple to strip out bug fixes for all these components. Since the releases are for testing your software (and to test the OS itself), how can you be sure your software will work if you can't even access network shares reliably, or certain conditions always cause a crash?
And who are they trying to throw off? The only competitor is MS, and are they sitting around going "Hey, Leopard still is buggy, we can goof off for a week...Wait! Its been released??? Arrrgggghhhh! We're screwed now!
Guess I should have made one thing more clear in my original post. Apple stripping features from the OS is what created a lot of the current bugs. Try taking any software and dropping major features and subsets of the code out of it and see what problems it will create. From a programatic standpoint, Apple keeping its "secrets" under wraps is THE major reason that we see the bugs in the developer releases.
Guess I should have made one thing more clear in my original post. Apple stripping features from the OS is what created a lot of the current bugs. Try taking any software and dropping major features and subsets of the code out of it and see what problems it will create. From a programatic standpoint, Apple keeping its "secrets" under wraps is THE major reason that we see the bugs in the developer releases.
You're making that up.
Or simply provide higher resolution (Apple says 4x) artwork. You do not have to use vectors, and I doubt Apple will for most of the OS. They're good for little symbols and stuff but not good for complex, lickable widgets.
You're right that Apple will not turn everything into vectors. Photo-realistic icons for one thing will remain bitmaps.
But you're wrong about using bitmaps for "complex, lickable widgets". First, even if you use 4x bitmap artwork, scaling them to arbitrary sizes will result in blurriness, especially around the edges, and that even if you use the best interpolation process.
Second, composing variable width buttons with bitmaps is needlessly complicated compared to what you can do with vectors. For a standard button, you need a bitmap for the left part, then another one for the middle part that has a variable size, then another for the right part. Also, like I said, using vectors makes them much easier to colorize, so you don't need two sets of bitmaps for the Aqua and Graphite theme.
Many "complex, lickable widgets" are already vectorized in current Leopard builds.
Check out this image for concrete examples: http://loop.worldofapple.com/wp-cont...indbuttons.jpg
As you can see, some parts are still using low-res bitmaps, but it's a work in progress, those will likely be converted to vector, if they aren't already (this screenshot is somewhat old).
The following is extracted from a recent Apple patent. While many Apple patents go unused, this is obviously some version of the tool Apple is using to make the vector Aqua buttons in Leopard.