I believe apps will quickly become "Leopard Only"
Just read this today on macnn regarding Delicious Monster's Delicious Library.
Hmmm maybe Apple is going to make an all out effort to convince the majority of OS X users to hop onto Leopard sooner rather than later.
Hey if they want to include iWork 07 and iLife 07 as enticements for a nice bundled price along with Leopard them we're talking. Clearly developers are chomping at the bit to deliver new apps based on the current Leopard architecture.
Quote:
Development is going well. Since this thread was born, we've decided to go Leopard-only, so that changed the flavor of development a lot, and also presented a whole slew of new challenges. I believe Wil likened it to performing surgery on a patient who is not only awake but actively slapping your hands away. I'd say so.
Development is going well. Since this thread was born, we've decided to go Leopard-only, so that changed the flavor of development a lot, and also presented a whole slew of new challenges. I believe Wil likened it to performing surgery on a patient who is not only awake but actively slapping your hands away. I'd say so.
Hmmm maybe Apple is going to make an all out effort to convince the majority of OS X users to hop onto Leopard sooner rather than later.
Hey if they want to include iWork 07 and iLife 07 as enticements for a nice bundled price along with Leopard them we're talking. Clearly developers are chomping at the bit to deliver new apps based on the current Leopard architecture.
Comments
Leopard (includes new iLife and iWork)
Price = $179
If Apple combines iLife and iWork into Leopard people will have an incentive to upgrade and iWork takes off because in 18 months it now has millions of new users. I know I'm definitely looking forward to iWork 07 more than iLife 07.
I do think that applications with these customer UI should improve greatly under Leopard as well. We're getting Rez Independence and threaded rendering. I'm looking at adding a Macbook and 24" iMac to my stable in the next 2 years to go along with my mini.
I'm ready to have everything connected and Digital Lifestyled.
I have called on iLife and iWork '07 to be leopard only for a while now, not that they a lot of the features wouldn't work on Tiger, it's just that I don't see Apple selling these products as seperate products anymore. Vista includes a Photo managing app and a few other bits and pieces. Apple has an incentive now to throw in iLife '07 into Leopard, but not only that, I think they should go one step further and include iWork '07 too. That would be "the complete package", and would not only stop some people buying Office, but it would get a ton of Mac users to upgrade to Leopard, and it would get a slew of switchers to jump on board too.
Leopard (includes new iLife and iWork)
Price = $179
Granted Vista now includes a more rudimentary version of iLife, but the vast majority of people getting Vista will be buying new computers with Vista installed rather than upgrading... so Apple including iLife on new Macs pretty much achieves the same purpose.
Including *iWork* on new Macs, OTOH, would be great for sweetening the Mac, and is long overdue. (The fact that your new MacBook or iMac comes without a basic Office-compatible suite is just ridiculous). I'm hoping they've just been waiting until they had a full 'Works-like package (spreadsheet app) before making that move.
Anyway. I'm just not sure the about logic behind abandoning two very profitable revenue streams (iLife is one Apple's most popular pieces of software, and bundling with Leopard and raising Leopard's price $50 still could very well lose money compared to selling iLife separate for $79), and offering Mac users less choice. There's plenty of people who want Leopard but can live without the latest version of iLife.
One that starts to change our ideas about how we interact with computers, just as the original Mac did.
That, or I'll settle for FTFF.
I'm starting to get the impression that in some sense Leopard is the first "real" OS X-- that Apple has been assembling all the pieces in terms of stability, dev tools, core services, resolution independence, UI, hardware, etc, and now they can start to basically make a new kind of OS that leverages all of those things and creates a seamless whole.
One that starts to change our ideas about how we interact with computers, just as the original Mac did.
That, or I'll settle for FTFF.
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I think your dead on here. I've had the same feeling for awhile too. Mainly because the finder has so consistently been the weak link in OS X, and obviously a carbon port. One would think that revamping the finder would have been a priority, but it seems to have languished. I think we will see a radical redesign of how we interact with our files, with the finder left as an alternative to the inevitable people moaning about change.
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I think your dead on here. I've had the same feeling for awhile too. Mainly because the finder has so consistently been the weak link in OS X, and obviously a carbon port. One would think that revamping the finder would have been a priority, but it seems to have languished. I think we will see a radical redesign of how we interact with our files, with the finder left as an alternative to the inevitable people moaning about change.
You know I still can't figure out why people despise the Finder so much. The only problem I've ever had with it is not being able to enter a Location Address like in the Explorer, but I quickly didn't care because I found things are never too far away anyways.
So why do people hate it?
Sebastian
My concern about Leopard (getting back on topic) is that I still use several "must have" Classic Apps and I don't suppose for a moment that Leopard will continue to support Classic.
I grew up with the Finder since 1987 so I don't dislike it.
My concern about Leopard (getting back on topic) is that I still use several "must have" Classic Apps and I don't suppose for a moment that Leopard will continue to support Classic.
Maybe it's time to find replacements for those Apps then. There's no point in fighting Progress or Evolution
Sebastian
So why do people hate it?
Quite a number of times mounting a drive or disk image, it magically forgets what all the permissions are until I relaunch the Finder and suddenly it remembers. Connecting to AFP over a wireless network often results in a hang up - even ftp sometimes. It's not terrible but it is annoying and I also find it lacks power. I would really like a URL bar and I know I can use the Go menu but I'd rather have a bar so that I can see and copy the current directory path.
One thing I do like is the column view. I feel lost in Windows explorer without it.
My concern about Leopard (getting back on topic) is that I still use several "must have" Classic Apps and I don't suppose for a moment that Leopard will continue to support Classic.
Let's hope so. Supporting classic only gives people a reason to keep using it and they shouldn't. There are no "must have" classic apps. Here's to classic going the way of the floppy. It doesn't work on the Intel machines anyway and Intel are Apple's future. No way are IBM's overheating CPUs in the XBox360 and low yield expensive PS3 CPUs going to persuade Apple back. PPC is toast. Burnt toast.
Mainly because the finder has so consistently been the weak link in OS X, and obviously a carbon port.
Just to lay this one to rest: the finder is not a carbon port. It is carbon, but it was written from the ground up for OSX, in carbon, and not ported from the old Mac Toolbox APIs (which is what a carbon port means).
That's not to say it's good software, but it isn't a port!
On the iLife/iWork side, I believe that Apple will continue to charge for upgrades. The only break might be replacing AppleWorks with iWork on the consumer lines, but that cannot happen until Apple includes spreadsheet and database apps - plus all of the wizards and templates from AppleWorks.
Just to lay this one to rest: the finder is not a carbon port. It is carbon, but it was written from the ground up for OSX, in carbon, and not ported from the old Mac Toolbox APIs (which is what a carbon port means).
That's not to say it's good software, but it isn't a port!
Didn't know that, I assumed (and we all know what that word means) that since the operations of the finder really didn't change that much, large portions of the old finder were used.
Now as to the other points. I don't hate the finder, I've used it forever. There are some pratical things to dislike. Most people who complain about the finder are accessing network mounts. If you don't do this, you probably don't understand why people get so mad about it. I thought it would have been fixed in 10.1. Its better, but still not great.
But I also think that the desktop metaphor itself is growing long in the tooth. What I am suggesting is that Apple has been conceiving and working on an entirely new way of accessing and organizing your data. Think 3D (in a useful Apple way) and Front Row. Think of no visible file structure, but info simply sorted and accessed by data types and user defined collections. For example your iPhoto and iTunes library would be invisible to you rather than as they are now. They would instead be database files (core data?).
Now I am a little out of my league here, and I'm sure some of my suggested possibilities have big holes in them. But I just think we are going to see something radically new. Also, a revamped finder is one "secret feature" that (most) developers wouldn't need access to. Therefor it could be kept under wraps until the last minute.
No doubt. The new goodies that users are going to be clamoring for are made simple for the dev in 10.5 - but a pain in the kiester to support on 10.4. Which means, as a dev, you have a choice - offer up the features that users will use to decide whether to buy your app, or your competition's, and then struggle like hell to support 10.4... or just go 10.5. I think a *lot* are going to go the latter course. The benefits are just too large this time around.
Pardon my ignorance, but what new features are you talking about?
Leopard Wish List
Pardon my ignorance, but what new features are you talking about?
He could tell you, but the he would have to kill you. NDA and all.
Most of it has been made public, but I can't recall what has and has not at this point, soooooo, I'm just going to keep my mouth shut.
It's no one thing, but a collection of features for the developer that will simply make life a lot easier. When you put them all together, some aspects of product development just get stupidly simple... to the point that devs will have more time to devote to new features for their apps, most likely using the more user-oriented features such as CoreAnimation.
Pardon my ignorance, but what new features are you talking about?
Google "Objective-C 2.0," then also Google "Core Animation."
There's one more that I'm super excited about but that hasn't really been talked about much, so I won't go there. (It's exciting to programmers, but not so much to anyone else).