My Week With Leopard.
I've spent the last week using OSX 10.5 Leopard on a 1.5 G4 Powerbook, and I thought that I'd share some of my impressions.
First, I found it odd that Apple has already released an update for Leopard using it on 15" Al Powerbooks. I didn't get the full specifics on what it did, but after it updated, things were noticeably smoother.
So on to the features.
Spaces: I remember using something just like Spaces on a Linux system back in 2000. It works about the same and just by holding control and pushing the arrow key, I'm on to a new space. Another nice feature about it is that the number of the space you're on is up in the menu bar, which is a nice reminder. You can click on the number and all your available spaces pop up for you to choose. Again, it's nice, but I don't think it's all that revolutionary.
Time Machine. While I admit that I need to back up my stuff on a regular basis, I just don't know if it's going to happen with TM. I love the idea, but as of right now, it's still really choppy and slow to use. Besides, when setting it up for the first time it asks where you want to have the backup and you can choose either your an external hard drive or the current volume. I'm not quite sure what the point is of backing things up to the current hard drive since a hardware failure would knock out both your original and your back up. So I chose to back it up to an external drive. However, since it's on a laptop and the laptop and I have it away from the desk most of the time, I rarely have it hooked up to the hard drive to have it do a back up. This is more a failing on my part and not the program though. It's a great back up tool, but again, hardly revolutionary.
I've heard a lot of people complaining about the translucent menu bar and how horrible it is. To be honest, I've not really had a bad time with it. The problem I'm finding is the dock. Instead of using the little black arrow under the application to tell you it's running, they now use this pale blue dot which is hard to see against the reflective surface. That mirror effect is also rather annoying. And I'm not sure if it's the OS or that the PB isn't fast enough, but when scrolling across the dock, it feels choppy.
Stacks is probably the feature I enjoyed the most. I always liked to drag my Applications folder down into my dock to have it easily accessible. With stacks, when you click on the folder, all the application icons spread out on the screen like in Expose. The downside is that they seem to be in some random order and I couldn't find a way arrange them alphabetically or anything. So they'd all pop up and I'd have to hunt through all these icons to spot the application I was looking for. Also, more times than not, the folder icon would disappear from the dock. It would still be there, and if I scrolled the cursor over it, "Applications" would appear, but the folder itself was not visible. Then I'd make the dock hide and when I'd pull lit back up, there would be the folder. Kind of irritating.
Another feature that I like that I don't think has gotten talked about much is the "compress" feature built it. Just right click on a file and you can automatically turn it into a .zip file or compress in other ways. Very handy.
The changes made to the shading in windows is also very nice. If you have multiple windows open, the one that is selected turns a dark gray and the inactive ones turn to a very pale shade of gray. It definitely makes it easier to spot which screen you have selected.
One feature that I was hoping to have some fun with was iChat theater, but it was a no go. I was able to use certain video effects such as Black and White or all the other ones that make it look like you're using a crazy mirror. The ones I really wanted to try out were the ones that would put a picture behind me or a video. This never worked and would always crash the program out. The strange thing was that it first asks you to move out of the frame so that it can capture the background, but it doesn't give you enough time to actually move out of the frame. Everytime I'd try, half of my face would still be on screen when it clicked to capture. Then it would crash, so I'm not really sure how well it works.
The other main complaint I had was that it would just randomly drop the airport signal. One second I'd be surfing the web and everything was fine, and the next it would lose the signal. The only way to get it working again was to go to the menu bar and select "Turn Airport Off" and then turn it back on again. Once it was turned back on, it would detect the network and be working great again.
As for a lot of the other features, like To Do's and the Stationary in Mail, they work fine, but I rarely used them. There are only so many times that you want to send a "Save the Date" stationary to your friends.
I hope that the "under the hood" stuff in Leopard really makes a difference to developers, because otherwise I don't see anything really compelling in it to make me want to upgrade.
Oh, and so far most of the applications that I've tried all worked fine. MS Office, iWork, and all of the iApps ran smoothly. A few shareware apps didn't run (like VLC player) because it wasn't supported on this platform.
Questions?
First, I found it odd that Apple has already released an update for Leopard using it on 15" Al Powerbooks. I didn't get the full specifics on what it did, but after it updated, things were noticeably smoother.
So on to the features.
Spaces: I remember using something just like Spaces on a Linux system back in 2000. It works about the same and just by holding control and pushing the arrow key, I'm on to a new space. Another nice feature about it is that the number of the space you're on is up in the menu bar, which is a nice reminder. You can click on the number and all your available spaces pop up for you to choose. Again, it's nice, but I don't think it's all that revolutionary.
Time Machine. While I admit that I need to back up my stuff on a regular basis, I just don't know if it's going to happen with TM. I love the idea, but as of right now, it's still really choppy and slow to use. Besides, when setting it up for the first time it asks where you want to have the backup and you can choose either your an external hard drive or the current volume. I'm not quite sure what the point is of backing things up to the current hard drive since a hardware failure would knock out both your original and your back up. So I chose to back it up to an external drive. However, since it's on a laptop and the laptop and I have it away from the desk most of the time, I rarely have it hooked up to the hard drive to have it do a back up. This is more a failing on my part and not the program though. It's a great back up tool, but again, hardly revolutionary.
I've heard a lot of people complaining about the translucent menu bar and how horrible it is. To be honest, I've not really had a bad time with it. The problem I'm finding is the dock. Instead of using the little black arrow under the application to tell you it's running, they now use this pale blue dot which is hard to see against the reflective surface. That mirror effect is also rather annoying. And I'm not sure if it's the OS or that the PB isn't fast enough, but when scrolling across the dock, it feels choppy.
Stacks is probably the feature I enjoyed the most. I always liked to drag my Applications folder down into my dock to have it easily accessible. With stacks, when you click on the folder, all the application icons spread out on the screen like in Expose. The downside is that they seem to be in some random order and I couldn't find a way arrange them alphabetically or anything. So they'd all pop up and I'd have to hunt through all these icons to spot the application I was looking for. Also, more times than not, the folder icon would disappear from the dock. It would still be there, and if I scrolled the cursor over it, "Applications" would appear, but the folder itself was not visible. Then I'd make the dock hide and when I'd pull lit back up, there would be the folder. Kind of irritating.
Another feature that I like that I don't think has gotten talked about much is the "compress" feature built it. Just right click on a file and you can automatically turn it into a .zip file or compress in other ways. Very handy.
The changes made to the shading in windows is also very nice. If you have multiple windows open, the one that is selected turns a dark gray and the inactive ones turn to a very pale shade of gray. It definitely makes it easier to spot which screen you have selected.
One feature that I was hoping to have some fun with was iChat theater, but it was a no go. I was able to use certain video effects such as Black and White or all the other ones that make it look like you're using a crazy mirror. The ones I really wanted to try out were the ones that would put a picture behind me or a video. This never worked and would always crash the program out. The strange thing was that it first asks you to move out of the frame so that it can capture the background, but it doesn't give you enough time to actually move out of the frame. Everytime I'd try, half of my face would still be on screen when it clicked to capture. Then it would crash, so I'm not really sure how well it works.
The other main complaint I had was that it would just randomly drop the airport signal. One second I'd be surfing the web and everything was fine, and the next it would lose the signal. The only way to get it working again was to go to the menu bar and select "Turn Airport Off" and then turn it back on again. Once it was turned back on, it would detect the network and be working great again.
As for a lot of the other features, like To Do's and the Stationary in Mail, they work fine, but I rarely used them. There are only so many times that you want to send a "Save the Date" stationary to your friends.
I hope that the "under the hood" stuff in Leopard really makes a difference to developers, because otherwise I don't see anything really compelling in it to make me want to upgrade.
Oh, and so far most of the applications that I've tried all worked fine. MS Office, iWork, and all of the iApps ran smoothly. A few shareware apps didn't run (like VLC player) because it wasn't supported on this platform.
Questions?
Comments
It's a great back up tool, but again, hardly revolutionary.
I think that too.
I've heard a lot of people complaining about the translucent menu bar and how horrible it is. To be honest, I've not really had a bad time with it.
It depends on your background image. I couldn't stand it for anything other than solid colors.
The problem I'm finding is the dock. Instead of using the little black arrow under the application to tell you it's running, they now use this pale blue dot which is hard to see against the reflective surface. That mirror effect is also rather annoying. And I'm not sure if it's the OS or that the PB isn't fast enough, but when scrolling across the dock, it feels choppy.
Given the choice, I'd probably turn the mirror effect off. You can customize it though. I find a black dock with white triangles shows up pretty well.
Stacks is probably the feature I enjoyed the most. I always liked to drag my Applications folder down into my dock to have it easily accessible.
The downside is that they seem to be in some random order and I couldn't find a way arrange them alphabetically or anything. So they'd all pop up and I'd have to hunt through all these icons to spot the application I was looking for. Also, more times than not, the folder icon would disappear from the dock. It would still be there, and if I scrolled the cursor over it, "Applications" would appear, but the folder itself was not visible. Then I'd make the dock hide and when I'd pull lit back up, there would be the folder. Kind of irritating.
I think that's a bug in the beta version. I had the disappearing icons too. I don't like Stacks at all. I wish they'd made it so that you drag a bunch of things into place and it creates a Stack. It only takes folders and I have about 150 apps in my apps folder so Stacks will be pretty much useless for that. I think people want to have grouping options so apps like Photoshop etc can go into creativity, apps like safari, firefox etc can go into internet and this doesn't provide it. You'd have to make folders yourself to do this and since Photoshop and others have subfolders for plugins, they'd likely have to go in there too.
What I might be able to do is make a folder full of aliases but if Stacks had been done how I think most people will expect them to be, this wouldn't be an issue.
Another feature that I like that I don't think has gotten talked about much is the "compress" feature built it. Just right click on a file and you can automatically turn it into a .zip file or compress in other ways. Very handy.
That one's in Tiger too.
The changes made to the shading in windows is also very nice. If you have multiple windows open, the one that is selected turns a dark gray and the inactive ones turn to a very pale shade of gray. It definitely makes it easier to spot which screen you have selected.
I didn't like that change. The transition is too distracting IMO.
The ones I really wanted to try out were the ones that would put a picture behind me or a video. This never worked and would always crash the program out. The strange thing was that it first asks you to move out of the frame so that it can capture the background, but it doesn't give you enough time to actually move out of the frame. Everytime I'd try, half of my face would still be on screen when it clicked to capture. Then it would crash, so I'm not really sure how well it works.
I tried it out and it doesn't work that well if you are against even a slightly complex background. I had a room with just a chair and curtains and when I moved back into shot, it just left streaks all around me. You'd probably have to be against a solid backdrop and one that was vastly different to what you were wearing. A greenscreen would do the trick.
The other main complaint I had was that it would just randomly drop the airport signal.
Airport didn't work for me at all. It just hung up.
I hope that the "under the hood" stuff in Leopard really makes a difference to developers, because otherwise I don't see anything really compelling in it to make me want to upgrade.
That's the impression I got but then that was the impression I got with Tiger too. I think the under-the-hood improvements in leopard are more significant though. I found some good performance improvements in important areas like application launching (for native apps anyway), PDF rendering and Coverflow animation.
Oh, and so far most of the applications that I've tried all worked fine. MS Office, iWork, and all of the iApps ran smoothly. A few shareware apps didn't run (like VLC player) because it wasn't supported on this platform.
Questions?
VLC is open source freeware but I noticed that a few open source apps are having trouble. All the ones I use actually. I guess this could be Apple's way of forcing Cocoa on people. Make it Cocoa or it will run terribly.
Time Machine. While I admit that I need to back up my stuff on a regular basis, I just don't know if it's going to happen with TM. I love the idea, but as of right now, it's still really choppy and slow to use. Besides, when setting it up for the first time it asks where you want to have the backup and you can choose either your an external hard drive or the current volume. I'm not quite sure what the point is of backing things up to the current hard drive since a hardware failure would knock out both your original and your back up. So I chose to back it up to an external drive. However, since it's on a laptop and the laptop and I have it away from the desk most of the time, I rarely have it hooked up to the hard drive to have it do a back up. This is more a failing on my part and not the program though. It's a great back up tool, but again, hardly revolutionary.
There are backups and there is backing up. I still haven't heard or seen of using Time Machine in place of regular backups. The demos I've seen (has anyone seen any others?) have always shown a user recovering a single deleted file. That is very handy, I'm sure, but has anyone seen how Time Machine is used to recover from a crashed hard drive? Even if you back up to an external disk, what is the interface like for that type of recovery? So really, it sounds like it will be great for people who accidentally, or not, delete files that they regret deleting. But not help so much if your hard drive crashes.
Also, you mention having a laptop and backing up to an external drive that is not always connected. How does Time Machine handle that? Does is stack up the backups somewhere temporarily until you reconnect to the primary backup device? Or does it just not perform back ups during that time?
I think that too.
It depends on your background image. I couldn't stand it for anything other than solid colors.
Given the choice, I'd probably turn the mirror effect off. You can customize it though. I find a black dock with white triangles shows up pretty well.
I think that's a bug in the beta version. I had the disappearing icons too. I don't like Stacks at all. I wish they'd made it so that you drag a bunch of things into place and it creates a Stack. It only takes folders and I have about 150 apps in my apps folder so Stacks will be pretty much useless for that. I think people want to have grouping options so apps like Photoshop etc can go into creativity, apps like safari, firefox etc can go into internet and this doesn't provide it. You'd have to make folders yourself to do this and since Photoshop and others have subfolders for plugins, they'd likely have to go in there too.
What I might be able to do is make a folder full of aliases but if Stacks had been done how I think most people will expect them to be, this wouldn't be an issue.
That one's in Tiger too.
I didn't like that change. The transition is too distracting IMO.
I tried it out and it doesn't work that well if you are against even a slightly complex background. I had a room with just a chair and curtains and when I moved back into shot, it just left streaks all around me. You'd probably have to be against a solid backdrop and one that was vastly different to what you were wearing. A greenscreen would do the trick.
Airport didn't work for me at all. It just hung up.
That's the impression I got but then that was the impression I got with Tiger too. I think the under-the-hood improvements in leopard are more significant though. I found some good performance improvements in important areas like application launching (for native apps anyway), PDF rendering and Coverflow animation.
VLC is open source freeware but I noticed that a few open source apps are having trouble. All the ones I use actually. I guess this could be Apple's way of forcing Cocoa on people. Make it Cocoa or it will run terribly.
Porting steps for VLC:
http://www.videolan.org/developers/v.../html/apa.html
Writing a native interface : If your system doesn't support GTK or Qt, you will have to write a native interface plugin (for instance Aqua or Win32). You may also need to rewrite the video output plugin if you're currently using a slow compatibility layer.
We know that GTK isn't available and Qt may not be ready for Leopard which would make VLC dead in the water without a Cocoa interface ready for it.
Spaces: I remember using something just like Spaces on a Linux system back in 2000. It works about the same and just by holding control and pushing the arrow key, I'm on to a new space. Another nice feature about it is that the number of the space you're on is up in the menu bar, which is a nice reminder. You can click on the number and all your available spaces pop up for you to choose. Again, it's nice, but I don't think it's all that revolutionary.
Don't forget that applications can be "bound" to a space so that they always open up in the same space. Spaces is a good feature that has been around (Virtual Desktops) for a while. I don't think Apple ever portrayed it as a "revolutionary" feature.
Time Machine. While I admit that I need to back up my stuff on a regular basis, I just don't know if it's going to happen with TM. I love the idea, but as of right now, it's still really choppy and slow to use. Besides, when setting it up for the first time it asks where you want to have the backup and you can choose either your an external hard drive or the current volume. I'm not quite sure what the point is of backing things up to the current hard drive since a hardware failure would knock out both your original and your back up. So I chose to back it up to an external drive. However, since it's on a laptop and the laptop and I have it away from the desk most of the time, I rarely have it hooked up to the hard drive to have it do a back up. This is more a failing on my part and not the program though. It's a great back up tool, but again, hardly revolutionary.
Remember. Your are attempting to do a preview on a beta OS that is not shipping for another 4 months. You really shouldn't be putting much weight on performance as that's the last thing tweaked generally. If one values their data they'll backup to an external storage device. Apple again has not claimed that Time Machine is revolutionary. It does bring them parity with Windows and Volume Shadow Copy. I love the UI alot better as you have Spotlight searches of Time Machine and a drop dead UI for restoring files.
As for a lot of the other features, like To Do's and the Stationary in Mail, they work fine, but I rarely used them. There are only so many times that you want to send a "Save the Date" stationary to your friends.
I hope that the "under the hood" stuff in Leopard really makes a difference to developers, because otherwise I don't see anything really compelling in it to make me want to upgrade.
The stationary feature is frankly for those that like sending out cutesy stuff but the To Dos are imporant. You may not use them but the To Do are an API that 3rd party developers can do. I don't know how old you are but when you get to your mid 30's or later you don't have time to be fu**ing around. To Dos and a solid calendar system are gold. Leopard's Calendar Store feature which gives 3rd parties ISV read/write access to iCal data is worth $129 alone.
Frankly your Powerbook is getting a wee bit old. Leopard is going to work best with a decent GPU now that the UI is threaded. If you're in the market for a new Powerbook late this year or early next year you'll likely want to wait and get Leopard and the next iLife. Leopard is NOT a small update but if your computer is falling out of the "comfy" range in power it's time to start looking at an Intel based computer with dual cores.
It's a must for me because I'm looking at getting Logic Pro 8 and Final Cut Studio. Both should work very well under Leopard. I want to see how the new QT Kit in Leopard works for multimedia playback and they're hyping QT Capture as a pretty nice system for recording good video and audio.
I expect that developers will get a kick out of Leopard. Python and Ruby will work nicely in conjunction with Applescript through Scripting Bridge (I believe)
You have to have dual core support to take advantage of nsoperation which improves application performance on dual core computers (Apple's apps like mail will take advantage)
Stacks are nice but I'm more of a Quick look guy. I want to access stuff without having to launch the app. I like that Spotlight has improved in fluidity and searching capabilities.
Computer sharing is easier and networking doesn't bog down the finder from what I read.
Core Image now supports RAW directly so I've a hunch that Aperture 2.0 will be a tad faster with RAW manipulation.
I've heard that Stacks is a pretty "boring" demo of Core Animation and that there are much cooler uses. I'm looking forward to seeing what developers can do from the wild to the mundane.
I've only recently started dabbling with Texmate but Allan Odgaard has said some nice things about Leopard's Core Text. These frameworks were hidden in Tiger but fully available in Leopard and should make text rendering much faster.
I also expect to dabble in Automator now that it's more robust and flexible.
If I knew I was buying a new computer in a year I'd think hard about waiting but my Mac mini is barely over a year and I'll be adding either a Macbook or an iMac to the stable in the next year but I want Leopard now. Fewer beachballs, better networking, cleaner UI.
I can think of worse things to drop $129 on
The main idea that kept running through my head as I was using it was that while all of the user features are nice, they are mostly things that were available by third party applications. Apple has gotten a lot of their best ideas from third party developers. It reminded me of how Dashboard was just a rehash of Konfabulator. Or how Sherlock was completely redone to look just like Karelia's Watson.
That's what made me notice that Sherlock is now officially dead. Of course, they've been letting that one die for years now. They brought in Spotlight and Dashboard which killed all the useful features or Sherlock. The only reason I ever used it was for the Movies feature, which is now an included widget in Leopard.
As for Time Machine and it's backups, as far as I can tell, if you're not connected to the drive you have designated as your backup volume, it doesn't do a back up. It doesn't save a back up. And I'll be damned if I could figure out how to restore an entire system from Time Machine. It may be a part of reinstalling the OS. When you first install Leopard, it asks you if you want to let Time Machine do a backup of your system. My guess is that if you reinstall it and have a backup already, it'll ask you if you want Time Machine to restore your system from that backup.
It definitely is in beta mode and still has quite a few kinks to work out, but being four months from release, I have to say that it's pretty good.
The main idea that kept running through my head as I was using it was that while all of the user features are nice, they are mostly things that were available by third party applications. Apple has gotten a lot of their best ideas from third party developers. It reminded me of how Dashboard was just a rehash of Konfabulator. Or how Sherlock was completely redone to look just like Karelia's Watson.
That's what made me notice that Sherlock is now officially dead. Of course, they've been letting that one die for years now. They brought in Spotlight and Dashboard which killed all the useful features or Sherlock. The only reason I ever used it was for the Movies feature, which is now an included widget in Leopard.
As for Time Machine and it's backups, as far as I can tell, if you're not connected to the drive you have designated as your backup volume, it doesn't do a back up. It doesn't save a back up. And I'll be damned if I could figure out how to restore an entire system from Time Machine. It may be a part of reinstalling the OS. When you first install Leopard, it asks you if you want to let Time Machine do a backup of your system. My guess is that if you reinstall it and have a backup already, it'll ask you if you want Time Machine to restore your system from that backup.
Apple's innovation doesn't come from delivering new products. They are the BASF of computing. They look at areas in which no one wants to address usability and they improve that product so that your grandmother could use it.
Apple couldn't have gotten the idea of Watson from Karelia. Note that "Watson" is a play on "Sherlock" thus the very creation of Sherlock was the impetus behind the creation of Watson and even Dan Wood admits that (he pretty has to). The UI were strikingly similar and that's where the hubbub came from.
Konfabulator was Dashboard done wrong. Arlo Rose spent many hours developing a "locked down" box in which to run Konfabulator widgets that embed themselves into a desktop which is covered %80 by the open application. Huh? Look at today with Vista and the widgets available elswhere and you see that Widgets were always meant to float above the surface and moving widgets from Java to web technologies was a stroke of genius that Konfabulator would have been wrong for.
Both Dan Wood and Arlo Rose sold their creations for profit to larger companies (Sun and Yahoo) and made off quite well for technology that was dying anyways. If anything Apple deserves a cut for helping them sell these albatross of applications at the right time.
Although I'm a total noob I really like what I'm seeing from a developmental standpoint.
Apple's added an easy to use API for multi-core threading with dependencies (nsoperation and nsoperationqueue)
Ruby and Python are damn near peer level languages for scripting and general app development
There's a new Inteface Builder with plugin format (xib) that should make creating more custom interfaces easier.
Xcode 3.0 supports Gargage Collection, code refactoring, properties (accessor methods) and more pervasive Uniform Type Identifier support.
Dtrace is a damn cool app for viewing load and processes.
Most API are now 64-bit including the Quicktime API replacement QTkit/QT Capture. Encoding performance has improved for video, alpha is now supported h.264,
Open Document format is supported in Text Edit. Dictionary now supports Wikipedia.
We should get write ZFS perfomance in a point upgrade.
DVD player looks MUCH better.
Open GL 2.1 included which means GLSLANG shader support.
Core Data is 10x faster and now supports schema revisions
Image Kit/PDF Kit have improved nicely
Time Machine is using a new API that tracks new events in the filesystem. I'm sure there are many 3rd parties that will use this as well to keep track of changes a bit easier.
There are better importing/exporting tools that maintain your metadata.
I'm still not wholly convinced though that Leopard is the right OS for an older machine unless that computer has a nice GPU.
I've seen some screenshots of the cleaned up network preferences and some other areas so it's nice to see some "sweetening" there.
Honestly I cannot say that there is one or two features that make Leopard better than say Vista. What I can say is that Apple continues to revamp the OS so that the sum of all the parts feels more synergistic than the comparable Windows OS.
I suppose Apple will continue to rapidly advance the developer toolset. It appears that augmenting and eventually replacing GCC is something they are keen on. I think that process hits with fury for 10.6.
I'm guessing that WWDC 2008 will be about long reaching 10.6 design goals but also preparing developers for a move away from a GCC front end and a more modern pipeline with LLVM and Clang.
I'm actually hoping for a few years without a new OS upgrade. For awhile there, they were coming out every year, making whichever version I was currently running obsolete. The thing that was nice about Windows XP was that you knew you weren't going to upgrade for awhile. Vista kept getting delayed and so XP was the current system for a long time.
I hope that Leopard stays around for at least three years. It's wishful thinking, but we can all dream... and save $129.
Apple's innovation doesn't come from delivering new products. They are the BASF of computing. They look at areas in which no one wants to address usability and they improve that product so that your grandmother could use it.
Apple couldn't have gotten the idea of Watson from Karelia. Note that "Watson" is a play on "Sherlock" thus the very creation of Sherlock was the impetus behind the creation of Watson and even Dan Wood admits that (he pretty has to). The UI were strikingly similar and that's where the hubbub came from.
Konfabulator was Dashboard done wrong. Arlo Rose spent many hours developing a "locked down" box in which to run Konfabulator widgets that embed themselves into a desktop which is covered %80 by the open application. Huh? Look at today with Vista and the widgets available elswhere and you see that Widgets were always meant to float above the surface and moving widgets from Java to web technologies was a stroke of genius that Konfabulator would have been wrong for.
Both Dan Wood and Arlo Rose sold their creations for profit to larger companies (Sun and Yahoo) and made off quite well for technology that was dying anyways. If anything Apple deserves a cut for helping them sell these albatross of applications at the right time.
Although I'm a total noob I really like what I'm seeing from a developmental standpoint.
Apple's added an easy to use API for multi-core threading with dependencies (nsoperation and nsoperationqueue)
Ruby and Python are damn near peer level languages for scripting and general app development
There's a new Inteface Builder with plugin format (xib) that should make creating more custom interfaces easier.
Xcode 3.0 supports Gargage Collection, code refactoring, properties (accessor methods) and more pervasive Uniform Type Identifier support.
Dtrace is a damn cool app for viewing load and processes.
Most API are now 64-bit including the Quicktime API replacement QTkit/QT Capture. Encoding performance has improved for video, alpha is now supported h.264,
Open Document format is supported in Text Edit. Dictionary now supports Wikipedia.
We should get write ZFS perfomance in a point upgrade.
DVD player looks MUCH better.
Open GL 2.1 included which means GLSLANG shader support.
Core Data is 10x faster and now supports schema revisions
Image Kit/PDF Kit have improved nicely
Time Machine is using a new API that tracks new events in the filesystem. I'm sure there are many 3rd parties that will use this as well to keep track of changes a bit easier.
There are better importing/exporting tools that maintain your metadata.
I'm still not wholly convinced though that Leopard is the right OS for an older machine unless that computer has a nice GPU.
I've seen some screenshots of the cleaned up network preferences and some other areas so it's nice to see some "sweetening" there.
Honestly I cannot say that there is one or two features that make Leopard better than say Vista. What I can say is that Apple continues to revamp the OS so that the sum of all the parts feels more synergistic than the comparable Windows OS.
I suppose Apple will continue to rapidly advance the developer toolset. It appears that augmenting and eventually replacing GCC is something they are keen on. I think that process hits with fury for 10.6.
I'm guessing that WWDC 2008 will be about long reaching 10.6 design goals but also preparing developers for a move away from a GCC front end and a more modern pipeline with LLVM and Clang.
Steve Naroff's presentation on Apple moving from GCC:
http://llvm.org/devmtg/2007-05/09-Naroff-CFE.pdf
Naroff is a brilliant engineer and always accessible at NeXT and Apple.
What about Resolution Independence?
It's not finished yet but I didn't really see any better definition on my screen. You'd probably need a pretty high res display to notice any change. When you do a ctrl-zoom, it still looks blocky in most parts of the screen, though I'm not sure if that will even change with Resolution Independence fully in place.
I actually think they might be doing a 50/50 implementation. If it works fast enough then they will have it ready, if not, they will stick with the old way of doing things - I'll need to check but I think there are duplicate interface images, ones that are the usual PNG and others that are PDF. They are using PDF for the format and as you probably know by looking at PDF documents, it's one of the slowest document types to render. They've dramatically improved the speed in Leopard (scrolling through some PDFs is smooth as butter) but there are still delays here and there so we'll just have to wait and see.
QuickTime bombs everytime I try to play an MPEG file or even select it in the CoverFlow view.
I get the impression that the current GUI is still just a placeholder (here's hoping).
It looks like CoverFlow view in the Finder is going to require some serious horsepower!
cocoa doesn't really mean shit
... even though they might be the same color.
cocoa doesn't really mean shit
For the end user yes, but for the programmer it may mean much.
... even though they might be the same color.
Nice.
Insight anyone?
Does Apple have a history in past releases of not disclosing some key features until release? I've been using the Mac since 10.0, and don't recall any surprises, but just wanted to validate it.
Is the feature list of Leopard fixed, or are there additional features likely to be included that have yet to be mentioned? The reason I ask is I'm curious just how underwhelming this release is going to be? If I know that nothing else will be included aside from what was discussed by Steve on stage in the worst keynote I've ever seen him give, then I can prepare myself for the limited features discussed in Leopard.
Insight anyone?
Does Apple have a history in past releases of not disclosing some key features until release? I've been using the Mac since 10.0, and don't recall any surprises, but just wanted to validate it.
i'm kinda wondering what a groundbreaking feature actually is... and what sort of things people were expecting Leopard was going to be doing. what is cutting edge anyway? is it a new gizmo, process, function or capability? is it eye candy or a hidden processes? if Leopard was going to fully use ZFS would it be apparent to an average photoshop user? does ZFS present the user a cool, noticable UI revolution that changes the way a graphic designer interfaces with Quark or a RIP driver or a word processor?
is there some super amazing work being done in the Linux world that illustrates a completely new Os design generations ahead of Mac or Windows? something that bears little resemblance to what is currently in use?
is the removal of a feature, like no more need of a desktop, a leap forward or backward?
it's all a big mystery to me... yet it seems people expect it to be available in the next version of everything.
Is the feature list of Leopard fixed, or are there additional features likely to be included that have yet to be mentioned? The reason I ask is I'm curious just how underwhelming this release is going to be? If I know that nothing else will be included aside from what was discussed by Steve on stage in the worst keynote I've ever seen him give, then I can prepare myself for the limited features discussed in Leopard.
I read somewhere that the WWDC release is not a feature complete version and that the one after it will be and that should be sometime in August, then there will be another in September and the final one will be at the end of October (a bit disappointing as I was hoping for the beginning). As with software though, if they get it right, I guess they could ship 'early' to make the delay seem less.
Also, although it seems to be underwhelming with regard to features, there are some significant performance improvements across the board.
I read somewhere that the WWDC release is not a feature complete version and that the one after it will be and that should be sometime in August, then there will be another in September and the final one will be at the end of October (a bit disappointing as I was hoping for the beginning). As with software though, if they get it right, I guess they could ship 'early' to make the delay seem less.
Also, although it seems to be underwhelming with regard to features, there are some significant performance improvements across the board.
I've read in several places that performance improvements were a big part of Leopard, and I'm happy about that. I'm just constantly feeling like all the great things in an OS have already been done and there's nothing really groundbreaking left for Apple to do. When they come out and tout Time Machine (provided it looks cool) as one of the biggest things in Leopard (I have yet to NEED "Backup" but I use it every two weeks) I wonder if there's anything great left out there. Quick Look was interesting, but what difference does it make to me whether I open an app that takes all of five seconds in order to read something, or click on it in a window? Seems the same to me. Either way, I'm reading the document.
I remember being excited about Tiger coming out because it had Spotlight, and it's a feature I use all the time now. There's not a single thing in Leopard that really gets me excited about the OS. Sure, I'll drop the cash on it just to stay current, but the features presented aren't all that impressive in my opinion.