ThinkSecret has put together an overview of the new features as found in the WWDC preview of Mac OS 10.5, including a screenshot gallery. “From an end-user’s perspective, the build of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard that developers received at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference nearly two weeks ago may seem lacking of new features. Beyond Spaces and Time Machine, like Spotlight and Dashboard in Tiger before it, or Expose and Fast User Switching in Panther, the span of noticeable new features are limited in present form.” On a related note, Jobs will not hold a keynote speech at the Paris Apple Expo.
This may not be considered a “big” feature to some but to me it is pretty important since I save most of my documents in Linux as ODF. Now I will be able to open them simply using TextEdit. I wonder if this is a pre-cursor to what we will be getting in the new version of Pages. Along with the new Office formats as well…. though that doesn’t effect me very much, since I do not use the Office proprietary formats.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/97218083@N00/220373393/
Preview also seems to load and perform much faster than in the past… they dropped the “drawer” widget in favor of a more “flat” sidebar. I like it much better.
Leopard may not seem like a HUGE upgrade but it was the small things that really needed improving. And in my opinion that is what is mainly happening UI wise. The Leopard Developers Preview has also been extremely stable and subjectively performance has increased yet again.
I am looking forward to these “Top Secret Features.” Maybe they will be what makes people think of a HUGE upgrade.
JRM7
The inclusion of ODF is very nice. I didn’t know that the were doing that.
is this the release with ZFS and DTRACE from Sun? Is time-machine based on ZFS snapshots? I know xcode 3 is supposed to suppor dtrace.
is this the release with ZFS and DTRACE from Sun? Is time-machine based on ZFS snapshots? I know xcode 3 is supposed to suppor dtrace.
DTrace is there, although I’ve heard that it is only partially done (don’t have a DP to confirm this myself). Perhaps the rest will be ported before the release?
As for ZFS, no joy. Time Machine works on top of plain old HFS+, and backups are actually complete files. Depending on your line of work, your hard drive will fill up right quick with this feature turned on. For more detailed discussion of Time Machine, check out this post on Ars, titled “Time Machine and the Future of the File System”: http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/8/15/4995
Oh, and this is my first post. Yay me.
just how beautful OS-X looks, GNOME can learn alot and I just wish it would.Just love the UI design, so I guess thats why I love gnome so much.
Edited 2006-08-20 23:09
Please, could you elaborate?
What exactly do you find so beautiful in those screenshots?
The various and incoherent (and for my taste rather ugly) interface toolkits?
Or the big and flashy glassy/photorealistic icons?
I’m honest, and not really trying to troll, but I’ve never understood this awe for OSX’s GUI. Especially with respect to the clean and professional looks of Gnome when used with Clearlooks Cairo.
I’m honest, and not really trying to troll, but I’ve never understood this awe for OSX’s GUI. Especially with respect to the clean and professional looks of Gnome when used with Clearlooks Cairo.
I think it helps to appreciate it when actually using MacOSX rather than just looking at screenshots. Back in 2003-2004, I used Aqua skins myself all over my Gnome and WindowsXP desktops.
When I finally got a Mac, I found out that it really is like putting makeup on a pig. 🙂 There just isn’t any comparison to the original. I don’t know how many hours Apple engineers spent on designing and implementing the GUI, but they went for pixel perfection. It’s very difficult to find technical errors, graphical hiccups and anomalies in the GUI.
This stuff requires some real skills to implement and there an incredible attention to detail. There might be inconsistencies and I would love to throw brushed metal out the window, but at least you can’t put a finger on the implementation. Brushed metal looks right on it’s own, but it doesn’t fit into the whole and it has to go.
In fact I tried to copy some of the Aqua look myself into a program of my own for Windows, but it’s very difficult to get the shades right so I ended up dropping it.
Edited 2006-08-21 16:13
Yeah, I’ve briefly used OSX, and I honestly think most of its special effects would probably become old after a while… but that’s just speculation, I admit.
OTOH, the pixel perfect glass you admire I find hideous, flashy, and very tiring to the eye: it’s not only brushed metal (ugly), but also pretty much all the other “skins” (pardon the inaccuracy) that look ugly to me 🙂
Well, tastes, I guess…
Since when is incorporating features like Time Machine and Spaces in a slick, simplistic manner considered minimal change?
If the next Ubuntu or whatever suddenly grew these integrated features in a point release (which is what this version of OSX is) I’d be incredibly happy.
I for one don’t believe this is all OSX will have to offer in it’s next version, but just enough to keep the users and fanbase happy while the “big news” stuff stabilises.
Edited 2006-08-20 23:26
well, it sure seems like apple’s running out of extraordinary ideas. I mean they’re on their 5th iteration of OSX.. Is there anything left they can do for OS11? I mean most people think the interface is perfect.. So how can they improve it all from here? Oh and btw, will they be releasing new laptops or desktops that bundle OSX 10.5? I just don’t want to buy a computer that’s going to be outdated right when OSX 10.5 is released
Just a guess here, but I’d think OS x will become OS 11 (whether they ever choose to rebrand in that manner) when Apple feels it must settle on 64-bit Intel.
I think this is several years off. No need to turn our PPC boxes into aquariums just yet. The early G4 boxes will be the next to find themselves left behind, though.
Wouldn’t surprise me if Apple changes its naming convention to stay with the OS X brand for a very long time. I would.
Well they can
improve finder for instance, this thing is evil…
get a decent remoting out of the box without anything expensive as a client in, no vnc does not cut it and apple rdp is way too expensive.
add better burning capabilites
add virtualisation capabilities…
the interface is FAR from ‘perfect’ ….. better than Windows, YES. Perfect? NO.
1) Have they mentioned a release date? My PC notebook is on its last legs and my next will be an Apple. If I can, I’d like to wait to buy until Tiger is out.
2) I have an iLamp that came with Jaguar, which it’s still running. What were the big feature additions in Jaguar? To me, it feels just like 10.(3|4|5), except with zero of the cool features.
1) No precise date was given but it is expected to start shipping next Spring.
2) These were the main new features in Jaguar (Mac OS 10.3 released in 2003) as you asked:
* Updated Finder, incorporating a brushed-metal interface, customizable sidebar and fast-searching
* Exposé: a new system to manipulate and view windows
* Fast User Switching: allows a user to remain logged in while another user logs in
* iChat AV which added video-conferencing features to iChat
* Improved PDF rendering to allow for faster PDF viewing
* Built-in faxing support
* Much greater Microsoft Windows interoperability
* FileVault: on the fly encryption and decryption of a user’s home folder
* Increased speed across the entire system with more support for the G5
* Safari (web browser)
Edited 2006-08-21 01:59
jaguar was 10.2, 10.3 is panther
as i recall, (and i could be wrong)
jaguar brought Quartz Extreme
iChat
Junk Mail filter in mail.app
maybe iCal
and some other stuff, im sure there is a review on ars that will give a very detailed list
Edited 2006-08-21 18:37
You are right. My (stupid) mistake.
Mac OS X v10.0 (Cheetah)
Mac OS X v10.1 (Puma)
Mac OS X v10.2 (Jaguar)
Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther)
Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger)
Jaguar included:
* Increased support for Microsoft Windows networks
* Quartz Extreme for compositing graphics directly on the AGP-based video card
* An adaptive spam mail filter, based on latent semantic indexing
* A system-wide repository for contact information in the new Address Book
* Rendezvous networking (Apple’s implementation of Zeroconf; renamed to Bonjour in 10.4)
* iChat: an Apple-branded, officially supported third-party AOL Instant Messenger client
* A revamped Finder with searching built directly into every window
* Dozens of new Apple Universal Access features
* Sherlock 3: Web services (See Watson)
* CUPS: The Common Unix Printing System allowed the use of Gimp-Print drivers, hpijs drivers, etc. for “unsupported” printers. It also allowed — with some user recompilation — printing to serial printers.
Thanks! Though, those are the features released in Panther (10.3). My 10.2 Jaguar machine does have a very dated version of Safari, which I believe had to be installed separately.
Jaguar was the biggest leap of all the versions of OS X. Many believe it (10.2) was really the first non-beta version of OS X. Of course, there can be all kinds of arguments about that, but it was a really big upgrade regarding both speed and features.
I believe we will see an overhaul of the UI in some way, i think really Leopard has been a bit harder to develop than previously thought, which is the reason for the top secret, i don’t think it’s anything to do with Microsoft (as another article stated Microsoft are not going to add features at this moment in time, they are concentrating on getting the OS bug free and released).
The reason is because of Vista, currently Apple are in a very good position in the market, they are in the public eye more now than ever. They need something which is going to wow the public and take the thunder from Vista, which in turn will bring more people to apple.
Really the features i have seen (time machine etc) are mere tasters for whats really going to come in spring.
A lot of people talk about when apple will change to Mac OS 11/XI, i don’t think we will see this for a very long time, if not at all. Mac OS X is a well recognized brand, the X has turned from a mere de-notion of version number to something more like the Coca-Cola logo.
They could go for 10.9 10.10 10.11 versioning scheme…
I’m a bit worried by seeing Grid Spacing and the new Trashcan window. They show that (some) work is still being put into the broken Finder.
As good as Grid Spacing is, it won’t FTFF.
@Governa
You described Panther. Jaguar was 10.2. It fixed a million little niggles and was the first version that many diehard Classic users actually liked.
One of the noticeable things about Leopard is that
a) Every application bar the Finder and iCal have been moved from brushed metal to the “unified” look.
b) Originally due around the end of Q406 / start of Q107, it is now due in “Spring”, which could be as late as Q207, i.e. it has slipped.
The slippage indicates that they’re working on significant features (e.g. there is support for resolution indepentent UIs in Leopard as a developer option). The fact that the UIs of the Finder and iCal have not been changed indicates that they have new versions of those applications in the works which they have chosen not to release at this time (although in iCal’s case it may just be that they didn’t get around to it).
I would hold off on a final opinion of Leopard until the Macworld Keynote in January. Despite all the “hiding-secrets-from-Microsoft” nonsense, I do think they have some impressive features around the corner.