As you have surely noticed by now, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs held his keynote speech yesterday at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. So far, the responses have been mixed; I have seen a lot of excitement, but also a lot of disappointment. Personally, I am not really sure where I stand.
Validation
The keynote kicked off with what may be the most significant announcement of all: the return of the Macintosh as a gaming platform. Electronic Arts announced that many of its top titles will be simultaneously released on both Mac and PC, which is a major step up from how things used to be. In addition, living legend John Carmack hinted at a major Mac related announcement in the future, which will most likely be quite similar to EA’s announcement.
Forget the transparent menu bar, virtual desktops, and the iPhone’s glorified scripts applications: the gaming announcement was the most significant part of the keynote yesterday. PC gaming has been a Windows thing mostly, and seeing two of the great gaming houses commit themselves to the Mac is about as great a validation as a gaming platform you can get. This will open up a whole new can of possible switchers.
Evolution…
Steve Jobs showed 10 of the 300 new features coming in Leopard. Most of these are things we already saw a year ago at WWDC, so I will skip those, mostly.
Time Machine is still not what I expected it to be; contrary to Previous Versions/Volume Shadow Copy in Vista, it requires an additional internal or external hard drive, and while this makes sense if you look at Time Machine as a purely back up solution, it does not make sense if you look at Time Machine as a revision control system. I tend to look at Time Machine as the latter, and hence I want to be able to access previous revisions of my files without dedicating an entire hard drive to it. I was hoping ZFS would be used for this, but contrary to what Jonathan Schwartz said, there has been no official word on ZFS, yet.
This, by the way, does not mean I do not like Time Machine; I just think it could have (should have?) been a lot more.
Steve Jobs said that Leopard would have a new desktop, so I expected something really ‘big’ to appear on the presentation screen. Instead, we got a transparent global menu bar, and a dock that appears to be copied almost exactly from Sun’s Project Looking Glass. It looks very slick, but to call this a new desktop is stretching it – to put it mildly.
The really interesting feature of that new desktop is the Stacks feature. The idea is, as usual, anything but new (let’s face it, it is a glorified directory on the dock, I can do the same thing on just about any OS’s panel), but the implementation is done in the usual Apple way: slick, sexy, and probably, infinitely useful.
A third feature I want to touch on is the new Finder. Long overdue, but now, they have finally done it. I personally never had that many problems with the ‘old’ Finder (apart from how doing anything related to networking would bring Finder to a halt), but I have heard a lot of complaints about it. Personally, I think the new Finder looks better, and the sidebar appears to be a lot more useful and flexible.
I am not sure about the use of the Cover Flow view, though. Of course, it looks slick and all, but I do not see the usefulness. I can see this being useful for browsing directories full of photos and image files, but for other files, I’m not so sure. However, this could very well be one of those things you really need to try first hand in order for it to make sense. In other words, I will reserve judgement on this feature until I have used it.
Another ‘feature’ worth mentioning is how Leopard will be 64bit, top to bottom. Initially, there was some confusion; will Leopard still run on 32bit machines? There is no explicit mention of this, but common sense obviously dictates that Leopard will indeed still run on 32bit machines, despite the lack of any specific remarks concerning this issue.
Steve’s claim that Leopard will be the first 64bit operating system capable of running 32bit and 64bit applications side-by-side is of course completely bonkers. Windows’ 64bit versions have had this capability since Windows XP 64bit Edition (for the Itanium, 2001), which was later perfected in Windows XP Professional x64 Edition in 2005.
Concerning drivers, Apple does have a point. Windows’ 64bit version require special 64bit drivers, while Leopard can run both 32bit and 64bit drivers.
I saved the best for last: for me, personally, one of the biggest ‘features’ is the consolidation of all the different Mac OS X themes into one, standard theme. I would have preferred if they chose another theme than the plastic look (I do not like it all that much), but it is already infinitely better than having 35093 different themes on your desktop. I hope application developers will adopt the new style and update their applications as quickly as possible.
…but not revolution
Overall, I think Leopard will be a fine, solid release, just like Tiger was. It will bring a lot of refinements, some welcome new features, while also resolving some long-standing issues such as the Finder and the lack of graphical consistency. On top of this, Leopard will see a plethora of under-the-hood changes (Core Animation, dtrace, ZFS, and so on) which alone will make Leopard a very worthwhile point (!) release.
However, where are those top secret features? Steve surely cannot say with a straight face that Leopard’s top secret features are a transparent menu bar and a prettier dock with reflections and directories on it? Do not get me wrong, I will buy Leopard the moment it becomes available (just like I did with Tiger, during a release party), but overall, it does not seem as if Leopard is as revolutionary as Apple made it out to be.
The only question remaining for me is how well Leopard will sail on my old PowerMac Cube. Apple has done an amazing job when it comes to performance; each release was actually faster than the previous one, and I hope Leopard will continue this excellent trend.
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I think a lot of the hype came from “fans” more than “Apple”. I really like at the things that came out. The unified look (finally!). Better integration with core anything. The new finder, spaces, stacks etc. I like it all and I think it will be a good upgrade.
hate to be teh buz kill but ZFS will not be in Leoprd
http://winbeta.org/comments.php?catid=1&id=7759
i too am sad
That doesn’t really bug me…it would have been cool of course. I think that it is a “feature” that definitely should be implemented.
well… i guess time will tell, but i am pretty confident that ZFS WILL ultimatly become OSXs files system.
I think this new “consistent” theme will bore the crap out of (looking at) OS X real soon.
The new theme hearkens back to Platinum from OS 8. It’s a welcome and well thought out change.
I think Apple hits the nail on the head most of the time when it comes to human interface design. Further I think they’re really making strides when it comes to pleasing and functional rendering of data.
I might budget for a new MacBook when Leopard is released. We’ll see.
“to be copied almost exactly from Sun’s Project Looking Glass”
Copied from what ? Apple created the dock.
They didn’t copy anything, it’s just the logic evolution of the dock (2D -> 3D).
Apple created the dock.
The dock was not ‘created’ by Apple. RISC OS already had a dock in 1987, 2 years before NEXT, and I’m sure there have been similar implementations before.
They didn’t copy anything, it’s just the logic evolution of the dock (2D -> 3D).
When discussing Apple: logical evolution.
When discussing anything other than Apple: copying/stealing.
On the zeroth day Apple created God…
i hate it how i can’t mod you up
I have always said that you should be able to mod staff up
(Not down, that wouldn’t be fair).
“he dock was not ‘created’ by Apple. RISC OS already had a dock in 1987, 2 years before NEXT, and I’m sure there have been similar implementations before.”
Just a note, early previews of NeXTSTEP were out in 86…
The dock was not ‘created’ by Apple. RISC OS already had a dock in 1987, 2 years before NEXT, and I’m sure there have been similar implementations before.
The Risc OS icon bar is not the same thing as shown in the wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dock_%28computing%29
——–
The Dock is a graphical user interface feature first introduced in the NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP operating systems, and radically changed and refined in Mac OS X, where it behaves more like the Apple Newton’s Newton OS Dock.
A similar feature, called the Icon Bar, has been a fundamental part of the RISC OS operating system and its predecessor Arthur since its inception, beginning in 1987, which pre-dated the NeXTSTEP dock (released in 1989). However, upon further examination the differences are quite noticeable.
——–
Now your points as you think for me, I will think for you:
When discussing Linux: logical evolution or “shameless” copy as you said.
When discussing Apple: always copying/stealing never innovating.
Anyway, when you take a look at Mac OS X 10.0 screenshots and then you take a look at the Sun dock in Looking Glass, only a dishonest guy can say that Apple is copying Sun.
They have it since 2001, and they just change in Leopard the way the outline is drawn…
Edited 2007-06-12 16:56
So it is written on Wikipedia, and we all know what’s on t3h intern3t is true.
Get real, the dock is a very, very general UI concept, implemented in various different ways by different operating systems. ARTHUR (RISC OS 1) was the first release I could find where it was used, but as I said, there may be other implementations even before Arthur.
Duffman, you capped the Wikipedia article at a really interesting point. did you read on? It made me laugh, you see.
“The main difference with the NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X Dock, is that the Icon Bar only displays icons for active, or loaded, applications. Also, the Mac OS X Dock will scale down accordingly to accommodate expansion, whereas the Icon Bar will simply scroll. Lastly, the Icon Bar itself has a fixed size and position, which is across the bottom of the screen.”
Those are not “differences” that are notable in any way. The icon bar in ARTHUR/RISC OS is a dock, no matter the spin Wikipedia tries to put on it.
Ok so when YOU post some articles from the wikipedia, that’s ok, that’s the truth.
But when someone not thinking like you do the same and post an article that YOU do not agree with, it’s wrong, they are lying.
Get real, the dock is a very, very general UI concept
Get real, the dock is NOT only a general UI concept, it’s a behaviour, it’s the way it works, the way you use it. And that’s the point the wikipedia try to reveal but it seems that you do not want to understand.
Now the Sun dock is just working like the Apple’s one.
Just take a look at the one in Leopard, nothing change it’s still use 2D icons and working the same way (plus stacks).
The day Apple will use high definition and moving wallpapers like in Looking Glass, you will be able to say that Apple copied Sun.
Hey look what I just found:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/12/leopard-dock-resembles-suns-proj…
Guess I’m not the only one noticing.
So it is written on Engadget, and we all know what’s on t3h intern3t is true.
Reading this debate about whether the Iconbar is a Dock or not; I find it ironic that the Mac OS X Dock actually shares more in common with the RISC OS Iconbar, than it does with the NeXTSTEP Dock.
The NeXTSTEP Dock only displayed applications that were put in it. It couldn’t hold directories or drives, and it didn’t automatically display running apps. It had no contextual menus displaying application options, or any way of storing more items than could fit on screen.
Like the Mac OS X Dock, the Iconbar in RISC OS had all those features, it just handled some of them differently.
Note that I’m not claiming that Apple copied RISC OS. I doubt Apple’s designers ever actually used that obscure British OS. Most of the features that the Iconbar and OS X Dock share in common are pretty obvious additions really…
“The day Apple will use high definition and moving wallpapers like in Looking Glass, you will be able to say that Apple copied Sun.”
No, they will discredit sun, and say they are copying Vista.
So you never use the dock to launch apps? I think that qualifies as a major difference.
What distinguishes the Dock from a simple process list window OR an app launcher is that it’s both, at the same time. It has to do with the fact that unlike other OS systems, the concept of “application instance” doesn’t apply to OS X, so a separate launcher/active processes display would be redundant.
You’re patently wrong. You don’t like it. Tough crap. Grow a pair of balls and admit your research was flawed.
If you want, go whine to Apple Engineering and ask them to show you an pre 1.0 version of NeXTSTEP with the Dock and how it’s functionality plus interaction with the GUI was original.
“””
BTW, the reality is that THEY are leading the innovation as every body is always comparing its OS to Mac OS X.
“””
“Innovation” is a four letter word, in my book. Please don’t use it. Or, if you do, either put it in quotes or explain that you are *using* the word and not abusing it in this, exceptional, instance.
When I was in school, the printing press and the Jacquard loom were what we thought of as great innovations… not a new closeness setting on our Dads’ electric razors.
The sooner we get back to “Doing Cool Stuff” and sharing our triumphs, rather than “Innovating” and issuing press releases about it, the better off we will all be.
Unfortunately, the word “innovation” itself is likely ruined for at least a generation’s time.
Agreed. Same with the acronym “FUD”. If there’s a term or phrase that can compete with “innovation” as far as its overuse in IT, it’s “FUD”.
Stop spreading FUD! Oh, wait…
I must admit leopard has a slick desktop. Arguably more appealing than Vista.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/desktop.html
I bet anything it was gona be but Jobs didnt like that Schwartz made it public. so to keep Schwartz in line Jobs pulled it. “this is my OS, learn your place” (whip sound) LOL
That’s likely as Apple has been known to ostracize those who cross them. Surely Schwartz had an NDA he “forgot.”
From Slashdot by Raindance:
”
Jonathan *had* to know he might get burned for spilling the beans before Steve. Jobs has a track record of being harsh, almost vindictive in his dealings with companies which betray his trust.
Exhibit A [insanely-great.com]: Samsung runs their mouth about being selected to supply software to drive the next-gen iPod Nano. Apple turns around and drops them.
Exhibit B [geek.com]: ATI runs their mouth about some specs for new macs before Macworld. Apple removes ATI boards from their computers and refuses to offer them as a build-to-order.
Simply put, don’t try to scoop The Steve.
”
BTW: Steve never said Apple was the first with 64bits. He only said that Leopard is going to be the first MAINSTREAM OS with 64bits. For Windows, 64bits is not standard. Even Vista Business which came with my brother’s ThinkPad was not 64bit. When he contacted them, they said that despite not having mentioned it was 32bit, he should have known because it was default and 64bit had driver problems. I think Jobs got this right.
Steve never said Apple was the first with 64bits.
He said Leopard was the first OS to run 32bit and 64 bit apps side by side. This is what I was talking about.
i think noone listened to his words, and not what they wanted to not hear…
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=18074&comment_id=247299
I was impressed with Look of the update. I’m happy they re-fined it not re-designed and I’m very pleased that they finally have a unified look. I’m not sure how useful the stack feature will be. Time will tell.
I don’t use a Mac, but talk about it’s incremental progress remind me of the similar complaints about each Gnome release.
But I think this is a good way to be. Big changes all at once break things and upset people. Frequent small changes get just as much done without as much trauma. Only problem I see is that you actually have to pay for the incremental OSX updates.
agreed
“I don’t use a Mac”
then… maybe your opinion is sort-a mute? Right?
“then… maybe your opinion is sort-a mute? Right?”
Absolutely not. Some of the best kinds of testers for an application are people who have never used it before, or who don’t use it on a regular basis…especially for usability studies. More often than not they’ll reveal flaws that other folks would have overlooked due to the different ways they use an app.
The first thing I do with any personal projects I release is park my technical-as-a-rock girlfriend in front of it and watch her click around…it’s amazing how much more I learn about non-geek usability that way.
That would be “moot”.
The new desktop features are all gimmicks, except Stacks which is just polishing an existing feature (and quite remniscent of Drawers in Gnome too).
Cover flow is just a gimmick. Quick view is pretty much just a gimmick as well, it just launches an application without showing the title bar – BOOM! I’m amazed…
Spaces is taken from X, but it’s always been a gimmick to me….
iChat has a lot of gimmick features: fake backgrounds, “funny” effects. The only useful feature is the conferencing feature (which is cool, though).
In my opinion, the interesting features in Leopard are Time Machine, web clips and , erh, well I don’t use AIM so the conferencing feature in iChat is useless to me. Hopefully, the open source movement will pick up the role as the innovater now that Apple is gearing down 🙂
Edited 2007-06-12 16:59
This is wwdc — the big news is really that all of these “gimmicks” are easily accessible to developers via the Core Animation, Core Video, and other Core APIs. The keynote is a show, so the gimmicks are what are in focus, and that is to be expected, but the most exciting stuff in Leopard is in the APIs for developers and how this all comes together. It’s all in the integration and execution, and, for developers, the ease with which really powerful new features can be added to applications. Having said that, I thought Exposé looked like a gimmick when Tiger was first shown but in daily use it has proven to be much more than just a fancy toy, and I suspect that some of the features of Leopard that have been quickly demoed are more significant than first impressions. We’ll see.
The gaming announcement to me IS the big announcement. The only reason I or my kids (teens) keep Windows around is to play games. If that reason were to go away (which I doubt), there would be no reason to run Windows. We already use OpenOffice, Firefox, etc. It is only for the sake of games that we put up with the mess of spyware, viruses, etc. However, I think it will be a long time before all (or most) games are released for Mac and Windows. For me personally, I would also like to see Linux in that same mix, but I’m probably dreaming. Closed-source games wouldn’t do well on Linux because of the Free Software Philosophy. Open-source games couldn’t generate the money (in my opinion) to pay for the amount of developers, artists, musicians needed to make modern games. As soon as one copy of the game is sold, it would immediately be on someone FTP site and there would not be a lot more copies sold. This is why Mac is still an attractive platform for Game Devs. It’s stil closed for the most part.
If they were in OpenGL on a Mac, then it shouldn’t be that much of a problem to make a release for Linux, we’ve seen that.
Closed-source games could do very well on Linux, because it isn’t only Free Software zealots who happen to use Linux, and most of those people would welcome decent games for Linux wholeheartedly. It would probably be the same with binary drivers, we see that nVidia’s are quite popular and in demand, I’d say most people seem to use them for better acceleration (I have no stats to support that, but just having a look at forums of your favourite distribution says it’s not just 2 people using those).
Besides, games for Windows get pirated usually the same week they are available. And I do think people might not get them cracked on Linux that fast, if they have some brains left anyway.
The problem is that Closed-source games go against the very foundation on which the OS resides – Free Software. This will never go away unless Linux goes away. Mac was able to absorb some of the BSD “love” because of the BSD license. You cannot do that with GPL code. Thus, binary-only drivers and binary-only software will always be second class – an evil that is [sometimes] endured until Free replacements are available.
My dream is for there to someday be a way to create a multi-million-dollar game and release it as Free Software, and still make money – and not because you charge for “services” or “servers”. I believe the reimbursement element needs to be built into the system, but I don’t see how.
You’ve said it yourself:
“Open-source games couldn’t generate the money (in my opinion) to pay for the amount of developers, artists, musicians needed to make modern games.”
There’s no arguing about that, a multi-million-dollar game released as Free Software and making money probably won’t happen
The thing with proprietary binaries is that they usually do what people need them to do, without waiting for someone to write an open clone, which will take a long time to get near the original in many aspects.
So while it may go against the Free Software as a foundation for Linux license wise (or is it?), they’ll probably have to switch to a license that allows it without just being tolerated, but accepted.
I couldn’t care less if e.g. Fifa 2004, of which I own an original CD, would run on Linux and be just a bunch of binaries if it ran. Frankly, most people don’t use open source apps because they are open source, but because they get them for free (and pre-compiled).
Besides, Free Software doesn’t necessarily have to be in conflict with non-free software.
Free software philosophy has nothing to do with it, there are companies making millions upon millions selling closed software that runs on linux. Problem is with the market; the companies making money selling linux software are generally targeting the datacenter, where linux is a proven commodity and market.
Gaming though, implies home/consumer use, and that’s a much more difficult market to measure in terms of viability, particularly considering the vast majority of gamers using linux already have Windows for gaming anyways. Linux needs market viability with numbers to back it up in order to encourage developers to target it as a platform, until then it’s a case of falling back to Windows or using wine-esque workarounds.
You could make a deal like the gpl does where everybody wins. You keep the game closed source for an amount of time(to make money) where people both pay for the game but also for the fact that it will be opensourced after 2 to 3 years.
Like WineX/Cedega?
p.s., I know they contribute code back, just like Codeweavers does. But in general, I haven’t seen the “HostageWare” concept play out well.
“Hopefully, the open source movement will pick up the role as the innovater now that Apple is gearing down
”
LOL!!!!!! He said “gearing down”…!!!!!! you so funny! Apple gearing down as an innovator! please… keep dreaming!
I see no innovation being done in any OS, except for maybe Solaris, ZFS is a major advancement in FS technology, and even that is an extension of existing tech. Apple copies MS and Open Source, MS copies Apple, Open Source copies MS and Apple, come on, take off the apple coloured glasses and see the truth, Leopard is built off of exisiting concepts, with stylish and very well designed applications and GUI, but none of them are groundbreaking, just like nothing in Vista or Gnome is groundbreaking.
it looks like marketing session than developers conf.
I take it you have never used 64 bit windows xp pro? Very unstable with poor driver support.
“I take it you have never used 64 bit windows xp pro? Very unstable with poor driver support.”
Eh? I’ve been using it for a couple of years now…extremely stable with good driver support. Of course YMMV, but I’ve had zero issues.
XPPro 64bit is Very Stable under Fusion.
Must be your drivers.
else thinks. I like its looks and functionality. I can see uses for many of the features they have added on a day-to-day bases. I don’t think that it needs to be revolutionary to have added value to the product. I wouldn’t have an issue shelling out the money for a family pack license. Much more reasonable than the cost of Vista, for what you get out of the box.
please notice that was online TEN of 300 features he showed!
And just think of the possibilities that these 10 features offer.
And of course there is no Revolution, the Revolution will come with Mac OS 11…
Yes, but clearly when any company showcases TEN of 300 features, they’re going to be showcasing the TEN BEST or most significant features (completed at that point in time). The remaining 290 could all be “add right click menu on X item” and simple bug fixes labeled as new features (safari support for ajax, a fix for some safari autocomplete handling, etc)
there are a few more mentioned on the website that i think are more than “add right click menu on X item”..
some i’ve noticed (granted i haven’t gone through everything)
1. new dvd player, this one looks pretty snazzy
2. you can choose to “reboot into windows” from the finder, but rather than “shutting down” the OS, writes the ram contents to the drive, it’s more of a safe sleep. that way when you boot back into OS X, everything is exactly like you left it.. very nice if you ask me
2. you can choose to “reboot into windows” from the finder, but rather than “shutting down” the OS, writes the ram contents to the drive, it’s more of a safe sleep. that way when you boot back into OS X, everything is exactly like you left it.. very nice if you ask me
It’s called hibernation and Macs can already do this.
They can indeed, but it’s still quite new to them; it was only every publicly released late in 2005. Before then, it was partially implemented but never used. Even then, I think it only hibernated when power was low; it couldn’t be forced (and was therefore only a iBook/PowerBook feature).
Check out Midnight
It’s a dashboard widget that can actually put your mac into hibernation.
http://www.tekuris.com/products/midnight
Edited 2007-06-13 05:55 UTC
The french website MacBidouille has an other opinion:
Here is the english translation on HardMac.com:
http://www.hardmac.com/news/2007-06-12/#6882
I think you can only tell about the inside of Leopard when you attend WWDC. But than you even can not because of the NDA.
1. We have only seen 3% of the *New* features of Leopard, so how can we determine that it is evolution and not revolution from that?
2. Under promise & over deliver… Jobs does not want Leopard to take thunder away from the iPhone, so he only mentioned 10 out of 300 new features and they looked pretty impressive.
3. Jobs announced a lot of great features in for iPhone and before we knew it, a bunch clueless clowns claimed to have cloned it’s features in their substandard phones. Why repeat that with Leopard?
4. The final Leopard is still 5 months away, so why give the copy cats a headstart on all it’s features?
Evolution and not Revolution?
Time will tell…
So we have Safari 3 beta and still no fix for using safari on Mac with citrix same certificate issue that is on safari 2. How do you explain advance when firefox and camino work fine using citrix.
Because there has been an advance, and very few people uses Safari on Macintosh with Citrix, thus they don’t care?
Your “little” problem is not “THE” problem.
That’s really strange how you think just because one thing doesn’t work for you, that the entire product is not an advancement for anyone else. What a way to think.
the issue is one that they have admitted to and one the Citrix acknowledges maybe you should read. Also it is not such a little problem if you are running Macs in a Windows enterprise which many people do that is an issue. Yes there is a work around but a issue all the same.
Hooray i say.
DirectX 10 is without doubt an excellent framework to run games on, far in advance of where OpenGL is now.
OpenGL is going to get DX10 style hardware capabilities in Sept/Oct, but the question is whether anyone would care by that point………?
Hopefully, the Apple gaming push will persuade games developers to care, and thus ensure the survival of OpenGL as a framework that is actually used by games developers rather than just the professional modeling/visualisation crowd.
Apple switching to x86 was an important step in this hoped for process, and of course, what is good for Apple certainly won’t hinder the linux gaming scene!
Edited 2007-06-12 18:28
How about confirmation that Leopard will be 64-bit yet magically run on 32-bit CPUs? Smart money says that Leopard will be for C2D-based Macs only and the non-upgraders will maybe get an extra-long support period for Tiger.
Apple’s got a history of dropping platforms and migrating to the Next Big Thing, and I doubt this will be any different.
Personally I think the idea that you can upgrade your Cube to Leopard is wishful thinking at best.
In that case, they would have to continue selling Tiger with current Mac Minis as they are not yet 64 bit. I can’t remember if the Macbook is 64 bit now.
It is. The Mini is the only 32-bit Mac currently sold.
My theory on that is the price of C2D processors and the fact that the Mini must use laptop-spec components. If Intel can get the price of C2Ds lower, or maybe Apple could use the Core-derived “Pentium” chips instead, then Mini could go 64-bit and keep its price point.
I work my whole day in command line, AIX 5.3L to be specific. There is nothing better at the end of the day to go home and use a Desktop that I have nothing to worry about…Apple provides me that…not only the slickest, always-ready GUI on UNIX, but the fact that I really haven’t restarted my box in months. I cannot afford the time of hunting for elusive rpms, dependencies and other crap associated with some open-source OS. If people don’t find the new items ‘good enough’ or ‘disappointing’…then, spend hours of ‘enjoyable’ time hacking around setting up KDE, XFCE, fluxbox and then installing all the gimmicks and shiny things and by the end of the weekend you can say ‘hey, where did my girlfriend go?’…she might be hanging out the dude with the MacBook at Starbucks!..after all, the mani goal is to get the chick!
=)
of Leopard. There’s nothing to break me away from Windows Vista.
Macs are really taking a back seat at Apple. There wasn’t anything worth talking about at WWDC’07. In previous shows, people would drool over things like overhyped Apple branded mouse. Nothing. Absolutely nothing…
At least they didn’t bring up the stupid Mail app stationary as a top 10 feature…
in a good way. Apple hyped Tiger, then only drip fed actual features. Once Users got their hands on it, they raved about it.
Apple is good at exploiting viral marketing and in order to do that you have to leave alot of the subtle (yet valuable) improvements unanounced. I suspect Leopard will be at last as good an upgrade as Tiger was if not more.
I’ve just been browsing the screenshots over at Apple.com and I’m surprised at just how transparent the new menubar actually is.
I thought if anything Apple had toned down the use of transparency, compared with the initial versions of Mac OS X. Transparency effects can provide some nice eye candy, I’m sure there are even circumstances where they offer a usability benefit, but they can also add visual clutter and reduce the legibility of text.
Even in the official Apple screenshots with a green desktop background, the menu text looks significantly less clear and readable. I know the same level of transparency isn’t used when menus are pulled down, but this does seem like a case of form over function, hopefully it’s an isolated example…
Guessing that it will be adjustable, somehow.
Replace “somehow” with “some lame piece of shareware going at MacZot”
Lame shmame. I use Onyx to do a lot of customization and maintenance. It is a nice piece of software.
I know, I was just poking MacZot, and stupid shareware that does stuff that’s already in the system, or can be done on the command line (1: taking screenshots of DVD Player, and 2: Screensaver as wallpaper)
Did you notice in the keynote that, when Steve Jobs changed the slide after announcing a “new desktop” and revealed the ridiculous transparency and the looking-glass dock, people laughed? It’s very clearly heard. People in the audience thought he was joking. I would have thought he was joking if I hadn’t seen it on the Apple website first.
Edited 2007-06-12 19:57
People in the audience thought he was joking.
Indeed, Alex, I thought I was crazy for thinking that
. Good to read I’m not alone on this one.
http://images.appleinsider.com/07leopardscreen.jpg
Ihateit Ihateit Ihateit. I came here looking to bond with others who hated it as well, but the general response seems positive. In my opinion, the menu bar looks like something I used to make dabbling in Ulead Photoimpact. Amateurish is an understatement–it’s unusable (for so many reasons). If someone were to tell me it was from a “fake Leopard screenshot contest,” I wouldn’t bat an eyelash.
Ironically, when it came out, I thought Tiger’s aqua-fying of the menu bar was as bad as it could get. They sure showed me.
Edited 2007-06-12 20:37
Well, transparency per se isn’t bad, but transparency in one of the most important (if not the most important) UI elements of your graphical environment is just… Well, stupid. The text labels are quite hard to read in the shots. I sincerely hope this can be adjusted with a slider.
I don´t like the codenames of Apple releases. I am just playing “Company of Heroes” and noticed that the Wehrmacht used to call their Panzerz all the same as Apple do it now.
…some of the more important changes will be with the threaded TCP stack, new scheduler algorithm, etc. I expect to see fewer beach balls under certain circumstances. It will be interesting to see how teh snappy the UI and many other apps will become.
“Steve’s claim that Leopard will be the first 64bit operating system capable of running 32bit and 64bit applications side-by-side is of course completely bonkers. Windows’ 64bit versions have had this capability since Windows XP 64bit Edition (for the Itanium, 2001), which was later perfected in Windows XP Professional x64 Edition in 2005.”
Not to mention that it’s been possible in Mandriva Linux since, I believe, release 9.2.
i’m sorry, but correct me if im wrong, but i believe that hes stating that any 64 bit compiled app will run in 32 bit mode if 64bit is not available. (aka : backwards compatible)
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/64bit/
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Write Chameleon Code
Tiger simplifies software distribution with support for fat binaries, applications that contain both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries within a single file. Using fat binaries, network administrators distribute a single version of an application to all users regardless of their system capabilities. Once installed on a user’s system, the fat binary automatically selects the appropriate code for the system without user intervention. This greatly simplifies administration, installation and distribution of applications.
Edited 2007-06-12 20:22
I can’t think of any system, anywhere, anytime, that has made backup, and especially restore so easy and practical as Time Machine. You can do advanced searches throughout the entire timeline and restore is a few clicks. There is no doubt in my mind that this is more than a revolutionary feature.
When discussing Apple: logical evolution.
When discussing anything other than Apple: copying/stealing.
On the zeroth day Apple created God…
Well at least we can admit that Apple was mention in the Bible before Windows, Risc OS, PARC, etc., LOL
From Apple’s website
“Files you download in Safari or save from an email are automatically directed to a Stack in the Dock, and when the download is complete, the Stack signals that a new item has arrived.”
and won’t users be surprised when they go to drag their downloaded file onto the desktop and it disappears in a puff of smoke.
I was a bit let down myself. I truly expected some revolutionary steps. There are a lot of need additions that I’m sure we’ll grow used to. Time Machine and versioning filesystems in general are pretty cool, so I can’t wait to use that.
Besides the addition of ZFS, the thing I would truly like to see is non-blocking I/O in the Finder. If a mounted volume is offline, or the network is down, the Finder should not hang, or beach ball so badly force quit (or kill -9!) won’t do anything, and I have to reboot the machine. This is the only flaw on OSX that I have no patience for (not that I have huge list of ‘flaws’).
Please fix this Apple, it’s a showstopper.
Amen.
There’s nothing worse that accidentally clicking on an offline network share and staring at that spinning ball.
But similar things happen on other operating systems. Ever mounted an NFS share and lost the connection, and then tried to browse the folder in Gnome (or with a GTK app)? kill -9 fixes that one, though.
I have never witnesses kill -9 fail on linux.
1. If I remember correctly you can recover files From The Same Hard Drive using disk utility. It might help doing some research Tom before you start ranting.
2. Yes you’re right about stacks. It’s nothing new since Apple patended this as Piles around 4 years ago and was rumored to come into 10.3 but never showed up.
3. It’s funny how you mock Wikipedia in your comments later on yet you link one about Windows XP 64-bit Edition and probably fail to read it yourself as well.
However if you would read that article you would notice it says that Windows XP 64-bit Edition “lacked most media applications” and numerous old technologies. Running 32 bit apps was done using an “emulation layer” and it also mentions that they were Significantly slow.
Not giving the right picture are you?
This could have been available in 2001 but its nothing compared to what Leopard will do.
Then of course there is the improved version that came in 2005, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.
Yet again if you read the WIKIPEDIA article it’s clearly not the same thing as Leopard, is it???!!!
Edited 2007-06-13 09:19