Leopard Details, WWDC Summary, Boredom, and Disappointment

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Leopard Details, WWDC Summary, Boredom, and Disappointment

Posted 06/11/2007 at 10:31:39pm | by Rik Myslewski

And Then There's Tiger

For a comprehensive overview of the WWDC annoucements, including all the Leopard news, check out the Mac|Live podcast #11, in which Mac|Life editor in chief, Leslie Ayers, reviews editor Roman Loyola, and I discuss in sumptuous detail what Jobs discussed during today's keynote. In summary, Jobs went through a top ten list of features to be found among what he described as 300 new features that will ship with Leopard when it's released n October.

Unfortunately, all the attendees at the keynote presentation had already heard about most of Jobs's top ten at the previous WWDC on last August 7, 2006, when he first introduced Leopard.

Let's tick off the old news, one feature at a time:

> 64-bit archiitecture? Check - a boon for addressing scads of RAM quickly and efficiently. Expect high-end apps and projects to run noticeably more snappily.

> Core Animation? Check - if it works even a tenth as well as it demos, this sytem-level animation technology should enable developers to create stunning new animated 3D and video apps.

> Boot Camp? Check - the developers of both Parallels and VMWare breathed deep sighs of relief when Jobs announced that the closest Leopard would come to Windows integration would be the incorparation of a non-beta version of dual-boot Boot Camp. Running Windows inside Mac OS X - aka virtualization - is still a "third-party opportunity." For now, at least...

> Spaces? Check - the ability to create multiple workspaces on the fly with their own dedicated apps may merely be a flashy solution in search of a problem, or it may be the next great interface advance since Expose. We're betting on the former and hoping for the latter - though, making Spaces sound quite a bit more attractive, Jobs said that you'll be able to set up as many Spaces as you want. Another reason for more RAM...

> Dashboard and WebClips? Check - widget lovers (and you know who you are) may rejoice at the opportunity to transform slices of websites into Dashboardable widgets. The Mac|Life editorial team, on the other hand, finds ourselves stifling a collective yawn.

> iChat enhancements? Check - an indication that Apple can at times try to put too much "fun" into what's really a quite utilitarian app. We're willing to bet that the iChat Theater will be one of the least-used features of Leopard. Or, even more likely, it'll end up like that cool toy you once received, played with once or twice, then forgot about.

> Time Machine? Check - system level CYA. If you don't backup regularly - and, according to Steve, you don't - you may find this automatic archiving sytem of interest and value. I'm interested, though, to see how many people actually dig into it to learn how it works before they need it to save their bacon. My guess is not many. It reminds me a bit of Spotlight - that is, it looks like a good idea on paper, but a pain in actual implementation. As a dedicated backer-upper, though, I hope I'm wrong - anything that can help folks backup their increasingly important digital assets has to be A Good Thing.

All seven of these members of the top ten are old news - not boring, useless, dull news, to be sure, but hardly earth-shattering new revelations worthy of getting worked up about. That said, they're all welcome additions to a new operating system that's sure to knock the living poop out of Vista - as I said, listen to our podcast, Mac|Live #11, for more details on each of these features, or follow the links I've added to this list for more info.

Jobs also announced three new Leopard features that hadn't been revealed last year. They ranged from the underwhelming (a new Desktop) to the encouraging (a refurbished Finder) to the truly interesting (QuickLook).

More...

COMMENTS: 18

TAGS: WWDC 08

COMMENTS

Finder
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2007-06-12 03:32

You don't mention the "Back to the Mac" feature that is part of .Mac - I understand some sort of DynDNS through .Mac? Genuinely useful and will finally give .Mac some real added valu. By the way, the Leopard pages on the new Apple site refer to .Mac but don't let you click through yet - work in progress apparently!

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About WWDC
Submitted by Ken (not verified) on Tue, 2007-06-12 04:11

I was disappointed at first, but then I realized that Apple, though a large company, is hardly a behemoth. They are getting ready for a monumental iPhone launch in three weeks, so there aren't many corporate resources left for other stuff. Anyway, anything they introduce now would be completely overshadowed by the iPhone.

And that brings me to another thought. Steve Jobs said there would be a lot of product announcements in 2007, but f I were him (which I am not) I wouldn't shoot all my ammunition at once. I'd spread out the announcements over the year to get the best publicity.

It would be unwise to introduce a new iMac or a ultra-portable Mac or for that matter a flying car, because it would get trompled in the media stampede to the iPhone.

So I'll sit quietly with my hands folded and wait. For now.

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re: ken
Submitted by Ben (not verified) on Tue, 2007-06-12 05:18

Well then I sure can't wait for the iPhone launch if that means it gets Apple's focus back to the computers.

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You Do Realize, I'm Sure,
Submitted by ptervin (not verified) on Tue, 2007-06-12 05:52

Safari's indoctrination into the Windows world is very closely tied to the release of the iPhone: the iPhone connects to both systems. In that light, we'll be seeing Mail on both platforms before the 29th. The Window's Outlook (Outlook) is dead, long live the out look (Mail).

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Nice write-up,
Submitted by Crumpy (not verified) on Tue, 2007-06-12 06:22

Nice write-up, but:

"..Windows guy; it may be that I'm a simple, dyed-in-the-wool Mac head ... but I could care less. "

Rik, it's "couldn't care less." :)

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Rik, it's "couldn't care less." :)
Submitted by Rik (not verified) on Tue, 2007-06-12 09:34

Good call - fixed 6/12 @ 10:30.

Thanks for the heads-up.

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iMac
Submitted by Savdedbybloodsteven (not verified) on Tue, 2007-06-12 09:44

I am so dissapointed... I have been waiting for a new iMac and Steve didn't reveal anything... I depserately need a mac, and I can't wait much longer. The apple site WAS updated, and it seems that the imaces have brighter screens and metal base, maybe I was hoping for something new soo badly that I didn't remember the metal stand before.

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iMacs had the metal base already.
Submitted by Susie Ochs on Tue, 2007-06-12 16:08

:-(

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Come on already
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2007-06-12 10:25

Just a quick gripe. It's bad enough that the new layout of maclife wastes an entire column of your home page for huge oversized buttons. Everything between "This Month's Current Issue" and "Next Month" is wasted space. Why make me click to read these articles when you've got so much wasted space in the layout where this column could go? It's just poor design.

But now I have to click past a full page ad?

I love your magazine, but I think it's time to get my news elsewhere.

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Our home-page layout
Submitted by rmyslewski (not verified) on Tue, 2007-06-12 11:55

Just an FYI: We're in the process of reworking that right-hand column to include links to features, news, and other prime-cut articles -- we just haven't got it together yet. Hang tight, and stay tuned.

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WWDC and ZFS
Submitted by Dr. Who (not verified) on Tue, 2007-06-12 15:35

So, any word on ZFS replacing HFS+? With the "pre announcement" from Sun, I would have thought it would be worth mentioning in the keynote. Since it wasn't I'll assume no ZFS...yet. Just like iMac's and lightweight MacBooks/Pro's...maybe before October launch. One can hope.

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Kick the poop out of Vista?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2007-06-12 20:04

First of all let me say that I own a MBP and I'm a big fan of Apple products. But here's something that I don't understand...

So what makes Leopard an OS that will kick the poop out of Vista? Transparent menu bar? Sounds like Vista's menu bar. Unified UI? Vista already has it. Stack view? Oh boy Vista has that, too. So what's new? Time machine? That's just a fancy name for a backup program. Really, what's so innovative about Leopard that will kick the living heck out of Vista? Is it because of CoverFlow? Something that looks very fancy but takes up a lotta desktop real estate and is sure to take up a ton of processing cycles (my MBP doesn't even run coverflow very smoothly in iTunes).

Believe me, I'm excited about Leopard and will likely get it when it comes out. But I can't help but feel really disappointed by its lack of innovation. I really don't see how this is going to be better than Vista. They look very similar to me.

I'm a dual user and I really can't understand why there's all this windows bashing going on at MacLife. I was a subscriber to MacAddict and got totally tired of all of its anti-windows attitude. Considering that a lot of Mac users now also run Windows, I really don't think Mac writers need to bash Windows.

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