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

> Desktop. Okay, so the Leopard menu bar is translucent, the Dock is 3D and reflective, and new Stacks folders help you organize stuff in your Dock (which can be easily done - though less elegantly - today). Nothing earthshaking here. The Stacks "fan" view, in fact, seems quite odd at first blush, and also seems to limit you to a rather small number of "fannable" items per Stack. The Downlaods Stack, on the other hand, looks promising in its ability to tame and contain downloads, and the new, deeper window shadows seem to actually be helpfuly. All in all, however, the new Desktop is primarily eye candy.

> Finder. There's some real meat to the refurbished Finder - enough, I venture to predict, that you'll be seeing more than one article in Mac|Life or on MacLife.com that's designed to help you get the most out of it. The new network searchability capability will be a true boon to home, office, and remote networks (if it works well), as will the abilty to use Boolean logic in Spotlight searches (although, admittedly, this is a relatively complex capability that will be used by few). The new Cover Flow file view is a truly useful treat, enabling you to page through images of your files as you do through your CDs in iTunes. Speaking of iTunes, the new Finder looks a lot like its music-organizing forebear - Apple appears to be bringing all of its hardware and software together into one Grand Unified Interface Theory (expect the old iPod's scrool 'n' click interface to go the way of the dinosaur Real Soon Now). Although we need to dig into the Leopard beta before we pronouce the new Finder a full success, even this cynical soul is encouraged.

> Quick Look. Truly slick - ranks up there in the "How did we live without it?" strata along with Expose. At its most basic, Quick Look simply allows you to view the contents of a file without having to launch the app that it's linked to - and if you've ever needed to look at an InDesign or Photoshop file and had to wait while those turgid beasts slouched towards the desktop, you'll greatly appreciate the time saved. (But wait - will Adobe apps work with Quick Look? At 11:46 on the evening of June 11th, the answer to that question is not known; stay tuned...). Quick Look enables three different levels of file viewing: At its most basic, there's the Cover Flow view in the Finder. Next up is an expanded window view. Finally, there's a full-screen view - great for videos and large images. Put me down as impressed.

The final verdict: Although we had hoped for more out of the Leopard announcements - wow us, Steve, please! - we must admit that what we saw demonstrated today in Moscone Center is one slick, smooth, well-thought-through, and undeniably attractive operating system. Of course, all we saw were demos, so there are still many questions that need to be answered - but Leopard appears to be a winner. An incremental, evolutionary winner, but a winner nonetheless.

That said, I'm worried about how much horsepower will be required to support a lot of the slickness I witnessed today (system requirements weren't announced) and I find myself a bit more than a little concerned that all the eye candy may give us all a case of digital diabetes rather than simply allowing us to get our work done with efficiency (though the new, simplified user-level icons were an eye-settling relaxation).

However, Leopard looks well worth the upgrade price - which Jobs teasingly introduced as $129 each for the Basic, Premier, Buiness, Enterprise, and Ulitmate version in a clear swipe at Microsoft's inane Vista pricing scheme. As Jobs said, though, "We think most people will buy the Ultimate version."

In other news

Jobs also announced the release of a public beta of a Windows XP/Vista version of Safari 3. Y'know, it may be that I'm not a business guy; it may be that I'm not a Windows guy; it may be that I'm a simple, dyed-in-the-wool Mac head ... but I couldn't care less. Yes, it may help Apple increase its market share. Yes, it may further bring The Goodness That Is Macintosh to the Windows heathens, but... hey... let someone else worry about that.

One Safari tie-in that is of interest, however, is that Jobs announced that developers would be able to use standard AJAX methodologies to create Web-based apps that will run on the iPhone's Safari implementation, and that will have access to all iPhone services such as the keyboard, scrolling management, calendaring, contacts, full security, Google whatever, and the like. The developers in the crowd who had been hoping for a full SDK (software development kit) seemed cool to the idea, but at least it puts them in a better situation than what was announced a couple of months back - which was that the iPhone would be a totally closed system. Now it's available for web-centric apps.

So that's it

What the five-thousand-plus of us crammed into the Moscone Center this Monday morning were shown was, all in all, all good stuff: Leopard looks as good as ever - and, with its Finder and other interface improvements, even a bit better than we knew of on Sunday.

But...

New iMacs? Not yet.

New Cinema Displays? Not yet.

New multi-touch screen iPods? Not yet.

A new subcompact 'Book? Not ... yet?

As the Firesign Theater once reminded us, the future ain't here yet.

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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