Comments on: Leopard Lots of Show, Little Go?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:03:16 +0000

But will it blend?

By: GeMenRe

GeMenRe — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 01:56:36 +0000

I think, Steve Jobs didn’t live up to the hype he created with his, ahhhhhh, secret features…
I got the impression, that it’s still the same Leopard as half a year ago

Without the hype you have to tell, that Leopard looks better than ever.
Come on:
- backdrops on iChat… every 3rd party webcam offers that…
- cover flow… I like it on my iTunes, to see what song’s playing for everything file related else I’m an old fashioned “Norton Commander” user
- different dock attributes… not an enhancement but just some toying on the desktop
- transparent menubar …whoaaw, took them how long to make it Vista-shiny?
- spaces… I’m a big fan of the existing “Virtual Desktop” which sadly won’t be continued and it’s motion detecting screen swapping
I consider these things as mere cosmetics than revolutionary unrevealed secrets…

I was really surprised, that Apple came up with Safari for MS - since I use it for years on my MacBook(s) Pro I installed it also on my MS XP…
…I like it but it crashes when I try to report one of the non-properly-displayed html-pages - but on my XP Firefox is still being my browser, as I can share my bookmarks (thanks to all these nifty little extensions) are able to make my surfing easier…

DynDNS integrated into the Mac is a clever idea. I can see its potential and I hope that Core Animation will be visible and toying around the desktop like Linux does with a proper 3D integration.

By: Rithster

Rithster — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 23:48:42 +0000

All of these opinions are based on what we have SEEN… let’s hold our final judgement for October when the final version of Leopard ship. Shall we? (When we can ACTUALLY get our hands on it.) After all, I believe Steve mentioned in the keynote that he only displayed 10 out of the “300 new features.” Personally I’m impressed with what I’ve seen so far. Let’s see how futher it will go over the next more months…

By: banjodrengen

banjodrengen — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 20:07:08 +0000

Leopard is s**t! Apple keep saying that they are the most innovative, but this new release is a joke! The small number of updates does not warrant a new OS. The should have released these as updates for Tiger. I love my Mac, but Apple is no better or worse than Windows, it all depends on what the individual user prefers and with the lack of innovation in the new OS, I believe Apple will lose the attention they achieved with Tiger as an innovative OS.

By: hmurchison

hmurchison — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:01:13 +0000

You can’t do Quick look now regardless of application from what I can see.
You can get close to Time Machine but not close enough
What chatting client allows me to do 3-up conferencing and sharing?
The Finder improvements are substantial. Spotlight now searches shared computers found via Bonjour.

Leopard is impressive

By: Jason Terhorst

Jason Terhorst — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 03:53:08 +0000

It’s not so true concerning Leopard - the OS itself is great, it’s just that the sessions are pretty flat in some areas, and the expectations that we developers had were squashed.

By: EV

EV — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 23:59:21 +0000

Is the Notes feature in Mail meant to co-opt/replace Yojimbo type applications?

By: vanni

vanni — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:18:05 +0000

we got short-changed. Its time to tell the emperor he has no clothes.
http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/06/13/appleDevelopers.html

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 19:36:05 +0000

I saw absolutely nothing in the Leopard preview that you can’t have today with a few freeware and shareware apps - and they aren’t RAM/CPU hogs like they probably will be in Leopard.

They look cool, but is this really all their is??? It took them years to copy a few small apps and put them in the OS? They already bought coverflow for iTunes, so that technology was already around. Quick look? There are dozens of CMs that will give you the same features.

I’ll reserve judgement until I get it on my machine, but I’m not overly impressed just yet.

By: Galley

Galley — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:14:21 +0000

It looks like Overflow launcher will become obsolete with Stacks.

By: Simon

Simon — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:54:37 +0000

How good would it be if Quick look was on the iPhone. Open any emai attachments!

By: Honza

Honza — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:43:57 +0000

I didn’t see a mac mini (I have G4) in the lineup when he said “Leopard will run on NEARLY all current macs”. But then, my video wasnt so hot either…

By: Scotty H

Scotty H — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 05:20:15 +0000

all the eye candy looked pretty good in keynote (tho jerky on Australia’s rubbish broadband)).

my question is; Will it all look so nice on an older G4? or even G5?
and seeing as I was about to buy a MacBook, will the graphics card be able to keep up?

scott (hoping for a hardware announcement really) H

By: Dave M.

Dave M. — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 02:01:47 +0000

If they make the menu bar transparent, then maybe there is a preference to make it hide and show like MenuShade. Anything is possible. We can only hope.

By: Mirri

Mirri — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 22:39:37 +0000

Menubar is lame.
Coverflow - coverflow is going to change my world.
-Raven

By: axel

axel — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 22:13:04 +0000

I second you on the menubar.

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:49:14 +0000

Stacks are just the beginning. Quite a few years ago, Apple patented a series of new GUI paradigms called “Piles.” This is the first implementation of it. It is so radical that it will take a while to roll it out in stages, so people can get used to it. I think you’ll see even more Piles implemented in the Finder, I suspect we’ll see a few more secret features when the final Leopard version ships.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:29:28 +0000

I see the coverflow/quickview as a great solution to the problem I face way too often. Say I do a research through literature and download tens of .pdfs. They usually end-up in a directory with automatically assigned meaningless names. When I want to look at a particular document later on, search terms usually pop quite a few matching results, so I either have to check the “info” for each, hoping that files have explicit metadata (which is usually NOT the case) or, guess what, open each file one by one until I get what I need. Painful.

Having the possibility to see documents in a format large enough so I can read their title and recognize quickly their content (quicklook) in a fluid manner (coverflow) as if I was quickly looking covers of documents in a pile of hardcopies seems just natural and efficient to me.

To me, this is much easier than
1- renaming/metadata-filing every file myself upfront, and/or
2- icon previews, where all publications of a certain journal, for instance, will look just the same.

By: j2d2

j2d2 — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:44:39 +0000

Love the addition of Cover Flow. It may seem like just gloss, but in reality it’s a step in that company-wide effort to establish new “front ends” for viewing our content. Front Row and Apple TV, and now the iPhone, then Cover Flow. Very consistent way of browsing our “stuff” visually.

It may get to a point when finding our files through the Finder is the “back door” approach — when we really need to mess with stuff under the hood so speak.

So in a way, I see adding Cover Flow as a more significant part of a larger trend in usability for OSX, then merely gloss.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:12:55 +0000

Just think of quicklook plugins for Textile, Markdown, HTML Pages, Image Previews with EXIF Data and Code Preview… There is so much more..

By: Richard Hather

Richard Hather — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:59:57 +0000

I was more impressed with the demo with Core Animations and the live video and searching. THAT is what I can see as a future desktop environment for Apple.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:15:10 +0000

I meant iChat and not iTunes.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:14:13 +0000

The technology behind quicklook is interesting. If there’s a quicklook-plugin for a particular filetype you can use that preview in many ways, like cover flow, itunes and surely tons of other programs that will use this programming interface.

Also core animation which the stacks and shiny dock are built upon is a strong technology that will help create advanced user interfaces.

Seems like you didn’t get that the technologies to build all this fancy standard user interface will be in the hands of creative 3rd party developers (or actually are for the beta subscribers).

By: Jorge

Jorge — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:06:49 +0000

All the new features unveiled yesterday may be cosmetic, but they do lend themselves to a better touch screen experience. Anyone agree? Maybe this is a transition.