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Open Thread: Leopard Preview
Merlin Mann | Aug 7 2006
Apple - Apple - Mac OS X - Leopard Sneak Peek Like most of you, I'm keeping an eye on today's previewed features of the upcoming "Leopard" (OS X 10.5) release. Looks like some interesting ideas -- many of which, as usual, seem inspired by existing third-party products. I think I'm most intrigued so far by the idea of "to-do" functionality from within Mail.app (thanks for the tip, Matt); let's hope that also means I can deep link to a given email from my iCal task list. I also welcome the concept of built-in email templates -- although I'm kind of bummed that they seem more focused on execrable 1999-style HTML emails than on the kind of functional time-savers found in the peerless MailTemplate. To be honest, on first blush -- and I'm sure there's much more to come by the time of release -- this feels a bit cute and a little light on really revolutionary stuff (the long overdue promise of something like Time Machine notwithstanding). Stuff like (yet. more.) iLife integration is handy enough for the notional Swithcher and Grandpa Joe, but in general I guess I'm hoping for some serious power-user improvements to the core functionality. Maybe that's just me. What do you think? What's "Yeah!" and what's "Meh?" Anybody else holding out hope for some really deep Finder rewriting and more functional iCal updates? Other coverage55 Comments
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 Tiger had more than Spotlight...Submitted by JulesLt (not verified) on August 7, 2006 - 1:42pm.
Tiger had more than Spotlight and Dashboard if you're a developer, and Leopard will be similar - the really important stuff is what comes downstream of the release. Operating systems enable applications, but it is applications that drive operating system sales. (Unless you are talking a DOS to Windows transformation, or OS X pre 10.3 where the system was - realistically - incomplete). I don't buy the 'we're keeping hush-hush about the new features in case Microsoft find out' line. Microsoft are one of the biggest developers on the Mac (Office). I suspect it is much more along the lines of 'don't promise what you can't deliver', and that the Finder revamp, etc, are still in development. Overall feeling : The keynote is a PR exercise aimed at the media and public as much as anything else - in a way, the developers conference is the wrong place for it, but Apple are very insistent that they don't do public vapourware demos, so the WWDC is a better excuse than a consumer trade show. The really interesting stuff are the bits barely covered - what's changed in Obj-C 2.0 and XCode 3, what's this X-Ray app, and how well does Core Animation stack up against rival technologies from Adobe and Microsoft? » POSTED IN:
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