Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, OS, WWDC, Leopard
Leopard: what we got and what we wanted
Chris Breen has written a nice follow up piece about Macworld's predictions for Leopard. The article lists the things that Apple delivered on, and the things they didn't. Granted the editors just listed things they wanted to see and not things that they were sure were going to see the light of day, but Apple did deliver on quite a few their wishes.So, dear TUAWers, what OS X wishes did the sneak peek of Leopard fulfill and what features did it still leave you craving?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
random said 10:10AM on 8-08-2006
This is quite simple:
Leopard makes a lot of the third-party apps I currently use integrated into the system. Quicksilver, Desktop Manager, Chax... Hopefully, they will not clobber my system resources.
Oh and Time Machine will be pretty nice. It sounds like Window's System Restore feature coupled with Backup.
Now, if there is a tabbed Finder, all my little UI dreams will have come true.
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Thomas said 10:14AM on 8-08-2006
The article mentions finder fixes, although we didn't see any I wouldn't be suprised if maybe they were running builds that only included versions of the stuff they were going to demonstrate. So as to not giveaway stuff too early. I don't really understand why so many people seem to be disappointed that the whole system wasn't demoed. It was a 90 minute Keynote offering a taster, I'm sure developers will get the full preview in their, you know, preview discs.
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andy said 10:18AM on 8-08-2006
it states that time machine needs another hard drive, i dont remember that specifically being said, im sure a partition would work ? ? if not, it would be a brilliant addition for the mac pro anyway, profefsionals need the back up more so, but then, they could be using raids anyway
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Neil said 10:22AM on 8-08-2006
What the sneak peak showed was a lot of enhancements to applications and very little to do with the Operating System. I am left some what disappointed with it all.
html templates for mail anyone, that will be useful for corporate users, not!
Vista 2.0 it is not.
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wastern said 10:28AM on 8-08-2006
@ andy
they said it would use another hard drive, or a server
while a partition *might* work. it is a bad idea to use that as your backup....if you're hard drive starts clicking and dies, both partitions on that drive are gone, that means your backup too. you should never keep your backup on the same drive as your working data, it isn't much of a backup at all.
it would save you from the, "opps i didn't mean to delete that", but not the hard drive failures. those are what you really want the backups for anyway
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Will said 10:29AM on 8-08-2006
Just a reminder: Steve Jobs prefaced everything that they revealed in Leopard with "Some of this is Top Secret, so we're not revealing it just yet." Probably coded language for, "Some things in Leopard, we couldn't get even a functional beta version included in the preview today, but don't worry, they'll be there down the road!"
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Angel said 10:36AM on 8-08-2006
Definitely the improvements to Mail (specifically the todo function). It looks like it will be integrated across the entire OS which will be a huge plus for productivity.
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Thomas said 10:46AM on 8-08-2006
The to do thing really piqued my interest, system wide it could be very interesting. What I don't understand is people acting disappointed by a PREVIEW! They didn't even demo the features they mentioned fully so how can anyone comment on how good the end feature set will be?
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Thomas said 10:48AM on 8-08-2006
The impression I got was that for actual physical backups then you will of course need a separate drive or server. However, it would be a shame if you couldn't use the restoration features on your computer as is. Otherwise it would mean (for example) that MacBook users on the road wouldn't be able to recover anything.
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PXLated said 10:52AM on 8-08-2006
As Will said in #5, the very first slide said "Top Secret". However, I have a different take than Will, I don't thinks it's bugs that prevented them from showing them, I don't think they want to show Redmond anything in Leopard that's truly unique. Save them and pounce at the appropriate time.
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tofu said 11:07AM on 8-08-2006
I wanted:
Finder: Kill it, make something better.
iChat: Integration with Yahoo and MSN
Airport: Upgrade to support new 802.11n drafts
Safari: faster, and... long shot... support for ActiveX since there is no MSIE anymore... and i'm still on PPCs.
Quicktime: more codecs
Apple spreadsheet program
Apple video thingy for my TV. Like an Airport Express with iTunes music and video! :P
Built-in Bittorrent support.
Oh and a working Darwine for PPC Macs.... :)
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Chris said 11:26AM on 8-08-2006
For the love of all that is holy in this world, please, please get rid of stationery in mail. Why, oh why does apple need to do this. One of the worst things about Outlooks are the idiotic templates, and now I will be getting bloated html based email from mac users too. Email should be text. Let the web be html. Damn you apple, damn you all to hell.
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kabel said 11:37AM on 8-08-2006
Agree with Chris (previous poster) that stationary is horrible. Anyone who ever used AOL (back when it only sucked a little) or dealt with anyone who did will remember getting those God-awful 100K messages that were nothing more than tags within tags within tags.
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Liam Parkinson said 11:55AM on 8-08-2006
#9, well if you dont like it dont use it. Don't complain because you don't like something that you don't have to use, my mum is excited about that little feature because some people like to be creative like this. Like it then cool, if you don't what difference does it make? they didnt say every email has to use it. Some people are just whiners who need to grow up
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drivebybiped said 11:57AM on 8-08-2006
Lets see, what we got? bloat, bloat oh and more bloat. A lot of attempts at catch-up to 3rd party apps (Quicksilver, Adium, etc.) but doesn't seem like anything quite there. Mail.app's 'new' features are just sad.
What I wanted? Quicktime to no longer be gimped? Pherhaps better system wide integration between mail, calendar, and address book? A more stable system, one that can actually handle USB hard drives and network shares without having to be fiddled with constantly. Integration of a system like Parallels.
For the big talk of Vista 2 they've seriously dropped the ball. Unless a lot more things get announced I don't see how they can justify people spending money on this stuff.
Poor showing Apple, Poor showing.
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superjeff said 12:16PM on 8-08-2006
I think PXLated has it right on the money. Taking it a step further: the reason the finder was not mentioned at all, is because it is the big Vista killer. That is one thing they could actually copy last minute (at least the look.) I still expect a finder update in 10.5.
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carson said 12:26PM on 8-08-2006
What I wanted was a reason to keep dotmac. Anyone else notice that with time machine you don't really need it anymore? I primarily used it with backup 3.0 to back up things like the keychain and contacts as well as sync bookmarks. I can do all that with a usb flash drive and for 100 bucks buy a 300GB drive instead of the dotmac service. Odd that apple doesn't know that.
C.
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Jc said 12:45PM on 8-08-2006
just like to say that i loved the new time machine and spaces, just cant wait to see whats next! cry micro$oft cry!
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kabel said 12:51PM on 8-08-2006
#11, the point isn't that we won't use it; it's that it will be used on us. HTML email is bad stuff. The vast majority of email users agree.
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Lars said 12:57PM on 8-08-2006
I wish Apple had said "Don't you just hate that image spam? We've improved filters!" instead of some weird e-mail bloating stationery... I would LOVE to know how large mails get with that turned on.
Or widescreen settings, or something... but not two measly additions...
Also, Virtuedesktops does a great job and gives us NOW what is touted as a 'Spaces' feature in spring 2007!
No word on fixing Finder annoyances, no really cool innovations (Time Machine is nice eye candy but be honest, how many of you have REALLY deleted stuff that needed such an elaborate means of retrieving it?), no word on performance tweaks on Intel-Macs...
On what I have seen so far, I find it hard to justify paying 129 euros (If they don't up the price on OS X, that is) for Leopard, come 2007.
So all in all I'm pretty disappointed (the Mac Pro is very nice though) and won't be holding my breath on what's now deemed too early to show and TOP SECRET by Apple.
I'd asked friends to sms text me any cool stuff, since I wasn't home yesterday during the keynote. When no one did I'd already figured something was wrong... :/
Also it's time they laid off the Vista jibes, it's getting old. If anything, they'll be shipping AFTER Vista.
I read something dumb as a lead on News.com, which I'll quote here:
"The new Mac OS is due after Vista. But if the Windows update slips again, Apple could get in first."
Well duh.
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