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Report: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to feature totally redesigned Spotlight-based Finder

Friday, October 21, 2005 · 9:29 am · 32 Comments

“To date, the only information Apple has provided about Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is that it will come sometime between late 2006 and 2007 and that it will be Intel compatible. Meanwhile, anonymous sources revealed to MacosXrumors the first major feature of Leopard and it looks like it has to do with the Finder,” macosXrumors reports. “According to the sources, Apple will entirely re-design the Finder in its next major Mac OS X update. The new version of the Finder, code-named ‘Chardonnay’ (like the wine), will be totally based on the Spotlight meta-search technology which was introduced earlier this year with Tiger.”

The extensive use of Spotlight in the next version of Finder will bring the following enhancements:
- significant overall performance increase
- improved user interface
- even more integrated Spotlight related features (search, smart folders, document previews…)

“The aim behind this new Finder is to offer to the user the ability to browse his files just as he browses his music,” macosXrumors reports.

Full article here.

Categories: MacDailyNews, News

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Comment Feed

32 Comments

1 2 Next »

Anim8r

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 10:43 am · Reply

Rumor alert!
Can rumors please not be reported as news?
Naraa Haras

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 10:46 am · Reply

reelase?

I refuse to get excited until SJ does a Keynote about Leopard’s incredible new features that will change everything about desktop computers as we know it in 64bits and cross-platform goodness.

MW:feed, as in feed the channel with Leopard highlights.
R

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 10:48 am · Reply

Is Leopard being kept quieter than usual– to surprise Redmond maybe? It seems like maybe we could have gotten a peak already…
ABQ Peter

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 10:49 am · Reply

ok, since they brought up browsing music: i would like to be able to use parentheses in my criteria for smart lists so that i can have combinations of “ands” and “ors”. This would make smart lists a lot more flexible instead of being able to only have a set of just ands or just ors. if they are going to expand the itunes paradigm to the finder then i think this needs to be addressed because this weakness will be even more apparent.

MW: stock – buy some more! you can’t make this stuff up!
dogfriend

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 10:56 am · Reply

I would like to see Apple release Leopard the day before Vista ships. They should keep as quiet as possible until then, but a redesigned Finder would be very welcomed. It is the weakest link now in the Mac OS.
gwm

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 10:59 am · Reply

Over the last couple of years I’ve seen numerous respectable tech opinions published that call to ‘Fix The Finder’. As a non-tech, I always felt the Finder was just fine, but I guess Apple may well be heeding these frequent requests if this latest bit of speculation has any ultimate worth.
RePlay

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 11:01 am · Reply

ABQ Peter:

Amen. I need more flexibility in constructing boolean conditions in smart folders especially (like Mail) like you can do in spotlight.
Wingsy

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 11:15 am · Reply

Fix the Finder, eh? It ain’t broke nearly as bad as XP. For (one of many) example, in XP open a folder and rename a file in that folder. When you hit RETURN the name pops back to its original name. Then try renaming it again. You can’t. It gives you some wacko error message saying it can’t read from the disk. If you close the window and reopen it, you see that the name change did indeed take.

But I do agree that the Finder does have a few of its own characteristics that could use some tweaking.
me

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 11:22 am · Reply

Can anim8r please not post any more.

This is very interesting because it will complete the plans announced by Microsoft years ago for Longhorn. Plans which they scalled back further and further so they are basically integrating Google Desktop into Windows Vista.

Longhorn originally called for WinFS, a new file system not based on File Application Tables (FAT) but driven by an MSSQL based, metadata system. Microsoft has such massive issues with it – a significant reason for Longhorn’s delay – that it removed the feature.

It is nice to see that Apple has delivered Spotlight nearly a year before the Vista Beta and that when Vista is available, Leopard will have the key feature MS couldn’t deliver.

MDN word: members
EricN

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 11:31 am · Reply

I sure hope this rumor comes to fruition. I think a new Finder will happen. Apple knows it can’t relent with Vista on the horizon.

Panther was the refined version of Jaguar (which delivered many new under the hood improvements). I think that the difference between Leopard and Tiger will be the same.

I wonder if the auto-save features incorporated into Aperture will be put into Leopard.
MacBeliever

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 11:42 am · Reply

You can replace parenthesis in your complex boolean conditions by using smart folders (or smart lists in iTunes). Put the content of each parenthesis in a smart folder, and concatenate the smart folders with conditions like “is in smart folder A <AND> is in smart folder B”.

I can’t give you more specific examples since I’m away from my Mac right now. I hope you get the idea.

MDN: “per”, as in “Use a smart folder PER parenthesis in your condition”.
the other steve jobs

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 11:46 am · Reply

doesn’t anyone recall what i said during the 2005 SFMW Keynote?

11:52: Me, reading off reviews of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
“Here’s the New York Times:’Spotlight isn’t just a superfast Find command. Its an enhancement that’s so deep, concenient and powerful, it threatens to reduce the 20-year-old system of netsted folders to irrelevance.’ Here here!”

You have to listen to every single word i say – because every word i say is purposeful. When i cheer something – that means in absolutely no uncertain terms that we are working on that. No matter how side-commented it sounds.
Wait A Minute

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 12:14 pm · Reply

The article promises substantial changes to some of the APIs. At the WWDC 2005, Apple promised the developers that the APIs would be locked down for a considerable time. One of the biggest frustrations for developers for Tiger was the constant meddling with the API’s from 10.0.1 through 10.3x.
ken

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 12:20 pm · Reply

Finder is (MDN word) “already” doing a far better job than Win ever hoped and Spotlight is “already” fantastic for the average user.

What we have now is Apple delivering a mature OS and being able to spend more than a year to make each next generation significantly better than the last one. I think that the Finder rumor is only a small indication of what is to come in 10.5 – Jobs wants to show Gates how to do it and he wants the market to see how it should be done. It’s going to be a rather painful experience for MS, but Tiger is “already”.
a

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 12:23 pm · Reply

My favorite line of the story:

<quote>The new version of the Finder, code-named ‘Chardonnay’ (like the wine)…</quote>

Are regular readers of macosxhints such troglodytes that they wouldn’t recognize the name of one of the most well-known varietals of wine??
Anim8r

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 12:59 pm · Reply

Hey me…
No I won’t stop posting.
The story has the header “Report”
This is not a report, but a rumor posted on another sight. How about a first hand “REPORT”, not a rumor gleaned from another site?
If this is in fact true I think it would be great but until some early builds hit the street it is foolish to argue about its relative worth.

MDN, how about changing the header to “Rumor”?
MacnPeecee

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 1:06 pm · Reply

Wingsy: “When you hit RETURN the name pops back to its original name.”

Then Don´t hit RETURN.
Less is More

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 1:30 pm · Reply

Almost 200 gigs on my drive and I can access whatever I want immediatley through a Butler Menu of aliases and no more than three mouseclicks. I’m more impressed by hardware and software power than finder bells, whistles and eye candy.
Winston

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 1:41 pm · Reply

in XP open a folder and rename a file in that folder. When you hit RETURN the name pops back to its original name. Then try renaming it again. You can’t. It gives you some wacko error message saying it can’t read from the disk. If you close the window and reopen it, you see that the name change did indeed take.

How pathetic. I don’t know what’s worse: that MS is so inept or that the vast majority of the computing world tolerates such shoddy workmanship.
CampusComputerStoreGuy

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 1:41 pm · Reply

I hope they can make the interface extremely snappy (short time from the double click until the finder window is open and usable).

If the new fuctionality makes the finder slower, I hope they have a way to deactivate features that create overhead.

I’m all for good filesystem/explorer features, but what I really want if for the finder windows on a G5 to have zero delay on opening