“At the Worldwide Developers Conference 2006 in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave the public and developers the first public look at Leopard, also known as Mac OS X 10.5–the next version of the Apple operating system, which will be available next spring. Though he made clear there remained many ‘top secret’ features and technologies to the OS, Jobs and other Apple executives outlined a dozen features that will be new and improved over the current OS,” Daniel Drew Turner writes for CNET.
Full article and the opportunity to rate the OS on a scale of 1-10 (registered users) here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Greg B” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Currently, the average user rating at CNET is “Good – 6.7 out of 10.” We think that’s way too low.
Of course it’s 6.7. All the Windows twits are giving it a 1 just out of envy and spite.
Preview? Much more to come? We can only hope.
A lot of discussion about Steve’s appearance and whether he has health issues.
I watched it again and the only thing I see is signs of depression and some embarrassment.
His team sent him out to his weakest ever t-neck & jeans appearance.
The flagship G5 replacement with a very disappointing Intel based tower that produces an embarrassingly low 1.5 times speed improvement for most of the ways most of us use the workhorse and an OS update of tweaks largely already available.
Who wants to pretty up their email with some gay stationery?
But, hope springs eternal. If there are a lot of orders placed for these things, we will get to where we wanted to be with this new stuff sooner than later with a quick turnaround with gen 2. So, ladies and gentlemen, draw your plastic and get yourselves to the store!
The theme of WWDC 2006 was that , ‘ dont upgrade to vista, just switch to mac instead’
Maybe Jobs didn’t feel well that day, but it could have just been a bug, not a life-threatening illness. I think that is sheer speculation.
I like the stationary feature. I am starting up a business and thought immediately that the stationary feature would allow me to quickly add a professional look to emails to my clients. Quick is key. I hope that people develop some amazing templates for mail that will be available when Leopard ships. I want some more elegant ones. That’s another money-making opportunity for developers.
As nice as the frequent “point” updates for OS X are, I wonder if the expected feature improvements in each release isn’t a lot like an addiction. The more updates there are, the higher the expectations and the greater the speculation over the next one, and so on. After awhile, no matter what, almost no improvement is enough to get anyone’s attention, and the “crash”, or disappoinment, sets in.
@ Pete Peterson: Gay stationary, that’s a good one. But you’re right.
Give me something like the iWeb black template instead, not those kitch borders and the like.
Pete, I guess you were hoping to hear an energy sucking heat monster quad 3Ghz G5 introduced eh? No I think we’ll let the Xbox360 have all the G5s they want. I love to see Microshaft lose money.
A 50% speed increase is embarrassing? Hmmm… And the huge price cuts are really sad too eh?
How convenient of you to leave out the speed increases over the G5 Xserve.
Wow, someone pissed in Pete’s Cheerios today. Can’t make that boy happy enough. Depression and embarrassment? Only in your own mind Pete. Too bad they didn’t deliver something you want, so you decide to make it your own personal goal to whine as much as possible in these forums. Do you need a Midol or something, Pete?
I really take exception to the tone of all the FUD manure spreading on Job’s health. It’s one thing to have concern for a beloved CEO, it’s quite another to openly speculate and create uncertainty, fear, doubt…
STEVE JOBS LOOKED FREAKIN GREAT. HE SOUNDED GREAT. He has as much vitality, poise, presence, and boom in his voice as ever. He was strutting and shufflin’ with top energy. HE LOOKED ON FORM! What is your problem, guys? Jeez. He’s bald and thin and healthy, back off!
THE TAG-TEAM WAS EFFECTIVE AND POSITIVE AND DAZZLING. You wouldn’t expect Jobs to droll on for over an hour on all the minutae, that would be more boring than the tag-team which gave color and variety and multiple perspectives.
LEOPARD LOOKED GREAT. I agree with Jay, the regular updates create built-in wow factor expectations over time. I thought Time Machine and Spaces alone were exiting. Time Machine and Spaces alone are going to have Redmond spies swearing and salivating a way to copy them.
We all care about SJ. That’s not the same as permission to create vile rumors about his health which have NO BASIS in the reality of his performance and presentation. Same goes for the Leopard demo. Back off, guys. It’s a great OS, getting greater.
Don’t hold back on us, Pete. If you were disappointed, just say so. 😀
Jeez, man, I just don’t know what you wanted. Let’s put the Intel Mac Pros in context of G5 towers.
Let’s say Steve came out and said:
“We’ve updated our Power Mac G5’s”
“We’ve gone from 2 Dual-Core G5 at 2.5 GHz to 2 Dual-Core at 3.75 Ghz!!”
“And we’ve increased the bus speed.”
“And we’ve added a bay for a second optical drive.”
“And we’ve upgraded the standard graphics card.”
“And we’ve doubled the standard RAM to 1GB.”
I mean, I’m already salivating…
And then the kicker?
“Oh, one more thing… the price is the same or lower as the previous models we’re replacing.”
Seriously, did you want it to levitate too?
And as far as Leopard goes, I’ll give Apple credit – first, they don’t seem to be adding “bloat” – the features are not ridiculous excuses to get people to upgrade. They are solid things that many people already want to do with their Macs.
If a good incremental backup program isn’t one of the most serious holes in the OS X Software world, I don’t know what is. Nothing against SuperDuper (which I use, and love) but it doesn’t give you incremental saves. And Retrospect has been a joke for so long I stopped laughing.
Time Machine is more than just a backup program, though. It really is a great visual treat. Like CoverFlow (which EVERYONE should download and try!!) it just changes your perception of things. It is a new standard in interface design. Brilliant.
Methinks also that the Core Graphics improvements and other stuff are going to find their way into not only the Finder, but into a lot of the 3rd party software designed between now and when Leopard releases.
Which is the point of the Developers Conference in the first place, no?
Oh, and Xserves that are up to 1/2 the price of comparable (hah) Dells to boot?
What’s not to like, Petey?
“gay” stationary? Gee, how many people would rather have straight, trailer park, beer swilling “straight” stationary? Maybe Windoze users.
The standard config is possibly competitive in price.
But, if you want what you want to do what you need to do with it, you will select the faster processor, lots more memory, another hard drive, a better graphics card, and wireless – at least. Then it costs something north of 6 grand. Competitive? Don’t think so.
Gen 2 will be faster, stronger, better in all these ways AND at less cost.
The marketing plan is to suck in all the “I can’t wait” buyers before moving to what it really should be. Again, I say, go buy lots of these things.
If you think that Leopard is not much more than a “point” upgrade, think about this: What would you have paid for all the free “point” upgrades (7 of them) that have come out since Tiger was introduced?
At some point in time, like next spring for instance, Apple has to get income for all the work that has been going on since the last time it charged for a significant “point” upgrade. And Leopard is that significant upgrade.
I for one think it’s a fair deal and plan on buying Leopard as soon as it’s available.
Vista Preview got a 5.6 rating. See it here:
http://reviews.cnet.com/Windows_Vista_Beta_1/4505-3672_7-31456587.html?tag=txt
Even with Bob Enderle voting a ten 500 times didn’t help that much.
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Meant to say, the Leopard rating stands at 7.9 right now. (1:30pm EDT)
Pete,
I think you may have offended someone.
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Anyway, what did you mean by SJ having signs
of depression? Just curious. I thought that
he seemed pretty energetic, despite the
appearance. Maybe he is just trying to give his
comrades a little stage time.
Pete, you NEVER, EVER buy the RAM from apple. WAYYYYY too expensive, same goes for the HDs
Most of us know that.
please wait for rev. 2 if you must, but your logic for doing so is flawed
The CNET rating is now 8.1. Better, but not quite accurate. What would it take to get it to 9.5?
the problem is we need gay (designer) stationary…
not the valley girl / cute stuff that was shown.
Microsoft Windows users have platform envy.
Wait a second. Gay = Designer? When did this happen. I did not recieve the memo on this. Why the hell am I out of the loop once more. Is the gay mafia behind this?
The “top secret” things coming with Leopard are going to be overhyped and we will all be disappointed.
Actually it’s PC’s that are gay.
Don’t you remember the old IBM
company songs?
‘IBM, Happy men, smiling all the way.
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Oh, what fun it is to sell our products night and day.
IBM, Watson men, partners of TJ.
In his service to mankind — that’s why we are so gay.’
8.3 now. sweet.
Steve Jobs is fine. “Slim and trim” at 30 translate into “gaunt” at 50+, especially with some greying and balding. He is taking real good care of himself after an unexpected health scare.
Now, if we want some speculation, who combed that new guy’s hair? Who selected his wardrobe? His presenting work was excellent, but I couldn’t help thinking that he is the used car salesman in the south-eastern part of north-western New Hampshire on his way to a duck pins tournament.
What gives? Inquiring minds need to know!