“Apple Computer’s recently previewed Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has made quite a stir, not because of what was shown at the World Wide Developer Conference but of what was excluded from show, cited ‘Top Secret.’ However, the build released to attendees at the conference includes a huge number of ground-breaking changes to the underlying technology in Mac OS X and the APIs exposed to developers,’ AeroXperience (AeroXP), a Windows Vista Developers Community, reports.
AeroXP has received information detailing several of the API improvements to Leopard, including:
• Leopard will feature resolution-independent user interface and there are several functions to get the current scaling factor and apply it to pixel measurements. It is a good idea to use vector controls and buttons (PDF will work fine) or to have multiple sized resources, similar to Mac OS X icon design, so you can scale to the nearest size for the required resolution.
• Carbon, the set of APIs built upon Classic MacOS and used by most 3rd party high-profile Mac OS X applications, now allows Cocoa views to be embedded into the application. This could provide applications like Photoshop and Microsoft Office access to advanced functions previously only available to Cocoa applications.
• Time Machine has an API that allows developers to exclude unimportant files from a backup set which improves backup performance and reduces space needed for a backup.
• Core Image has been upgraded to allow access to RAW images directly
• Leopard also gives developers access to a “Latent Semantic Mapping” framework, which is the basis for spam protection in Mail. It allows you to analyze text and train the engine to restrict items with specific content(like spam e-mail for example).
• Quicktime 7.1 is included, and the underlying QTKit framework is greatly improved. There is improved correction for nonsquare pixels, use of the clean aperture which is the “user-displayable region of video that does not contain transition artifacts caused by the encoding process”, support for aperture mode dimensions, improved pitch and rate control for audio and a number of developer improvements, like QuickTime capture from sources like cameras and microphones, full screen recording or QuickTime stream recording. Live content from a capture can be broadcast as a stream over the network.
More here.
MacDailyNews Note: We’d treat these as unconfirmed rumors for now. Make of them what you will.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “vitaboy” for the heads up.]
Related MacDailyNews article:
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to feature ‘resolution independence?’ – May 21, 2006
i keep reading that OSX won’t get a lot of traction in ‘business’ because they don’t ‘support’ ‘business’ very well. I don’t know what that means. Networking? Reading files off a server? Sharing well with others? Whatever those things are, i’d like Apple to give more reasons for big companies to buy Mac.
“I keep reading that OSX won’t get a lot of traction in ‘business’ because they don’t ‘support’ ‘business’ very well.”
These comments refer to their unresponsive (and sometimes arrogant) attitude to corporate or educational customers. I know because a friend of mine runs IT for a school here in Philadelphia. He hates dealing with Apple because of this and is switching everything over to PC’s (unfortunately). He’s a reverse switcher.
Cubert– that is rather vague. What is meant be “unresponsive” and “arrogant”? What particular problems is your friend having?
There is improved correction for nonsquare pixels
That’s interesting.
Last time I saw non-square pixels were the rectangular ones on the Apple IIGS twenty years go.
Apparently they’re present on other platforms?
Makes it kind of a pain to rotate images…
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The only thing Mac OS X doesn’t support for large businesses is ActiveX controls. My floundering mega-corp is chok-full of Windows-embedded network apps. They could easily be rewritten to support Macs.
Aside from that, I dn’t think there’s a limitation beyond education.
“Resolution-independent user interface” implies enhanced resolution on future laptops? Connection to big-screen sets? A hint of manifold display devices.
My floundering mega-corp is chok-full of Windows-embedded network apps. They could easily be rewritten to support Macs.
Come on, surely you know how big business works.
It’s Ok to spend countless dollars & endless hours fiddle-fsking around making Windows work, but God help you in asking for ANY resources to port anything to Mac.
And big companies wonder why they flounder. The idea of a small lean company running Mac OS is almost enough to make one an entrepreneur.
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Of course, it would be some scumbag Windows site that breaks Apple’s NDA.
Typical morals of the PC world…
supporting businesses? wrote:
“i keep reading that OSX won’t get a lot of traction in ‘business’ because they don’t ‘support’ ‘business’ very well. I don’t know what that means. Networking? Reading files off a server? Sharing well with others? Whatever those things are, i’d like Apple to give more reasons for big companies to buy Mac.”
This is an easy one…
What they mean is that OS X doesn’t support legions of IT professionals. I remember someone on here (an IT guy) once explaining that he would allow people at his job to use a Mac only if they agreed to do their own tech support. Of course, anyone who was familiar with a Mac agreed readily.
The people who buy computer systems can only work with information they’re given. The people who make the recommendations want job security, that means Windows and all its (job securing) problems.
Now watch, some IT guy will come up with all kinds of reasons (stuff many of us have never heard of) and try to justify Windows. Well, I use XME at work (some kind of XP Pro) and it sucks.
At work (unfortunately) I’m stuck with Windows XP Pro on a Dell (something-or-other, it’s a little black box) and the computer guy who came when we upgraded to these sad little crap-boxes told me the company pays something like $2200 a year for each one (leased). He said the price includes parts if they break, but not labor since the company employs so many computer guys.
Everyone hates them and everyone is now starting to see that I’ve been right in telling them that every time the company “upgrades”, the machines get slower and less reliable.
At home, on my dime and my time, only a Mac will do. My iMac (iSight) is the finest home computer available at any price. Walt Mossberg said so.
~M
I doubt these are the “top secret” features that Steve was alluding to.
The average consumer wouldn’t even understand any of this.
I’m betting that the only builds with the “top secret” features are those that are internal only.
I heard that Leopard will identify polyps, protect your garage door secret code and prevent your closest relatives from finding your stash.
TheConfuzed1, you’re almost certainly right.
What this post refers to are the guts of the Developer preview. It’s the non-obvious stuff that hack writers like Thurott overlook because, well, they’re hacks who lack the ability to actually investigate and disseminate data.
It’s amazing how much disinformation is out there. People are already spreading this baseless idea that Time Machine = System Restore, and they’ve been doing it because they haven’t seen Time Machine nor the guts of Time Machine and basing their disinformation on assumptions.
We need more detail stuff like this to make it clear Leopard is, in its earliest iteration, a huge change from top to bottom. It’s kinda sad that the very people who always complain about Apple’s “eye candy” are so easily fooled by surface appearances.
The important point? Leopard is gonna be a killer cat by looking at the developer preview, even if its mostly camaflaged in the glow of the keynote.
THERE IS NO WAY THOSE ARE ALL THE 10.5 WILL OFFER THERE IS A MUCH BIGGER SECRET TO IT. APPLE WANT US TO THINK LIKE THIS, SO THAT THE BLOW WILL BE BIG.
I agree that these things are not the “top secret stuff”. These were easily found by looking into Leopard’s API’s. The top secret stuff will be consumer oriented and not entirely necessary for developers to know too far in advance (ie. Finder improvements, better Spotlight GUI, improved Front Row, and maybe a delayed “one more thing”).
I’m sure some of this IS among the “top secret stuff” they decided not to tell us about. Partly because they didn’t want Redmond to even think about including it, but mostly because, to quote clydeuhhh, okay <eyes glaze over>
Half that stuff will make your Leopard experience so much ‘better’, but you’ll never have a clue as to how or why – even if they tell you. So … why bother telling you! When they announce Leopard has “200 new features”, you really don’t want to have more than half of them mentioned, much less described to you.
They mentioned Time Machine because it’s flashy and would be hard to copy. They mention Dash Code because Vista already has that ‘set’ and, though it sounds great, it means little. Spaces is already out there – by 3rd parties. iChat is already out there for both – more 3rd parties. The only real news was how great it looks and feels and that they brought it into the distribution. Forgot – Mail, their robust email client is still playing catch-up to MS’s less robust email client … we now get pretty pictures and linking with iCal (etc) so SOHO users have one less excuse not to switch.
> “Native Windows without Windows” is a BAD idea, because it would be relatively trivial
> to create Windows viruses that will execute “natively” on the Mac.
No, that’s not true. Windows has virus problems because the basic design is insecure. Applications have unrestricted access to the Windows core. You could quite easily run a Windows app in a restricted environment that would prevent any security holes in the app from damaging the OS X core.
> Besides, MS would sue the shit out of Apple if they ever tried this.
You ever heard of WINE? You can already run Windows apps without needing windows on a varity of UNIXes, OS X included. The only thing holding it back from perfection is lack of financial investment. See http://www.winehq.com/
Apple could make Windows apps run natively in OS X but I don’t think they would want to. It would be a lot of trouble. Every time MS changes their API Apple would have to do the same. Witness the history of MS Office document format changes and how competing office products have had problems importing and exporting every time MS changed the format.
More importantly I think Apple wants people to run their Windows apps on OS X alongside Apple equivalent products and discover that the Apple apps are better.
Anyone interested in the OS X specific port of WINE should look here:
http://darwine.opendarwin.org/
Just give Quicktime the ability to recognize different aspect ratios … It’s great when you encode a project in WIDESCREEN and Quicktime insists on displaying it in a 4×3 window …
What is the big deal if developers make apps for Mac or Windows, who cares? It is not like Apple will miss any cash income from a 3rd party vendor writing an app for Windows only. It only drives the point home about how much more compatible Apple is than Windows. An application is an application, ported, native or whatever lingo you want to throw at it. you still buy it regardless. No one benfits except for the author. If anything, it makes the applications more compatible from platform to platform.
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