“Steve Jobs revealed a first glimpse of new Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard features in the WWDC opening keynote address. There are additional details and movies illustrating Leopard and Leopard Server features on Apple’s site (http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/). Many new features delivered on my wishlist items,” Daniel Eran writes for RoughlyDrafted.
Eran covers:
• Time Machine
• Mail
• iChat
• Spaces
• Dashboard
• Spotlight
• iCal
• Accessibility
• 64-Bit
• Core Animation
• Safari
• Xcode
Eran writes, “The biggest surprise: brushed metal apps appeared throughout the demonstration movies, with the Finder, Safari and Address Book all looking virtually unchanged. Of course, this is only a preview, and the pages note that features are subject to change. Apple remarked that they are holding on to some secrets, so perhaps we’ll get a unified appearance yet. Also unchanged is Mail’s unique bubble toolbar that so many people dislike. I’m somewhat ambivalent on the subject; I can find my way around Tiger without trouble, but I’d like to see more refinement and consistency in the interface.”
Full article here.
os x is like lots of apps working together, to add these new features for the demonstration, and to not reveal other secret features, makes sense, this is prob just tiger, with the newer features added on, i sense a more drastic style change to come before release, to put them apart from vista, (such as the animations, icons, resolution independence, unified theme etc.
I wouldn’t be at all shocked if the interface of all the things we saw and the system as a whole change before release. What are the chances that the build they were using literally only included those features required to run?
Personally I prefer iTunes brushed than unified.
And the big question is…
Where is the integration of Core Animation on Leopard????
This is probably the big secret.
When presenting Timemachine we all can hear Scott Forstall saying
“This is the standart Finder”
What this suppose to mean…
I’m as much an Apple fan as the next guy, but I think something needs to be done about the interface consistency. There’s too much visual difference between Apps made by the same company that you begin to wonder if the dev teams actually talk to each other…
I like the iTunes interface/appearance, I think Apple should make all their apps look like this.
I think there may be changeable themes to Leopard. Notice the use of blacks lately– iWeb, their own website, reflections, etc… KInda’ like Vista, but first. And better.
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Well, as long as nothing looks like garageband, I’m happy! Seriously though, I’d be very pleased if everything had iTunes’ and iPhoto’s visual style, I think it looks very clean and refined. Though I would also like to see apple stick to the HIG a bit more.
There’s an important benefit about UI (in)consistency that many people fail to recognize, and that’s muscle memory.
Quite often, I’m working with so many applications, that their visual appearance becomes critical to recognizing an app as soon as I switch to it. If every app looked the same, I’d have a much more difficult time with this. I like how Mail looks different from other apps… that adds value for me simply because I can bind my actions to the visual appearance… sort of like switching mode when I switch apps.
XCode and Xray will make your grandma want to code
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Mascker:
“This is the standard Finder”
What this suppose to mean…
I didn’t see any significance in that. My guess is he was trying to point out that there were no “special steps” to follow or apps to open. That TM was always at the ready in your normal workflow.
I like Mail’s interface and version 3 looks like a nice update.
“I think there may be changeable themes to Leopard.”
Keep dreaming.
I hope there’s an easy way to create one’s own custom templates for enhanced HTML mail from Mail 3.0.
It’s been a dream to be able to generate proper HTML email easily.
@ Mascker: Yes, i picked up on the Finder comment too. Methinks something Top Secret is afoot in Finderland.
What i found interesting in Eran’s article is his speculation that TM is based on the CVS system Subversion. Makes sense to me.
MDN: Thanks for the credit for the article Tip. Not!
Has anyone ever seen the Archy interface by the late Jeff Raskin? The Time Machine is a little reminiscent of it.
I saw the Keynote last night for the first time. Did anyone else notice that Bertrand said (at the beginning during the OS X – Vista comparison) that Spotlight will search the Internet?