Apple today unveiled a near final version of Mac OS X Leopard, the sixth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system. Scheduled to ship in October, Leopard introduces over 300 new features, including a new Desktop and Dock with Stacks, an intuitive new way to organize files; an updated Finder featuring Cover Flow and a new way to easily browse and share files between multiple Macs; Quick Look, a new way to rapidly preview most files without opening an application; Time Machine, a new way to easily and automatically back up and restore lost files or a complete Mac; Spaces, a powerful new feature to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them; and enhanced iChat and Mail applications, which easily allow users to communicate even more creatively.
“Leopard is the best release of Mac OS X to date, surpassing even Tiger, and will further extend Mac OS X’s leadership as the most advanced and innovative operating system in the world,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the press release. “We think current and prospective customers are going to love Leopard, and that it will help make the Mac even more popular.”
Leopard includes a completely new Dock featuring Stacks, which can help manage a user’s desktop clutter caused by browser and email downloads. With the click of a mouse, users can instantly fan out the contents of a stack to easily see each item. Leopard’s Finder has been completely redesigned, adding Cover Flow as an innovative way to quickly browse and locate files and applications. Finder’s new Sidebar simplifies the organization of files on a Mac, and adds easy access to shared Macs and PCs on a home network. Subscribers to .Mac can also use the new “Back to my Mac” feature to browse and access files on their remote Macs over the Internet. Also new in Leopard is Quick Look, an innovative new way for users to instantly preview almost any file, and even play media files, without opening an application.
With its unique ability to let users travel back in time to find deleted files, applications, photos and other digital media, Time Machine is a revolutionary way to protect your digital life. With just a one-click setup, Time Machine automatically keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on the Mac. In the event a file is lost, users can use Mac OS X’s Spotlight to search back through time to find and then instantly restore the file. Time Machine can automatically back up a Mac to an external hard drive connected with a FireWire or USB cable, to a server, or wirelessly to an AirPort Extreme base station with an attached hard drive.
Leopard also includes three new technologies that take full advantage of the latest developments in processor hardware: full native 64-bit support to enable applications to take complete advantage of 64-bit processing while still running side by side with existing 32-bit Mac OS X applications and drivers; easy multi-core optimization and scheduling to take advantage of the latest Intel hardware; and Core Animation, helping developers easily create animated user experiences as amazing as Leopard’s Spaces and Time Machine in their own applications.
Other new features in Leopard include:
• Leopard Mail, offering more ways to customize and add personal style to email than ever before, with more than 30 beautiful stationery designs and layouts that look great on a Mac or Windows PC; Notes, making it as easy to take and organize notes as it is to compose and read emails; To Dos, for creating lists viewed directly in Mail and automatically sync them with iCal; and data detectors that automatically sense phone numbers, addresses and events so they can be easily added to Address Book or iCal
• Leopard iChat with iChat Theater, letting users present photos, presentations, videos and files in a video conference; Photo Booth effects, enabling users to transform their iChat video in real time with fun distortion and color effects; and video backdrops that allow users to choose any photo or video that makes them appear to be anywhere in the world, or out of it
• Leopard iCal, introducing powerful group calendaring features based on the open CalDAV standard that make it easy to organize and coordinate schedules with other people
• Spaces, giving users a powerful new, clutter-free way to create customized spaces on the desktop with only the applications or files needed for each project, and the ability to quickly switch between them with one click of a mouse or keystroke
• Web Clip, bringing anything that a user wants from a web page to Dashboard as a live widget
• Boot Camp, making it possible to run Windows natively on Intel-based Macs (copy of Windows XP or Vista required).
• new development tools, including Xcode 3 with a next generation editor; an all new Interface Builder for easier integration of advanced animation effects into an application; simpler debugging; and support for Objective-C 2.0; DashCode, a better way to create new Dashboard widgets without writing a line of code; and Xray, a new application for optimizing application performance.
Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard is scheduled to ship in October and will be available through the Apple Store, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of US$129 for a single user license. The Mac OS X Leopard Family Pack is a single-residence, five-user license that will be available for a suggested retail price of $199. Volume and maintenance pricing is available from Apple.
More info: http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/1366/
Stacks was Piles before?
Overall, for me at least, a disappointing keynote. Don’t like the new skinny, translucent Menu Bar or the look of the new desktop, though Stacks should help decrease the clutter. Not that crazy about the new Finder either, though Boolean operators will make Spotlight much more useful. Quick Look is a nice new feature but on the whole the Secret Features weren’t up to my expectations. Also, the lack of a new iLife or iWork is quite disappointing. iWork in particular is getting long in the tooth and is still short of what is needed, especially Pages. Lack of professional apps on iPhone, esp ability to read and write to Word and Excel docs is also a big problem for me. And disappointed in the lack of any new hardware. New iMacs desperately needed. iChat in Leopard is very nice but iChat won’t help those without built-in cameras and no new standalone cameras announced. Overall, a C/C- grade from me and looks like the stockholders agree.
Ok, help me out here. The new leopard will work on 32 bit computers as well right. We are not all going to have to buy a new 64 bit Mac to run Leopard are we?
Ok, help me out here. The new leopard will work on 32 bit computers as well right. We are not all going to have to buy a new 64 bit Mac to run Leopard are we? Someone reported they have not intention of releasing a 32 bit version.
I’d like to see cover flow applied to applications like Yojimbo. That might be an upgrade I’d pay for.
Good gawd, you whiny whiners!
10 features out of 500 total were featured today, leaving 490 candidates for “top-secret”, ZFS, resolution, and boot-camp features yet to be revealed to the wider world, at least until people begin to leak them from their preview editions they received today. get a grip!
Apple’s failing to live up to its hype for once. Disappointing Keynote. Seems Leopard’s as much a service pack for Tiger as Vista was for XP. Some eye candy to keep up with Vista and some of the newer Linux window managers and not much else.
…and isn’t “stacks” a blatant copy of the same feature in Vista?
Wow. Leopard is not particularly good looking. I am starting to think that Apple needs another Jonathan Ive, one for software graphic design.
It’s like everything is about saying, “Hey, lookit here! Look at me!” Catching the eye of Windows users shouldn’t be our operating system’s central mission. We have to actually use this thing, too.
Seriously, it almost makes XP look tasteful and restrained. When the demo voice on Apple’s movie introducing The New Dock pointed out that it reflects everything that approaches it, I had a moment of thinking I must have stumbled onto a parody website.
It’s sort of like when the .Mac site design had brushed metal all around everything–if anyone else remembers. It just looked really, really bad, as does this.
I thought Time Machine as demoed previously must be only a rough draft, in interface-design terms. But its dark, reflective, overly busy design is everywhere now.
So here’s to whatever comes after Leopard! In at least some ways this feels like backwards progress.
Can you really install Leopard on a Core Duo (32Bbit) system ?
If you look at Apples hompage they only say 64bitprocessor and 32bit applications?
The new 3D dock looks cool — like a shelf with 3D icons sitting on it. But what about those of us who like a vertical dock on either the left of the right? How’s that gonna look?
haven’t seen the video yet, but Stacks idea reminds me of this.
http://www.bumptop.com/
@Mark,
“Do y’all think his Steveness is holding back more features? I doubt this as I can’t see what benefit would be had from that.”
OH, I don’t know. How about when they sold airport that had “n” built inside for about 5 months then told everyone, hey your “g” system is really 5X faster, for a buck. Apple, better than you know, always.
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@ Reality Check.
“Apple’s failing to live up to its hype for once. Disappointing Keynote. Seems Leopard’s as much a service pack for Tiger as Vista was for XP.” Boy do you need a reality check.!!!!!
This is a developers conference. Read “Roughlydrafted” to see what you should have been expecting, not what you would like to see. Also, read between the lines. Look for the things that don’t get screamed out. Apple is making Windows look like Apple, work great like Apple, but only for Apple programs iTunes, iPhone, Safari, etc. People wanted to run Apple on their Windows, well, its getting there, one step at a time. And for everyone that gets to see whats up, the next time they buy a computer, its more and more likely to be an Apple.
That keeps driving Apples Mac shares UP and UP and UP. And with only 6-10 percent of the market right now, there is plenty of UP to help the stock price rise.
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Did anyone else catch the line about there being no 32-bit version of Leopard? I saw a quote of Jobs saying there would only be a 64-bit version. Does this mean that my year old MacBookPro with a CoreDuo won’t run Leopard? If so I’m gonna be SOOOOO PISSED!
Amazing how many trolls come out the woodwork after these announcements..
Hoping to get the press to say how dissapointed the Mac fanbase is. For any press reading this, wait a few days until the paid microsoft trolls have all gone away and then measure the reaction.
Leopard is looking fantastic – 64 bit, Unix compliant, fantastic use of CoverFlow, and Quicklook is just brilliant too. I think iChat Theater will be a winner too.
This has taken OSX miles ahead of Vista.
Resolution independence and ZFS are for 2008 – I thought everyone new these were not for 2007. If you need to know more start reading some facts – try RoughlyDrafted.com
Well done Apple. A nice keynote. I’m for one not disappointed.
There is only one version of Leopard, and its 64 bit and 32 bit compliant – full stop.
The screen sharing has moved to the Finder. Check out the demo movies and you can see ‘Share Screen’ in additional to mounting a Network computer in the Finder sidebar.
I couldn’t see a tabbed Finder window either.
“Where is the true screen resolution independence?”
It’s in there! Just because Steve didn’t mention it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Don’t laugh at me, but will Leopard still run Classic? I’ve got one program that I use under Classic and I’d hate to have to buy an update just to run it under OSX. It’s fine under Classic. (Douglas CADD, circuit board layout app)
Although there were no earth-shattering announcements, I am very pleased with what they had. The redesigned Finder with Quick View is a very impressive and useful feature. The new dock and transparent menu bar is a subtle and welcome improvement. The new unified design of the Apple website and Leopard GUI is very clean and very usable. The more I learn about Leopard, the more small details I discover about it that I like.
Apple is delivering more of the well thought out, attention to detail, elegance and polish that made me a fan of Mac OS X in the first place.
It’s still wait and see for me. Steve only showed 10 of the 300 new features in Leopard – I hope some of these non-demoed features are serious ones.
Let’s hope David Pogue has a nice FAT Leopard book awaiting final print detailing all the new features (hopefully useful ones and not just bloat/eye candy).
Seems like Apple has been overly busy with the iPhone indeed, but, I imagine over the coming weeks more and more info about Leopard will emerge.
Here’s hoping there’s more under the hood…
I know it’s eye-candy, but – I must say that the 3D Dock looks VERY cool.
there will be a new iLife and iWork when Leopard is released but why would they announce it at a developer’s conference? it’s not like developers will be writing software around it. apple will announce it much closer to it’s release date so as to capture the buzz for Leopard and iWork sales.
if this was MacWorld, then sure, but it’s not.
Would you guys like some cheese with your whine? At this point it’s all about honing the usability and performance of OSX. Tough crowd (or a bunch of trolls)…any one of keynote items are amazing.
time to sell AAPL… it was too bad… I’d rather not seen this news…
I wonder if Apple bought MenuShade? I hope it’s half as configureable…Whatever?