Latest OSX Leopard build hints at new features
The latest build of Mac OSX Leopard (build 9A343) is in the wild, and it offers some interesting things that haven’t surfaced before, mainly in terms of fit-and-finish. Think Secret still pegs Leopard’s final release at end of March, but that’s something I like to call bullshit. My call is, and has been, late May/early June. March seems an awfully aggressive timeframe to reach GA quality, especially when “stability remains questionable, with many applications experiencing unexplained hangs or crashes”. That doesn’t tell me we’re 30 days away from GA, but what do I know? I’ve only been in the software business all of my professional career.
Nonetheless, there are some curious highlights:
- Considerable gains in performance and responsiveness, including the dreaded “window resize” delay that has always been a nit with OSX. I’ve always hated it, so it’s nice to see something to simple yet so frustrating finally fixed. And, as is Apple’s tradition, performance only seems to get better release-to-release.
- The icon for Terminal, instead of having a black background, is now all Matrix-ey with what appears to be green characters suspended in vertical freefall.
[link]
- Terminal now sports tabs, which is nice and makes perfect sense. But it begs the question: is Finder now tabbed? I certainly hope so.
[link] - New Terminal Inspector.
[link] - “Arrange By” gets new keyboard shortcuts.
[link] - Battery health (if you have a laptop) now indicated in one click.
[link] - Two new screen savers of note: “Security” screensaver takes a series of pictures with your iSight camera when motion is detected, and “Retro” simulates the flickering screen and sepia tones of old CRTs.
["Security"] ["Retro"] - Brand new Network preference pane — easy networking configuration just got easier.
[link] - Spaces performance has been massively improved — invocation is now instantaneous. To boot, Spaces supports a total of 16 workspaces (4×4).
There are other nuances not covered here, so be sure to check out Think Secret’s Leopard 9A343 screenshot gallery.
There are a few things that are not here yet, most notably…
- A new Finder. Prominent people (namely, Ars Technica’s John Siracusa) have been calling for this for a few years now, and I agree. I’d like to see the Finder brought up to snuff with Windows Explorer — at the very least. Apple’s file manager needs a serious refresh, and I can’t see this being ignored for much longer. I think Leopard will see improvements here.
- No new GUI/look-and-feel changes…yet. I still think this will happen, and I’ve called for it before, as has Daring Fireball’s John Gruber. Aqua is due for some refinement, probably in the direction that iTunes 7’s GUI suggests.
- No native virtualization technology to allow OSX and Windows apps to coexist side-by-side.
- Nothing that would be considered truly “top secret” above and beyond what we’ve known for some time now.
Finally, Leopard will not be released until Jobs has a chance to stage an event where he shows off the rest of Leopard (including the heralded “top secret”) features. That’s a given.
One more time: Apple’s next-gen OS will not slip quietly into the market. There will be another showing in which we’ll see the final product and get an official word on its timing. Vista’s buzz is dying, and Jobs can officially grab the spotlight with some more showmanship around Leopard — not to mention a full array of technology and a complete feature set.
Until then, we’ll just follow the developer seeds and try our best to piece together what Leopard will look like as a final product.
Technorati Tags: apple, osx, leopard, steve-jobs, 10.5, rumor
First!
It’s all well and good, but I haven’t really seen anything yet that makes me jump out of my seat and yell, “Farewell, Tiger!!”. I can only assume that the Stevemeister will pull those things out of the bag when he does the keynote, and I imagine I’ll probably be whooping with the rest of them at that point. To really put a dent in Vista’s mojo, Leopard simply cannot be Tiger warmed over. For now, though, I remain not especially excited by Terminal getting a new icon…
Agree! It has been close to two years…there should be something beyond minor evolutions, and what perfect timing for it as M$ shoots themselves in the foot. Time machine and Spaces are cool, but for me to upgrade, there had better be a bigger twinkie than that. I hope Core animation is integrated
and some eye candy is important, as long as you can turn it on or off. No real reason to upgrade so far, but my ears are perked.
I think some of you are missing the larger picture here.
A new OS is greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps not one feature jumps at you (although, for me, Spaces does), but when you step above it all, Leopard is already pretty compelling. A nice backup mechanism with Time Machine (I hate that name, BTW), virtual desktops with Spaces, all-around improved performance, especially on Intel machines, new Safari, new Mail, Core Animation, etc.
Looks pretty nice to me already, and we don’t know the full story yet.
Also bear in mind that an OS is a platform on which applications are built. The more things like Core Animation (and Graphics and Audio) are built into the OS platform, the cooler the apps can be. And apps are ultimately what deliver value to the end user.
So: don’t dismiss Leopard yet. It will easily be the best OSX to date and a worth successor to Tiger. Jobs isn’t going to microwave Tiger and call it a new OS.
I CAN’T WAIT!!!!, once this gets out i’m buying a mac…
they KICK ASS!
Interesting. Unreal that its taking so long. I would love to see a March release, but I agree that its unlikely, but only because they told Wall Street during their earning call early this month that it would be released in Q2. That’s April-June. (It also meshes with the “Spring 2007″ nonsense, which is a little more slippery than “Q2″ from a financial standpoint.
Anyway, I’m a PC User looking to buy my first Apple computer since the Apple II days. Probably an mini to supplement my three PCs. Somethings are just way too painful on a PC. But, you already know that.
So, any thought on whehter release and distirbution will be honed? People walked into stores when Vista was released and bought new computers with it pre-loaded that night. Will Mac purchasers be able to do the same?
I should note that for me, on my iBook G3 running Tiger, I already have the one-click battery meter and all of the options shown. Not sure what’s new about that.
I’m also very curious, how in the world do you find Windows Explorer to be superior to Finder? It’s big and clunky, takes forever, isn’t integrated into the OS very well, VERY confusing for newbies, ugly as f***, and Finder does everything it does while being simple, easy, and beautiful. Please tell me how Explorer is in any way better than Finder.
Of course, I’d love to see improvements. Tabbed Finder would rock, it would also be nice to be able to use Finder as a really lightweight web browser. That would also allow them to pump a few more features into Safari without worrying about making it clunky.
What window resize delays are you referring to? I have Tiger on a G4 and I’ve never had any delays when I resize a window.
In fact, I’ve always been impressed at how it fluidly scales the text and icons in the Sidebar as you size and resize windows.
As far as bringing the Finder up to snuff with Windows Explorer? Huh?? My Windows friends don’t even like that thing.
You’re the Blog of the Minute at WordPress.com for this post…
Thanks a loooot Jeff for making my anticipation of Leopard absolutely intolerable !
JT Hollister asked how anyone can say that Finder is not as good as Windows Explorer…
The only thing you have right is that Windows Explorer is ugly as sin. Compared to Mac OS, everything about the pre-Vista OS’s is ugly. Mac wins the pretty award.
But to say that it isn’t well integrated into the OS?! Come on- that is one of the problems. The Explorer engine is too tied into the OS which is by Internet Exploder hacks are so critical.
Slow and clunky? Maybe on a PII with 256 MB of RAM. On a real system, I have never found Explorer to be slow or difficult.
As a relatively new Mac proponent (bought my first mac a couple weeks ago- using it for this), I would love to take some shots at PC, however, not on the Finder vs. Explorer debate. Explorer is much less confusing as it shows the heirarchal flow much easier than the cascading windows that start to disappear, blah blah blah.
Mac has a lot of things right, but where Windows has improved on Mac’s early rev’s, Mac needs to strike back making it better still.
Leopard does not sound like much of an improvement. I hope Mac has simply managed to keep a lot of things quiet until they actually work. Smart on their part, if that is the case. Vista’s many pre-releases showed their hand early and gave anti-MS crusaders and Mac time to develop their commercials and blogs before the general public ever saw a glimpse of Vista…
Harry
http://getsfb.wordpress.com
I’m gonna ge Leopard as soon as it comes out…hopefully. The new iChat and Dashcode are the features I really want, as Spaces’ functionality is taken up by VirtueDesktops on my Mac. I’m also looking forward to CoreVideo. If they make Finder support tabs, that’d be great!
Hey again Jeff,
I’m not dismissing Leopard out of hand, and I probably will be pretty early in the upgrade queue, but I see that Jobs has a real opportunity here to steal Vista’s thunder and I just hope that it’s grabbed with both hands. I’m sure it will be and things like Core and improved iChat etc are great cherries on the cake, but I’d love to see something really collosal being wheeled out, not just performance tweaks and fancy visuals, however sexy it may all be. This is the perfect time for a powerplay. I agree with you here, Jeff – it’s really the apps (including iLife) which will really make this all happen.
okay, good bye vista.
and it’s hello to mac!
One Thing I Would Really Like in Leopard, is the Finder with Tabs. I Don’t care if the finder is redesigned or not, but at least add Tabbed-Browsing Capabilities to the Finder. Otherwise you need to open a new finder window… Meaning the number of windows open gets quite large!
I Can’t Wait For Leopard!!!
-Chris
All About Mac
HELL YEAHH DUDE, TABS ON TERMINAL WOOHOOO
This will Kick Out the Micro$oft Vista Slogan
The “WOW” Start it Now….
Yes the WOW only available on Leopard
Gosh! I’m just getting more and more excited about Leopard!!! I can’t wait!!!
It looks like it will be AWESOME!
looking forward to the release, i should imagine it’s going to be a while before we see i-phone in australia so i hope leopard is going to keep us excitied for a while yet.
I have a *very strong feeling* that the Leopard Finder will support tabs. No way they’d implement a Terminal with tabs while ignoring the Finder. No chance.
I all but guarantee a tabbed Finder.
Jeff, I’m one of the ADC Select members and have been punching on Leopard Server pretty hard (on non-Intel metal). While I’m a bit more restricted in what I can say/write it’s clear… Leopard’s going to kick some major tail (both server and workstation). Can’t wait until my AppleTV arrives so I can doink around with Leopard and ATV!
gwhiz — dude, you cannot come here and say you can’t say things. That’s just plain mean.
Type “aa” if Leopard has amazing new stuff we haven’t seen yet — like, say, a new Finder. Type “Shut up Jeff, I really don’t feel like being sued right now, thanks” if you want me to shut up because you really don’t feel like being sued right now.
I think that Jobs will start showing off Leopard once the Vista hype dies down. At least I hope so. That way it’ll be less about LEOPARD VS. VISTA SMACKDOWN!, and more about Leopard’s strengths in general.
I’m actually looking to convert to a Mac soon so I’m trying to learn all I can about the system. Of course most of this was a foreign language to me right now but I want to get into the graphic design world at least that is what I’m working on and everyone in my classes say the mac is better for the graphics. Gotta upgrade so might as well give it a shot! Thanks for all the info! Taking notes, even if it doesn’t make a ton of sense right now!
waduh keren lah om tanteh
I just went though and read some of those comments.
Very true. I’d never thought of it that way. Very nice point.
Gosh, now I REALLY can’t wait for Leopard…
Definately get a Mac QuirkyBitsnPieces!!! It’s worth it!
Additionally, after looking through some of those new features, I had a new gut reaction: finally!
Tabbed terminal, workspaces? Ok, great, KDE has had these features for years! Do we need a new major revision of the OS for a new tabbed terminal? Certainly not.
I’m extremely anxious for the other functional underpinnings of the OS (virtual desktops, 64-bit, time-machine-enabled filesystem).
A tabbed terminal, to me, is just a whole-wheat doughnut…
As a Solaris guy I’m looking forward to integrated DTrace and ZFS. Hopefully ZFS makes it into this release…
IMHO, the top secret 10.5 features will be based around inter-operability with rumoured new multitouch sensitive input device/s. Multi-touch technology introduced with iPhone will translate to new multitouch sensitive input device/s to be introduced at the same time as 10.5. Think in terms of a multitouch sensitive screen that is intended primarily as an input device, and which can alter from displaying a keyboard, tablet, audio mixing desk etc, based on the application currently running, or the function currently accessed from within the OS. This device is horizontally oriented (like a keyboard).
Think fundamentally revolutionary new technology!!
I don’t understand – am i the only one who has listened to jobs’ leopard preview at wwdc where he categorically states that leopard will have a new finder…? (complete with a mock up screenshot of an aqua version of windows explorer)