Leopard was the big news at this years WWDC and to be honest, there wasn’t really much to see. The Intel/Apple ‘incredible job’ was trooped out again (how many times??). Games on the Mac was one of the opening spots but they kept the fact that the EA games will be run using Cider. If it works well it’s not an issue but I have my doubts.
The new desktop does look nice although I’m more pleased to see consistent window look and prominent active window than Stacks. Nice feature but hardly ground breaking – Stardock’s Objectdock has had that feature for quite a while (although they originally ripped the Apple dock). Icons look far more detailed though which is great as I’ve been using a far bigger icon size recently that suits this. Not so sure of the transparent menu bar though – hopefully switchoffable
The new finder looks quite sweet. When reading from Madrid on Monday, Cover Flow and an iTunes look and feel sounded pretty weak but watching the demo and seeing Cover Flow in action has changed my mind. The sidebar looks far more flexible, Cover Flow could be useful and the better .mac integration and spotlight network searching (at last!) will be very handy.
Quick Look is like a fast Preview although I use QuickSilver to launch data and apps quickly so I’m not sure it’s much of a time saver. Still, it could end up being the most used new app in Leopard. Spaces – it’s virtual desktops, it’s been talked about to death, seen on Unix and Windows machines for years and not something I’ll use much if at all.
iChat upgrades looks very nice, especially as it leverage’s Quick Look. Must use iChat more! Not sure about the video backgrounds though. Scratch that – I’ve just seen the hologram iChat effect. Very nice.
Time Machine looks ok but by default it backs up…everything. How big would the backup disk need to be? I think most users will back up only certain key folders (certainly not the downloads folder) and so a frequent full system backup is still required. I’ll probably stick to SuperDuper.
The Safari for Windows announcement left me kind of cold too making for a fairly tame keynote…with no new hardware. Still, roll on October – Leopard could be my first Glasgow Apple Store purchase.
Yeah – I must admit I was a bit disappointed, particularly when Steve had said back in January that there were loads of secret features in Leopard. I’d expected them to be announced in the keynote, but they were conspicuous by their absence, apart from the new finder of course which was pretty much a foregone conclusion. Having said all that, it’s a nice looking OS and I’ll definitely be getting it. Whether it appears in my house along with a Macbook Pro I’ll have to wait and see…