WWDC everywhere
Steve Jobs kicked off Apple’s annual world wide developers conference this week with his traditional keynote where Leopard took centre stage. In addition to the features that were revealed during last year’s conference, Jobs demonstrated a new desktop, Finder and a feature called quick look. He also announced a beta of Safari 3 is available for download and runs on Mac OS X 10.4.9 and both Windows XP and Vista.
The new desktop has not changed much from the current one in Tiger. Notable changes include the menu bar which now is translucent and allows you to see more of your desktop picture (although it looks a little, tacky) and the dock has received a “3D” pane below it to add depth to the desktop, with the icons sitting on top much the way ClearDock can look. The has also dock received a new way to manage icons on your desktop and in folders, and can act as an application launcher by displaying the contents of a folder in a expanded view (similar to my previous application folder in the dock suggestion).
The Finder now sports a fresh unified look that has been inspired from the iTunes 7 interface. Gone are the brushed metal, milky and ribbed interfaces, which have all been replaced with a unified user interface (as UNO can do to Tiger). Aqua still has a presence in the unified GUI by way of scroll bars, buttons and tabs (but looks a little out of place and probably has a good chance of being changed to compliment the refresh). The Finder allows you to browse other networked devices over the internet or locally with the help of .Mac. Connecting to other computers has been made much easier with the help of the side bar and improved network browser.
Quick look allows you to view files without having to launch their applications. It can view movies, keynote presentations, PDF’s and any other type of file that developers can build to take advantage of this feature. Quick look really is great when used with the Finders new cover flow view allowing you to view a movie, or move through the pages of a document right in the Finder.
Boot camp will be out of beta and included with Leopard when it ships. Windows and Mac OS will be more seamless with Apple utilising Windows hibernation and Mac OS’s safe sleep features to allow you to move between each OS without having to close all of your applications. Parallels and VMware will still offer the most compatible side by side use of Mac OS and Windows allowing you to run Windows inside Mac OS.
Apple still expects to ship Leopard in October of this year - the month it was pushed back to earlier this year. Mac OS X 10.5 will sell for US$129 and include over 300 new features.