Your guesses on Secret Leopard functionality

J

jcart12

Registered
Well we are still waiting to know what secret functionality will be added to Leopard. My guesses

1. Aqua replaced with 3D interface. i.e. instead of window, we will have cubes. Finder will be replaced with an app that manages files in stacks based on spotlight meta-tags (Good bye to folders forever!).

2. Hand gestures incorporated into OS. Apple will release a new range of touch sensitive cinema displays at the same time.

What do you think?
 
Just a caveat,
Don't want to know about supporting apps. Yeah we know about iChat etc. However that aint part of the OS. In addition yeah I'm a geek like you, but I can't imagine Jobs announcing to the general public, wee geez we have now incorporated Sun ZFS into the the underlying file system! It's too geeky and most people wouldn't have a clue what he was talking about.

Of course there could be nothing new and he was just pulling out collective leg. However I doubt it......
 
I'd settle for backwards compatibility with all existing OSX applications, now that really would be a first.
 
Tommo, I can't imagine 10.5 would be incompatible with 10.4, instead I'll get worries about that when we get to Mac OS XI.

Jcart, those features sounds fun but i can't believe they wouldn't have been seen in the developer betas, I'd guess the extra features will be more discrete, like built in bootcamp, etc etc.
 
For one, I agree that the Finder is overdue for an overhaul, and I would be interested in seeing a file system that's entirely search-based, although the implications would be quite severe...

On the other side, I get the feeling that touch screen technology might be getting quite mature. We've seen what Apple has done on the iPhone, and I could well imagine working on an OS that's mostly touchscreen.

Some of you may have seen the following demo of that technology: http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_han
My impression is that it is maturing nicely, and it is quite likely Apple will be the first to bring it to the masses.

However, unless we foresee a complete overhaul of their computer lines, I expect that the technology will be built into the OS, but only available on future high-end Macs.

I will go out on a limb, and actually raise the question as to whether the current line of Mac might maybe already have built-in touchscreens...
Apple, with its skill in secrecy, would be quite capable to ship computers for years with that kind of hardware and not let it slip.
But probably that's just wishful thinking on my part. It would pain me greatly to find out the MacBook I bought two months ago would not be able to run Leopard to its full potential...
 
Ora, I can well imagine applications not running under 10.5 that ran under 10.4. There have been cases of this on all previous upgrades, which have either been patched or the software discontinued for Mac. In the earlier days it would occasionally occur on point releases as well.
 
jcart12 said:
Finder will be replaced with an app that manages files in stacks based on spotlight meta-tags (Good bye to folders forever!).
Click to expand...
I agree with this except for the replaced part. Stacks will make a great addition to the Finder. Folders aren't going anywhere. Ever. The user's reliance on them, however, most likely will.

Along those lines, I expect Leopard to let you assign your own tags to files arbitrarily. This should not be at the Spotlight level, but rather the file system level. HFS+ has support for this, and even Tiger has the ability to do it, although it's not used. I hope Apple will use file system metadata more and the Spotlight database less, because the Spotlight database is a nightmare in many ways. Ideally, Spotlight should only be used for caching data that can be re-created whenever needed (basically, as a time-saving measure). For instance, you can re-determine the size of a JPEG based on the file alone if the Spotlight database is damaged/erase, but you CANNOT re-determine the URL of a downloaded file, which Safari currently stores with Spotlight. This leads to unexpected data loss in many circumstances. Spotlight is not resilient enough to be the SOLE source of any information. That's why I expect Apple to make great use file system tags. (Microsoft was going to do something like this in Vista, but it got cut.)

As I've said before, I expect Leopard to have a scalable UI. Again, this almost made it into Tiger, and in early versions (10.4.0 - 10.4.3, IIRC) you could even play around with it if you installed the developer tools (using the Quartz Debug app). It worked decently, but had a lot of rough edges and no decent way to control it. If it makes it into Leopard, I suspect that A) Many of the UI elements (like close boxes, buttons and scroll bars) will be vector-based so they'll never look blocky, and B) An interface for controlling this will be present on every window; e.g., in addition to the resize box in the bottom-right corner of every window, there could be a scale box.

I expect higher-quality visual effects. Exposé is great, but it uses a very ugly scaling method. With the power of Core Image and Core Animation, enabling smooth scaling animations should be easy.

I do NOT expect a Finder that Doesn't Suck. I hope and I dream, but I do not expect...
 
I guess so with 3rd part software, though for the biggies you tend to get fixes. I thought you were referring to changes on the scale of OS 9-->X and PPC to Intel though, my bad!
 
They already have stuff active in recent Leopard builds that will be bigger than most people out there anticipate. With resolution-independence _in place_ now, they can "simply" release 200ppi+ displays and they make sense (with Leopard).
 
Would be nice if network printing, especially to Windows-shared printers, was working properly. And static IP routes.

I guess this counts as too geeky for the main announcements, though!!

Andy
 
You guys think too small. This is Apple we're talking about. Their Voice recognition and synthesis software has gotten so good, that I think Leopard's secret functionality could very well be "keyboard optional"

Imagine his keynote speech when he unveils Leopard on the big screen and says, "Now normally, I go and sit down and show you all the wonderful new features ... but not today. Today I am going to do it from where I stand."

Then he starts opening applications and showing everything in a very intuitive voice-controlled manner.... Then he says, "Now lets go into KeyNote ..." and KeyNote opens back up to the slide that he was previously giving. He turns to the crowd .. grins with a smirk and says, "keyboard is optional" .. at that point keynote switches to the next frame ... and he introduces keynotes new voice cue feature :)

Not to mention that all the new Macs that he's going to be introducing will be Leopard ready - they'll have this special voice chip that can make it flawless.
 
i'd hate to have talk to/shout at my computer. 'nerd!'

i want some GUI additions to make those Vista fanboys go 'damn, that's cool!'

i want the meta-finder. the finder could be more like itunes, iphoto etc, remove the need for folder trees, just stack files. make a GUI for the terminal for the times when you need total control, but for every day, and iTunes/Spotlight-based style finder would be so nice.

full-Postscript GUI would be good, and the advancement of LCD definition to get closer to the 300dpi desktop environment. print graphics would be so nice to work on in 300dpi real-time.

and of course, Multitouch. that would be the biggest shift in computing. i'd like a computer that sits flat, not vertical, that i can interact with properly. sod the one cursor mpuse driven gui, grab an image and play with it properly, get type and page layout back to how it used to be, moving the elements around on a piece of paper with your hands, tangible design. that would be so nice. it's pretty much wasted on the iPhnoe, it's only really used on photos there anyway...
 
Multitouch could also be applied to the trackpads on notebook range. That would be nice. I've also just decided that it would be nice if Leopard has proper read/write FTP support built in, having spent an hour fighting with third-party apps.

Andy
 
I wasn't referring to lame voice recognition that you see now - I'm talking about smart interpretation. Name your mac, ie. "Fred". Then you say, "Fred lets see what's on Digg" .. computer recognizes Digg as a website and takes you there .. "Fred, just the RSS feed" .. boom you are looking at the RSS feed ... "Next Page Fred" ... "Fred, Show Me Apple Unveils Speaking Computer"

k .. I'm starting to realize how lame that would be. My wife sleeping in the next room and I'm trying to surf :) Yeah ... okay - I withdraw that idea .. Lt. Major Burns has some good ideas .. I'd definately like to see finder reworked to be a lot more customizable / controllable.
 
I don't get whats wrong with the finder. Every1 is saying that it needs to be revised, reworked and more controlable and bla bla bla.
I don't see any problems with the finder. If you say it needs to be reworked, what do you mean? Are you talking about folder management, or finder prefs, or being more integrated with Spotlight?
 
For example:

Finder "forgets" that it has folders and mounts every now and then. You have two choices then: reboot, or touch the folder in question with the terminal. Only then Finder gets the folder again. Though it NEVER was gone, as you can get it via the Terminal just fine all the time.

The Finder has some of these "treats", it would be nice if Apple would *finally* work on it. And they know about it, trust me.
 
Well you can always switch back to the keyboard when your wife is asleep or use the multi touch like some have suggested. I don't think we have to get rid of the keyboard because obviously people need it for writing and programming. Eventually Apple will adopt this multi touch surface in its Mac line and the keyboard will slowly fade away.

I emailed the Apple team back when Mac OS X 10.2 came out about a bug where the system could not remember the view settings after you closed the Finder window and opened a new one. In Mac OS X 10.4 it is fixed. Hooray!

Don't quote me on that.
 
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