I wonder what Alex will think of 10.5? Hmmm.

[ozskier]

Now that we've seen what Apple has in store for 10.5 (http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/) I wonder what Alex is going to think of all the improvements. Sure, Kevin is going to love it and and the two can get into an argument about Kevin being a "fanboy" or "drinking the koolaid" but there is no denying the fact that 10.5 takes Vista out behind the woodshed and knocks it around.

I guess it really depends how drunk they both are during that point in the show.

-Dave

[tokenuser]

I was underwhelmed by the 10 new features in OSX.
To me, they are things that will get in the way of doing something useful.
Sure the additional eye candy is nice, but I turn that stuff off anyway.
Sure Flip Covers are great. OK, that is something I might want to keep. Actually no - its only really useful for photos (I'll keep using Picassa or just turn thumbnails on in my photo directories) and music (iTunes - and it already has Flip Covers). I'll use Google Desktop for the rest.
Virtual machines are cool. Boot camp, VMWare, Parallels - they let you run Windows ... HEEEYYYYYY! This lets you run Windows? So no you can have your bloated eye candy and still run something useful! Wow </sarcasm>

If a a trip to the plastic surgeon is what its going to take to keep OSX appealing to a youth market so be it.

Oh yeah - side note: Safari. OK, I might actually try this. Hmmm. Maybe not. Opera still renders faster and is more standards compliant than Safari. In a market that is really segmented in IE, Firefox, Opera, everything else, why would you want to enter a market which is already saturated?

[ozskier]

While the updates weren't groundbreaking, I do feel that they do enhance and further solidify OS X's position for the next couple of years. As someone who works in an environment that is 9/10ths mac the Spotlight and Finder enhancements certainly do help out.

Quicklook is going to help my day. I constantly have Finder open so I can preview .psd / .tiff / .png files for design projects I am working on. Having the ability to see the a detailed preview inside a finder window that I can scroll around on with my mouse is going to help.

I'll be doing the upgrade from 10.4.x to 10.5 while my Vista box sits next to my mac going completely underutilized.

[silentspyder]

As a mac user I also feel underwhelmed. Unlike the other guy I like the visuals but it just doesn't impress me that much. The only useful thing was probably time machine but that isn't even a new announcement. I was waiting for a new mac. Oh, and Safari on Windows being the "One more thing". WTF

[scoobydiesel]

I always like when alex an kevin are fanboying it out

[brian1625]

As a Windows user, I'm intrigued.

Spaces may sound useless for some of you, but two years ago that idea crossed my mind being someone with attention problems. I need my screen to mostly be doing what I'm doing at that moment and nothing else. I've learned over the years that less is more when it comes to screen real estate. I've fallen into the Web 2.0 philosophy.

[magunwarrior]

We've known about spaces for awhile now...I don't really see myself using it much though.

[tokenuser]

As a Windows user, I'm intrigued.

Spaces may sound useless for some of you, but two years ago that idea crossed my mind being someone with attention problems. I need my screen to mostly be doing what I'm doing at that moment and nothing else. I've learned over the years that less is more when it comes to screen real estate. I've fallen into the Web 2.0 philosophy.The idea has been around in the Linux UI world for quite some time as virtual desktops. Spaces is implemented a little differently, but it is still the same concept.

[brian1625]

Yeah, I first saw it on a Linux and I've also seen Apple's preview of it before. I know that it's nothing new, I just thought I'd bring it up while we're on the subject. I highly suspect I will use it, it won't be something I'll use then forgot about.

[tokenuser]

Yeah, I first saw it on a Linux and I've also seen Apple's preview of it before. I know that it's nothing new, I just thought I'd bring it up while we're on the subject. I highly suspect I will use it, it won't be something I'll use then forgot about.Something tha tis cool with Spaces is using the accelerometer hack on a Macbook ... and setting it up so that slapping the edge of the screen flips the Spaces :)

[magunwarrior]

Something tha tis cool with Spaces is using the accelerometer hack on a Macbook ... and setting it up so that slapping the edge of the screen flips the Spaces :)

But no accelerometer hack can beat this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacSaber

[baldmonkey]

Something tha tis cool with Spaces is using the accelerometer hack on a Macbook ... and setting it up so that slapping the edge of the screen flips the Spaces :)

You mean like the function in that has been in for a while VirtueDesktops?
It is actually quite useless.

[rabidbadger]

I'll be living in spaces. And time machine is gonna be a godsend cause I never ever back up, but know I should, And Tokens stolen stuff and two burglaries at my house, have convinced me I aught to. Quick view is gonna be awesome, basically cause I have millions of poorly named files and this will help me find them, mostly images, so spotlight don't help much.

[ozskier]

Time Machine is great, however I fall within that small percentage of folk who actually perform a daily backup. The backup application with .mac does a great job. A couple of months ago I dropped my MacBookPro and completely destroyed it. I only lost around 4 hours of work since I had a backup from the afternoon on one of my external drive-sets.

[casework]

The Finder/Quick Look/Spotlight things are what I'm looking forward to the most. Spotlight is something I figured would just be a wasted function when I switch to Macs, but I've come to love it. Command+Spacebar and typing the name of an application is such a nice way to navigate my files(and yes, I know Vista now has this feature - too little, too late, I'm afraid).

Time Machine will be nice, too. As much as I don't like backing stuff up, except music and videos occassionally, it will be great to have my machine do it for me, and much more effective than System Restore. The few times I had to use System Restore for something really important, it was almost more of a pain losing all my recent changes. This will be great to just grab a file and boom, it's back.

I tried VirtueDesktops awhile back and wasn't too impressed, but I think NOW, Spaces will be of use to me. Doing a lot of editing(video, audio, AND photo), it will be nice to keep my programs separated, but be able to easily jump between desktops(if I'm working on an audio file for a video project, for exmaple). But for day to day use, it's definitely not very useful to me.

And maybe I'm just buying into the hype, but Jobs did make note that these are TEN of the 300 new features of Leopard. It certainly wouldn't make sense for them to show the best 10 to a bunch of developers, so I expect some big things to be revealed at or near release. Also, what's going to get people talking more now... a bunch of eye candy and a couple unique features(compared to Windows - sure Linux has a lot, but it's not something a lot of people care about), or some really enhanced computing features? Look at the iPhone... no one CARES if the sound quality is crap, but the Multi-Touch, Cover Flow, GoogleMaps, etc, is what everyone is really looking forward to.

Also, I actually like the eye candy. Sure, I'll probably turn some things off when I'm worried about conserving my energy and power, but let's be honest, it's fun, and can enhance the experience. People sure made a big deal of Vista having Aqu...er...Aero, and I see some of the things Leopard doing as improving upon that big time.

Anyway... what will Alex think?

Alex: "Eh, some of the stuff is cool. I can do all of that on this Falcon Northwest with Vista, though."

Kevin: "Come on man, Time Machine is cool. If you lose a file, you can jump back and find it no matter how old it is. And the new desktop looks sick."

Alex: "Ooookay. But I don't delete important stuff that I need. And I have System Restore anyway. The desktop looks cool, but it's nothing very useful."

Kevin: "You just don't think these features are cool because it's Apple."

Alex: "And you just like it because of that Apple logo on it. Quit sucking the ****, Kevin."

Sorry if I just ruined episode 102 for you guys.

[chevmalfet]

For the Mac folks the biggest saving grace will be autofs. Multithreaded daemon to handle mounting/unmounting volumes. Otherwise known as the beachball killer daemon.

[magunwarrior]

I've watched half the keynote, good to see some of the stuff in action.

They're really pushing cover flow, I ****ing hate cover flow.

But Quick View is going to be a life saver.

[darknessgp]

My thoughts "meh." Some features look interesting, others like cover flow just look gimmicky.

[chevmalfet]

I definitely think the consumer focus to both keynote presenting Leopard really hurt Steve's presentation. I realize with the iPhone and all he's getting a lot of media attention right now, but the Keynote would have been much more solid had Steve addressed the new version of XCode and some of the more technical improvements.

In the end, an hour and a half of OS demo gets kind of boring.

[magunwarrior]

In the end, an hour and a half of OS demo gets kind of boring.

I knew that was going to happen with Leopard due out in a few months.

[chevmalfet]

Oh and as for Alex's reaction... 10 to 1 he calls out Apple on the whole "frosted glass" look. And rightfully so. Cool? Yes. Shamefully swiped from Microsoft? Likely.

Kudos, though, for keeping it off the window surrounds.

[magunwarrior]

Right because Microsoft didn't shamefully swipe widgets among other things now did they?

[chevmalfet]

There are many things one might claim Microsoft swiped... i wouldn't recognize widgets as one of them. Certainly it was a bandwagon move on their part, but widgets in some form or another existed on both platforms before implemented in the OS, and on platforms before OS X and Windows.

[phatlip12]

Alot of the things Steve showed are UI improvements. You have to actually try these things out until you can classify it as eye candy or useful.

[magunwarrior]

True, very true.

I don't really see myself using stacks too much, I don't really care if my desktop is cluttered, I usually have a browser window over most of it.

[logant]

Oh and as for Alex's reaction... 10 to 1 he calls out Apple on the whole "frosted glass" look. And rightfully so. Cool? Yes. Shamefully swiped from Microsoft? Likely.

Kudos, though, for keeping it off the window surrounds.

You mean transparency? Hasn't OS X had that since 10.2 Jaguar.

[staggord]

As somebody who was thinking, eh, wait for leopard then maybe buy a MacBook of some configuration I was quite underwelmed. The announcement from EA was pretty good though, and of course its always nice to see Carmac demoing something new. This might leave Alex with one less reason not to use Macintosh. Even so, I was expecting 10.5 to look a bit better than it does, I might expect Alex to say something like: "Its not even out yet", but hey maybe they've sorted out the mouse acceleration issue that he mentioned a few months back.

Its funny, I was trying to remember if I'd seen the 'virtual desktops' on a PC before (apart from LINUX and SOLARIS which has had them for years). And it hit me, there has been a Microsoft Power Toy out for doing this for a few years now. Its here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

I stopped using Microsoft Vitual Desktop Manager after reinstalling Windows and forgot about it. Its got the same kind of 'view all desktops' functionality that Spaces has only its XP animation so its kind of Amiga 500 IFF anim stuff. No idea if theres a Vista version, if there was it'd probably look better.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned.

[chevmalfet]

You mean transparency? Hasn't OS X had that since 10.2 Jaguar.

Nope, Frosted Glass, specifically.

And Virtual Desktops have been around on UNIX machines since, effectively, the dawn of time. Though, as sloppily as Windows still handles multiple physical displays, I'm not sure I'd want to handle the hassle on a PC. Most consumer vid cards don't color manage per display still, they color manage per video card, so you can't say color calibrate your laptop and external separately and have them both be profiled simultaneously.

That said, some of the eye-candy features will no doubt be useful but much more slick will be the solid under the hood improvements Apple has made. Such as being able to run both 32 bit and 64 bit apps concurrently with both 32 bit and 64 bit drivers.

[staggord]

Though, as sloppily as Windows still handles multiple physical displays, I'm not sure I'd want to handle the hassle on a PC. Most consumer vid cards don't color manage per display still, they color manage per video card, so you can't say color calibrate your laptop and external separately and have them both be profiled simultaneously.

In what way does Windows do Multiple displays sloppily? I've been using it for years, no problems here.

I though you could make changes to colour calibration per display.

[chevmalfet]

In what way does Windows do Multiple displays sloppily? I've been using it for years, no problems here.

I though you could make changes to colour calibration per display.


As have I... when I worked as an engineer I had a workstation with a relatively non-standard 3 headed display interface. In that instance, it worked great, but I've found not only is the quality/stability too dependent on the video card manufacturer, MS in my experience relies too heavily on the display interface's drivers to sort multi-display systems. I had the recent thrill of dealing with a photographer's laptop in just that situation; in dual head mode the OS display control panel was well nigh useless, and NVidia's would only load a color profile per DI, not per display, forcing a color profile for the external to the laptop.

Now, I'm sure there are video cards that support this functionality (as I'm sure the NVidia could if they wrote it into the drivers) but this is the kind of inconsistency that irks me.

[brew7]

He will probably just blow it off as whatever and claim that Vista can do all the same things. Which is fine, I suppose; he is entitled to his bias, as Kevin Rose is a bit of a Mac fanboy now. Sorry Kevin but even I have to admit that MS Surface is pretty BA. Even if it does seem a ways off before any one is using itl

[chevmalfet]

Surface is great as a practical research demonstration... as far as product engineering goes it'd be terribly kind to call it "A Work in Progress."

[darknessgp]

Surface is great as a practical research demonstration... as far as product engineering goes it'd be terribly kind to call it "A Work in Progress."

Supposedly. Not all companies give away everything. MS did a small demonstration for Surface, I think it is similar how Apple said "10" of 300 "new" features (I use quotes cause seriously a different GUI and wallpaper isn't really a feature.)
Surface might do a whole lot more or the coffee table could be the initial idea for a line of products that are just making a surface into a computer interface... The fact is we don't know, but it is exciting to think of what could happen with the tech as it seems MS wants to actually apply it more than the universities have been.