Gizmodo
A few days ago, we reported on some rumored OS X Leopard features. Those turned out to be fake as Uncle Tom's toupee. But, the real features unveiled at today's WWDC Keynote turned out to be almost as yummy. If you've missed the presentation, we've gathered everything we could about the new OS—including videos and images—and we vomited it up into this post. Jump to read more.
Time Machine
Leopard's most radical concept is Time Machine, a way to back up your computer without actually going to the hassle of backing up your computer. The system journals every change on your disk, giving you access to older versions of your work. Want a file you just overwrote or deleted? Use Time Machine's browser to scroll back a few days, then pluck your data from oblivion. Of course, if your drive goes poo-poo, your Time Machine is useless. We're impressed, but we'd be more impressed if Time Machine could go forward in time to when our blog posts are already written, 10 hours from now.
Time Machine can backup, on the fly, to an external or network'd drive. Here's the official Apple video.
Mail
I personally use Mail, and I'm super excited over two tweaks that'll appeal to organizing freaks. The first is the Notes box. How often do you send yourself an emails as reminder notes? The new Mail has a dedicated box that formats Notes messages so they look like Post Its. The Other function is the ToDo list. Mail lets you highlight text in any app—even document files in Finder7mdash;and turn them into things on your ToDo list. Sweeeeeeet. Mail also does stationary now, in HTML. Just like Outlook Express did 5 years ago. The templates included range from photo album to ecards. They're nice. Here's a video.
iChat
It's fargin awesome. We're talking app screen-sharing over iChat video (so you can show off slideshows, or powerpoint, or even videos in Quicktime.) Then, there's iChat's backdrops. The backdrops can overwrite your messy room with a photo of a beach, or of Times Square. The coolest thing? iChat supports video backdrops—one example they had was of someone appearing to be riding a rollercoaster. Then, there's Screen Sharing, which I didn't hear Steve talk about during the keynote. I assume it's a VNC type of remote control. Apple's video here.
Spaces
All the new Macs support high res LCDs. But even the biggest LCDs get crowded after you open a spreadsheet, a mail program, and a browser. So that's where Spaces comes in. Spaces lays your application windows out across 4 virtual desktops that you can quickly switch between. You can zoom out to see all 4, then drag apps between each virtual desktop. BTW, this has been around for a long time in Linux machines. Gotta love how Apple accuses M$ft of copying, while they've copied third party apps like Konfabulator since Tiger.
Dashboard and Widgets
Dashboard, if you don't know, is a program that runs useful mini apps called Widgets: They can check the weather, check stock prices, rock some basic calculator action, and loads more. (Here's Apple's directory of Widgets.) What's new? A Widget creator that seems more suited for developers, and a way to turn any part of a webpage into a Widget. Eh.
Spotlight
Spotlight is OS X's search service that can find not only files, but images from iPhoto, email from Mail, and contacts from Address Book. You get the idea — you can search your system for whatever. What's new here is support for searching Mac's across the network, and support for additional search syntaxes. Meh.
iCal
The big new thing about iCal is group calendar support, using the CalDAV standard. Using a compatible WebDAV server, you can automatically schedule meetings during times when everyone is available, and automatically request meeting rooms. (So, we're one step closer to iCal being useful for workplace use.)
Parental Controls for Net-Access
Parents can limit internet access on machines by remote control. It wasn't announced at the Keynote, but Giz found this sidebar on the Leopard website.
Bundled Apps
Bootcamp, the software that helps Windows Machines run on Macintel machines, comes out of beta and will ship with Leopard. So will Front Row, Apple's media browser, and Photo booth.
Core Animation
Core Animation is a developer tool for scripting graphics. It's best explained by watching an example of a program.
64 Bit Support
Leopard is Apple's new operating system, due to hit the shelves in the spring of 2007. The OS has been written to fully support 64-bit apps and the Quad Xeon 64-bit chips in the new Mac Pro desktops. And at the same time run older 32-bit apps. All without emulation, which should mean that the new Macs will have software to take advantage of their native architecture.
In the Wild
And today, developers at WWDC are walking away with an early version of the OS. If you're lucky, you can find copies in the wild.
OS X Leopard [Apple]
9:09 AM on Tue Aug 8 2006
WWDC 2006 Keynote Video [Apple]
WWDC 206 Keynote Transcription [Macrumors]
By Brian Lam
16,725 views
24 comments
Comments
Don't forget Steve also said there are more features that still must be kept secret from the microsoft photocopier, so perhaps some of those rumored features will still make it.
mac os gets closer to windows just as windows get closer to mac os.
jwardell, that time machine isn't a system restore copy?
jwardell, that time machine allowed them to go back and "photocopy" old windows features.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xpp...
"Virtual Desktop Manager
Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy."
Ha! looks like apple is the ultimate porn surfing platform! No spyware, no viruses, no pop-ups, a "reset safari" feature, and now, spaces!- the ultimate "no sir boss, that wasn't porn... as you can see, I have nothing on my desktop but work-related material"... lol
I think Jobs is secretly a porn freak... hehe
I was really hoping for a major announcment regarding some amazing virtualization software implementation or something related.
Bootcamp is nice, but its still another partition.
I guess that could be one of the "top secret" things.
Don't start again with that Konfabulator story. The only similarity between it and Dashboard is the name 'Widget'.
Virtual Desktop Management had been around for Apple since OS 9 days, its just Apple added it to iChat while previously it was a part of their networking software, then Remote Desktop.
Yeah Konfabulator flat out was admitted to being a throwback to old OS 6 applets which had since been removed from the OS. All Apple did was bring back a thing it had originally in its OS but lacked a focus because without the web, there was little reason to have most of the applets out since no data really was updated.
The Brain, so what you are saying is that OSX will be including virtual desktop software with their OS before Windows? I'm sure you realize Microsoft was not the first company to come up with the concept of virtual desktops. It's hardly a "Windows feature" if its not included with Windows. Is it?
It's OS X 10.5, Gimoguys. Not OS X.5
If Time Machine lets you roll back to _any_ time in the past, won't that be taking up a horrendous amount of space? More than System Restore?
Actually, David, the X is officially shorthand for 10. You're supposed to either refer to it as OS X or OS 10.5. Some folks choose to clarify they're talking about X while being specific about which version by saying X.5. It's a perfectly cromulent way to write it.
Do you suppose Time Machine would like your roll back to System 7?
sykora, It is not a system restore replacement. It is a backup solution. It will take up much more space than system restore. Just like any backup solution would. It does minimize its disk usage by only saving diffs for each file revision though.
I'm excited for the new iChat, it's about time it gets some serious features.
I hope some of the "top-secret" features are headed to the Finder, Mail, iCal and iSync, there is definitely (a lot of) room for growth there.
I'll echo my comments during the webcast yesterday:
Time Machine - just like System Restore on Windows, I'd turn this off. Do people really sacrifice their hard drive space on a big what-if scenario? If you manually keep backups of important things, and don't browse the internet like an idiot (which by using OSX you're already not going to get a lot of the scripting viruses), why do you need to have a constant backup running? Maybe in a work environment that would be handy to have built in backups of all machines to a server, but I don't see the use for a home user.
Virtual desktops - In the past I've found XP's implementation buggy. It wasn't really full desktops, it was more like virtual views of the same desktop. I had problems with apps bleeding across desktops, it didn't really seem to help workflow, I dunno...it just didn't seem refined. I know it's in linux, but still haven't ever really used them. I dunno....maybe I just like having everyone on one screen. Maybe a good implementation would make me more productive. Meh.
I'll repeat, templates and graphics and stationery in email is retarded. Send me plain text, no fonts, no colors, and any pics or files as attachments.
Just my $.02
Nope, it's for data, instead of just the "Registry" (not that OS X has a registry).
Meaning, it's way, WAY more useful. I'm very happy about that feature in particular, I had been searching for a good backup tool for OS X and the best free thing I could get was a set of rsync scripts and using the Umbrella tool to grab my Address Book contacts. Since this does versioning in addition to just back up, it's going to make data even more secure.
*Note to self: Buy big honking external hard drive to replace current dinky-sized external hard drive*
Edmican: It probablly is going to use efficient binary diffs, so you're not going to be storing multiple copies of each document, just the change sets.
I'm reasonably sure there will be controls about things you don't want to keep versions of and ways to permanently delete files.
Ah David, apparently someone didn't pay attention in Roman Numerals class parts I, II, or III.
I don't get it..
"Time Machine" - has been available on Win XP for ages! It's called System Restore, does the same exact thing minus all the pretty graphics. So, why is this revolutinary?
"iCal" - they're commenting on how Windows Vista is stealing their design cues... well, is it just me, or is iCal really looking like Google Calendar?
sxt173, System Restore only saves changes into the registry. Time Machine is going to save changes to all _your_ files; e.g. you've left your computer open on accident whilst your associate employee contemporary with whom you're competing for promotion edits the hell out of your proposition and uses your ideas for his own.
With Time Machine, you'll be able to go back and accuse Dave of plagiarism. He'll be fired and you'll be promoted.
I like web clip.
The new Safari might have a view subdivided into panes that has similar functionality.
Time Machine works over a network as well.
meaning i might be able to replace my two Retrospect machines with whatever Time Machine uses... presumably OS X Server 10.5 ... sounds like a MUCH better solution.
being able to have each user able to restore an *oops* file vs. them emailing me and asking if there is anyway to get this super super super important file they need.
this will only be useful though if it ALSO makes the backup be a full bootable backup as well. i would assume it would though.
i am also very curious how it works when a computer goes "offline" for the evening. as in... a user brings their machine home wherein it no longer is on the same network as the Time Machine servers.
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