Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard : what can we expect and when ?

[Stéphane]

Ok, Apple will officially ship Leopard in Spring 2007 but it raises several questions :

- Will it be released around or before Vista ship date to consumers ?
- Will its ship date be announced or will it ship at MWSF ?
- Is there enough time left to include really impressive "secret features" and get a Leopard deserving the Vista 2.0 monicker, including extensive testing?
- Or will we only get a Spaces/Time Machine enabled Tiger on steroïds : true 64 bits, resolution independence, and Intel optimization offering little suprise – contrary to Vista – to consumers focused on the GUI and productivity things ?
- And, most of all, what can be the secret features ?

We already know that Leopard will bring Multithreaded OpenGL (as Tiger on MacPros), better 64-bitness, big chunks should be compiled using Intel compiler (instead of classic GCC) and that resolution independant GUI will be… err, a good thing or, at least show promise for next gen. displays.

But I would like to know with what unexpected features Leopard can suprise us and when do you think it will show ?

I would like new, better performing kernel, new Finder with Sun Looking glass-like GUI improvements, vectorized icons and GUI, networks perfs immrovements, more "pro" GUI colors (Aperture… wink, wink), stunning uses of Core Animation (flipping Windows, cube-like transition effects and more…), uniform GUI (no more brushed metal, no stripes), new Dock (mine has something like 47 apps in it) with ]– maybe –separations or thumbnails (like old Launcher buddy under OS 9)…

And I think Leopard will ship end of march with secret features showcased at MWSF.

[cheerful]

I hate to admit this, but Vista probably will ship out to consumer first. In addition, I'm pretty sure SP1 for Vista will be out before 10.5 too.

No comment to the other questions/statements.

[linathael]

Ok, Apple will officially ship Leopard in Spring 2007 but it raises several questions :

- Will it be released around or before Vista ship date to consumers ?
- Will its ship date be announced or will it ship at MWSF ?
- Is there enough time left to include really impressive "secret features" and get a Leopard deserving the Vista 2.0 monicker, including extensive testing?
- Or will we only get a Spaces/Time Machine enabled Tiger on steroïds : true 64 bits, resolution independence, and Intel optimization offering little suprise – contrary to Vista – to consumers focused on the GUI and productivity things ?
- And, most of all, what can be the secret features ?

We already know that Leopard will bring Multithreaded OpenGL (as Tiger on MacPros), better 64-bitness, big chunks should be compiled using Intel compiler (instead of classic GCC) and that resolution independant GUI will be… err, a good thing or, at least show promise for next gen. displays.

But I would like to know with what unexpected features Leopard can suprise us and when do you think it will show ?

I would like new, better performing kernel, new Finder with Sun Looking glass-like GUI improvements, vectorized icons and GUI, networks perfs immrovements, more "pro" GUI colors (Aperture… wink, wink), stunning uses of Core Animation (flipping Windows, cube-like transition effects and more…), uniform GUI (no more brushed metal, no stripes), new Dock (mine has something like 47 apps in it) with ]– maybe –separations or thumbnails (like old Launcher buddy under OS 9)…

And I think Leopard will ship end of march with secret features showcased at MWSF.

Leopard will ship after Vista is available for customers, predicted date for Vista being Q1 (Feb I think) 2007.
Leopard will come faster than people think, but March seems to me to early; eventhough localization of Leopard is already done. I would say launch jsut prior WWDC, or right on time for WWDC.

[moose]

Vista is supposed to be released to the public in January 2007...
regarding vector icons, there's an interesting post on resolution-independent UI and vector graphics over at Iconic (http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2006/11/iconic). There was also on a side note a really interesting post on resolution-independent UI for websites over at Dave -Safari- Hyatt's blog (http://webkit.org/blog/?p=56).

[Stéphane]

Vista is supposed to be released to the public in January 2007...
regarding vector icons, there's an interesting post on resolution-independent UI and vector graphics over at Iconic (http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2006/11/iconic). There was also on a side note a really interesting post on resolution-independent UI for websites over at Dave -Safari- Hyatt's blog (http://webkit.org/blog/?p=56).

Thanks for the links Moose. While I agree with Hyatt view, that CSS should allow for different content displayed if we are viewing the screen above some resolutions, hence the notion of HDweb, I tend to disagree with the other article who think vector based icons are a bad idea… Being a big user of hybrid solutions for print jobs, through the use of PDF, I can't stress enough how the use of vector lines/strokes and typos concurrently to bitmap based texture improves the scaling of pictures.

PDF is the way to go for icons and I can clearly see how Apple and Adobe gained with that. now that Adobe owns Flash, we can even think of animated icons which animated behaviour ca

Vista is supposed to be released to the public in January 2007...
regarding vector icons, there's an interesting post on resolution-independent UI and vector graphics over at Iconic (http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2006/11/iconic). There was also on a side note a really interesting post on resolution-independent UI for websites over at Dave -Safari- Hyatt's blog (http://webkit.org/blog/?p=56).

Thanks for the links Moose.

While I agree with Hyatt view, that CSS should allow for different content displayed if we are viewing the screen above some resolutions – hence the notion of HDweb –, I tend to disagree with the other article whose the author sayss vector based icons are a bad idea… Being a big user of hybrid bitmap/vectors solutions for print jobs, through the use of PDF, I can't stress enough how the use of vector lines/strokes and typos concurrently to bitmap based textures improves the scaling of graphics while still alowing for photo-like elements.

PDF is the way to go for icons and I can clearly see how Apple and Adobe gained with that, now that MS is touting their vector graphics solution.
More : now that Adobe owns Flash, we can even think of animated icons (htrough next gen PDF) which animated behaviour can be ruled by Apple updated HIG. We can imagine a Toast icon with spinning disc during burning or other system alert triggering aniamted notifications instead of the current jumping icon… Sure enough, it is risky to enable animated icons, but until now, Apple made a pretty good job at restraining its developpers from using too eye-candy oriented interface elements (except with those Disco – the new burning app – freaks).