World of Apple

During today’s WWDC Keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed off 10 features of the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Jobs also noted that Leopard will include over 300 new features when it is released in October of 2007.

Jobs also said that developers attending today’s WWDC will take away a near-complete Beta copy of Leopard.

Desktop and Finder

Mac OS X Leopard features a significantly updated Desktop, including Stacks and enhanced Dock.

• New menu-bar, translucent but otherwise unchanged
• Enhanced 3D dock, slimmer and more functional
• Stacks, similar to a stack of paper, allows anything to be collected together into one Stack, once clicked the content either spreads out into a grid or fans out (this had previously been rumoured as “Piles”)
• Brushed metal has been dropped for a new consistent look throughout Mac OS X

Mac OS X Leopard features a new 3D, reflective Dock

The Dock features a default Stack called “Downloads”, this Stack, when a Download completes in Safari the Stack signals that a new item has arrived. When you want to see the files in a Stack, all you have to do is click — Stacks spring open from the Dock in an elegant arc for a few items, or in an at-a-glance grid for more.

Mac OS X Leopard now features Stacks

Leopards new Finder with Cover Flow on show as well as the new Sidebar

What’s new in the Finder:

• The new Sidebar looks similar to the iTunes Sidebar, items are grouped into categories; places, devices, shared computers and searches.
• Sidebar Searches, searches can now be saved into the sidebar for convenient searching over and over again.
• Spotlight now allows Boolean logic to narrow search results by entering “and,” “or,” or “not” into a search request. You can also search for exact phrases (using quotation marks), dates, ranges (using greater than [>] and less than [<] symbols), absolute dates, and simple calculations.
• Shared Computers automatically display in the sidebar, whether they’re PC or Mac. By clicking on a connected Mac, you can see and control that computer as if you were sitting in front of it. You can even search all the computers in the house to find what you’re looking for.
• Users with .Mac can now use “Back to my Mac”. With this you can connect to any of your Macs at home from any Mac on the Internet. Your home computers will appear in the shared section of the sidebar just as they do when you’re in the living room.
• Coverflow now in the Finder.

Other

The rest of the features demonstrated had been previously demonstrated at WWDC 2006.

Jobs did note that iChat will include a new audio codec called AAC-LD (Low Delay), which is said to increase the quality of audio in iChat conversations.

Shipping

Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard is scheduled to ship in October and will be available through the Apple Store, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $129 (£89) for a single user license. The Mac OS X Leopard Family Pack is a single-residence, five-user license that will be available for a suggested retail price of $199 (£139).