So, wow. Bit of an event that WWDC this year, eh? An event in so much as it was resolutely a non-event. No new hardware. No real new software. In fact, nothing of note to speak of at all. Let’s take a closer look at what did(n’t) happen.
First off, the new features in Leopard. We’ve got a re-designed Desktop and Finder, with an essentially unchanged Dock, the addition of Stacks and an integrated Coverflow view in the Finder. We’ve got a tarted up way of previewing files (what was so wrong with Preview.app anyway?), iChat has been made into a child’s play toy who’s new features probably hold all of ten minute’s worth of novelty value and will never be used again, a built-in backup application, and a virtual desktop implementation that solves a problem Exposé much more neatly solved a good few release or so ago. Meh. Big deal, huh?
I’m kidding (of course).
You see, from where I’m sitting, Leopard may not be full of the wizz and pow of Apple’s previous OS releases, but that’s all right. Tiger isn’t exactly broken, so what is there to fix? The bottom line is this: when it comes to large scale software development, you need to keep your marketeers happy first with the big features, before you can move on to the slightly more mundane (but equally important in the grand scheme of things) task of firming up the foundations. Tiger may not be broken, but there’s certainly a lot that could be tweaked and improved. Nothing big enough for the marketeers at Apple to get their teeth into - perhaps illustrated by Mr. Jobs in the WWDC Keynote and the online video on Apple’s Leopard website seeing the need to show off a relatively trivial feature as the new perspective Dock reflecting in real-time applications that are dragged behind it.
So what we’ve got is major improvements under the hood to the Finder (its now a proper multi-threaded Cocoa app), full 64-bit seamless support top to bottom in the OS (quite a major thing for a desktop OS), improved multi-processor task allocation (so you’ll benefit more for multiple processors), resolution independence, vastly improved text-to-speech, stereo bluetooth headphone support (using the A2DP stereo audio profile). Individually, these features wouldn’t exactly cause waves on the BBC News web site, but collectively they represent a firming up of OS X’s middle layer that means your day-to-day use of Leopard is going to be that much sweeter.
Without sounding like a hopeless Apple apologist (although something tells me my readership will forgive me that one transgression, were it to arise 
), Leopard is a solid OS release from Apple that moves the OS game on even more.
I do think Apple have missed a trick when it comes to eye candy, however. After seeing some of the fantastic visual effects employed in Linux’s Beryl software (wobbly windows, windows that poink into the corner of the screen when maximised, etc.), and with all the eye candy lavished on certain versions of Vista (providing you’ve got certain supported graphics cards, of course), it does look a little like Apple has suddenly fallen a little behind the game when it comes to eye candy. And it doesn’t matter that the tech world was up in arms the first time window minimising was demoed way back in the public beta of OS X 10.0. Ee gads! That’s ridiculous eye candy! That’s a travesty of form over function! (were their cries). Now they’re all at it.
But, this isn’t to say that Apple should do eye candy for the sake of it. They have developed an extremely powerful animations engine into Leopard and it would be all too easy to trowel on spades and spades of icky gooeyness to woo the crowd with a stonking first impression. Apple seem to have done quite the opposite. For example, their new unified theme is a critical study in minimalist design. Grey and flatter and significantly less lickable. Less is definitely more. By stepping back and casting a critical eye over the whole OS, they’ve carefully chosen what can be safely removed from the interface to reduce clutter and confusion even further. Adding tonnes and tonnes more eye candy just to keep up with the over-zealous attempts by the rivals would be like slapping a bit of Dulux on the Mona Lisa.
But there are parts of the rivals’ additional eye candy that actually would enhance Leopard’s offering. For example, using Linux’s Beryl, application windows never just change state, all states are animated. The best example of this is how the corners of windows will animate a stretch into the corners of the screen when maximised. It gives the user great feedback on what is happening and certainly adds value. In OS X’s case, it has had the window genie effect for years for expressly this purpose - to show the user where a window goes when it is maximised. Why not take this a logical step further and animate all window transitions? Keep the user in the loop.
So, yeah, Leopard’s unveiling has been a mixed bag. Overall, more people than usual were disappointed when the secret new features didn’t really turn out to be that worth hiding after all. The proof of Leopard’s quality will be in its use, and this is where I think Leopard will bring a whole new level of usability and feature set to the average user on the desktop.
The other major(ish) events in the keynote were the erstwhile release of Safari 3.0 for Windows and Mac, and the lack of a developer toolkit for the iPhone. Both garnering quite a lot of indignation amongst the flock. Developers were first promised a ’sweet’ solution to the conundrum of developing third-party applications for the iPhone, while retaining security and preventing bloat, before then being told that they should simply develop their applications as web pages browsable through the iPhone’s built-in Safari. Their chief iPhone software dude then came on stage during this part of the keynote to try and sell this (non) feature to the almost exclusively developer audience. No wonder the poor chap looked a little nervous and apprehensive.
Then Apple went on to announce Safari 3.0 for Mac (which is freeking awesome and has made Safari again my favourite Mac browser!!) and also now for Windows. Shock seemed to be the best way to describe the reception that got, and why Apple chose to do this is anyone’s guess. Obviously, getting WebKit (the rendering engine heart of Safari) out there and exposed to more and more web sites can only be a good thing for any device that is going to use it. However, early reports seem to suggest that the Windows release is as buggy as hell, crashes frequently, and has some pretty major security holes. Personally, I’ve only used it briefly on Windows and can immediately see the increase in speed over any other browser on that platform, and it certainly didn’t crash or do anything nasty for me - so it could all be a load of FUD coming from the Apple-haters. But Apple’s releases into the Windows world need to be squeaky-clean and whiter-than-white if they’re to avoid being snapped up by the bloody-thirsty Windows press and media - and there probably ain’t smoke without fire in Safari on Windows’ case.
So there you have it. A mixed bag. Looking back, Apple may have been more sensible to hold back big-ticket features such as Time Machine and Spaces as the big top-secret features to be unveiled at this WWDC, thereby creating a huge wave closer to the OS’s release. As it stands, the wider media have somewhat passed over it as an old story. Looking forward, however, this does mean that Apple are probably gauging up for a mammoth next release (OS 11?). And with so many new and exciting new user interface paradigms coming to fruition relatively recently (multi-touch and 3d-spacial probably being the most exciting), Apple are all set to re-invent the way we interact with our machines in a way that’ll make us look back on mice and keyboards the way we look back on the days before Exposé or (heaven forbid) when we actually had to drag a piece of wood with carbon in the middle over some more wood to write stuff.
Where Apple goes next is anyone’s guess. But they’re in the strongest position they’ve been in for years, so the sky really has to be the limit. And I don’t know about you, but I’ll always enjoy coming along for the ride.
You may like to catch up on some of the previous articles by the same author:
1 - Fanning the Fanboys
2 - The Lament of the Mac Mini
3 - Market Share? What’s That?
4 - Integrations What You Need (aka. the assult on Windows)
5 - Beating Windows At Its Own Game
6 - MacBook Surprise
© Copyright Craig Pugsley 2007
Published by MacShrine with permission
Craig Pugsley works as a technical consultant for a small independent software vendor in the UK, and writes commentary pieces for various publications and online sources in his spare time. He lives in Berkshire with his astounding nearly-wife Lucy and a surprisingly large mortgage. He gives thanks for every day he is able to work on a Mac, and yearns for a life when more people can freely experience the life-changing benefits of a good computer.
