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8 Responses to "300 New Features in Leopard!"

1. | Reply Robert Handrow
   Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 5:50am #
   

   "Merge All Windows - Combine all your open browser windows into one single, tabbed window."

   That is definitely a helpful thing.

2. | Reply Olivier
   Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 6:39am #
   

   AppleScript: Descriptive Error Messages (about bloody time);
   DVD Player: Time Skip;
   Font Auto-Activation: FontExplorer X is good but maybe it works better if implemented at the system level;
   I might put an iCal server somewhere at work;
   iChat: Screen Sharing, to make photo slideshow sessions with my family;
   Mail: Forward As Attachment, sometimes useful, especially when reporting spam;
   Mail: Stationery... not! I don't look forward to receiving even more HTML e-mail. I'd rather have proper text-only view of HTML messages, in my preferred font, at my preferred size, even when the sender is arrogant enough to not inclue a plain text alternative. I'd love a better message composer too, that lets me enter non-breaking spaces and stops putting a leading of 2.0 to quoted text when I compose a plain text message;
   Preview: PDF manipulation; one less reason to fire up Adobe Acrobat, finally bringing down the total to zero;
   Quick Look
   Safari: Preview controls for PDFs;
   Security: Enhanced VPN Client Compatibility (if it means I can trash the Cisco VPN client);
   Spotlight: Advanced Searches, Search by Filename and a proper result window;
   Terminal: Tabbed Windows;
   TextEdit: Smart Links, Smart Copy and Paste... not! I don't like the way TextEdit (and Pages too) is becoming like Word. At least you'll be able to turn them off easily, because it will be in the preferences, unlike Word;
   Wide Area Bonjour, if it works;
   Xcode 3 in general;

3. | Reply Daniel
   Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 8:07am #
   

   I'm definitely interested in Time Machine & Spaces, but other features that interest me are:
   - Dashboard movie widget
   - Google Maps in address book (I currently use the plugin)
   - scriptable system preferences
   - Safari's advanced find
   - web history search
   - movable tabs in Safar & Terminal, and
   - PDF editing

4. | Reply Tim Buchheim
   Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 2:50pm #
   

   as a sysadmin who deals with two labs full of macs which NFS mount all their filesystems from a linux box, I have to admit that I'm rather looking forward to having autofs rather than the crappy NeXT automounter.

   Apple's old automounter doesn't really work (if it loses a mount due to a network problem or a fileserver hiccup, you have to reboot the machine to get a mount back. you also have to reboot if you want to add/remove/modify any mountpoints!)

   Time Machine is probably my favorite of the features targeted at "normal" users. Now there's no good reason not to have good backups!

5. | Reply Aaron Linville
   Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 6:14pm #
   

   I'm looking forward to iChat Screen Sharing and iChat Theater. Primarily the first as it will make assisting my parents much easier.

   I'm pleased to see better smart card support. Hopefully this leads the way to my next NMCI machine being a Mac. Along the security line, the signed applications, sandboxing and application based firewall looks very good.

   Finally, I welcome Spaces. A lot of people said multiple desktops would never happen and it finally has. This will now allow me to focus my evangelizing efforts on sloppy cursor control. Maybe in 10.6. 🙂

   Also, I need to find a camera that supports remote control via Image Capture. Goodbye crappy webcam. Hello super highres webcam.

6. | Reply Timothy Knox
   Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 8:48pm #
   

   Well, so far I have made it all the way to iChat on the list of new features, and have yet to find even a single one I really care about. Maybe I am becoming an old fuddy-duddy (or perhaps I have spent too long as a professional Unix geek), but so far, not a one of the new features has made me go, "I gotta have that!"

   Now lest you think I am Windows/Unix troll coming over to start trouble, let me trot out my Mac credentials. I first used Macs in 1986, when I was an undergrad, and bought my first Mac (an SE/30) back about 1990 or 1991. I still have the IIci I bought to replace the SE/30 when it was stolen. I spent a few years of my professional life developing Mac software, and was actively involved in MacHack. 🙂 I bought one of the first MBPs, and still love it. I would not trade my Mac for any computer out there.

   That said, I am so far not impressed with Leopard. Yes, I will probably upgrade soon, but mainly so that the apps I love don't leave me behind. You may now return to your jubilation, already in progress. 😉

7. | Reply David Smith
   Posted 19 Oct 2007 at 8:34pm #
   

   A lot of the stuff I'm excited about isn't on the list (because your average user would neither understand it nor care about it).

8. | Reply DSW@TNM
   Posted 28 Oct 2007 at 8:29am #
   

   I really like the Dashboard web clips feature. As a web developer, there are several helpful apps I use on the web but the steps to open the browser, open bookmarks and launch my preferred sites is always a pain. Hitting F12 and seeing my apps all in the same place will be excellent.

   I also wanted to add that I've launched a new site to vote on and discuss the features on this list. The Mac OS X Leopard Voting Center is meant to be a place to discuss and offer tips related to the new Leopard operating system.

   @David Smith - If you have found additional new features you'd like to be able to discuss please let me know and I'll add them to the site.

   Thanks,
   DSW