Ten things you didn't know about Leopard

SimonW:

All these seem like good things -- with the notable exception of the addition of the preposterously named 'more' to the context menu. Having what's essentially a junk drawer, a 'miscellaneous' category, a place to put whatever commands doesn't appear elsewhere, is exceptionally poor user interface design, and Apple should know that. The solution to simplifying menus is *not* to take uncommonly used items and bundle them all together into a 'more' or 'advanced' category.

Microsoft *used* to be one of the worst offenders at this -- the 'advanced' tab in the Windows 98 'find' dialogue is a good example -- but in more recent versions, they have been getting much better at sensibly organizing things (although the hiding of the menubar by default in WMP11 is a disappointing step back, this is somewhat countered by the Office 2007 UI, which is a huge step forward in this regard, junking the 'tools' menu and organizing commands into sensible categories). Similarly, the Linux desktops used to be quite bad, but (especially GNOME) have gotten much better recently.

That's why it's so disappointing to find Apple suddenly seemingly adopting this terrible habit. I can only hope they reconsider this before releasing Leopard.

Next generation's menubar: "File", "Commands", "Stuff", "Advanced", "More", "Even more", "Misc", "Help"...?

n45800:

The 'More" menu wasn't really explained properly here.
The More menu is for Contextual Menu Items (plugins). Additional right-click items in the Finder (explorer for you Windows people). Quite a few apps add these, and the right click menu can be a bit bloated. In Leopard, there is a standard right-click menu in the Finder, and the additional plugins are filed under More. The Bluetooth, Automator, and Folder Actions items are not stored with the default Contextual Menu Items (plugins), and are therefore filed under the More group.

Information Central:

Microsoft is an offender with "advanced"? Apple buries tons of basic functions under "advanced", for no damned reason.

This article is absolute crap. Attention to detail? WHY CAN WE STILL NOT RESIZE WINDOWS FROM THEIR EDGES?

Why can we still not create a subdirectory in the right place in Finder? Why does Spotlight still not show PATHS of the items it "finds"? Why is there no "up to parent directory" button in Finder?

Why don't apps' windows restore when you cloverleaf-Tab to them? Why in hell do apps continue to run when you've closed all their windows?

Ugh, it almost never ends. The endless fawning over this blunder-riddled UI just turns the stomach.

The author is obviously not a real Mac user, or he wouldn't have overlooked the innumerable defects that have gone unfixed.

karold:

why don't you just go back to Windows and be done with it?

"cloverleaf"?

Computernerd:

most of what your saying is false, eg. you CAN resize windows from the corner, and apps DO restore with command + tab. but in reality its not so much that you dont know what your talking, as much as you just want the mac to be just like windows.

snordemann:

you can not resize windows from their edge because the apple philosophy is to have one place, the lower right hand corner to resize from.

you can not create a subdirectory in the right place, most likely because you are viewing in list view and expanding folders, it will create the new sub directory in the main emcompassing folder. if you happen to be in column view, then it is because you have not drilled far enough down, and it is creating the folder one level higher than you want.

spot light shows the paths, select item, look at bottom of window. there is the path

hit command [ and lo and behold, you go backwards, or alternately command click on the name of the window and see the entire path of the window you are in.

not sure what you mean by "apps restore" did you manually minimize them? if so, and it is the last remaining window, most apps do restore it. if you have other windows open, then it seems to assume you wanted that window minimized and leaves it so. otherwise, command (cloverleaf as you say) tabbing switches you to the app, and you can create a new app or do whatever.

as for your last complaint, the mac os is not windows. when you close the last window, it stays open, deal with it. there are exceptions. system prefs comes to mind immediately. this is a mac thing, it has been this way, it will not change. saying it is wrong is stupid, saying it is not what you are used to, understandable.

every one of your complaints seems to boil down to "OMFG it is not just like windows aaaaaaagh" deal, or go back to windows. whatever.

Bicc:

Are you using Leopard?

Because in Tiger Spotlight does not show the path.
If you do a search i finder the path is visible at the bottom, but not in spotlight.

Anonymous Coward:

Spotlight will show the path if you do a Spotlight search from the Finder (hit command+F in the finder). If you select one of the found items, the path is shown at the bottom of the window.

If you do a Spotlight search using the "floating" window (I hate this one to be honest), then you'll have to click on the info icon next to the item to reveal its path. But still no big deal.

buddhistMonkey:

((( This article is absolute crap. Attention to detail? WHY CAN WE STILL NOT RESIZE WINDOWS FROM THEIR EDGES? )))

You need to take a deep breath and relax, dude. If resizing windows is so all-fired important to you, try downloading WindowDragon from VersionTracker.com. It's been available for years, and lets you move and/or resize your windows by clicking anywhere inside in them. Simple, and free.
__________

((( Why can we still not create a subdirectory in the right place in Finder? )))

Who's this "we" you're talking about? I can create a subdirectory anywhere I want in the Finder, so I'm guessing that it must be user error on your part.
__________

((( Why does Spotlight still not show PATHS of the items it "finds"? )))

It does. Just click on the file's "info" icon (it looks like a little letter "i" inside a circle). If you want to see the paths for all of the found items, option-click any file's info icon.
__________

((( Why is there no "up to parent directory" button in Finder? )))

There are three ways to move up to the parent directory in OS X. First, there's the key combination Apple-up_arrow. Second, you can click a window's title bar with the Apple key held down to get a directory list, where you can navigate to the parent. (Note: this also works in Safari, Photoshop and Illustrator, among others.) Lastly, if you really need a button, you can add a path list button to your Finder windows by choosing "Customize Toolbar..." from the "View" menu.
__________

((( Why don't apps' windows restore when you cloverleaf-Tab to them? Why in hell do apps continue to run when you've closed all their windows? )))

Those sorts of window behaviors make sense in a Windows environment, because each application is relegated to its own window. When you close the last window, you're closing the program, because you're also closing the menu bar.

But the Mac isn't restricted that way. The windows from many different programs can be interleaved, and a program can be running with no windows open. It's a much more versatile environment, once you get used to it. For example, I can start iTunes playing a song, and then close its window and it will continue playing. If I click iTunes' icon in the dock, the window reappears. Simple. Another example is that I can leave Mail open in the background to notify me of new mail without having to hide the mail browser window. As I write this, I have 17 programs open on my Mac, but I only have 2 windows showing.
__________

((( The author is obviously not a real Mac user, or he wouldn't have overlooked the innumerable defects that have gone unfixed. )))

Sounds like you're the impostor. Those were all Windows features you were bemoaning. A real Mac user would have known everything I told you.

Ben Clark-Robinson:

dude, don't troll.

Lord Shank:

Let me guess. You bought a Mac because you thought they looked cool, realized you could not right click (because almost everyone buys a laptop starting out), and you just let the hate flow. There are key commands that will take care of most of those issues as well. Command(er, the one you call a "cloverleaf")+shift+H (in finder) for home directory, command+[ for back, as in previous directory. You get the path if you search in finder. As far as the advanced being buried comment, WTF? Have you not the time to click on one more tab, or look in system preferences? Give me a break. I don't want to hear anything about "advanced" until you can prove that you know what a bash command is, or have you never seen the terminal because it is "buried" under Macintosh_HD>Applications>Utilities. A real Mac user know his/her computer. Point is, if you don't like it, roll your own (OS) or shut up. Trolls suck, grow up and quit flaming.

Topcat:

Why dont you learn to use the UI everything you have mentioned is either already in the UI or it a feature.......

Why dont apps close when you close all the window ---- why do you have to have it minized? the fact that you can have mail open with cluttering your desktop is a feature in my eyes !

Everything else you said is the ravings of a idiot, Go back to windows

william:

You've clearly not worked with a mac very long. You'll understand the beauty of that later. Try F9 (expose) etc., much better as ALT-TAB.

Though i have to agree on the PATH in finder and spotlight (although spotlight has it, hidden onder APPLE). Showing the path in finder should really help when you want to do some file management.

Generic no name guy:

You can move up directories with apple-Up and down directories (ie open selected) with apple-Down. That's been standard Mac behavior for about 20 years now.

William:

Yes :)..

And try this while moving a file... won't work. Thus not such good behavior after all.
Should have path in finder :)

Anonymous Coward:

If I'm going to be moving files I command+3 to column view (thereby revealing a multilevel directory structure), move the file around to its new home, and then command+1 to go back to icon view. It makes the most sense.

Alternatively, if I'm performing many move operations to the same directory/directory tree, I drag a folder into the finder sidebar. Also makes sense

jackmon:

All of the criticisms here are valid and yet everyone jumps on this guy to defend their perfect OS.

"La la la [hands over ears] World's most advanced operating system... I'm not lhearing this ... la la la... "

There are lots of great things about OS X and lots of sloppy things... If you hit the mute button every time someone tries to point out the sloppy things, then those things are less likely to get fixed. Please Mac fans, let's stop letting our prejudices get in the way of objective reality.

m3talsmith:

I mean seriously. We "defend" our OS by knocking his invalid points down one at a time. We show him how to do what he wants to do, essentially helping him in his struggles, and get slammed by you. Nice.

I wasn't even going to comment on this because I've been doing this stuff for years. But then you had to speak up didn't you? Have fun with that.

Bob Loblaw:

Apple + click on the title bar of any Finder window to get a COMPLETE path/hierarchical menu tree. Now stop insulting Steve.

Nat:

Well done - an excellent example for me to use when someone asks me what trolling is.

Do you honestly think a post as stupid as that on a thread that is going to be read by 90%+ Mac users is going to be taken seriously?

I'm a former Windows user who has switched to the Mac and I've never had trouble with any of those things you listed, after the first couple of hours of getting used to the differences on the Mac.

If you weren't trolling, you're an idiot.

James:

-You CAN resize windows from the bottom right corner

- I have no problems creating subdirectories where ever I want in Finder

- Spotlight DOES show the path if you hover on the item.

- Apps windows DO restore when you apple-tab to them.

- Apps run until you QUIT them. Is this really such a hard concept to understand? I love that my browser doesn't quit when I close all the windows. Sometimes I don't need a browser window open, but if the app is still running, getting one open is much faster than if the app has to startup first.

Basically, your entire post was nonsense. I think you should go back to Windows where idiots belong.

msr:

Dude! Get a freaking Windows PC! Mac OS does not act like Windows, and it never will. The UI is better than anything out there, and it's getting better. I could go on to explain the millions of reasons, but it's been done before better than I could. If you want Windows use Windows, and don't complain about Mac OS working the way it has since 1984.

User of Both:

I hate it that windows resize from any edge on Windows. I'm always accidentally resizing when I want to move.

I have no problem creating subdirectories in the right place in os x. Don't know what you're talking about -- you must be doing something wrong.

I find Spotlight and Windows Search equally annoying to use, for various reasons.

I never noticed there's no up directory button in the finder. I've always used the keyboard shortcut, which in case you don't know it is Command-up-arrow. When on Windows I really miss column (browser) view. In os x it is what I use 95% of the time, as it is far more efficient, especially for doing everything with keyboard. Of course I'm still more likely than not to use a terminal for file management anyway.

I have no idea what you're talking about with app windows restoring. Can you clarify?

I would be really really angry if applications quit when all their windows closed on OS X. What a collosal waste of time it would be to have to constantly be restarting applications like on Windows instead of just leaving them running.

Of course on Windows you don't want to leave a lot of apps running because its virtual memory system sucks so badly, and having too many apps/windows open renders the taskbar completely useless.

Kit-N:

One of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that Windows quits the application when all the windows close.

Next time you need the app, you wait with your thumb up your posterior waiting for it to reload. On the Mac, you Command-tab and there it is ready to use!

I have used both Mac and Windows almost every workday since 1986.

I equate the experience as follows:

Mac = finesse

Windows = a rock in a tin can

Just my preference (from vast experience).

You like Windows, stick with it, but please don't suggest that Mac becomes more like Windows.

Peter Andreas:

Well put. I miss the same things over and over again.

Julius Ceasar:

In my view, Apple has the wrong priorities.

They are wasting time making rounded menus to impress 13year olds while some of us can't work with this kiddy stuff because the file system is a heap of crap. Most serious apps won't run except on HFS+. This FS is over two decades old, an old fossil from a time when personal computers came with a 50 MB hard drive and a floppy.

When I mount a few drives over the network using file sharing and the other Mac quits the network (reboots, goes home, shuts down, whatever), the machine I am using will hang until the other Mac boots from the same startup volume, because the file system and the OS are too dumb to handle this.

There are times when the Mac will pop up a tiny window allowing me to unmount the affected volumes, but for some strange reason this only happens once in a while. At most times, a forced shutdown of the other computer does not result in a timeout, particularly when I'm not even using the volumes. So here I am, waiting for some other guy on the network to start up again, wheel spinning, because this dumb system can't seem to be able to multitask this when I don't access the affected volumes. Now if that isn't silly, I don't know.

Besides, all of you Mac users so proud of a shiny apple we all dearly overpay for, Windows is no longer so inferior as it used to be. For the last few weeks, I've been using Vista Ultimate on my Mac Pro because Mac OS X has hit new dumbness levels and I just need to do my work.

If you ask me, they should put the ZFS (Zetta FS by Sun) in, as they had originally promised for Leopard, and finally support 64 bit not only in the Cocoa API but also in the Carbon API as they originally intended (many of the apps we use do heavily rely on it and will for some time). But no, Apple scrapped all the helpful features which would improve performance, and came up with rounded menus. Wow. Call it innovation. Awesome.

TheMacThinker:

Great coverage by the way. It always take a little bit of time for people to catch up with Apple. But I think that Leopard will be a great alternative to Vista and will offer not only a much better user interface but also much more security...

Macsforever:

Stop me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the said removed article called '10 things you DIDN'T know about Leopard'?

Tony:

I don't really have a major beef with what you're saying but here are some things that Apple should be looking at rather than such cosmetic issues:

1. WINE can port the Windows API to Linux so that Windows applications can run on Linux, so why we do we have to resort to Boot Camp or Parallels on OS X to run Windows Apps?

2. Why can't Safari run extensions or, better still, make Safari be able to run Firefox add-on extensions.

3. Why won't Apple let anyone build a PC of their own from the ground up and then install OS X on it? Is Apple worried that sales of their Mac hardware would be affected? Or is it more likely that Apple doesn't want to upset Microsoft by doing this?

4. Apple is an innovator, sure. Solid State Drives (SSDs) are now available. An OS drive only needs a maximum of 64GB. SSDs can do that now. So where are the Macs with an SSD main drive and a hybrid data drive option?

jason Maxwell:

The reason that Apple doesn't sell the OS independently (amongst others) is that they are a hardware company. There OS is not their major money maker. They make money from iPods and Computers. Selling the OS independent of their computers would call for an entirely new business plan and complete restructuring of how the company operates. Also, by making the OS inclusive to their hardware they have the distinct advantage of knowing hardware their OS will be running on. This eliminates the need for legacy drivers and support of millions of unique configurations, thus allowing them to spend more time on the creative side and making a sound OS for their hardware.

While it would be pretty slick to load up a home-built PC w/ OS X; I don't see it happening... ever. (that is unless Microsoft suddenly folds)

WryTerra:

To anyone who asks why OSX isn't available to purchase and install on a new machine, the answer's simple. Well, enough of it is simple that you don't need to get into the detail.

The much-touted reliability of the OSX platform comes not from its' UNIX origins but from its' platform homogeny.

What that means is that, by and large, Macs are Macs are Macs when it comes to hardware combinations.

In the same way that a games console's OS is stripped down and geared towards an extremely narrow range of hardware options, making it effecient and fast, OSX developers can rely on Macs having a predictable combination of hardware.

Hell, why don't they sell the XBox OS seperately? In terms of comparisan I reckon it's more stable than OSX. And the XBox was a PC, right?

Nevermind that when you code in drivers to account for the myriad combination of potential hardware that exists in the wild the size of the OS bloats and the complexity and potential conflicts increase exponentially.

Changing something as remote as the north or southbridge controllers on a motherboard can have a huge impact on stability depending on the quality of driver for that bridge and the interoperability between the driver and the OS.

Opening OSX to a wide market will turn it into Windows, if not in usability then in terms of bloat and reliability. And let's face it, is usability really your complaint with Windows? Or is it bloat and reliability? Do you want OSX to go that way?

McBanjo:

Touche, I can understand why you would prefer to install OSX on a Mac, but I'd buy OSX for PC.

Though Apple just loves to massively overcharge their customers on their hardware.

Just try to get an extra 1 GB of RAM on your iMac, and BANG (or boom) AU$270. Opposed to industry wholesale prices of around AU$70.

Now tell me Apple isn't a rip! For that price we should be getting SSDs as standard.

R3zonance:

Just go buy your RAM from someone else, and also of note. the RAM in an iMac is laptop memory, and therefore expensive than desktop RAM anyway.

Mattjumbo:

How about, now try hard to follow me here, you go buy the RAM from wherever it is cheapest *instead* of buying it from Apple?

Who the heck said you have to buy RAM from Apple?

bits45:

2 GB of RAM for iMac only cost me $100. (US)

Ron Hughes:

Here in the UK, Stevie boy wants £189 ($360) to upgrade from 1GB to 2GB in a MAC.

The same upgrade on a PC is only £50 / $100. Rip-off or what?

There is a world glut of RAN guys, 'cos all those Dramurai made the stuff expecting Vista to take off, but it sank.

Gabo:

Apple is hardly selling extremely expensive hardware anymore. If you do a little comparison shopping you will find that the prices of comparable computers at dell.com are about the same or more expensive than at apple.com.

Also, the reason why apple will not allow you to build your own pc is because they make most of their money selling hardware. Their OS is not locked with a serial number because of this. I prefer to keep it that way for that exact reason. I can reinstall the OS in any of my clients' computers without having to deal with Apple (as opposed to Microsoft, when you have to call them and, hopefully, be allowed to reinstall the software you purchased.

Finally, selling their own hardware allows apple to control the user experience to a much higher degree. They do not have to support innumerable hardware components in their OS, they only need to support the hardware they include in the machines they sell. This has given Apple (and probably will continue to give) a great advantage over Microsoft.

tin:

1. WINE would be simple to port (assuming it hasn't been) to the newer Macs since they are x86 anyway. Apple could even sponsor efforts to make it better.
Of course Apple probably don't want that since making it easy to run Windows apps sort of encourages people to not port them over properly.

2. No idea, but maybe because they want to keep it simple, stable and their own? Run Firefox if you want that stuff.

3. Agreed. I would love to run a legit copy of OSX on my desktop. Legally I can't. Not that I want it for my main OS, but it would be nice to have for occasions where I need to support Mac users.
I don't get why they don't sell it either.

4. SSDs are too expensive still probably. They can't have them in an already overpriced PC and still compete. I would expect them to become normal in 2008 though.

James:

1) It was ported as DARWINE long before the switch to X86. Codeweavers has since released a cleaner modification of WINE called Crossover that works fairly well. Though I agree Apple should lend a hand to make it work with more apps.

In addition Cedega exists in a form called Cider. Instead of the user installing it-Transgaming tweaks a version of Cider for each game it is used on and Cider becomes part of the program.

2) There are quite a few useful extensions for Safari on OS X. Still Firefox has many more and they're all free on Firefox which is one reason why I use Firefox as my main browser.

3) I don't think Apple is ever going to take the risk again. They tried it in the mid 90s and it killed Mac sales. Jobs axed the project when he returned.

4) You can already use SSDs on a Mac. But you are correct that they are expensive as shit at this point-running about $500 for a 60GB 2.5" drive. Apple will use them when it's cost effective.

crossover action:

Check out CrossOver. It uses the WINE libs to create a more mac experience, and runs a huge number of M$ apps.

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

Anonymous1:

Why on earth should I care about any of these things?

Tom:

1. WINE currently can run on OSX, if Apple itself was to develop it they may run in to legal issues with microsoft.

2 Safari can run extensions (www.pimpmysafari.com). Firefox and Safari are very very different, trying to cross port the thousands of obscure add ons and extensions is by and large impossible for the seemless user expeierence Apple creates.

3. Apple has always been about the marriage of great software and hardware, Look at the iPhone. Allowing anyone into their software doesn't fit with their ethos... plus the money they make off hardware is very lucrative.

4. Yeah solid state drives would be cool, but its really just a little niceity as oppoased to a necessity.


Also, I would take issue with the opening introduction of the article as well: "Leopard didn't get a great reaction when Steve demoed it at WWDC."

I think in reality this is quite far from the truth, the response was due to the lack of product announcements as opposed to reaction to Leopard. I think Leopard has been recieved very very well.

Other than that nice article!

TC

DonD:

Tony, I share three of your four questions, namely 1, 2, and 4. About number 3, however, Apple believes VERY strongly that "people who really love software should make their own hardware", as Steve pointed out in his iPhone address. Their goal is to integrate the hardware and software seamlessly so that everything works without problems. When folks build their own machine, then driver issues and compatibility issues start, which invariably get blamed on the OS. Apple doesn't want to mess with this.

Making their own hardware also means that the hardware and software can share design cues, like when Panther sported the pinstripe design found on the monitor, or the brushed metal look shared by the aluminum case.

Basically, Apple wants the entire computing experience to be amazing: from pulling the machine out of the box, to using its software. Whether they achieve their goal is certainly subjective for each user.

I hear this question a lot and thought this to be a good opportunity to clarify (hopefully).

--D.

n45800:

"1. WINE can port the Windows API to Linux so that Windows applications can run on Linux, so why we do we have to resort to Boot Camp or Parallels on OS X to run Windows Apps?"
Because WINE cannot run about 95% of the applications I throw at it and it has been under development for almost 15 years now?
Also, if you could write a program for Windows, and have it run on OSX and Windows, or write a Mac app and have it run on only Macs, which would you choose? Also there is the interface-design problem. Many PC apps look like they were designed by 12 year olds who have had at least one too many bottles of Mountain Dew (The ATI and nVidia control centers for example). Most Mac apps (built on Mac, not built on PC and then ported to Mac) have much better interfaces than 98% of Windows applications. (arguably, some people may like the Windows style, but I can't seem to find one)

"2. Why can't Safari run extensions or, better still, make Safari be able to run Firefox add-on extensions."
Quality control, to put it simply. What happens if you add too many add-ons to Firefox? or when you download one which has a serious security or stability flaw in it? Most non-techie people would have no idea how to fix it, or would even know it is fixable. As it stands, there are unofficial add-ons to Safari using InputManager hacks (see http://pimpmysafari.com/ ), but these can cause stability problems.

"3. Why won't Apple let anyone build a PC of their own from the ground up and then install OS X on it? Is Apple worried that sales of their Mac hardware would be affected? Or is it more likely that Apple doesn't want to upset Microsoft by doing this?"
Same as above, quality control. That and having to deal with the infinite number of possible PC hardware configurations with cheap Taiwanese parts. If you buy a mac, the hardware it ships with is guaranteed to work, the Operating System is designed knowing what hardware is going to be used and how to optimize it., and the machine usually has no major problems. If you built a PC there is much more possibilities. You install OSX and suddenly your Matrox graphics card doesn't work, your Hauppauge card doesn't work, the PCI USB card is not written entirely to spec and has a bug that causes it to die every few minutes (which has happened to me before on a Linux/Windows PC which had the problems in Linux but not XP due to a manufacturing error), as well as various other hardware.
Don't you think Windows would crash less if you never had to worry about Drivers? Or wouldn't it be great if you re-installed the OS and all the hardware was recognized without having to setup a Firewire shared internet connection with your laptop to go online to download the Ethernet drivers for some company that went out of business about 2 years ago (and took their driver downloads with them)?

"4. Apple is an innovator, sure. Solid State Drives (SSDs) are now available. An OS drive only needs a maximum of 64GB. SSDs can do that now. So where are the Macs with an SSD main drive and a hybrid data drive option"
Where are the Macs with Holographic storage and Blu-ray/HD-DVD drives? Where are the Macs with fiber ethernet cards? Where are the macs with 3D-reality helmets. They exist, I saw one at some tech conference in the 90's. What about the Macs that drop IPv4 and go completely IPv6?
That is not to say they never will have solid state drives, but they don't have it now. As is the same with most PC manufacturers.
Also, Solid State Memory (in my experience) isn't as reliable as Magnetic drives. I have had about the same amount of people asking me for help with their USB drives dying as I had people asking me about their internal drives dying. And i'm pretty sure all the people who come to me for help with their computer have internal hard drives, but not all of them have USB Flash drives.

- Spaceman Spiff -:

I guess not too many people read the article about the controversy between the WINE project and Parallels because Parallels has WINE code in it and is refusing to release their modifications. So the whole idea of why WINE isn't used on OSX is ridiculous because it already is being used. Oh, and apple won't screw this up because parallels already has its software so well-made that if Apple were to attempt to recreate it, years would pass before it came out. By that time, Parallels would have the market.

n45800:

Last I checked, Parallels DID release the source, although it took them a bit longer than some people wanted.
http://parallelsvirtualization.blogspot.com/ has some more info.

Anonymous3456789:

1) Does WINE run all programs seamlessly on Linux? No. Well may be that is why Apple isn't supporting it. There are too many problems with it, but if you want it for OS X there is version you can download. It's runs for shit, of course.

2) Safari is a powerful browser made to be simple to use. But Safari 2 can run extensions, just not authorized ones by Apple. If you want extensions then just download Firefox.

3) Why would Apple care about upsetting MS? Yes, it's about Mac sales. Apple is as much a SW company as they are a HW company but their profits come from HW. Sure, they could license OS X and other vendors like Dell really wouldn't mind paying out the ass to get it. But Apple won't do because they'd have to daunting task of support a 100M drivers that will never get fully optimized.

Plus, and people don't seem to understand this, Apple doesn't care about the marketshare. Sure it's nice but only if you can keep your initial consumer base at the same time. Macs may be a small OS marketshare but in terms of their HW they are #1 in sales for higher-end machines.

4) How the hell am I going to store my 1TB of data on a 64GB SSD drive? External drives? Oh, so now I need to have slower cumbersome external drives hanging off my computers, which cost extra while I have a smll 64GB SSD which cost a lot extra.

Technologies CAN exist in unison to one another. SSD has their place but HHDs are reliable enough that the negative aspects of capacity and price do not outweigh the pros of speed and power consumption. Will SSD ever catch up to HHD, I don't know.

Intel's "Robson" hybrid drive options has been a complete failure so far. I had hoped that Apple current partnership with Intel would lead Intel to perfect Robson for Apple machines seeing as how Apple machines are for higher-end customers, anything Apple gets free PR for being Apple, and the number of drivers needing to be written is very small. But no go. For use on Windows it's a completely waste of money and can slow some processes down completely.

Jeremy:

1. At best something like WINE can't be much more than a game of cat and mouse with Microsoft. It'd cost Apple a lot of money to develop something that runs every Windows app and it'd only be a disincentive for developers to develop native applications for Mac OS X. This is not in Apple's interest.

2. This is actually a myth. Safari does have appear to have an architecture for extensions. Just look at PithHelmut, Inquisitor, Saft, etc. In fact there's a whole range of plugins listed at .

3. This could work out to be a costly move for Apple, if all it does is eat away at their hardware business. It's not so much that they don't want to upset Microsoft, however, this would put them head to head with Microsoft in a battle they can't win.

Dan Warne:

2. -- No, all of the above programs are unsupported hacks to Safari. There's a big difference between a supported extension framework with APIs and unsupported methods that third party developers have discovered. With the latter, Apple can (and does) change the way Safari works at any time, breaking compatibility with extensions completely. 

come, oh my brethren.:

IMHO: Nerds.

haaah! i just wanted to say something truly stupid
so that i could feel like a part of this discussion.

CapnVan:

Did you notice while posting that your comment had nothing to do with Leopard? Which is what the article is about? Or were just feeling like you needed to get some random complaints off of your chest?

1. You're complaining that a company has failed to port something to its platform that would help users run competing products from competing products. Or you're just making a random (and incorrect) complaint that no one has ported WINE to OS X. Which, again, has jack to do with this article.

2. Let's see. Just how often does Apple make anything wide open to anyone outside the company? Why would Apple support something designed for a competing product? Safari crashes enough for me as it is. I also run Firefox. Is there a particular reason that that is too complicated for you?

3. Do you know anything about the history of Mac clones, or are you yet again just spouting off randomly?

Is Apple worried that sales of their Mac hardware would be affected?

Considering that Apple continues to maintain some of the highest profit margins on hardware of any company selling computer hardware, one would think that the incredibly obvious answer, is, "Hell, yes!"

Or is it more likely that Apple doesn't want to upset Microsoft by doing this?

Jesus, please, if you know nothing about the industry, keep your delusions to yourself. Microsoft still doesn't worry very much about what Apple does in system software. Because, while Mac OS X market share might be rising, it doesn't really threaten their monopoly.

4. Again, there are obvious reasons - they cost a whole lot of money, which would make them of interest solely to people who are interested in machines designed for extremely specific purposes. If you had thought for a solid five seconds, you'd realize that Apple doesn't make machines for specific purposes. They're all designed for average consumers. Who don't want to spend several hundred dollars more for less drive capacity.

When you're next moved to comment, could you do us all a favor and try to get one point in that actually addresses the subject touched on in the article? Thanks.

U752181:

Well done Danny. You wrote a news article.

You kept it (relatively) simple and stated some facts. The article was also mostly free from bias. (I could be facetious and ask who "Steve" is as he must be a close friend for you to be on first name terms with him.)

But let's leave that aside. The article as written is much more likley to be read by the likes of me if it contains facts and is not a fanboy rant.

You gave me some news. Thank you

William:

Sorry to see that finder still can't do some basic tasks like 'cutting' (moving with ease) or 'create new file here (touch)'.

And so many more things were missing still on http://www.daha.co.uk/daha/Apple_Mac_OS_X_Wish_List

n45800:

You can 'move with ease'.
Just use drag and drop while holding the Apple key.
As for the Cut shortcut, what happens when you try to cut and paste your thesis to a hand-in folder and accidentally hit C instead of V?

Cut is inherently dangerous as your are marking the file as deleted before you move it, if anything else goes on the clipboard , that data is unrecoverable.

Molli:

...that's why windows deletes the file only whan it has been sucessfully pasted. I see that that's a different behaviour comparing to cutting text though.

_Chris_:

The Windows implementation of "Cut" for files is inconsistent with the normal behavior of cut and paste.

While I would support Move in the contextual menu (instead of or in addition to cmd-drag), using cut to move a file is poor OS development, since the way cut typically behaves would unnecessarily increase the risk of file loss. Making it behave like Windows would be inconsistent, and also a bad idea.

william:

Sorry, but Apple-X can never be replaced by something like opening 2 windows and moving stuff. That is proun for error and happens a lot of time over here.

1) You have timemachine, so why think you loose something.
2) Every windows user, Linux user, etc. uses CTRL-X to cut... even you do it in Word, etc. So that is a real bad argument. If you don't want to use it, fine... but make it possible for the rest of the people to activate it.
3) APPLE-X could be implemented 'smart', so it moves stuff into a temporary thing. The windows implementation that if it wasn't moved, it's still there works fine too.

Ow... and while complaining about APPLE-X having the ability for deleting stuff (which it thus doesnt) you probably never copyed a folder/file into some other folder which has a folder/file with the same name... yes, your first file is deleted then... never to be found again (they should move that file into trash if you ask me!)


:)

PIerre:

"Cutting" a file only makes sense because you're used to it. In the Mac world, you don't have to have two windows open side by side to move a file, you just use "spring loaded folders":

Just grab the file and drag it to a folder. Wait a sec and the folder will open up, showing you what's inside. Keep this up till you've found where it belongs and release the mouse button. The file will be put where you dropped it and the intervening window(s) will be closed.

JLP:

The reason OS X will never have a cut feature is because the usability team does not like the "cut" metaphor for files. When you cut text, if you cut another piece of text afterwards, that first clipping is lost forever. This is not the appropriate behavior for files, and as such is actually confusing for people when the text-cut and the file-cut behave differently.

Richiepoo:

"...Now when you right-click on a file (for all you Windows users that's where you use the right mouse button instead of the left ;-) ..."

You seem to be implying that Windows users haven't had access to a right-click menu for years and years! In my experience, this is really only a new development for Mac OS users. I remember the hockey-puck shaped iMouse (or whatever it was called) which didn't even have a right mouse button!

Dan Warne:

I think you might have missed the fact that he was joking heh heh. I think Danny was making reference to the fact that Windows users always manage to sink the boot into Mac users for not having right mouse buttons despite the fact that you've been able to plug just about any USB mouse into a Mac for over a decade, and use the right button (and the fact that Apple now has a two button mouse, but doesn't physically split the buttons, so some Windows users still assume it's a one button mouse!)

Jetta77:

Here is one more thing that I am really getting into on my MacBook: the mouse pad. This is where some of Apples initial 'real' multi-touch resources have gone. When I leave one finger on and move the other finger down or up, the screen scrolls down or up. But it also even works right to left!

But since we are on the subject of the 'right click', when I put two fingers on the mouse pad and click, the contextual menu comes up! Amazing. I love it.

...one more. On Google maps, the same motion described above does not scroll the screen, but it zooms in or out. That's nice.

Dechah:

That way we will see them in Windows by 2011...oops, hang on a minute!!!

William:

Mac users are, sorry to say, behind on menu's. Look at Office 2007, or MSN-messenger... Do you see a menu?

Microsoft's new menu-policy looks like 'only appear if needed'. So transparant is fine, but it's still there...

Dan Warne:

Not having menus in some apps leads to confusion on the part of users.. it's the lack of predictability that always makes Microsoft UI's more confusing than Apple's...

_Chris_:

Apple has a menu bar at the top of the screen because it conforms with Fitts' Law* , and allows faster access (~5x) to menu items than is available in Windows by providing infinitely large target width. It is MS who is behind on menus.

*[Fitts' Law: T = a + b * log_2(d/w + 1), where T is the time required to access a target, d is the distance to the target from the present location, w is the width of the target, a is an experimentally obtained constant related to user's reaction time, and b is an experimentally obtained constant related to pointer latency and precision]

Anonymousssasas:

how does the mac os menu bar, at top of screen, provide faster access than a windows app menu bar, also at top of screen?

in other words, ui smartass, please consider jargon therapy -- your claims of "infinitely large target width" are clearly delusional.

n45800:

"how does the mac os menu bar, at top of screen, provide faster access than a windows app menu bar, also at top of screen?
in other words, ui smartass, please consider jargon therapy -- your claims of "infinitely large target width" are clearly delusional."
How do you overshoot the OSX Menubar?
In otherwords, ui smartass, please consider logic.
To reach the menubar on Windows, you move your mouse to the top of a non-maximized window on your screen, which could be pretty much any random point, or the top of the screen of a maximized window, which is the top of the screen MINUS about 20-30 pixels for the title bar. On a Mac, you just move the mouse up until you reach it. It is impossible to go 'too fast' or 'too far'. It is an infinitely large target because you can move your mouse up infinitely and still hit the target.

william:

1)
Try this: open mail. put it on your secondary display. Now search something in the menu of mail.

Correct. A lot of delay because you have cognitive overload due to the fact that you have to find the menu on the primary display now and mail in on the secondary!

Fix this and get a lot of satisfied users again.

2)
Like the dock, the menu should have an ability to move where you want, and even be able to hide.

Buster:

Is that all you could come up with: rounded corners?

Conrad Winchester:

I am running Leopard 9a466 at the moment and this morning somebody sent me an email with the words.

'I shall come and see you on wed.'

in it.

When I moused over 'on wed' It automatically popped up a menu asking me if I wanted to add this to my calendar. I clicked on it and it auto-generated and iCal entry form for Wednesday 11th. If you think about what is going on there its really rather cool.

Creating todo's from emails is also rather cool.

Leopard is full of usability tweaks like that. Just the things I have always wanted a computer to do.

Dan Warne:

Hardly revolutionary -- Google pioneered that kind of AI with Gmail and Google Calendar integration. It's great that this is finding its way into operating systems though -- there's still not wide enough support for PDA/Phone syncing with Google Calendar despite an API being made available for GCal, so we're still very much tied to desktop calendaring software.

Steve G:

By 'pioneer' you mean copy the functionality of the Apple Newton circa 1993?

Dan Warne:

Errr.. yes I guess so!! Sorry, I wasn't aware the Newton did that! Guess I should stop making sweeping remarks about computing history ;-)

Corky:

Conrad didn't say it was revolutionary. He said it was cool. How is it any less cool for having been done before?

It's also a Leopard detail that hasn't been mentioned in most of the published stories, so I'm counting it as news.

Pismodude:

Do you think it will be possible to set downloaded pictures to be imported directly into iPhoto? I am sick of downloading it, importing it, then trashing the original :{

S:

You can already do that in safari 3.

AJ:

I have heard that Leopard was going to Sun's zFS, which, as I understand, allows for much better, larger data storage, instead of the current NFS format. Is this true? You said nothing about it and it would be a major upgrade and improvement.

Anonymous1:

NFS? You mean HFS right?
And yeah it's better at larger volumes.

Mac Fan:

You haven't mentioned Spotlight improvements, how Icon View has been improved with grid size settings and a lot of other small details etc...

Steve-o:

I'm sorry, but I have to agree with some of my Linux friends above. Here's why:

All of this stuff seems great, but this time around Apple is the one doing the catch-up. A lot of the "eye-candy" listed here has been fully functional on some level (although beta) for Linux users for years now. That includes "spaces" and "rounded corners". Really, come up with something better than that to base a top ten list on. Do your homework!

Also, Beryl, Linux's version of the Mac OS X, is definitely more advanced. When a stable version (still in V 0.3), Beryl will rip the pants off of Leopard. Cubed desktop, wobbly windows, transparency, skydome, and more with added plug-ins.

Beryl isn't the only eye-candy for Linux. Add any open source app to add luster to your desktop env in Linux. That includes VLC, Kiba-Dock (Linux's version of the Mac OS X dock), and more.

Sorry, but the only reason I need a Mac is to wipe it clean to install Linux on it.

DeltaNick:

First of all, let me begin saying that I began my home computing on a Mac back in the mid-1980s and have admired the superiority of nearly every aspect of Apple's Mac vs. Microsoft's MS-DOS and Windows. However, since this discussion compares Mac vs. Windows, I will ask a question that I have not been able to find the answer to regarding Mac OS X.

Is there something (a plug-in, drop-in, tweak, etc.) that allows my Mac keyboard's Home, End, and Arrow keys to work as they do with Windows? There used to be freeware in the Mac Classic days providing this functionality, but I can't remember what it was called. I'm surprised that Apple hasn't built such options into OS X, available via Preferences, since people have wanted such functionality for at least 20 years.

ArealMacUser:

Command up arrow=home or top of page
Command down arrow=end or bottom of page



For the people asking about paths in spotlight.

If you hold your arrow over an item in the spotlight search the path will pop up.

n45800:

"Is there something (a plug-in, drop-in, tweak, etc.) that allows my Mac keyboard's Home, End, and Arrow keys to work as they do with Windows? There used to be freeware in the Mac Classic days providing this functionality, but I can't remember what it was called. I'm surprised that Apple hasn't built such options into OS X, available via Preferences, since people have wanted such functionality for at least 20 years."
I can tell you I have never wanted that feature, and would like to know if there is any Preference or 3rd party plugin that would change Window's Home/End/Page Up/Page Down keys to work the way they do on a Mac.
Right now, I usually click where I want to insert text in a text editor, than sometimes use page up/page down to see what else I already mentioned about a topic, than just start typing and OSX just scrolls back to where I clicked and starts typing. On windows, you have to use the mouse to get a similar feature.

In any case, OSX does have a similar feature. Certain emacs keybindings are in OSX. Such as Control+A and Control+E (Control, not Apple/Command) for going to the beginning/end of a paragraph.

Flinstone:

This simple function could make Leopard stand out.

TABS IN THE FINDER WINDOWS!!!!!!!!!

Why not? Is there something i miss??

sfenerule:

Wonderful. Great. Now, GET RID of the translucent Menu Bar.

wra1th:

Looks like the new apple OS is a Vista wannabe to me.

Someone:

You cannot be serious with that statement can you?

!NSA!NT:

oh maaan, open up your window-square-shaped eyes ... win VISTA is a mi(e)ssed try to develop a all-new super OS. i say that's bullshit. vista has soooo much (and even if they are tiny as a ant) things which are in OSX for much versions before.

for example:
spotlight <- osx <- upper right corner
live search <- vista <- lower left corner

...so well other name, other pos. BUT
i bet it has nearly the exact mechanism
...cannot say by 100% 'cause i'm not a
programer ... i'm on the designer site ... however.


just goto youtube.com and search for
"Mac OS X Vista" or anything similar!


Apple just rules!
yes they have done some mistakes (e.g. apple TV) ... but who does not? we're
all humans and humans DO mistakes!


by the way...

V - Virus
I - Inside-
S - Switch
T - To
A - Apple
;)

greetZ

Brian Roberts:

"Now when you right-click on a file (for all you Windows users that's where you use the right mouse button instead of the left ;-)"

First, I loved the article. I'm an Apple convert after YEARS of Windows experience. BUT, why the arrogance over the right-click? While Windows PALES in comparison with OSX, those Windows folks will remember that WINDOWS was first with right-clicking, not mac. I REALLY don't think that you need to remind WINDOWS users of what a right-click is. I recall having to tell Mac users what I meant by right-click just a few short years ago.

I'm not bashing, I'm just pointing it out. :)

APPLE RULES!

SAm:

I hope you know that the Location menu option is available on Tiger too. I'm using it right now since I travel a lot.

This article wasn't very well thought out...

tyler:

Dude, he's saying UNLESS you have more than one location (as you do, since you travel), the location menu option doesn't show up.
Does that make sense?

Alexander the gadget freak:

It borders on a crime that a state of the art interface like this doesn't have the immensely efficient, gratifying, smooth, natural option for any window in any app one is using: full bleed, full view, FULL SCREEN.

Windows, of all things, does it anywhere. Just hit F11.

I mean, especially Safari is crying out for it. Today it takes a third party hack. (Saft, it's called.)

The iPhone wouldn't think of leaving out the option to have every app run full bleed to the phone's beautiful glass meets metal edge. Indeed, the iPhone has rid us at last of Window frames altogether. Good bye brushed steel, hello gooey, 3D glassy content. Nothing more, nothing less. True Apple elegance.

We don't need a Window there on the phone, and we don't need it on a desktop. (Scroll bars can fade in when the mouse goes to the edge of the content frame. (Again, think Dashboard Widgets, iPhone apps.) Indeed, maybe next upgrade, they can do away with Window elements altogether -- for full-screen view and otherwise -- and just let the Dashboard/iPhone windowless interface become the Mac interface.

It's the obvious next step. Posthaste, Steve! Don't leave this screaming need go unaddressed when the final Leopard rev is burned and shipped.

n45800:

"It borders on a crime that a state of the art interface like this doesn't have the immensely efficient, gratifying, smooth, natural option for any window in any app one is using: full bleed, full view, FULL SCREEN."
That is one of the great features of OS X in my opinion. Full Screen mode is a huge waste of screen real estate most of the time. I saw a person with what appeared to be a widescreen 17" PC running Word. They had the window set to maximized size, and the page took up less than 60% of the horizontal real estate. Searching the internet, most websites don't resize infinitely horizontally, which is a good thing. Have you ever seen columns in a newspaper? It is much easier to read text which is a short distance across and have it be longer vertically than having a few lines but much wider. Also, maximizing windows completely disables most of the drag and drop features of the computer.

In any case, in most Cocoa apps you can hold Option when you click the zoom button to maximize the window, or use a 3rd party app like Megazoomr ( http://ianhenderson.org/megazoomer.html )

"We don't need a Window there on the phone, and we don't need it on a desktop. (Scroll bars can fade in when the mouse goes to the edge of the content frame. (Again, think Dashboard Widgets, iPhone apps.) Indeed, maybe next upgrade, they can do away with Window elements altogether -- for full-screen view and otherwise -- and just let the Dashboard/iPhone windowless interface become the Mac interface."
Ah, those were the days, back in DOS and MacOS 1.0. There was none of the 'multitasking' stuff, there weren't multiple apps running at once (unless you count those idiotic 'desktop accessories' or 3rd party hacks...). Who needs MultiFinder? Why on earth would you need to see more than one thing at a time?
They should completely kill windowing entirely! They probably won't because then Windows users would complain about not being able to drag and drop files from one window to another, or not being able to look at a web page when writing an article, or not being able to listen to music when doing anything but playing music. It would be "Macs can't right click!" all over again!

Seriously though, this is a horrible idea. The idea of windows is that you can do more than one thing at a time, if other windows are so distracting (can't... stop... looking.... at.... half-empty.... text.... editor... next.... to.... browser..... too.... distracting...), then hide them. You can use apple-tab and release tab when you are over the app you want to hide and push H (for Apple+H), or use Hide [current app]/Hide Others commands in the [current app] menu, or use the key combos that are associated with those, or use the dock to hide a specific app, or hold option when you click into another app, or just minimize windows to the dock, or minimize all of an apps windows to the dock by holding option when minimizing the window. There are even 3rd party apps that hide programs as you switch between them ( see http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050214155123525 for a quick list of apps that may do this)

william:

Megazoomer sucks pretty hard... it goes 'to' fullscreen.

Apple clearly doesn't give about giving option: if a lot of guys ask for this: just build it in, put it off standard but do allow a user to change behaviour so it's possible.

I think it total waste to see my background, while surfing on the internet, and constantly having sites that are giving a horizontal bar (yes, safari and firefox!). I would love to go fullscreen in all programs, just like mail does, just like Final Cut does.

Snafu:

Apple's attention to detail in Leopard feels spotty at best. For every interesting touch here and there, you find a few incredible no-nos, too. The same goes for usability.

-A transparent menu is the dumbest idea ever readability-wise, and seeing how Apple had been gradually toning Aqua transparencies down, it comes as a nasty surprise, and feels utterly Vista-wannabe misguided.

-The reworked Dock is simply wrong: its reflections for docked icons don't follow perspective (just look at the trashcan's) and never they will unless icon designers produce correctly drawn reflection icons, too, for Apple to pair with the normal ones there). When laterally anchored it feels bad. Docked icons lack visual demarcation thanks to that new non-enclosing Icon tray.

-Coverflow looks nice, even if it feels a bit too much. The Finder's main problem with previews was them being only available in Column View as an additional column, which required activation via a palette dialog (Pathfinder approach was far better: producing a retractable window tray). Coverflow is fun, but being able to produce too a lateral preview area instead of an horizontal one, plus a single item view, would be good (I am afraid of Coverflow being like Spotlight: fast as a ray in the demos, and latency-crazy in real life usage).

-Stacks are a great idea ("Dockettes"? :-), but not the best one for dealing with, say, docked folders of long-named subfolders of long-named sub-subfolders, which is the usual stuff a worker often fast-navigates by docking his/her projects history folders. Traditional-style Dock menuing was super-useful, and now is gone, replaced by something that works best as an addition than a substitution. One prays some third party utilities come to the rescue.

-If a CM's "More" submenu is a way of separating third party CMs, I hope it means the horrible latencies one gets when right-clicking a bunch of pre-selected Finder items is finally gone for standard Finder CM operations.

-Anchoring an app into a Space is interesting, but I could think of cases where one wants a single app to be on more than one space at once: say, a web developer whose Mac is his/her home PC, too, will want a "web developer" Space with some tools and Safari for previewing designs, and a "web/Mail home tasks" Space with Mail and... Safari, too. Now what? If one can manually move an App from a Space to another one, a solution would be to automate that transport to allow to preset cases such as that one.

-I can understand the rage of that Windows user regarding window resizing all too well: the resize widget happens to be in the place most liable to end up under the Dock or below the screen limits.

-When Apple decided to photocopy Windows' browser-like file navigation style when launching OS X (the biggest most sincere form of flattery everybody always fails to notice, funnily enough), it simply didn't go deep enough at it: we still lack some truly good Windows functionality, like the "go a directory level up" button (I know there is a keyboard shortcut, but Apple decidedly is rather schizophrenic about encouraging the whole poweruser thing), or some convenient web browser-like elements (persistent navigation history, tabs, etc.).

-Spotlight's way of showing the directory tree an item sits on in just one line keeps being utterly inferior to the original pre-Tiger way.

-Exposé isn't fit to show a dozen Finder opened windows yet (they become undistiguishable). At the very least, it could show the windows' names without requiring mousing over them

Etc.

I often wonder if Apple ever does group testing any more. For example, the Stack issues would have been noticed at once just by putting it in the hands of your typical DTP artist. It doesn't seem to want to help powerusers and pros that deal with laboriously structured data: most of the Finder's and Dock's new tools look like geared for dealing with masses of heterogeneous files dumped into a folder. It's good to have them, but then they are destroying the older ones and our ability to manage and browse user-built hierarchies, And it didn't need to be that way.

_Chris_:

The reason windows are resizable by a corner instead an edge is because Apple scroll bars (are supposed to) extend to the edge of the window. This makes scroll bar accessibility much faster when a window is using the whole screen, by making the right most pixels of the screen part of the scroll bar. Screen edges have infinite width as defined by Fitts' Law*, and are accessible more quickly than any other screen location saving the current mouse location and the screen corners. Adding a grab bar to the right of the scroll bar would eliminate this benefit.

*[Fitts' Law: T = a + b * log_2(d/w + 1), where T is the time required to access a target, d is the distance to the target from the present location, w is the width of the target, a is an experimentally obtained constant related to user's reaction time, and b is an experimentally obtained constant related to pointer latency and precision]

n45800:

"-Stacks are a great idea ("Dockettes"? :-), but not the best one for dealing with, say, docked folders of long-named subfolders of long-named sub-subfolders, which is the usual stuff a worker often fast-navigates by docking his/her projects history folders. Traditional-style Dock menuing was super-useful, and now is gone, replaced by something that works best as an addition than a substitution. One prays some third party utilities come to the rescue."
The old style dock-folders are still there. Stacks only come into effect (as far as I can tell) if you select multiple items and drag them into the dock in one go. If you drag in an individual folder it follows the traditional-style clickable-folder-in-dock.

"-Exposé isn't fit to show a dozen Finder opened windows yet (they become undistiguishable). At the very least, it could show the windows' names without requiring mousing over them"
Wouldn't having the window names over the window reduce the 'distinguishibility' of the contents of the windows?
Look at this site. If you have 2 comment windows open, and the home page open, they would all be labeled "APC Magazine" or "Safari - APC Magazine". The label over the window would decrease legibility. As it stands, I use Icon View for all my folders at 64x64 pixel size (to the great disdain of many other computer geeks). I also use custom icons fairly often. I don't have vision problems or anything like that, I just like seeing all the details in the icons. That may be why Exposé legibility isn't a problem for me.

Snafu:

"...The old style dock-folders are still there. Stacks only come into effect (as far as I can tell) if you select multiple items and drag them into the dock in one go..."

Thank you for that info: nobody nowhere else cared to explain that bit.

What I'd like Exposé to have is some more varied presentation schemes: when one has several easily distiguishable windows, all is well, but if one has to deal with lots of Finder windows in List View, as is my case (many dense project windows with elements to reuse: I can't allow myself to do them in Icon view), I simply cannot tell them apart. Plus it disperses them unordered. I'd like to see more Exposé views: say, a "Lightbox" one, a photo roll for each app; miniatures clumped by app or some other criteria, etc., things like that. One size doesn't fit all, here.

(Actually, my favourite View was Mac OS' Small Icon View. Apple destroyed that with its name truncation system, making it unusable)

Snafu:

I guess Quartz is still uncapable of producing a "printed" PDF in which typed URLs behave as such, as, say, when "printing" a Safari webpage to a PDF file.

Katie:

That's a neat list and all, but I've been able to right-click for years and even with a cheap mouse! Oh, and I've used Windows since 1990. How long has the glorious Steve offered a mouse that can right-click and at what monetary cost?

Just some food for thought - since apparently you don't get much.

Deepfire:

osx uses right-click since aeons ... but it is always nice to hear a window$ user criticize an OS without having any knowledge about it :)

Snafu:

But then Mac OS didn't, even if you bought a two button mouse: you had to install some software for the right button to be recognized as a CTRL-Click.

Plus, while OS X supports six mouse buttons or more, making it a third party issue again (as Apple didn't provide multibutton mice since a few years), I think the criticism is still valid: after all, it added to the price, broke the whole style, and was rather boneheaded.

As I said before, Apple simply doesn't know how to cater for powerusers and pros: not only it always defaults to a non-computer savvy home user style setup, but it won't let us have "Advanced" prefs and things like that to adjust things as we progress. Not having a simple Apple Two Button Mouse purchase option was sillier than words can describe. That we get a "don't warn me if I change a filename's Extension" now after years of aggravation, or an "icon grid adjustment", but we still cannot change Labels colours, is beyond control freaky.

Maria:

The stacks feature really isn't new. I've been putting folders full of aliases in my Dock since the Dock became part of Mac OS X. It has the same functionality as Stacks, although I admit it isn't as pretty. It even supports hierarchical menus. So I'm afraid I can't get too excited by that "new" feature in Leopard.

Duncan:

Me too.

Patrick:

I don't get it. I found the same article at least once in about 2 minutes, yet those apple lawyers haven't noticed. Well, I least I got to read it.