Greetings from the WWDC
I am here in San Francisco for Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. There are over 4800 Mac geeks stuffed into one building in downtown San Francisco to learn about the latest MacOS hardware and technology. The WWDC used to be aimed primarily at Mac programmers, but in recent years it has expanded to be a learning experience for IT administrators, scripters and other technically-inclined people. Apple made two majot announcements today: Steve Jobs, with his usual theatrical flair announced the new Mac Pro desktop system, which is basically a very fast Intel-based Mac in an old (but slightly re-jiggered) g5 enclosure. In addition to the new Mac Pro, Jobs introduced a new Intel-based xServe server, and he also took (partial) wraps off of the much-anticipated MacOS 10.5, Leopard.
I’ve learned a lot about the new OS which I cannot share with you, due to Apple’s legal requirements, but there is still plenty of new information on the OS which Apple has made public. You will definitely want to go to Apple’s web site to see the demoes and read about all the new features in detail, but I will share my initial thoughts on a few of the highlights.
The big “cool” new feature is built-in, automatic backup, called “Time Machine.” Time Machine lets you restore your entire system, or an individual file from any point in the past, through a really cool interface which looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. The only requirement is that you have an extra hard disk to back up to, such as an external firewire drive. If you went to the LAUG meeting last month, you learned about how important backing up is, but also how confusing it can be. If Time Machine works as advertised, backing up will be automatic and easy, and millions of Mac users will be able to rest a bit easier. And no, as hard as Apple engineers worked, Time Machine can only go into the past, you can’t yet travel into the future!
A couple other cool new features and improvements are a major upgrade to iChat which gives those with video cameras many new options to share presentations and videos, and a much faster and more advanced Spotlight. Apple also has built in virtual desktops, which will allow you to “switch” from one desktop to another as you move between applications. In effect this gives you a monitor that is four times bigger then its physical size!
However, in my opinion, some of Apple’s new stuff for Leopard isn’t quite as exciting as Time Machine. In fact, I was very disappointed that Apple made no improvements to the Finder, which is one of the weakest part of the Mac. Apple also added some fairly silly features to Mail without apparently fixing Mail’s many flaws. You can now have to do lists in Mail and send attractive HTML email messages easily, but there’s no sign that Mail’s horrible Spam filtering or clumsy user interface has seen any improvements.
Still, I am eagerly looking forward to seeing Leopard become more polished as it heads towards release. The new OS is certainly a step forward from Tiger in many areas and anyone using a Mac can look forward to it when it ships next Spring.
August 8th, 2006 at 8:27 am
Hey Mike! Thanks for the update and I hope some of that secret stuff that can’t be talked about just yet is amazing because it was kind of a slow keynote. Oh well, considering the engineering team got the Intel transistion to happen so fast I can’t really complain. Have a good week out there.