Leopard and WWDC
Leopard
Well, the revealing of some leopard features was pretty huge for me, though there were some features which were not so important to me WWDC wasn’t as good as most people thought it was going to be; I know a lot of people that were very disappointed with the keynote. Here is my review of the best bits of WWDC.
Desktop
Desktop. A new sexier, sleek and slimmer new desktop. Its obviously been out on the town, come back with a swanky new look. I don’t like the transparent top menu bar and will be changing it back to a solid one. I don’t like reflective dock – do I need that to function? I use overflow with my MX revolution for apps normally. I do like stacks! I’ve always wanted something to use like this for downloads from Safari. My desktop is normally splattered with icons from downloading various items. I also take loads of screenshots of websites, so I can refer to them later. Stacks will be handy for me!
Finder
The new sidebar looks suspiciously like iTunes to me. The new sources list seems like a good idea, because it allows me to find my files quickly and easily. My current finder is covered in folders down the side linking to locations that constantly move. Searching other computers in my house is awesome. My house consists of my MBP, and 2 Windows machine, (1 desktop, 1 laptop). I’ll be able to search all of the computers to easily find files I might have left on other computers, without setting up a LAN, or manually transferring files with a memory stick, or CD-RW. Back to my Mac! Wow. Apple, this is one great marketing scheme to get me to continue using and buying the .Mac service. If I forget a important file when I go to college, I can simply go back to my home mac using a standard internet connection and grab the file I want. Wow. I really, seriously love this.
iChat
I’m forever video chatting with friends to get ideas for new projects and for general chit chat. I have found that iChat’s quality compared to Skype is far less superior, since Skype is using way better codecs and quality is twice as a good. The new low-latency codecs should be an awesome improvement. Watching the keynote, I’m guessing that the video demo was done over a local network, so the quality is dramatically increased. I would really like them to bring out a new iSight camera: I noticed that steve has two! And yet we can’t buy even one. I guess i’ll be spending some money on eBay for one. The photo-booth type effects look sweet, now I can waste more time playing than trying to fix ports. I doubt this will work with 3rd party apps… though still, fun fun fun!
Time Machine
Finally a back up utility from Apple, that works! I’ve been using the backup utility that comes with .Mac which is pretty poor. I love the way that Time Machine can work with AirPort Extreme Base Stations that have hard drives attached to them. That means I can buy a huge 1TB Drive, and back up my life to there. This is a excellent idea. Say one of my hard drives breaks, and one of my design projects is gone, i can go on time machine, and find it. Well, I hope it works this way.