14 DAY TRIAL // Everyone's been waiting for the WWDC keynote and the latest Leopard preview, in order to see those Top Secret features that were previously left out. With the keynote behind us, these Top Secret features out in the open, the direction Apple is headed with Leopard is much clearer.
Those expecting Apple's latest operating system to be revolutionary were probably disappointed as there was nothing there that will forever change the way we work with computers. Most of the new features are very nice, and a significant step forward in terms of the way we work. The new Dock and the new Finder are both better equipped to do the same things they always did, but in a more efficient way. Stacks are not inherently different to the way the dock used to work before, with contextual menus, but they are much better at actually showing you the items inside that little dock icon. Similarly, the Quick Look and Cover Flow in the Finder are fantastic ways of browsing and viewing your files. Neither of them is out of this world, or never seen before, but while these things have been around in one form or the other, they have never been integrated thus within the file browsing experience.
"Leopard is the best release of Mac OS X to date, surpassing even Tiger, and will further extend Mac OS X's leadership as the most advanced and innovative operating system in the world," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, in the press release. "We think current and prospective customers are going to love Leopard, and that it will help make the Mac even more popular."
Jobs is right that Leopard is better than Tiger, and the best release of OS X to date, but then, how could it not be. It definitely is a significant improvement, with most, if not all of the new features being practical and geared towards productivity. More importantly, Apple has started bring gin everything together and making key applications behave in the same way, borrowing what works from each and applying it to the others. It may not be OS Y, but then there probably won't be any such thing until something big happens in the computer scene.