WWDC ‘06
August 7th, 2006
Okay, so like all other Mac-heads, I was intently tuned into what was going down this morning at the Steve-note. I was looking forward to the preview of Leopard OS X 10.5. I was looking forward to Apple making the Intel transition complete. Those two things happened today, plus a few surprises. I don’t think today’s preview of Leopard exposes everything that this OS update has in store for us by the time it hits the street next Spring. At least I hope, because most of what was shown today, was marginally impressive.
Time Machine. I think the idea of automated backup and restore is a great one, but I think the interface is corny. I agree with Jon Hicks’ assessment that Apple’s UI designers were smoking something when they came up with that one.
Spaces. Split on this one. I hate to see Apple encroach on third-party developers, but the purist in me loves to see this kind of stuff rolled into the OS.
Updates to iChat, Mail, iCal, Core Graphics, Spotlight. Zzzzzz.
Things that I hoped to see today, but may still happen before Spring:
- Improved Finder
- Unified window chrome (Death to brushed metal and pinstripe!)
- Unification of Mail, Address Book, and iCal into a single app.
- Resolution Independent UI
- Tabbed iChat (yeah I know I can use Chax for this)
- iSync that supports my Blackberry (via Bluetooth)
August 17th, 2006 at 10:05 am
I agree with you and Jon that the Time Machine UI is a bit corny, but the concept and implementation is quite good and should work well for most general users. It’s hard to say yet how it will impact the enterprise.
iChat will have tabs (well, sort of). It was in the keynote demo. Or I’m pretty sure it was ;-)
I wouldn’t count on Mail, Address Book and iCal completely integrated into one app or a system-wide adoption of the unified window theme though, but a reworked Finder and resolution-independent UI are more likely or absolutely, positively going to happen.