Apple's Mac OS X Leopard fully unveiled
by Paul Miller 
posted Jun 11th 2007 at 11:11AM
1. New Desktop - First off is the new desktop, featuring a new menu bar, a snazzed up dock and "Stacks" to help you keep your desktop clean. For instance, there's a default Stack that collects all your downloads in one place on the dock.
2. New Finder - More on the aesthetics side, Apple is going with a unified look for apps, which nixes the brushed metal style and instead mimics the current iTunes theme -- surprise, surprise. In fact, the new Finder looks and performs almost exactly like iTunes, all the way down to integrated Cover Flow for shuffling through your files. You can also save smart searches in the "playlists" side of the interface. On the back end of things, Leopard includes "Back to my Mac," which keeps track of your home Mac's IP address through various (and secure!) magicks, letting you browse your files remotely as if they were on a local network. Spotlight search also works over networks now, as expected.
3. Quick Look - Another new Finder integrated function, Quick Look lets you open up previews of most common document types without opening the respective app, and unsupported doc types can be added through extensions.
Keep reading for the rest!
4. 64-bit top to bottom - Apple is supporting 64-bit in Leopard from apps to drivers (and presumably beyond). Leopard should run on most Tiger-supporting Macs, just in case you were wondering if the lack of a 64-bit processor in your current Mac (i.e. Core Duo or Core Solo) would lock you out of using the new OS. So don't chuck that first-gen MacBook just yet.
5. Core Animation - Same song as last year, but enough crowd pleasing effects to make it worth a second gander.
6. Boot Camp - Sadly, there aren't any surprise Parallels-killing functions here, but the lack of need to burn a drivers CD should take this one out of the hax0rs' court and see more users taking advantage of it. Also, it will supposedly feature faster switching between from OS X by using the hibernate / safe-sleep feature to keep "open" running apps when jumping over to Windows.
7. Spaces - Once again, not much new here, but it does turn out that you can have more than four Spaces, the number of 'em is user configurable.
8. Dashboard - Yeah, 10 new features? Not so much. Web Clip still sounds fun.
9. iChat - Now features tabbed chats and uses AAC for audio, along with those other fancy features like Photo Booth effects mentioned last year. You can also show off any Quick Look-supported document over a chat, movies included.
10. Time Machine - Backup for noobs, and previews in Quick Look
So no multi-touch interfacing or anything fancy like that, but still a crowd-pleasing offering. $129 and she's yours, come October.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Homeboy @ Jun 11th 2007 2:20PM
Wow looks very neat. Makes me want to sell my 6 month old laptop, sell some blood and buy a macbook pro.
I guess many of y'all Core Duo owners are furious over not having any 64bit support. My advice is to sell your machines as soon as possible. 64bit is the future.
Robert @ Jun 13th 2007 4:06PM
FYI Intel Core Duo IS 64bits. So that takes care of your comment.
Philip @ Aug 2nd 2007 1:40PM
Homeboy is right. The Core Duo line only works with the old 32-bit x86 instruction set. Perhaps Robert is confusing the Core Duo with its successor, the Core 2 Duo, which is capable of running 64-bit x86 code.
paloooz @ Jun 11th 2007 2:18PM
Cool, now give us the iPhone.
myownswordsman @ Jun 13th 2007 10:04PM
do you know when the iphone come out?
Ethan Duffy @ Jun 11th 2007 2:26PM
I need a mac in August, unfortunately.
Gordy @ Jun 11th 2007 2:31PM
Okay...it might be time for a new mac...
jrbrewin @ Jun 11th 2007 3:41PM
i thought this 'mac os' thing ran just fine on older hardware.. unlike vista? ;)
mike @ Jun 11th 2007 7:17PM
You, uh, don't need a new Mac for this, but.. I guess you're thinkin 'free OS upgrade'
Any Mac (8 yrs old) can run this.
Gordy @ Jun 12th 2007 8:48AM
I'm aware my Quicksilver 2002 can run it...but it's age is showing. For Tiger, I only missed out on Dashboard's ripple effect. I'll be missing out on a lot more sweetness in Leopard...so...it might be time for a new Mac. Key word: 'might'
Ryan Karolak @ Jun 12th 2007 1:30PM
Pretty much any Mac with a firewire port will be able to run Leopard although the older computers will need to max out their RAM. Many older macs won't get all the effects such as ripples. I know that my 1.24ghz PPC Mac Mini doesn't get it with a 32mb Radeon 9200. Most likely some of Leopard's effects won't run on my mini as well.
Joshua Ochs @ Jun 11th 2007 7:06PM
Nothing here requires 64-bit. If you're working with files and data beyond the 4GB limit, you'll see huge gains. For other applications, you might see some minor gains with 64-bit registers. For 99% of stuff, there will be no difference whatsoever.
Now, a few years down the road as large (video) files become the norm, then things will be different. But 32 vs 64 bit isn't going to matter in practice for several years yet.
bobbyw @ Jun 11th 2007 2:38PM
Will my dp 1.8 G5 tower take advantage of the "top to bottom" 64 bit Leopard?
l0ne @ Jun 11th 2007 5:25PM
The new libraries are 4-way Universal Binaries -- 32 and 64 bit, PowerPC and Intel.
Jared @ Jun 12th 2007 11:44AM
Great, now the minimum size for an app is 80 MB....
KC @ Jun 11th 2007 2:41PM
I thought it was an xbox logo...
TJ @ Jun 11th 2007 2:51PM
Okay, top to bottom 64-bit is nice, and the new finder sounds good but am I the only one who came off a little disappointed. Maybe I was just expecting too much.
TrueDis @ Jun 11th 2007 2:48PM
Did Steve even give a release date?
James Ollier @ Jun 11th 2007 3:18PM
I love that its the almost the same price as Vista Home Basic, and way cheaper than Vista Ultimate ;)
Peter @ Jun 11th 2007 3:29PM
James - Apple has never really tried to make money on the OS. They make money on the hardware sales that the new OS drives.
And unlike Apple, almost no one buys a MS OS at retail or upgrades an existing OS. They get the new OS at a subsidized price when they buy new hardware.
Mojo_Yugen @ Jun 11th 2007 3:36PM
And don't forget that Apple releases way more OS updates than MS. Each one costs less, but add them up and... well, you get the picture.
dothedrewtoo @ Jun 11th 2007 3:37PM
64 bit: "Hard luck for those rocking older machines" HARD LUCK FOR THOSE WHO JUST BOUGHT A BRAND NEW MAC MINI!!! WTF APPLE??? I AM LIVID.
connorcam @ Jun 11th 2007 3:54PM
You're retarded to buy a new mac right now.
krizoitz @ Jun 11th 2007 4:06PM
This does NOT mean that Leopard won't run on non-64 bit machines, it just provides full 64-bit support seamlessly if you ARE running on a 64 bit machine.
Robert @ Jun 13th 2007 5:25PM
why do people post uninformed comments? trolls!
V @ Jun 11th 2007 3:51PM
is engadget owned by apple? why always the excitement and promotion of apple? wow!
one device has success, and people are this crazy over the brand? 98% of the planet has an average to below average IQ (intelligence quotient for the below average) 98% of mp3 players on the planet are Ipods, hmm, the correlation?! ipod has always offered less than Archos, it must be the idiot buttons, low IQ's can handle only a few buttons
louder @ Jun 11th 2007 4:26PM
higher IQ's need to work,
not to search where is a button or how to's.
i work with a mac. i am 188.
Nick @ Jun 12th 2007 3:12PM
The number of people below average is probably closer to 50%
...yea it's exactly 50%
CarbonFree @ Jun 11th 2007 5:15PM
How is that even possible to have 98% of the population has average or below average IQ? By it's very definition, it would require about 50% of the population to be below average and 50% to be above. Average IQ is the summation of the populous' IQ and division by the population count. How in hell could you have an extra 48% be at or below average?
Looks like someone falls in that bottom 50%.
rickane58 @ Jun 11th 2007 7:27PM
not true, if you have a few very high people, they will balance many dumb people, and there for the average falls in between. You are confusing an average with a median. Mean/Average not equal to Median
nEmoGrinder @ Jun 12th 2007 1:06AM
uh, actually...thats a really bad argument. to have the "few" hold up the "many" they'd need HUGE IQs....and by huge I mean impossible.
IQ tests are designed so that the average person scores 100. And by average that means "most people". A genius IQ would be something near 160, keeping in mine that 10 points is usually the standard deviation, which also happens to be where new 'levels' are indicated.
iPods (and Macs actually) sell for one main reason: Marketing. I personally find mac's far superior to PC, and find my iPod better than my Creative made Dell DJ, but I'm still smart enough to know that most people buy Apple products because of the marketing and because of their aesthetics.
As for the Archos, they are garbage (no offense). I only say that because I work at best buy and we get them returned constantly, and we barely sell any. If you want to argue MP3 players, at least go with Creative. They have very nice and log lasting MP3 players, especially if you have a PC. I would recommend it to any PC using person. But, if you have a mac, iPod is the way to go. iPod + PC is usually a hassle (I had mine formatted for PC for a while before giving up and switching to mac only). not that the iPod itself is hard to use with a PC, but I find iTunes just doesn't run as nicely (long start up time compared to WMP on a PC, slower searching).
If PCs want to be more popular, maybe they should make some witty commercials instead have boxes that look like cows.
V @ Jun 12th 2007 12:50PM
hmm, marketing huh?
cow boxes? still?
the iq statements from me are correct!
Jon @ Jun 16th 2007 2:48PM
Have you ever heard of the "normal distribution?" _Exactly_ 50% of a large enough sample will have an IQ of 100 or below, and _exactly_ 50% of a large enough sample will have an IQ of 100 or above. Yet that's beside the point. A Mac G5, G4, or a G3 will _still_ run leopard, yet it will run somewhat slower, and without some of the special effects. And yes, 64-bit processors will work seamlessly with leopard, yet you do _not_ need a 64-bit processor to use it.
kyle @ Jun 11th 2007 4:02PM
any word on ZFS file system...is it in leopard or not??
Alon @ Jun 11th 2007 4:05PM
Hi Everyone!
Not long ago i decided i was moving from PC platform to MAC, which i didnt do yet,
but really planning on going MAC.
Currently i own a Desktop PC that has 2.80ghz Pentium 4, 1GB Ram, Nvidia Graphic Card Geforce FX 5200 and a hard drive of 360GB.
I wanted to ask if it is recommended to upgrade to a macbook 2.16Ghz, 2GB RAM and 120GB Hard drive.
Please help me decide!
Thanks..
Ken @ Aug 23rd 2007 6:56PM
1GB has been enough for my purposes on a macbook, which often includes running a Linux session with VMWare.
CalCroat07 @ Jun 11th 2007 4:22PM
*assuming IQ is normally distributed*
wow, would you please go look up the definition of the word "average". how can 98% of people be below average? the skewness on that distribution would be quite interesting. generally speaking, approx. 50% of people are below average and 50% are above. All you've done is show you're in that "98%"
Carlitos @ Jun 11th 2007 5:52PM
Please stop comparing it with Vista's price. People are really naive. Apple release an OS update at least every 2 years and charge I don't know around $100?? Microsoft release Service Packs for free, yes maybe they need it more for security features but they don't charge. They charge onces 7-8 years.
wctodd @ Jun 12th 2007 2:33PM
Lets see, MS only release a new OS every 7-8 years. I guess that means WinXP came out in 2000 and Win2000 was out in 1993. I see the general point you're trying to make but come on. OS X came out around 1999, right, and this is the 5th iteration. MS has come out with 4 (consumer) versions of Windows in the same time (ME,2000,XP and Vista) while easily charging double/triple the price that Apply does. If anything MS should be charging less (at least less then they do) simply because of economy of scale (meaning they sell way more copies so they can afford to sell at a lower price).
Carlitos @ Jun 14th 2007 12:19AM
True, but really no one really wanted or needed to upgrade to ME for instance, whichi really u know suks. They still are different OS. Some ppl prefer 2000 over XP. Yeah u r right, but i think is unfair to directly compare the prices. Besides most people in windows just don't upgrade, they buy a new pc at least where i live no one upgrade
Bill @ Jun 11th 2007 6:24PM
"higher IQ's need to work,
not to search where is a button or how to's.
i work with a mac. i am 188."
It really frustrates me when people act like they're Apple cult members because "it's just easier to use." I started using a PC when I was 8 years old. It was running DOS. Absolutely no GUI. Windows is an ultra-simplified version of DOS. If you can't figure out an ultra-simplified version of what an 8-year-old learned how to do by himself, I have a hard time believing you have a 188 IQ.
Apple computers are the grown-up (and I use that term loosely) equivalent of a childhood clubhouse with a "No ____ allowed" sign. Being part of a 5% market share gives them a false sense of exclusivity, like somehow they're above us "regular" PC users. We should be ashamed of ourselves with our much more extensive software library and easily upgradeable hardware, I guess.
Also, my IQ is 1,000. Seriously, I'm not lying.
louder @ Jun 12th 2007 11:43AM
i'm not telling you that i can't work with windows.
Everytime i do something with the mac,
i spend less time working on it.
have a nice day.
Thecompkid @ Jun 12th 2007 4:07PM
Let's just put it this way. If it's 2AM and you're trying to write a report that's due tomorrow, do you want to be using an OS that could crash at any second? When you go to print out this report, do you want an oh-so-delightful error message about some obscure driver popping up on your screen? No, you don't, and I say this with all too much first-hand experience with the matter. Mac users do not think they're elite, those people that do are simply assholes that are using macs. The same goes for windows users.
The reason that I use a mac is not because I can't fix problems with my computer. I assure you that I am more than capable of solving just about any Windows problem you can come up with. I use a mac because fiddling around with driver config files and deleting cryptic registry keys from the command line is my hobby, not my life. If i'm writing that report at 2am, I want my hobby to stay where it should be: far, far, away; not so much for my convenience, but for the safety of anyone that may be standing under my window when I get the blue screen. I use a mac when I want things to work, and they do. Part of the reason that macs work so well is that they are hard to upgrade and have very little software available. This way, there are very few bugs, and those that remain are not so serious. Call it stupid, but that's no problem, it's an undocumented feature. So stop bashing mac users for their choice of computer brand. If you would simply pull your head out of your ass for a second, you would see why we keep windows where it belongs. Maybe you'll even join us in our pursuit of a bug-free computer.
...and we'll be more than happy to welcome you.
-Rob H. IQ: 145
Bill @ Jun 12th 2007 4:55PM
I've had one BSOD in the past 5 years, and it was because I tried to play Geometry Wars with weird settings on my graphics card. I've used every version of Windows from 3.1 up and my blue screen problems stopped the day I got XP. The whole 'HAHA WINDOWS CRASHES ALL THE TIME' thing is really just grasping at straws now.
Every other crash I've ever had has been due to software, such as Maya, which loves to crash at the most well-timed moments.
And that's another thing - it irks me how Mac users act like that's the premiere platform for any creative programs. Guess what? I used a PC all through college, and I used it to work in Photoshop and Illustrator, do 3D modeling and animation, edit videos and sound, and do special effects. There was not one single Apple in any of our labs, and for the same amount a Mac would've cost each workstation had easily double the horsepower.
So, thanks for your Mac invite, but I think I'll stick to my PC that is perfectly stable (no matter what the newest Apple propagana ad says), costs a fraction of your Mac's price and has endlessly more software and hardware available for it.
Bill: IQ still 1,000...actually I think it's like 1400 now, for real
breger @ Jun 11th 2007 4:58PM
although I am one of the guys saying "microsoft is copying apple", this will shut me up for quite some time - 10.5 clearly copies the design of vista 1:1
even the gras in the background....
Miguel @ Jun 11th 2007 6:07PM
Absolutely, breger. Not only the grass, but the "stacks" function, though never implemented, was an original file system dreamed up back before Vista was Vista. Now they're copying ideas.
I'll give them props for actually getting it done, though. Microsoft could learn something there.
Robert @ Jun 13th 2007 5:25PM
are you hallucinating? If you fell asleep during the presentation, put it right in the middle and take a good look @ Core Animation. What has vista to offer?
the other steve jobs @ Jun 11th 2007 5:09PM
why are 32 bit users screwed in any way? it will run as well on both 64 and 32 bit machines - and both machines can use 32 bit drivers...
if anything, this is the opposite of "hard luck for older machines" - when you go to install 10.5, it will install what is appropriate for your machine.
erik @ Jun 11th 2007 5:33PM
why don't they stop with all the features and just fix the bugs from the last xx versions? i guess the new features in this version will cover up the bugs from the new features in the last version. two wrongs make a wright. great.
Peter @ Jun 11th 2007 5:40PM
erik - "why don't they stop with all the features and just fix the bugs from the last xx versions?"
Now that's just silly Windows talk.