Can you taste it? No, we suppose you probably can't. While Microsoft has been happy to share Windows 7 with just about anyone with a taste for danger, Apple has followed the traditional route of development with
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, sharing it with developers alone. The good news is that things are starting to coalesce in the run-up to WWDC, with Apple just now informing developers that Snow Leopard's APIs are now frozen, with no more alterations planned before release. That means developers can work on their Snow Leopard-ready applications without much fear of Apple mucking things up with late game OS-level changes, and is a decent milestone towards what should presumably be a summer launch. The latest build also includes Chinese handwriting recognition for Macs with multitouch trackpads, similar to the functionality
included in iPhone Software 2.0, and also finalizes the Grand Central architecture, which lets developers address multiple processing cores without all the know-how and complication usually required.
Update: MacRumors is
also reporting that the new build includes Windows HFS+ drivers with Apple's Boot Camp utility, allowing Windows-on-Mac users to access their Mac OS X HFS+ partitions out of the box.
posted May 11th 2009 1:11PM
I'm still hopeful of a big UI change; read: getting rid of the Dock!
Okay, I'll bite. What wrong with the dock? Obviously it's not the screen real estate since it can be hidden. I don't think I've seen anyone with this particular complaint.
If you really don't want the dock, don't use it. That simple.
I know a lot of UI people hate the dock (and the finder for more obvious reasons), but I frankly find the dock to be one of the best UI elements of OS X.. and explaining why the Windows start menu/taskbar/systray is an utter disaster compared to the OS X Dock is one of the easiest things to explain to novices.
i personally love the dock too...quite a nice feature, and i have it hidden so it doesnt get in teh way when im not using it.
any ideas what else theyre gona do for snow leopard thats different from just leopard? cuz it seems stupid to me to release a new version of the OS with the only changes being soemthing about chinese language and grand central architecture...
I've got tons of junk on my desktop. The dock is the least of my concerns.
The dock is a signature and sort of a cool factor for Macs and I think Apple will be stupid to get rid of that.
Gnome-Do / Docky FTW!
Cmd-Option-D
I HATE THE DOCK! It's great for your mom, but it is a PITA for more advanced users. Speaking of, The thing I hate most about OSX is the lack of native customization. There are so many little things that bother me, like the stupid "light dot" on the dock icons showing that an application is running... Why can't I ******* change that? Perhaps its just my ignorance and there is an easy 3rd party utility that allows you to customize every aspect of the OS somewhere, but I sure haven't been able to find one..
@loosely_coupled: I don't think there is one single utility that lets you theme everything, but there are a few that cover most things. Candybar from Panic lets you replace icons (and keep them organized, iApp-style, in a library) and also theme Leopard's 3D and 2D docks. There are several other dock-specific utilities, some free, since really all that has to be done is to replace images in /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources.
Façade, the spiritual successor to Unsanity's GUI theming utility Shapeshifter, has been in the works for a long time, and due to its developers still having to juggle between it, other actively developed apps like Bowtie and Bluebird, and college, it's likely to stay in the pipeline for a while longer. However, in the meantime, Magnifique is available as a quite serviceable substitute.
The downside of all the above is that because Apple hates people changing how their precious Aqua UI looks, these apps basically have to swap out files (including system files in Magnifique's case), so if that's too "hackish" for you, you might be better off sticking with the defaults or using Tiger with Shapeshifter and maybe ClearDock.
BTW, I recall seeing a Taskbar-ish application called Fantasktik which was kinda neat when I looked at it. I don't know if that's what you would rather have than a dock, but there are alternatives out there. Even for OS X, amazingly enough.
@ Unix system engineer...
Not everybody "loves" that bubbelywubbely stuff the girls and wannabe-designers dig so bad. Since stacks it has improved a little, but the dock is just a beautiful, fancy gimmick to open/close your software, nothing more.
Here's a nice article by a truly objective person about OSX and it's functionality while working: http://www.fictionalhead.com/blog/full/mac-vs-pc-a-designers-take
Suck on that.
Calling the windows start menu, explorer, taskbar and systray a disaster probably says more about you.
Snow Leopard released @ WWDC?
The general vibe I've been getting from OS X IT people I know is that a Fall release is more likely. Granted, I didn't think the API freeze would be this early. It definitely means they're far along.
Anyone know when WWDC is?
June 8-12th. Keynote is that Monday I believe.
@ eminemdrdre00 - sure looks that way.
I would love to see a print screen function and a show desktop - yes I know you can get an app to do that, but it seems like two functions that SHOULD be included.
Those are both already in Leopard. Command+Shift+3 and then click will screenshot your desktop. And then I set up the bottom right corner of my screen as a "hot corner" to "Show Desktop". All I have to do is swipe my mouse down to the bottom corner and all the windows push away, giving a clear view of the desktop. Doing it again brings everything back to where it was.
OK I'll Bite.
Command shift 3 for print screen - saves a graphics file on your desktop.
press F11 to get back to your desktop.
Am I missing something here?
Show desktop is a function of Expose. Assign it to a hotcorner. There are several modes of screenshot taking already in OS X. Google it.
They ARE included, and have been for years.
Print Screen – Cmd + Shift + 3
Show Desktop – F11 (you can also use hot corners or change it)
if by "show desktop" you mean what i think you mean, it's been implemented since Tiger. go to system prefs > expose.
Do expose (Show Desktop) and Command+Shift+4 (Screen Grab) not do it for you?
Command-Shift-3 will take a screenshot and post the image to your desktop, even has a shutter sound when you do it. No need for the Windows rigamarole of opening up Paint to paste then save. To copy a window you change 3 to 4 and the mouse over is very slick. My only complaint of this feature is the inclusion of the Shift key, which i have removed so that only Command-3 or Command-4 are required. I wish that was default, but including a whole other keyboard button like on Windows keyboards is silly.
Show Desktop is a bit of dead feature. Exposé does a much better job of showing all windows and the desktop, especially if you use hot corners, though you can also do a simple 4 finger own or up, respectively to get the same effect in an instant.
That would be ALT + SHIFT + 3 for print screen, and everyones favorite F11 for show desktop.
(Or Alt + SHIFT + 4 to selectively print a section of the screen)
CMD + SHFT + 4 lets you draw a clipping box around a specific area of the screen to take a pic of.
I mapped show desktop to my multi-touch. 4 fingers up = show desktop. 4 fingers down = expose
OPT-SHIFT-4 then spacebar will capture a window without having to draw crosshairs, too.
Maybe he's looking for old school printscreen... i.e. press a button and your dot matrix printer suddenly whirs to life.
I hear you brother... I refuse to upgrade to Snow Leopard until Screen Savers and Keyboard support are included by default. I mean, who wants to type a Pages document with the mouse???
Obviously I'm a Mac newbe - thanks guys, I will have to try that when I get home. I was use do windose that I hit the icon on my desktop to minimize all the programs and view my desktop. Then my print screen key would store a picture of the desktop in my clipboard.
Thanks! :-)
Why is everyone saying that F11 is show Desktop? My F11 is a sound-down button. I don't even have a Desktop Button. An Expose and a Dashboard... But n Desktop. Have I bought a schnidey Mac?
@Alex: You must have a new keyboard. Cmd-F3 (Expose) will show desktop. F11 was on the old ones.
I thought Engadget was a blog about computers, not money pits.
I thought engadget enabled comments so that something useful or funny could be said about an article.
Actually, it's a blog about gadgets, and this is a post specifically tailored to developers who make software for those gadgets.
Yeah!
Is there anyone else who didn't know what coalesce meant with looking it up?
Nope, just you.
You act like it's such an archaic word or something. Perhaps not the most commonly-used word, but definitely not rare.
Hmm. Well, I learned a new word today.
Good for you for looking it up. A lot of people when they don't know would have just read over it.
Hey, language is a living thing.
Right-click -> Look Up in Dictionary
Snow Leopard is pretty promising in terms of how it might be a huge step forward in OS performance. Having skipped Leopard on my home machine (use it at work, don't really like it), I'm looking forward to this upgrade.
You are aware that Snow Leopard = Leopard + speed, aren't you?
If you didn't like Leopard, you're probably not going to like Snow Leopard. What don't you like about it, anyway? It's much better than Tiger. I'm not going to get in to the question of comparing it to other OSes, but I gather from your post that you're a Mac user anyway.
Speed is the reason.
I'm running Tiger at home and Leopard at work on an older (dual 2.0 G5) Power Mac. I'm not impressed with the minor UI tweaks (less legible icons, slightly less friendly dock design, etc) and am astounded at how slow it runs on this box. I understand that the G5 is an old chip, but it should NOT run this slow considering that I ran Panther on a 600mhz G3. Leopard also feels a bit more buggy and hang-prone. It's even hard crashed a couple of times.
The only thing I really want that's in Leopard is Time Machine, so I've been putting off the upgrade on my Mac Pro until Snow Leopard comes out.
Leopard is a vast improvement from Tiger. I hope Snow Leopard gets even better.
You should know that Snow Leopard will not run on PPC Macs, only x86.
Does "Grand Central architecture" have something to do with OpenCL?