Citrus Skies

Mac OSX Leopard Preview

8 August 2006

Apple have released a preview of their latest OSX version, “Leopard”. Amonst the goodies on offer are some new applications as well as updates to existing apps.

Mail has been upgraded with a few features already offered in Microsoft’s Outlook application, namely notes and “to do” lists, the latter of which are automatically added/updated in iCal as well. Apple have also introduced a stationery system to Mail that allows you to add your own photographs into supplied templates.

iChat receives two key new features. The first is “virtual presentation room” allowing photos and Keynote slides to be presented remotely, all with the slick animation we’ve come to expect from Apple products. The second is desktop sharing, allowing mutliple users to view and control the same desktop for a variety of purposes. iChat also picks up photo or video backgrounds and video effects which are sure to provide minutes of amusement.

One of the most interesting new applications is Time Machine, a built-in backup and recovery service. By default, Time Machine will store the back-up data on the same disk, but can be easily configured to use an external drive or Mac OS X server instead. It may not have all the features of thirdparty solutions, such as SuperDuper, but its a step up from the backup system used by most users, i.e. none.

Another new feature is Spaces which provides multiple virtual desktop capabilties. Its hardly revolutionary, similar features have been available for different UNIX flavours for a long time. Even Microsoft has its Virtual Desktop Manager for XP. However, its nice to see this feature finally included in OSX.

Introduced in the previous OSX release, “Tiger”, the Dashboard receives a few tweaks with new widgets and an easy-to-use custom widget builder. Leopard also introduces the ability to sync Dashboard data across multiple Macs via your .Mac account.

Steve Jobs opened his presentation by stating “There’s some top secret features we’re going to keep a little close to the vest”, but already things are looking good for Leopard.

Article Tags: dashboard, ichat, leopard, mac osx, mail, spaces, steve jobs, tiger, time machine, mac