The new Leopord demo Vids. WOW!!!

I have to admit I don't really see what point you're making.

In the grand scheme of things, again, I doubt Apple cares much about grabbing browser marketshare. From how I read this part of the keynote, the Safari stuff seemed mostly like filler anyway.

-Zadillo

 

I agree, zadillo. There's no "iPod incentive" to use Safari in Windows, other than to develop iPhone apps on Windows.

But I want to make a point about the fact that there's no reason for people to switch to Safari, and that Safari doesn't really offer a new experience: neither did Firefox! But its successful now with a 15% market share (or more, I haven't checked). There's no reason for people to switch to Firefox, but I guess stability and tabs and more security drove people to Firefox. IE7 has caught up, but its not winning back most of the Firefox people.

Maybe Safari will be the same. They have as many features as FF and IE7, but load faster and have better RSS readers and Bookmarks, and UI, etc.

 

Yeah, I'm certainly willing to be surprised. I will admit that Firefox 2 on my Windows PC has seemingly been more unstable than older versions of Firefox were. I could certainly at least see giving Safari a chance.......... but at this point, I don't even use Safari on OS X, so it will be kind of a hard sell for me.

I think some of that will depend on what happens with Firefox 3 though (I know a new alpha release just came out).

But I think for Safari to actually make some headway (if Apple wants it to, that is), it needs to offer some really cool new browser features or something. And even that might be enough though; if I recall, Opera actually has some pretty nifty features, but I don't think it's helped it gain much mainstream marketshare.

-Zadillo

 

Well you may wanna do some reading on the Knoll brothers who developed Photoshop.
Apple originally wanted to own PS and did successfully control its distribution as a pro market application for years before it finally went public.

 

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything? Why are you telling me to "do reading" on things that aren't even vaguely relevant to the discussion?

Adobe got involved with Photoshop almost right from the start...... Apple always had a close relationship with Adobe, naturally so (until 92 or 93 Photoshop wasn't even available for Windows).

What do you mean Apple controlled its distribution as a pro market application for years before it finally went public? Photoshop debuted on the market in 1989..... what do you mean Apple controlled its distribution, and what do you mean "before it finally went public"?

Are you just continually changing the subject to get away from the original point (your claim that StarDock includes people who helped develop or "inspire" the Mac UI)?

-Zadillo

 

Having used Safari on OS X for some time, my opinion is that it's a well rounded, clean, and simple browser. Eventually switched to FF but that's beside the point really.

I think it's great that they ported it to Windows as having yet another browser option is really never a bad thing. Would I use it? No, probably not, as I'm perfectly happy with IE7/FF and I don't see a compelling reason for me personally to use Safari.

However that's just me, I'm sure there are going to be a good number of people out there that have either heard about or used Safari before and might have wished for a Windows version. For them (or someone that just wants something that works more like iTunes interface-wise) it will probably be the main browser they use everyday. I think this is one of the situations that Apple is trying to take advantage of with the Windows release of Safari. With the potential increase in market share, they also have increased the amount of exposure the Apple/Mac brand gets, and in marketing, that can relate strongly to better sales and adoption of the Mac platform and other Apple products.

It really is another example of what Apple is doing right as of late as a company (IMO). From the minimal relative effort and cost to port and support (no rhyming! bad! ) Safari, Apple can get a very large potential return in brand recognition, familiarity with their products, and thus sales.

And wow, there have been... *counts* 5 new posts since I started writing this one! Almost as quick as TRT.

 

I was just referring you stating that Apple doesnt contract anyone while apple had a big influence on photoshop and its distribution
Apple had the program from Oct 88 until its public release on Feb 1990 and it was a mac only application until 1993 whe it was finally released for windows platform.


Now back to Stardock and Apple relationship.... Have you ever heard of Taligent?

"Taligent was the name of an object-oriented operating system and the company dedicated to producing it. Initially started as a project within Apple Computer to produce a replacement for the Mac OS, it was later spun-off into a joint venture with IBM in order to build a competing platform to Microsoft Cairo and NeXTSTEP."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent


"The Second Generation...
By early 2000, Stardock was in the position of where Object Desktop did the "main" things that the OS/2 version did.... That meant that it was time for DesktopX. The concept from 1997 in which the long talked about Microsoft "Cairo" and IBM/Apple Taligent ideas would come together."
http://www.stardock.com/stardock/articles/article_odhistory.html

Theres another article i gotta find that just goes a lil further indepth that they all shared info and ideas for various desktop GUIs. But it would only be Mac and Stardock that would succeed in pushing it forward

 

Re: Adobe; I'm still not sure how Adobe/Photoshop and Apple are relevant. I said that Apple didn't work with outside companies to develop Mac OS UI elements, and this is true. The Photoshop situation is really completely different, so I'm still not sure I understand the connection.

Yes, I have heard of Taligent - I actually mentioned them up above.

Note that Taligent was the name of the joint partnership/company itself. The OS itself was code-named simply "Pink". There had been some hopes that it could end up being Apple's next generation OS.

The problem is, none of the Taligent stuff ever came to fruition for Apple. They acquired NeXT, and based Mac OS X on NeXTStep (note that the NeXTStep stuff was developed back in the 80's).

Stardock's influence then didn't really have anything to do with any Mac OS, frankly.

-Zadillo

 

Ok, you agree to say that Stardock had a hand in collaborating with IBM in designing the i-face for OS2. Yet you will deny (after i posted links) that stardock also had some discussions about Microsofts Cairo and IBM/Apple Taligent OS.
ok, thats your choice if you wish to deny their collaboration thats fine lol

and some of Taligents stuff DID become of something for Apple. Namely macs icon i-face and now its stack (all evolved over time of course) which brings me back to my original comment of how the stack looks like Stardocks Fly-Out

Lastly heres a bit of other tidbit info. Stardock had dealings with Nextstep in the early to mid 90's. Whether it be sharing shell data or fine tuning their GUIs they collaborated on ideas.
Apples Pink OS fails in 1995. Then Apple acquires Nextstep in Feb 97 for $420million.
At that time Nextstep had already established its cross-platform Openstep OS with cooperation with a number of developers like Sun Microsystems, Windows and SunSolaris.
But on Feb 97 Apple bought Nextstep and used the Openstep for its OSX
So in reality, Apple never really developed their own OS. It was bought/purchased.

 

The iPhone is just one reason but not necessarily the main reason for Safari landing onto the Windows platform. You are right, there are people that do want to run Windows but there are quite a few switchers that love the Mac OS platform but the problem is there are some websites that those close minded web designers make that are optimized for Windows Internet Explorer and you can't even use the Windows version of Firefox so putting Safari on the Windows platform and having it in the iPhone is going to get more developers to use Safari to design their websites. Apple is not going to cross the line and give all their best apps to the Windows world. Why would they? They just showed a very robust OS today that shows they are trying to be the best and offer the best.
Having Windows run on the Mac is just one benefit. Apple is not trying to get switchers to buy their hardware and remove the Mac OS and just use Windows. Again why would they.
Apple signed some big deals with the gaming industry to get some hot titles on the Mac. This is an area where they just messed up by ignoring. After today it shows the Mac OS will gain.
Apple is now the preferred choice of multimedia so expect a lot of change of market gain from the Mac OS system.

 

I like how this thread has become a battle for geek-trivia master.

 

wow i must admit the new features in leopard are awesome. kinda makes me envious since i'm a pc user....i would love to have the stacks and the quicklook option in windows, along with maybe expose and spaces.

what i really wish for is apple releasing some more of their proprietary software to windows. specifically, i wish iLife could be released, along with photobooth. im still trying to find a pc equivalent to photobooth.

if the improvements to leopard are to drastic i might just start thinking about switching...after my current computer bites the dust.

just a quick question though...does apple charge its customers for every upgrade to osx? like..if ur running tiger right now, will u have to pay to utilize leopard? i ask since my sister has a macbook...

 

I think the GUI looks horrendous. The menubar at the top of the screen...it's hideous. I really hope Apple isn't serious about this...

 

beats having to debate about 1/4" thicknesses, 1 lb differences, fps, 3Dmark scores and screen res.
I at least will add aspects to a discussion that are thought provoking and at most maybe part add a diff dimension in comparison threads.
You can only talk about subjective build quality for so long before it gets boring as hell.

 

I skipped this comment of yours earlier and said to myself ill get back to it, so now im getting back to it lol

Ok, so you think Apple doesnt care about browser marketshare. Well i think you better look deeper into Apple and you will soon see clearly what its all about.
You dont own any Apple stock do you?? Well like any big name stock they have quarterly newsletters that advise and/or project whats happening and showings of plotted growth etc etc.
Anyways, as i mentioned earlier Apple stock peaked (before intel, before bootcamp) with very slow growth. They pretty well leveled off as the pro market for the mac was well saturated and the consumer market was growing at a trickle.
Then came Intel. Whatever probs IBM had with Apple or Apple had with IBM, whether it be delivery probs or personal issues with them all whatever... the main thing is Apple changed chips. Bad for IBM but good for Intel. This transition was just the beginning of the mac train to grab as much marketshare as they could. But what marketshare was there to grab??? The pre intel mac market was already saturated enough that there was little movement.
So the only marketshare to get was to bite into Windows marketshare. Thus the main reason bootcamp was developed. And now with Safari being released its just Apple trying to get its product to a wider audience.
And its no different than what Microsoft did years ago when it released Internet Explorer as a free browser. Its purpose... to get people to like the softwear in order to entice them to want to try other MS softwear.

Thou a lil late Jobs is now thinking like Gates did. The free Safari has only one purpose and thats to get it into the hands of PC consumers in the hopes they like it and they'll want to know more about other Apple products...plain and Simple! And this is no diff than when Apple introduced bootcamp. Hell, you dont see MS making their own bootcamp so OSX can run on a PC do you???
You can continue to deny it and continue to believe that Apple doesnt care about marketshare if you wish but you cant deny the recent yrs migration of what would be normal PC users to the mac because of the bootcamp option.

And in the grand scheme of things.... its the stock growth that truly tells the story

 

I'm not denying their collaboration, I'm saying that if they did anything at all, it was with the "Pink" OS, which was just one of a handful of projects. Pink isn't officially even an Apple project, of course; it was a Taligent project, which was a joint venture of IBM and Apple. Realistically, at best Apple had hoped to use some ideas from "Pink" in their unreleased OS code-named Gershwin, but it never happened.

What do you mean by "macs icon i-face"? I assume you mean interface there, but I still don't get what you mean.

If you mean the look or function of icons in OS X (or Mac OS back at the time), I don't get it. There was no UI development for Taligent Pink that made it into any classic Mac OS or the current Mac OS X. The look and function of icons in OS X dates back to NextStep, which predates StarDock.

Seriously, what exactly are you claiming?

Whatever StarDock might have done with NeXT didn't have much to do with UI's; the NextStep/OpenStep UI was already well established by that point.

You have been making the claim that Stardock influenced the current or ANY Mac UI, and there isn't any basis for that (including in what you posted above).

The Mac UI as it is right now is a combination of NextStep elements which date back to the 80's, and Mac elements which date back even before NextStep.

There isn't anything in the current OS X UI that has anything to do with whatever stuff StarDock might have done with IBM and Taligent and Pink.

Regarding your last point; it's worth noting that when Apple "acquired" NeXT, what actually happened is essentially that NeXT really took over Apple. Apple themselves at that time was basically stuck; the people they had working there couldn't come up with a next gen OS (the whole reason they did have to start looking outside the company).

When they bought NeXT, all the NeXT people essentially came in and replaced the old guard.

So to say that Apple didn't "develop their own OS" is kind of misleading. NeXT essentially became Apple, and as Apple developed Apple's new OS (Mac OS X) based on their old one (NeXTStep).

And StarDock had pretty much zero to do with any of this stuff. What exactly do you think StarDock contributed as far as UI stuff to Apple OR NeXT that ever was used for anything? All I see from what you've mentioned so far is the collaboration with Taligent on Pink (which never came of anything).

-Zadillo

 

Agrees

Think "Tortoise & the Hare". As history tells us, marketshare can change in a blink of an eye. And this looks like Apples window to be a serious contender to MS.

They are playing the "Chicken or Egg" game with features. I don't care who designed a certain kind of menu first.

 

.....

I never said Apple doesn't care about marketshare in general. I said Apple doesn't specifically care about browser marketshare.

Browser marketshare does not necessarily equal computer marketshare, any more than MP3 player software marketshare does. Obviously iTunes is very popular because of the iPod and iTunes store, but it doesn't mean that Apple expects that to translate to massive marketshare.

Apple's goal with iTunes and the iPod is to have a halo effect, to see people see how things work and then ideally check out a Mac.

But I don't think they have the same goals for Safari, nor would it have the same effect even if it did.

As for eating into Windows marketshare, of course Apple wants to do that.

But seriously, please stop twisting what I'm saying. I am arguing about browser marketshare and what Apple's goals are with Safari, and then you're saying I'm denying that Apple cares about computer marketshare as a whole which I never did, and which is a different topic.

And I'm certainly not disputing the fact that Apple wants to make it easier for Windows users to switch. And yes, part of that is Boot Camp, as well as Apple's heavy promotion of virtualization solutions like Parallels and VMware Fusion.

But Boot Camp, virtualization, etc. are basically the nice side benefits of the switch to Intel. In and of itself, Apple didn't switch to Intel solely to make it so they could sell a computer that would make it easier to run Windows and Windows apps on. They did it primarily because the PowerPC chip was stagnating, especially on the mobile side, while Intel was making huge advances in mobile CPU's especially.

Again, I'm not disputing that the Intel-compatible aspects of Macs has been a big benefit...... just saying it wasn't necessarily the driving factor behind the switch that was made.

This seems really to be off on a tangent though from the original discussion though.

 

I thought this thread was about the Leopard demo videos. I think we have discussed the stardock thing to death. Let's try to keep with the topic of the new Leopard features.

I like the first 2 or 3 features he announce, but the rest were old news. It was kind of frustrating. I like the stacks and the new Finder looks great, but the rest is kind of ho-hum.

 

True, but I think what is most interesting in my mind is not whatever new googags Apple could have added themselves, but what they'll be allowing third party devs to do with Core Animation, etc.

Watching the video of the keynote, one of the most impressive parts to me was during the demo of Core Animation, where he showed a little app they whipped up that basically was like a real-time version of the "AppleTV Intro Movie"; where he automatically filters it out to show just videos that match a keyword, browses through the running videos in real-time, etc.

I think it shows that the real promise of Leopard is going to be in the kinds of slick stuff that devs will be able to use it as the cornerstone for, and that's what really has me pretty excited.

But as it is, the new stuff that was shown, combined with the existing stuff I've already been looking forward to (especially Spaces), and it looks like a really nice upgrade to me.

Frankly I've gotten to the point where I kind of like the things that might not be mindblowing, but which are practically useful.

 

Not sure I'd say the menubar looks "hideous", but for what it's worth, it's already been confirmed that it can be made Opaque if the transparency bothers you.

I'm not sure what's really horrendous about the GUI, personally. It's really not fundamentally different from the existing OS X GUI; more just that it's been polished up a bit.

-Zadillo

 

I agree, Zadillo. I think the most impressive part of Leopard is going to be the way Core animation is used. I also really like Time Machine.

 

Yeah. I think I might have mentioned this earlier in the thread, but I think it will be kind of like Tiger...... although stuff like Spotlight and Expose were kind of cool (Expose actually was a cool enough future that I would have bought Tiger just for it), the actually long-term interesting stuff wasn't any of the "new features" that can be easily demo'd, but stuff like Core Image that laid the groundwork for a lot of the slick third party apps that have come out since then.

I really do think Core Animation will be similar, and will let developers do some really amazing things app-wise.

-Zadillo

 

they turned itunes into an os lol

 

As funny as it may seem, I think there are some merits to using aspects of iTunes for file organization and management. Especially things like adding the "Smart playlists" concept, and just generally, I think that if it works well for dealing with and categorizing music files, it can work with other files as well..... particularly how they've adapted cover flow to quickly browse through files, etc........ it looks much more preferable to me than the way it worked in earlier versions of the Finder.

 

You really need ask yourself if you are really gonna ever switch to the Macintosh? According to your post you actually want the Mac to go away or kick the bucket. The world is about choice and change and you don't seem to be open to either one.
Apple has already been more than generous by offering some of their best software on Windows albeit to gain market share but that's what the game is all about especially in Microsoft's world.
It's ridiculous for Apple to give away their iLife suite to Windows (which is Apple's secret weapon) and give away photobooth as well any other of their proprietary software. If that was the case then Apple's plan of action would be to kill the Mac at an early death.
You said you liked iLife and you can't find an equivalent of photobooth and you want Apple to port it's proprietary software. Well you just closed yourself on the Macintosh.
This is the main issue Windows users have about switching to the Mac is that they are so dedicated (for whatever reason) to their Windows software that they just can't part with it.
Most of the same software between both platforms is available and you just said you were envious of Leopard's new features. You should take the Mac plunge, many people have been happy. Just don't expect Apple to give Windows users a reason to stay on Windows, that's not gonna happen.

 

hldan, to answer your question; Yes, Apple charges for the major upgrades (i.e. 10.4 to 10.5)...... the incremental upgrades between releases are free.

Given the time in between releases though (Tiger came out back in 2005, Panther had come out in 2003)), I would say it isn't necessarily unreasonable, given the prices have normally been $129. I'd say it compares fairly reasonably to the prices MS charges for Vista (especially the Ultimate version).

-Zadillo

 

Uh, Zadillo, thank you for that info but I didn't ask that question. That was posted by someone else.

 

Since this is the thread about Leopard I will reiterate how excited I am and I just can't wait to get my hands on a copy in October because the new look and features are hot! Tiger did well but Apple will set the standard for the Macintosh.
What I am mostly amped about is EA Sports and Id software are making some fresh titles on the Mac. Apple has finally started paying attention to gaming. Gaming will be big on the Mac in 2008. This will further create switchers.

 

Anyeone know the specs for running Leopard? Leopard looks really good, I like the new dock espessially.

 

Shouldn't be too extreme; I know that I read that even the Intel GMA950 card in regular MacBooks is supposed to be able to handle Core Animation (which is probably the most demanding aspect of Leopard), so I think most any somewhat modern Mac should work fine.

Even older G4-based Macs should be able to handle it, although I think that for Core Animation you need a Radeon 9600/GeForce FX 5200 or above (or about that). Certainly Power Mac G5's and iMac G5's should also have no real problems with it.

Granted, lesser hardware might struggle with some really intense stuff (i.e. I can imagine some of the Core Animation stuff might really stretch the boundaries of what some of the older and lesser hardware can handle without stuttering, etc.).

I think it is able to scale to some degree based on what the hardware can handle though.

 

Yeah, older iBook G4's probably wouldn't be able to handle Leopard.

 

^^^yes they will.

and as far as Core Animation goes, the only major thing they have shown with that is the little video wall you can bring, up which isn't necessarily that useful, although it does look very cool.

and Core Animation doesn't even use opengl does it? it is more like a 2.5d type of situation i believe.

 

Probably would be really slow though on let's say..a 1 GHZ processor though, right?

 

there really isn't any reason that Leopard should run any slower than Tiger. which runs perfectly well on an iBook.

 

hldan please dont misunderstand, i do not wish for apple to disappear at all.

i rather like their computers and the os. i just simply stated that i wish apple would open up some of their proprietary software to be able to run on pc, because i like the ease of their software.

hell, if apple made osx availble for installation on pc's, i'd switch it over vista/xp. so please dont group me with those other "hardcore microsoft" junkies, thx.

 

Sorry, just wanted to respond to this.

The "video wall" they brought up was more to demonstrate how simply something could be developed with Core Animation, but more specifically, I think, to actually show how it could be used to make a better interface/application.

In this case, the actual "application" of that video wall was as a sort of massive video library browser. In the demonstration, the video wall basically showed all the videos playing in realtime, and parts of the wall could be zoomed in on, etc.

I think the interesting component was how he filtered it in realtime to only show videos matching a certain keyword, and then was able to browse through them as they were all playing in real-time.

The main purpose of the demo was to show off the kind of eyecandy and visual effects possible, but I think it shows how devs could apply Core Animation to actually making more useful interfaces.

Just thinking of the way that little demo app worked, I thought about how I currently would navigate through my videos......... I'd essentially probably use my file system and navigate through them, maybe do a search to show just the ones that matched certain tags....... but then I'd still essentially sit there opening them up in a video player, playing them one by one.

In terms of the real meat behind Core Animation, that will be shown at the actual Core Animation sessions this week during WWDC. But what he demo'd so far was just to give a taste of what's possible (not to mention what the underlying system is capable of).

-Zadillo

 

Manually organizing your files into folders, subfolders and what not is sooo 1980s.

In the modern age of indexes, great search tools and massive disk drives it makes more sense to put all of your data in one big bucket and use smart folders or other query tools to present different "views" of the data by applying filters.

Just like labels in gmail or smartfolders in apple apps.

 

yeah good point.

if you check the WWDC section of the site they have posted some very interesting little videos of the different topics this being one of them.

basically telling a little to developers what core animation was and what it could be used for.

the demo they gave was very interesting, but saying that is going to keep older g4 computers from running Leopard is definitely pushing it, they will run the OS fine.

 

Yeah, I wouldn't say it would keep older G4 computers from running Leopard. At most it would just mean that some things might not perform as well, or might be disabled (i.e. if the machine didn't have a Core Animation compatible GPU).

I recall reading that the GPU requirements for Core Animation were going to be similar to those for Core Image..... and Core Image requires any of the following GPU's or more powerful:

(that's an older list so doesn't include, say, the 8600M GT).

 

Are we going to see core-animation improving animation features in presentation software like keynote ?

 

I think that's almost a certainty. Apple loves to use its own apps to show off what the OS can do.

Also, the primary rumor for the delays in the unveiling and release of iWork 07 (and iLife 07 for that matter) is that Apple is beefing them up a lot to take advantage of Leopard....... so that would also back up the idea that Keynote would almost certainly make use of Core Animation.

 

Am I the only one that is dissapointed with the new look of leopard, in my opinion I think its horrible. The windows are basically all platinum, only a shade darker. The new dock looks horrible, as does the new apple bar, incredibly vista-ish, and the apple bar looks horrible all flat. I thought jobs was joking when he put that hideous grass background up aswell. I much prefer the look of tiger. Also the new finder just looks exactly like itunes has for years. How can they say vista copied of them and then put hideous transparent elements just like vista into thier design. Even the hideous grass wallpaper shouts "VISTA!". I never thought apple would do something like this.

The only cool feature I could see was perhaps the effects in ichat which I wont be using because all my friends use msn. The other features will be usefull, especially time machine which is amazing but alot of the new features wont even be used by alot of people,especially me who uses my macbook for mostly entertainment, alot of the new features are very buisnessy-fied.

You can argue my points but this is just my perception of what I have seen of leopard so far.

 

Everyone's entitled to their opinion.

Personally I will take the new look of the "platinum" Finder elements over the brushed metal in Tiger any day. Tiger's big problem was UI inconsistency; brushed metal in the Finder, the platinum look in application windows, etc. A unified look has been one of the most requested features.

As for the desktop picture - come on, it's not like that can't be changed (and the menu bar in Leopard can be made opaque as well).

As for the Dock......... how does it look "horrible" compared to the old dock? It fundamentally is the same, except it just has a 3d perspective now, so the dock doesn't take up as much room, and the icons rest on top of it instead of being overlaid above a 2D dock. It's hardly a major change though.

As for the transparency, etc. - it's not like OS X never had it.......... it's just been extended a bit beyond the elements it was in (i.e. the menus in Tiger were transparent, as was the dock itself............. all Apple did was extend the transparency option to the menu bar, which I hardly see as making it "Vista-fied").

Generally speaking, a lot of the glossy and transparency effects debuted back in Tiger (most notably in the Dashboard widgets and effects); Leopard is just a unification and extension of those elements. This idea that it's imitation Vista seems like a bit of a stretch to me. Basically both Vista and Leopard reflect the UI influences of Tiger.

Aside from that, I wouldn't say that these are all business-y features. Spaces can be useful for a lot of things. Quick Look and Cover Flow as means of navigating content should be useful for a lot of consumer uses, etc. I think the iTunes-like navigation and playlists and searching is a natural extension to file management. And Stacks should help with desktop management.

-Zadillo

 

Well just not keen on the 3d look of the dock, I cant really tell you what it is to be honest, must just be my taste.

I know alot of people despise the brushed metal but I actually like it and the dark grey just looks boring to me.

I will find the spaces feature most usefull when using photoshop especially on such a small screen so I can dedicate a whole sapce just to photoshop.

If I hadnt already seen so much transaprency in vista maybe I wouldnt mind it but I think its a sickly look and will be most unusefull in the menu bar in my opinion.

Obviously the grass can be changed, it just made me mad =)

I think I prefer the retro look.

 

If it's any comfort, most of these UI elements will be easily changeable, at least with third party apps.

I imagine Uno (an app that some Mac owners currently use to unify the interface) will be updated, and there will surely be a way to restore a brushed metal appearance if one so desires.

I don't think dock modifications would be that hard either.

As already mentioned, Apple already confirmed that the transparency in the menu bar can be turned off.

So if it is just the looks, I think you will be able to customize it to fit your tastes (just as people currently customize the look of their Mac right now with Uno, ShapeShifter themes, etc.). Now that I think about it, there are "Jaguar" and "Panther" themes for ShapeShifter to let Tiger look like an earlier version, so I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a "Tiger" theme for ShapeShifter under 10.5.

EDIT:

Over at macthemes2.net, this blog post from a UI designer is very interesting:

http://macthemes2.net/2007/06/13/re...eopard%e2%80%99s-user-interface/#more-106

Points out a lot of of the potential for theme-makers with some of the new underlying UI capabilities in Leopard. Should provide for some interesting things and a lot more variety.

 

Leopard looks really nice, and I've often considered to buy a mac but...Macbooks are too underpowered and Macbook Pros are too expensive (for me) =/.

 

Fair enough. What's underpowered about a MacBook though? The only thing I can think this might be referring to is the integrated graphics, but this is true of many laptops in the MacBook's price range. And the MacBook does at least have fairly fast CPU's, etc.

 

Well, I would like to see Outlook on the Mac instead of Entourage and a full version of Windows media player. I think the Zune marketplace should run on Macs as well, I'm really not sure why Microsoft doesn't do that? They need all the market share they can get. I also would like it if Microsoft stop being so rude and bring back I.E on the Mac and make it actually work.

No, Microsoft doesn't want to help Apple's Macintosh to win and Apple doesn't want Microsoft's OS to win. Who loses? The consumer. So although I'm not considering you a Windows fanboy, before you wish for Apple to stop being selfish you have to look at how selfish Microsoft is toward the Mac.

Isn't it enough that there's more software choices on Windows, the Mac needs proprietary software to grab the consumer.

 

outlook is horrible...thunderbird kills it interms of looks/simplicity/ease of use.
and ipod > zune by far.