What was the big Secret?

I kept hearing teh big secret feature for leopard and I didn't see anything supprising today at the WWDC

 

Nothing mind-blowing, but the new things that hadn't been seen before were the new Finder and Dock stuff (including Stacks, Quick Look, the new Cover Flow stuff, and the iTunes-esque searches/playlist functionality).

The overall revisions to the Finder were probably the main "secret", as these haven't been seen until now, and do address most of the long standing complaints about OS X to date (that the UI was becoming chaotic and uncohesive).

So no, no major big secret, but we did finally get to see the stuff they weren't ready to show off before now.

Personally, I like it a lot, as it does really do a lot to make the Finder nice again and address some of the biggest usability and aeshetic issues with it.

 

Apple stock is down quite a bit today (which is rare these days), so I'm guessing you weren't the only one who isn't blown away by the announcements. I think some of the announced stuff is kind of neat, but none of it is a really huge deal like I guess some people were expecting.

 

too bad...

 

Apple stock is down because analysts were expecting/hoping that Apple was going to release a new product, and they didn't.

It is kind of a stupid expectation really; WWDC is a developer's conference. The point of it was to show the rest of Leopard, etc. and give devs access to start building apps for it.

It wasn't about releasing some new Mac tablet, or new iMacs, or whatever.

 

Well I don't know what analysts were expecting, but even some people who were not expecting a completely new product might have been expecting bigger-deal features for Leopard (beyond what was previously announced). I mean, stacks and transparent menus are cool, but not game-changers for Apple.

 

The game-changers in Leopard are more the underlying technologies and features and how it moves things forward in terms of what the OS itself can do, and what third party apps will be able to do.

-Zadillo

 

Precisely. Things like full 64bit & Core Animation will open the doors for what developers can do. Just the little bits of Core Animation Apple has shown is really mind-boggling.

 

I think some of the secret features may still be held back...until October, when Leopard is near shipping. Then again, Leopard is supposed to be "fully-featured" in a beta form for the developers already...

Because I don't think Apple would want to talk about these ultra-cool features, have all this hype and then have some of the hype die off by the time October comes around...

By the way, the Apple website's been updated.

 

Nah, they can't spring anything else on users or devs at this point. As it is, the whole point of WWDC is to deliver a feature complete beta so devs can actually start working on it and have time to have apps ready.

 

Yeah. I think that some people who were hoping for "everything and the kitchen sink" announcement might have been looking for the wrong thing.

Honestly, ideally, the point of the OS is supposed to be to lay the framework for third party apps.

I mean, as it is, I certainly use OS X partly because of the OS itself, but more specifically because of the kinds of cool stuff people use with OS X's components to develop really slick apps (like Panic Software's new "Coda" app).

What excites me most isn't the specific "features" of Leopard (although I do like stuff like Spaces), but the underlying frameworks that I know creative third parties will use to create all sorts of cool stuff.

Heck, just going back to when Mac OS X 10.4 came out. The "least exciting" feature of it was Core Image, probably, but it's proven to be the framework for some of the coolest third party apps in terms of functionality and appearance.

 

I know that, but that stuff (64-bit, core animation, etc.) was announced previously. No additional game-changers were announced today.

Like Sam, I'm still wondering if Apple's "holding something back". I'm not betting on it or anything...