Since Apple switched to OS X, just seven years ago, they have had 5 major releases of the Operating System as well as about 5 smaller releases per major release.  That is at least 20 updates to the operating system in seven years.  How many updates have the other guys done in that amount of time?

Each major release of Leopard brought with it at least 300 new features on average.  This is where OS X 10.6, code named Snow Leopard at the moment, will be different.

Here is a quote from Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s Senior VP of Software Engineering.

“We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering in the statement released by Apple. “In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world’s most advanced operating system.”

In my honest opinion, and really I’m trying not to be biased because I like the Mac so much, Leopard was an astounding “polishing” release of OS X.  Even though Apple managed to jam in another 300 or so features into Leopard when it was release, and even though they’ve refined many of these features since it was release in 3 separate updates, I still think Leopard has a fair amount of focus on efficiency, security, and polish.  Obviously Mr. Serlet doesn’t feel the same way.

I’m really looking forward to what Snow Leopard will bring.  Macworld is reporting that one major difference is that it will support “groundbreaking amounts of RAM”.  Well, that piques my interest.  But no matter what, I think that hitting the brakes to focus on Core in software development is not only rare in this business, but very refreshing.

Source: Macworld: Apple confirms OS X Snow Leopard.

Safari on Leopard. Screenshot by Skitch.

When I jotted down my wishes for Safari in Leopard I quickly mentioned the things I’d like to see changed and/or added in Safari to become my default browser full time.

That was then, this is now

Several of my opinions have changed a little since then, so I’ll go through those really quick first.

My stance has change completely regarding Apple’s decision to place the “Default Browser” preference within Safari’s preference panels. I wrote:

“This “feature” definitely gets on the nerves of many and really I can’t figure out why this resides in here. [...] …but this does not mean that this is the proper location for this preference. What if I uninstalled Safari?”

I now feel this is the best possible place for this preference and I couldn’t see it residing anywhere else. In fact, I think that all applications which rely on being a “default” for any protocols should handle these preferences the same way applications do with regards to filetypes. Photoshop has a preference setting for being the default application for opening JPG files as does Apple’s Preview application. Firefox, Safari, Camino and their ilk should do the very same when it comes to handling the various hypertext protocols that browsers typically utilize. Not only do I now feel that Safari should have this preference built-in, I believe all other browsers should do the same.

Just quickly; Me wanting multiple feed detection might be against spec. I have to do some research on this (not that I wouldn’t mind having the option still) but I’ll report on this in the future. (please see Update #2 below)

Onto features.

One of the things I wanted most was a searchable history. I’m a bit of a pack rat when it comes to my browser’s history (I keep about 120 days worth, see: my history in Camino) and so I like being able to quickly search it based on not just the URL but also the page’s title.

This is something that has been available in Camino for quite some time and I found myself using it a lot.

I’m happy to say that this is built into Safari and works as well, if not better, than it does in the latest Camino build that I was using. I had some people ask me if Camino slowed down the more history items were in it and the answer is yes. Browsing doesn’t slow down but URL lookup does. In Safari I’ve yet to see the lookup slowing down at all.

The other feature, which sadly did not make the cut in Safari on Leopard, that I wanted to see was bookmark keywords. Sure, I could use Spotlight to search my bookmarks but I liked having short words that I could type into the location field without using my mouse to find the bookmark in the menu or typing in the entire URL. For instance: ‘mysql’ was one of my keywords for a bookmark that took me to my phpMyAdmin installation on one of my servers, the URL of which spanned some 75 characters and the bookmark relating to it lies nested about four steps down. This is the thing I miss most when using Safari in Camino’s stead.

I’m not going to do a feature-by-feature review of Safari on Leopard because so many have done it better than I ever could. But I will say this: during my short stint with Safari so far, the only thing I’m now missing is bookmark keywords. I recommend giving it a spin.

Update: Something that I forgot to mention but was just reminded of while I was using Google Reader; clicking on a link from iChat, for instance, which is not currently loaded in Safari will result in a new tab with that URL. Perfect. However, as my friend Kyle Neath said to me last night:

“1. Can’t force target=blank to open in a new tab for some reason”

I never really had much issue with this because I can just “command”+click on a link and it will open in a new tab. Bad part is, this doesn’t work when using Google Reader’s default keyboard shortcuts. So I’m presented with a new window everytime I hit ‘V’ to view the original post.

Does anyone have a workaround for this?

Update #2: November 12th, 2007 – Another thing I had wanted was for Safari to handle multiple feed URLs and I thought this was against spec. I was wrong. And boy am I happy to say that I was wrong and it turns out that Safari does indeed handle this just fine out of the box. My friend Josh Pigford has more on theappleblog.com about this.

By design most modern Operating Systems allow each user to save an innumerable amount of options. Not only can we manage our own directories, system level options, and per-application preferences – we’re also able to customize the look and feel of the Operating System without changing it for another user of the same system.

This has been true for nearly every OS since I began using computers in 1994.

Yet, even the very latest, cutting-edge version of the Mac OS is unable to change a few of these preferences based on my current location. Sure it remembers the passwords to access the wifi networks I have encountered in my journeys – but I need something more. I need to be able to add location-based preferences for things like mounting drives, SMTP servers in Mail.app, and per-directory file permissions to name a few.

Any Operating System designed to run on portable devices, like my Macbook, should have these types of things built-in without the need to search for third-party solutions.

1. Backup your entire drive. Some good tips for this step can be found in John Gruber’s “I believe in Murphy’s Law“. In short; create a bootable backup of your hard drive before you install any operating system upgrade.
2. Uninstall anything non-Leopard compatible. There are many applications that you probably have that you could keep, because you know that it will be updated at some point, however there are others that start when your computer boots up that it’d be a good idea to ditch. The first of these may be Unsanity’s Application Enhancer (APE). Either remove this using these instructions or update it to the latest version. Another would be to rename your DivXNetworks folder in your /Library/Application Support/ folder. Doing these two things will ensure that your installation process will go much smoother.
3. Free up enough space. Leopard is going to need somewhere between 6 and 9 Gigabytes of free space in order to install. Leopard won’t actually take that much space once installed, but it will need at least this much space in order to complete the installation.
4. Plug in your computer. If your using a laptop computer I would advise having your computer plugged in during installation. The installation will take the better part of an hour in most cases so you’ll want to be sure to have enough juice. This may seem like a no-brainer but, for some, it isn’t.
5. Have a way to search Google handy. I hope all of your installations go as well as my Macbook’s install but incase they do not, have some way to search Google for solutions handy. There are thousands of people upgrading Leopard or have already done so within these first few days since its release and you can easily leverage their experiences to make yours better.

I’ll be doing a short write-up about Leopard sometime in the next few days but here is the short version; I am in love.

MeToday: June 11, 2007

So I’ve been catching some flack over my MeToday photo that, more or less, described my feelings towards the WWDC Keynote on Monday. Perhaps I’m overreacting, perhaps I’m being a little overly critical, or maybe I just needed more sleep, but the fact remains — I am not alone in my thinking that this latest Keynote wasn’t what we all thought it would be.

If you haven’t watched the Keynote, or weren’t fixated on the coverage during it, I suggest you watch it and then come back and read this post – because I’m not going to recap what Steve Jobs covered, but more cover what I think was sorely missing which lead to my disappointment. If you’d like my thoughts on what was announced, I suggest reading Michael Heilemann‘s “WWDC 07 fallout” post which nearly reiterates my thoughts on the what was announced during the Keynote.

That which went missing

The days leading up to any keynote by Apple’s CEO are always filled with rumors of new products or services that Apple will announce. These generally range from iPods that will do your laundry to cloaks that make you invisible like Harry Potter. Though Harry made an appearance in this keynote – no cloaks were added to the Apple Store. A lot of times this rumor-mongering builds up the expectation to such a level that, no matter what Apple introduces, those expectations are ultimately let down. However, I do not want anyone to believe that I “expected the unexpected” and was thus let down by the contents of the keynote. On the contrary, I think nearly everything that was mentioned in the keynote was, in a word, great — but I definitely feel a few things were missing from the keynote and that is why I reacted the way that I did.

Ok, so there was one rumor that, in the end, let me down. The iPhone SDK isn’t really an SDK at all – which only lets me down from a “user” perspective since my Cocoa-foo is lacking to say the least. No, I don’t want to build Cocoa apps for the iPhone – but I know a few developers who I would have loved to have the opportunity to do so. Yes, I like the fact that Apple is providing hooks into the iPhone’s core system via OS X services that can be “called” via the Web. Yes, I will build a few “iPhone applications” for my own personal use – but there is something I’m not happy about. Speed, responsiveness, and local caching on the iPhone will all become a factor with having 3rd party web apps be the only way that the iPhone can be developed for. Most of my time is spent near wifi (by necessity currently) but when I’m accessing the web over AT&T’s network I imagine that my mobile version of NetNewsWire is going to suck. Google Gears for iPhone plz?

Where was the latest version of iLife? While watching the keynote during MacWorld in January I was sitting on the edge of my seat, waiting for Steve to announce iLife 07 and give a preview of the enhancements made to, what has become, my most used suite of applications on any platform. Nothing. Surely another opportunity to let us iLife-faithful know what is in store for the next versions of the applications wouldn’t slip by. Obviously, iLife 07 is destined to become Leopard-only (which I’m fine with) – and perhaps the keynote had a “bigger agenda” for this conference, but even announcing that an update is coming might have quenched my thirst.

One might argue that WWDC is not the platform for announcing consumer products but rather is focused on showing off features that developers would find most interesting and valuable. Good argument. But that doesn’t mean that Steve couldn’t show how iLife takes advantage of the new Core Animation API in Leopard to allow a much richer experience when sorting your photos in iPhoto, or how iMovie can burn HD DVDs (or something). Of course I could argue the point further that the new movie listing Dashboard widget being released in Leopard (oh thank God this was a top-ten feature of Leopard, gives me a lot of faith in the other 290+ features) is much more a consumer product than a developer one.

I also wanted to see updates to .Mac since Steve Jobs mentioned at D5 All Things Digital that we should expect updates to this service soon. No, he didn’t say that they’d be announced at WWDC – but still. .Mac is falling behind and really needs a shot in the arm. I’ve only used 60 day trials of .Mac – but I did like being able to use it during those times. However, with free and better alternatives available – there is almost no reason to use .Mac besides greater system-level integration. I’d love to see a partnership between Google and Apple on integrating .Mac with Google’s offerings. Having close ties with Google Docs, Maps, Gmail, and several other Google services inside of Leopard – via .Mac somehow – would be great to see. Obviously it would save Apple the need to reinvent the wheel – and with Google’s open APIs it wouldn’t be that hard for Apple to put some really slick interfaces ontop of these great services (like they did for Maps on the iPhone). Perhaps this is wishful thinking since Apple makes a fair amount of cash from .Mac subscriptions – but I’d also love to see .Mac go free as another pull to switch to the Macintosh and have the best system level integration with web services on any operating system.

Something new! In January Steve mentioned that they had to keep wraps over a few of the Leopard features because they didn’t want Redmond’s photo copiers to start early. Fair enough. But he couldn’t have been talking about Stacks or the movie widget, was he? Obviously Time Machine and Core Animation are Leopard’s most notable features (from my perspective). I’m sure there are a ton of advancements under-the-hood being that Leopard has been in active development for 21 months! And maybe, just maybe, we won’t know of the best features until we install it – but I really thought Steven built-up the expectations there a bit and never really came through with anything bigger than what he had mentioned in January. This isn’t to say that I’m not just as excited to update my operating system as I was in January, just that I thought there was going to be “one more thing” worth noting about Leopard.

So to recap. I’m pretty happy with what was shown in the keynote. I’m just a little disappointed with what I thought was missing in it.