Apple Mac OS X Leopard Previewed
Apple previewed Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard today at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. The sixth major version of Mac OS X, Leopard won't be available 'till spring 2007, but at least you can wet your appetite with some of the new features to come, including Time Machine, described as a "revolutionary new way to automatically back up and restore everything on your Mac", and Spaces, said to be a new way to instantly switch between groups of applications required for various tasks. New advancements in Mail and iChat include Stationery, Notes and To Dos in Mail. Also, new Photo Booth-style effects, allow you to “place” yourself in any photo or video as the backdrop for your chat, and live presentations of iPhoto slideshows, Keynote presentations and videos in iChat.
Additional features in Leopard include:
* full native 64-bit support that allows applications to take complete advantage of 64-bit processing while maintaining full performance and compatibility for existing 32-bit Mac OS X applications and drivers;
* enhancements to Boot Camp, Apple’s innovative technology that was previewed as a public beta in April 2006, making it possible to run Windows natively on Intel-based Macs
* Front Row, now available with all new Macs to play back digital content, including video Podcasts using the simple Apple remote
* Photo Booth, Apple’s fun-to-use application that lets users take quick snapshots with an iSight video camera, add entertaining visual effects with the touch of a button, and share them via email
* iCal 3 with group calendaring capabilities, event drop box, and standards-based CalDAV support
* improved Spotlight™ searching that’s even faster, provides richer previews, and lets users search across network mounted folders on other machines
* a new Movies Dashboard widget for movie times and Web Clip for clipping any part of a web page as a live widget
* new parental controls including curfews, time limits and remote administration
* Core Animation, a new graphics technology that makes it easy to create stunning visual effects and animations;
* major enhancements in Universal Access, including improvements in VoiceOver, Apple’s built-in screen reader
* security enhancements including anti-phishing protection in Mail and Safari™, and an automatic firewall that limits network resources available to an application
* new development tools, including Xcode® 3 with full 64-bit support, DashCode™, an easy way to create new Dashboard widgets without writing a line of code, and Xray, for optimizing application performance
