Having used Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, for some time now, I thought I’d record some of my general impressions, as well as list a few of the things that I’d like to see in the next major update (yes, I know it’s still a long way off!).

Whilst not as revolutionary as the previous major Mac OS release, which introduced Spotlight searching and Widgets to the world, Leopard does have a bunch of genuinely useful new features — the most conspicuous of these being Time Machine, Stacks and Spaces. The latter I find to be particularly useful in organising my desktop since it allows different applications to be placed in different virtual ‘spaces’, making it easier to multitask without having too much distracting clutter lying around. Spaces is particularly good if you are using a machine with a smaller display size, such as a laptop, as it effective multiplies the size of your available desktop by a factor of n. With characteristic Apple style, transitions between virtual workspaces take place with an elegant ‘swoosh’ as windows zoom out of the way to reveal the new space whilst icons in the underlying Finder window remain static. It’s a nice touch, and like other visual effects in Leopard I sometimes find myself invoking the feature just to admire the visuals (sad, I know!). Time Machine is particularly stunning with the background starfield and spiralling clouds of mist being a pleasure to behold!

Aside from the major headline features, there are a host of more minor changes lurking beneath the surface. Indeed, there seem to be few features and applications that have escaped some kind of user interface or functionality makeover in OS X 10.5. Some of those I particularly like include the way that the Disk Utility now allows partition sizes to be adjusted dynamically without having to reformat your entire drive (although for some reason this doesn’t seem to interact well with the Boot Camp partition process — not that I would want to run Windows on my Mac anyway!), the new multi-threaded Finder which no longer hangs when you become disconnected from another server or try to eject your iDisk (a godsend if you regularly work with multiple computers), the ability to connect to and browse other machines directly from any Finder window (which is so intuitive that wonder why it didn’t always work this way!), screen sharing in the Finder and iChat (very slick and great for administering remote computers), much faster Spotlight searching, plus minor changes the printing system that make it a lot more polished and user friendly.

Some of the other user interface changes are more subtle, such as the fact that clicking on an inactive application now just activates it rather than placing the cursor, just like it did in the old days (although this still seems to vary somewhat between apps). The new unified window appearance gives a more professional look to the user interface and, even though I miss the old brushed metal appearance, the new look is pleasantly clean and functional, and closely matches the aluminium enclosures of the latest Macs. There are still some discrepancies in toolbar styles though, with Mail and Preview sporting ugly lozenge-shaped buttons whilst Safari retains its own unique look, but in general Leopard gives the impression of a solid, finished and mature operating system, unlike previous releases which have always seemed a little toy-like. Gone are the old pin-striped menus and modal dialogues, replaced with a new frosted glass look, which is a nice touch and somewhat reminiscent of Windows Vista. The translucent menu bar takes a bit of getting used to, but I have to say that I think the Apple designers made the right call here as it focuses attention back on where it ought to be: on the contents of your documents. Even the subtle ‘lights’ on the dock to show currently running applications work well and are easy to pick out when you need to whilst not unduly distracting from the work in hand. The fact that they look like lights also makes you want to quit unused applications more regularly so that your Dock isn’t lit up like a Christmas tree — a nice visual prompt to help you cut down on virtual memory usage!

Every major release of an OS has an effect on the overall ‘feel’ of the operating system, and in this OS X Leopard is no exception. My general impression is of a much more businesslike and serious OS, which makes me wonder whether Apple are deliberately targeting the corporate market in order to expand their user base (the design and pricing of the new MacBook Air would tend to confirm this hypothesis). Visually, the use of a lot more black in the form of popup windows and head-up displays gives Leopard a much darker and more menacing appearance than any of its predecessors — something which is exacerbated when using the new iMac, which has a strong black border around its distinctly cinematic display. And, for the first time, the corners of the screen are actually square, rather than the more aesthetically pleasing rounded corners that have graced all previous releases of Mac OS. How times have changed! If I was to be really picky then I’d say that Leopard looks slightly less pixel-perfect than Tiger, which gave the impression of having been lovingly hand-crafted, although you quickly get used to the new look. I suspect that this may have something to do with the new resolution independent technology, support for which is currently more or less invisible, but which will eventually allow windows to be zoomed in and out without any loss of resolution — 3D desktop windows anybody? Some of the new menu bar icons suggest that Leopard is also designed to work with much lower resolution displays, which may offer some clues as to what Apple has planned for 2008 and beyond…

I’d like to finish this post with a personal wish-list of things that didn’t make it into Leopard, but that I hope to see in a future release of Mac OS X, although no doubt that will not appear until well into next year. Some of these are — in my opinion, at least — no brainers whilst others would just make Mac OS X just that little bit nicer to use. In general, it’s difficult to know where Apple will go from here since OS X Leopard just seems so, well, finished, but no doubt we’ll see some exciting innovations driven by new form factors and technologies such as the advent of full-size multi-touch displays and trackpads, which will augment if not totally replace the traditional methods of user interaction, such as the mechanical keyboard and mouse that have become ubiquitous since the early days of desktop computing at the famous Xeroc PARC.

1. •Animations everywhere! The addition of Core Animation to Mac OS X should make it easy to add lots more sexy looking animations to the OS and bundled application, creating a much more fluid and enjoyable user experience not dissimilar to the new iPhone / iPod touch. In particular, I’d like to see windows ‘float’ into view front when they gain input focus, animated window zooming effects, animated dock icon for commonly performed actions (sending/receiving mail, iCal alarms, Time Machine backups, Safari downloads, etc.), page turning effects in Preview, Safari and elsewhere, Finder windows visible ‘growing’ or ‘shrinking’ toolbar icons and sidebar whenever the toolbar button is clicked, subtly animated desktop backgrounds (I wouldn’t mind having Time Machine as my desktop background!), plus the reinstatement of the old Front Row entry and exit animations (why ever did they take these out?!).
   

2. •Desktop widgets. Since the addition of widgets in Tiger, I’ve wanted to be able to drag or ‘pin’ certain widgets (e.g. a clock or calculator) to my desktop just like any other application window.* Whilst the idea of placing widgets in their own separate workspace is great for avoiding desktop clutter, sometimes I’d like a widget to be visible all the time. This could easily be added to the existing UI by allowing a user to grab hold of a widget with the mouse before exiting Dashboard, in the same way that ordinary windows can be dragged between multiple spaces, leaving it ‘pinned’ to the desktop. Additionally, by holding down a certain key combination (Command-Option?), little ‘pin’ icons could appear at the top-left corner of each widget, just like the ‘close’ icons that appear when you hold down the Option key, that could be selected to achieve the same effect. In both cases, desktop widgets would be pinned to the currently active Space, allowing multiple workspaces to be configured with a different different widgets, each of which would be opened automatically at system startup.
   

3. •Document ‘piles’. In addition to having folders display as ‘stacks’ in the dock, it would be great if other folders could also be displayed in this way within the Finder so that you can easily see their content without having to open them directly. Pressing the spacebar would expand the stack, or ‘pile’, to show its contents, similar how that Quick View currently works but with multiple documents, allowing items to be opened by clicking on them, or browsing deeper into the hierarchy. This technique has already been patented by Apple a while back, so it seems like ‘stacks’ might just be the first step towards implementing such document ‘piles’ within the Mac OS X Finder.
   

4. •Full FTP support in Finder. Why this hasn’t been done already I don’t know, but I would really like to be able to upload files to an FTP server directly from the Finder. Yes, I know there are third-party utilities that allow you to do this, but there really isn’t any excuse for not having it supported directly by the Finder, especially since it already allows you to browse the contents of remote servers via FTP and SFTP. Come on Apple, you know it makes sense!
   

5. •Zoomable 3D windows. This is a biggie. Imagine that your desktop workspace was three dimensional and you could ‘push’ windows down into the screen and them ‘pull’ them back to the front when you wanted to work with them. It would be like having a live Exposé workspace where each window could be independently resized not just in terms of width and height but in terms of its ‘depth’ within the 3D workspace. The addition of resolution independence to OS X makes this a real possibility and opens up a whole range of new approaches for user interaction. Coupled with a multi-touch display or trackpad, this kind of interface will undoubtedly make a huge difference to the way that we interact with computers. I just hope that we see it on Mac OS X first!
   

6. •Menu bar auto-hiding. I’m not really sure whether this is a good idea or not, but I’d like to be able to hide the system menu bar completely and have it automatically scroll into view when the mouse touches the relevant side of the display. Just like the system Dock, the menu bar could be configured to appear on any side of the screen, freeing up valuable screen space, although by default the menu would be constantly visible at the top of the display as usual. This suggestion is reminiscent of the way that the menu bar on the old Commodore Amiga would automatically pop into existence when the right-mouse button was held down, which I always thought was quite a nice convention, and there seems to be no particular reason why the menu bar should be constantly visible other than by convention.
   

7. •Better support for non-American spoken language. Is it really necessary for the built-in voices to have an American accent? And why is there no text-to-speech and speech-to-text support for international languages? Worse still, I find that I have to speak with an American accent in order for the built-in speech software to understand me — i.e. “what is the taahm?” instead of “what is the time?” — which makes it worse than useless! It’s embarrassing enough to find yourself talking to a computer, but to have to put on a silly voice to do so is just insulting! In these days of internationalisation, it’s about time Mac OS X learned to talk in or understand an English (or Scottish!) accept, as opposed to American, not to mention being fluent in German, French, Spanish, etc…
   

8. •Unified software update interface. The built-in software update facility of Mac OS X is great, but I’d like to see it extended to third-party applications as well. As it stands, each application has to implement its own software update facility, with the automatic checking for updates being configured and run independently, which can be a real nuisance (“a new version of Application X is available — would you like to install it now?”) . It would be much better if Apple operated some kind of application registry by which third-party apps could notify users that a new version is available via the existing Software Update utility, with downloads automatically taking place from the relevant server and being installed from a single app. This would make it much easier to keep your system up-to-date, reducing the number of annoying pop-ups that appear due to running old versions of software.
   

9. •Integrate iChat buddies list. Why oh why oh why do my iChat contact have to appear in separate windows? I want to be able to see all of my contacts simultaneously within a single window (or menu) and to be able to contact them via my preferred messaging system (selected by dragging them into order) via a double-click. Is that really too much to ask?
   

10. •Voice and/or face recognition. Maybe this is a bit far-fetched, but wouldn’t it be great if you could log in using just your voice, or by your Mac recognising you via its built-in iSight camera? iChat could update your status to reflect whether you are sitting in front of the computer or not, and the OS could prompt you to switch users whenever it recognises somebody different. This wouldn’t be the most secure method of authentication, but perfectly adequate for general home use, and incredibly cool for demos!
    

11. •Peer-to-peer synchronisation. Finally, I’d love to be able to sync the contents of my iTunes library, photo albums, iWeb sites and other content between multiple Macs on my local network. Dot-Mac synchronisation is great for bookmarks, calendars and addresses, but it can’t really handle the large volumes of data required to keep media libraries in sync. Given that most (although not all) people using multiple Macs do so within a single LAN, it would make sense to allow such data to be synchronised peer-to-peer, much like contents of your iPod or Apple TV can be synchronised with your main computer via USB, Firewire or a wireless network. At the moment such content needs to be copied across manually, which is time consuming and inefficient. The ability to keep the contents of a local folder synchronised with a remote one via AFP, FTP or WebDAV straight from the Finder would also be a welcome addition, although one I suspect we’re unlikely to see any time soon since it negates much of the benefit of Apple’s existing .Mac offering (Windows briefcases anyone?). If Apple wants to be really sneaky, it could still make use of .Mac to register synchronisation information, but with the actual file transfers taking place directly from machine to another whenever they are connected together via a network connection (or even via the Internet via the ‘Back to my Mac’ facility, although that might be a bit slow). I’ve already suggested this one to Apple, so we’ll see if anything comes of it… Roll on Mac OS X Lynx, or whatever big cat they choose to name it after!
    

*It seems that this is already possible. See here for details.