Yes, I know not everything was shown in today’s keynote.

Yes, I know Apple has some top secret goodies waiting for us.

But that didn’t change my initial reaction: meh. What Jobs and Company showed us today did little to impress me, Time Machine aside. I can only hope that these “Top Secret” new features really live up to the hype. Anyway, here are my initial thoughts on what we did see today. It’s late, I’m tired, and have to get to work early in the morning (and as you can guess, the sense of humor isn’t up to making snide jokes at the moment), so I’ll keep this short.

64-bit

Not much to see here; it’s pretty self-explainatory. I try to avoid MS-bashing in my blog, but I just have to wonder; how is it Apple can put together one version of Mac OS X for x86 and x64 (64-bit x86) which handles both 32- and 64-bit applications just fine while MS has to rely on two separate editions of Windows to get the job done? Granted, Apple has yet to actually ship Leopard, and for all we know there may be separate editions in the end, so this is a little unfair.

Time Machine

Insert some lame Back to the Future joke here, please.

When I first heard about Time Machine in the various live text feeds, I was under the impression that it was simply a versioning system for OS X with some backup features--think .mac Backup. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it’ll back up my entire system. w00t. I suck at backing up; I do it only when my system shows signs of trouble, but if Time Machine makes it as painless as it is positioned to be by Apple, then I have no excuse. Not that I have an excuse as it is, aside from laziness and being too cheap to buy an external hard drive, that is. Of course the second one won’t fly being I plunked down over $1300 on a new MacBook and AppleCare a couple weeks ago. If I have enough to buy a new computer I should have enough to buy an external hard drive (or so I hope!).

I do have to wonder what the friggin’ starfield’s doing in the background. That just struck me as being a little silly.

Mail

Stationary is slick. Notes seem a bit odd being tossed into an app called Mail. Yes, I know Outlook and Entourage do the same thing, but they’re not called “Mail”! Not that it matters; iCal’s been sitting in my Dock for years and goes untouched more often than not; Stickies gets used even less so. I suck at organizing stuff. Oh, the media browser’s a nice touch. How about making that available as a system-wide service, Apple?

All-in-all a nice update, though nothing earth-shattering.

iChat

Okay, this is going to sound weird, but this is the first time I’ve actually gotten excited over an IM client. I for one can’t wait to use the collaboration/desktop sharing features of iChat. I’ve tried using SubEthaEdit’s collaboration features, but it tends to be flaky over the internet in my experience. Theater seems to be a cool idea, though I probably wouldn’t use it that often. And although gimmicky, the background and Photo Booth effects just might be amusing. To quote an old edition of The Macintosh Bible, “This is the Mac. it’s supposed to be fun."*

Spaces

The idea of multiple desktops is nothing new, and it isn’t something I personally have ever taken to (though Pilky has), but I do like the fact that you can drag windows from one desktop space to another. I’m curious about whether it’s limited to four spaces or if that’s customizable.

Dashboard

Okay, letting users make clippings of web pages and adding a few more widgets is well and good. But how about the ability to stick widgets on the desktop? On the other hand, I can’t wait to play with DashCode.

Spotlight

Boolean operations. Yay. Works across networked Macs and servers. Sweet. It sounds like Spotlight is being filled out more from its Tiger implementation, which does have some shortcomings. But would it have killed them to do a demo? And what was with that blue Spotlight icon in the Dock during the keynote for? Let the rumor-mongering begin! Why must you torture us so, Apple?

iCal

The keynote didn’t cover nearly enough about iCal for me to even comment. Next.

Accessibility

Being a sighted person, I have little use for VoiceOver, but I have seen where VoiceOver in Tiger has opened up computing for those with visual disabilities. Leopard can only improve upon an already-solid base. And for the rest of us, a new text-to-speech voice is a nice perk.

Core Animation

I’m no programmer, but I have some experience with the power of some of the other “Core” technologies (creating a Core Data-based app is absurdly simple, by the way). While Core Animation was only briefly touched on, anything that cuts the amount of work a programmer has to do by 90% is a good thing in my book. At first glance Core Animation seems to have little practical application aside from screen savers, but I could totally see this end up being leveraged in the next version of Motion or some of Apple’s other pro video software.

Other stuff

Steve just wasn’t himself. I am not the only one who feels this way. Here’s hoping Steve was only a little under the weather (I haven’t been at 100% either lately), and that it’s nothing serious.

At an rate, the user interface is largely unchanged from Tiger’s, but it’s still early, and maybe a little stability in the UI isn’t such a bad thing. It would be nice if Apple did make up its mind as far as brushed metal goes, already. I want to see more about the Finder; it needs a little helps, especially in the UI behavior consistency department.

And am I the only one who finds the girl in the video chat in this promo screenshot to be rather cute?

That’s all I have for now, I think. I just really hope that Apple does have a lot more up its sleeve. Only five months until Macworld!

*Naiman, Arthur et. al. The Macintosh Bible, Fourth Edition. Berkeley: Peachpit Press, 1992.