Ah, another year, another WWDC. This year’s keynote centered on Leopard, the next big update to Mac OS X. Secondary topics centered on Safari and iPhone (of course). I’m going to spare you a lengthy introduction and jump right into the heart of the matter.

Leopard

That’s it? Those are the top secret features we’ve been waiting for? A tweaked Finder and Dock? A transparent menubar? Okay, okay, I know that there are still a lot of Leopard features that we have yet to see, but Apple has had two chances to show us the big ticket features. I’ll basically echo the general assessment I made regarding Leopard from WWDC 2006: meh.

As far as this section goes, I will only discuss things that have changed in Leopard since we saw it last year (or that I have enough to go off to make anything remotely close to resembling an opinion), otherwise I’ll end up repeating a lot of what I said before.

The “New” Desktop

Oh come now, Steve; don’t give me a see-through menubar, a Dock with even more eye candy, and one new feature—stacks—and tell me that it’s a new desktop. A new desktop is a paradigm shift. A new desktop is a change on the same magnitude of Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. This is a minor refresh at best. The new menubar gets honorable mention for the Leopard “What were they thinking?” award, right behind the overdone Time Machine starfield.

Okay, let’s start with…
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Based off of Jeff Han’s multitouch technology, Microsoft has developed a new platform of computing, which they are calling Surface (codenamed “Milan"). This revolutionary technology surrounds the concept of being able to touch your computing. The multitouch technology is most simply a glorified touch screen, one that can sense multiple touches, including movement. As can be seen from the early conceptual video by Jeff Han, the use of the technology is nearly endless. We have already seen it in the iPhone, slated for release next month.

Microsoft has taken it a step forward by putting it into a coffee table. Quite seriously however, Microsoft has really raised the bar by integrating wireless technology and the ability to simply place a device on the surface and transfer files to it tirelessly by dragging it to the device itself, right on the surface. Be sure to check out the entire video at Popular Mechanics. Microsoft is going to be selling the technology initially for commercial use, as in hotels. It will cost around $5k-$10k, possibly by the end of 2007, so keep your eyes out!

If history has taught us anything, it’s that most tech companies don’t play well with others. In this way, they are a lot like teenage girls or film producers. Sure, they work together because they have to, but none of them ever seem very happy about it. This helps to explain why the buying public is so often forced to choose between products and media formats that are generally incompatible with each other in every possible way. Often times, this incompatibility is engineered and thrust upon us by the competing companies as a way to ensure that they won’t have to share any more than necessary. So here we are, yet again, this time looking at two major formats vying to replace your stack of DVDs and show you everything you didn’t know you’d been missing: HD DVD and Blu-ray.

I should state right off the bat that I do not own any players or titles from either camp, although in my defense I’m pretty sure nobody else does either. In fact, that’s one of the many problems faced by supporters of both formats, but we’ll get into that later. In preparation for this article, I went to the local electronics store to check out as much as I could in person and I will be discussing my findings. For the most part, however, I’m going to be focusing more on the factors involved in the current format wars¹, as well as a little historical perspective.

In the coming years, Blu-ray…
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Note: this is not a full review, not even close. I’ve toyed with Coda, but only enough to present you with my first impressions, so take this with a grain of salt.

For a while now I’ve dabbled with web design. I’ve built up a pretty decent knowledge of XHTML and CSS—not expert, but I at least have a clue as to what I’m doing. Currently I use two applications for the majority of my web development: SubEthaEdit and CSSEdit. Both have fulfilled my needs quite well, and I’d go so far as to say that SubEthaEdit and CSSEdit are a couple of my favorite Mac OS X apps. But now there’s a new kid in town: Coda by Panic. Panic positions Coda as a one-stop web-development shop; using Coda, you can edit your code, your stylesheets, organize your files, preview rendered pages, connect to your server via a Terminal, and even access reference guides. Hell, you can even share files and collaborare, just like SubEthaEdit (Coda is based on the same collaboration engine as SubEthaEdit).

I think I just wet my pants.

Okay, it sounds like a great idea, and I think it can be implemented very well, but somehow I find Coda to be, well, lacking. The user interface is beautiful, for one, though I definitely see some “delicious generation” influence. This surprises me to an extent, because Panic’s software is typically attractive yet understated. Transmit is a beautifully thought-out and attractive piece of software, and it does so…
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Search in Windows Vista has been an interesting beast for anyone who followed Vista during the Longhorn years. First it was going to be pervasive throughout the system to the point of making the user folders (Documents, Music, etc.) virtual folders (smart folders, for those who know the Mac version of them.) Slowly and without mention, the search features were brought back into a more manageable feature set. One facet of the old search that remained through to Vista final was called Stacks.

Bill is just your average, run of
the mill guy, worth a trifling
$50 billion

Few people know how stacks work, or even what to do with them. Stacks have received minimal press coverage, and no one really seems to know or care about them. They are neat, but not even Microsoft really explained them enough to get people interested. Luckily, they fit well into the whole desktop metaphor that most modern operating systems have at least a minimal base in, so figuring them out wasn’t too much of a challenge.

To understand stacks in the digital sense, one must think back to a physical desk. Let’s say that Bill works in an office in the time before computers. Let’s say that Bill wants to temporarily organize all of his memos in a folder marked “Floor 4 Correspondence” by the date sent. What’s the most logical thing to do? Arrange them into stacks. Stacks are just a quick way to organize files based on a trait, such as…
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