WWDC Notes

Herre’s the serious overview from Steve Job’s talk at WWDC earlier today.

In regard to the brushed metal interface, that’s now officially dead alongside OS 9. All main windows will have a consistent look and the menubar will look slightly transparent. There will be some new tools for managing the clutter on the desktop. The Finder has changed dramatically, it will now seem a bit more like the current 10.4 iTunes. New views are added that will help the basic use extend well. Cover-Flow and scrolling information on files is included in the changes. Icons now contain controls for movies and scrolling though multi-page documents. Of course, QuickLook adds lots of preview capability to the Finder. The Finder’s sidebar has gotten a massive update, it will be able to have live Spotlight-based searches. Spotlight (as already known) can now search on network-mounted servers. The Dock now has a smoother interface. Folders in the Dock will open a “stacks” that show their contents across the desktop. All of these features certainly fit into the category of “Secret Features” since none of them have been leaked since Job’s last Leopard demo. But, we will need to wait until we use 10.5 for weeks to see if any of these secret new features actually are worthwhile. One interesting point, though not tied straight to 10.5, is that Safari will be released as a Windows app as well as a Mac OS X app when Leopard is released.

Well, that was my main overview of Steve Job’s keynote. The source for this overview was mainly an article up at ARS Technica. Enjoy, Alex