Sure third part developers have been comming up with this shit for years. They get most of their ideas from apple since XP and linux out of the box is fugly.

This is the first time it has been implemented in an OS without hacks or third party BS. Which is revolutionary.

Granted alot of these featrues have been done before and I agree this was the most underwhelming of all WWDC hypes.

I come from Australia and for two glorious years we had ICQ then msn came out with cutesy features aimed at 13 year old girls and before long everybody in australia is using msn . iChat needs to have full suppport across all chat clients. Sure I can use a jabber hack portway etc. But I know longer find enjoyment in finding hacks and backdoors, or running spybot or renistalling my os every 3 months. ITs time comsuming aukward and not enjoyable. Thats why I use a mac now.

Yeah the two most useful things (mainly “time machine” and “spaces”) have been around in the computing world for at least 6 years under XP, the other 3 things can of course be approximated with software available for XP.”

Something like Time Machine has been available on XP, included with it, for at least 6 years? Are you referring to NTBackup – a program that can do incremental backups of the drive to another drive? How is its functionality anything like what is proposed in Time Machine? Time Machine is proposing in-line data recovery – no need to launch another app or anything like that. Also, where is NTBackup when the computer takes a shit? I tried installing Leopard on my iMac and it made a Time Machine backup of my drive beforehand. Lucky me, all 3 installs failed to yield a bootable OS. So I tried “recovery” -> Time Machine from the installer. My computer is now working perfectly fine. Can my XP box do that? No, it cannot. nothing is included with XP that can do that – Period. I would know, I am a computer technician with several years of experience and a degree in it. Nearly everything I work on is a XP or Server 2k/2k3 computer. Get your facts straight, bud, before you start spouting off all kinds of false claims about how XP had features like this.

The point of these features is not that they’re going to be super-different than what might have been seen in the Linux world or something of the like. The point is now they are part of the operating system and integrated in a seamless fashion, all designed by the same guys, so that the functionality of the system as a WHOLE feels logical. The problem with 3rd-party add-ons is that they typically do not ‘feel’ like they were programmed by the same guys who worked on the operating system.

but apple has proven many times that their implementation simply kicks all other’s ass.

you can call me a mac-fanboy, but i am one for a reason. os x is in terms of technology and user interface design way ahead of everything else.

linux is still ugly and too complicated for the average non-geek user and xp … i’m not even going to talk about that.

Visit http://www.bbcnews.com

Real stuff matters.

These are products, not religions. Can we get a grip?

If it’s an Mac topic, talk about Macs. A Linux topic, focus on Linux. Windows, focus on Windows.

Simple as! Stick to these, and we can all chill out a little more. I own a Mac, PC, and Linux machine. I like all three!

They don’t necessarily invent all of these new things, take the Apple II for instance. They didn’t invent the PC. But Apple’s innovation led the Apple II to be the best PC around.

The same is with OSX. Sure, not everything is a new technology. But they way Apple implements the existing technologies is INNOVATIVE.

For instance, iChat. Some were comparing the share-deskptop feature with VNC. I have VNC. My dad uses it because of his business and therefore my PC has it.

But since when is VNC easier than typing in someone’s screen name? It’s not! Sure it was around first, seeing as Leopard isn’t out yet obviously, but Apple does it better.

And that’s not saying that Apple doesn’t come up with their own things either. On the other hand, they aren’t copying and I don’t see why they should call others copycats.

Everyone should just shut up if you’re complaining that these 5 feautures are not ‘evolutionary.’ If you think that way then you’re missing the point completely.

Have a nice day!

-=|Mgkwho

Spaces? For crying out loud, these have been in Linux since around 2000. And with the recent XGL/Compiz (http://en.opensuse.org/Compiz), you can actually have these “spaces” on a 3D cube!

Dashboard? SuperKaramba (http://netdragon.sourceforge.net) has been around for a year or so now, and offers similar functionality to Dashboard.

Mail? Linux offers “Kontact” a intergrated PIM suite, with mail, addressbook, todo, calendar, RSS feeds, etc, and for that matter, Outlook has been around for ages anyway.

iChat? Take a look @ Gaim (http://gaim.sourceforge.net). It can connect to AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC and Jabber just to name a few, so now you can chat with friends who don’t have iChat.

Remote Control? That has been around for an age, with VNC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VNC) easily allowing you to do this.

And best of all, all of this is completely free and opensource, and will run on a computer a fraction of the cost of a Mac.

I really don’t see what there is to get excited about.I imagine that the 5 items listed are not evolutionary to most people who take the time to read this blog/column or whatever you choose to call it.

But, more importantly, to the average user of a Mac or a Windows machine these features will appear evolutionary. Term applies to the perception of the general audience not to the technology.

To most of my friends in the business community or in my social life they will see these as advances, even evolutionary advances, although we may not.

If you don’t like Apple’s new Leopard get off the pot and go shit on someone else’s blog

What would be great to know are actual OS related things like (for example).. Are they finally going to get rid of the hideous HFS filesystem (which is a bear to work with if you are integrating with any other non-apple system) Will they introduce ZFS?!

Its hard to call ‘adding backdrops to an IM application’ an “OS enhancement”.

Now almost nobody is comparing Win at OS X and all everybody’s going at “Linux is better”, “*nix had this feature since the civil war”

As any *nix OSses are readily usable by the average computer user and should be adopted straight away…

But at least people using Win has the decency to stop bragging about an OS that has serious functionality problems…

One step in the right direction, I would say

I’m 14…The about page is correct.

> Spaces? For crying out loud, these have been in Linux since around 2000. And with the recent XGL/Compiz (http://en.opensuse.org/Compiz), you can actually have these “spaces” on a 3D cube! Yeah, there’s virtual desktop software for Tiger too. None of it is new. I have a PC running XGL/Compiz… it looks fantastic, but I prefer my mac overall.

> Dashboard? SuperKaramba (http://netdragon.sourceforge.net) has been around for a year or so now, and offers similar functionality to Dashboard. Konfabulator was around for mac way back. I’m pretty sure they were the first.

> Mail? Linux offers “Kontact” a intergrated PIM suite, with mail, addressbook, todo, calendar, RSS feeds, etc, and for that matter, Outlook has been around for ages anyway. Mail is primarily a mail app. Previously, all of those features have been available in separate applications bundled with OS X (Address Book and iCal integrate well with Mail). They’re just now adding system wide todos, and throwing notes into mail. Oh and Kontact has a horrible UI, IMHO.

> iChat? Take a look @ Gaim (http://gaim.sourceforge.net). It can connect to AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC and Jabber just to name a few, so now you can chat with friends who don’t have iChat. Adium (uses Gaim libraries I think) for mac does all this too, it’s a fantastic open source app. iChat beats anything around for video conferencing though, and the whole remote presentations seems like a great idea.

> Remote Control? That has been around for an age, with VNC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VNC) easily allowing you to do this. And best of all, all of this is completely free and opensource, and will run on a computer a fraction of the cost of a Mac. I really don’t see what there is to get excited about. You can run VNC on a mac too. I disagree with your use of the word “easily”. iChat just means people don’t have to figure out ip addresses and such. A better comparison would be MSN Messenger for Windows, which allowed you to initiate screen sharing sessions.

And lest ye forget, those are only the first ten features.

Spaces? For crying out loud, these have been in Linux since around 2000. And with the recent XGL/Compiz (http://en.opensuse.org/Compiz), you can actually have these “spaces” on a 3D cube!

Dashboard? SuperKaramba (http://netdragon.sourceforge.net) has been around for a year or so now, and offers similar functionality to Dashboard.

Mail? Linux offers “Kontact” a intergrated PIM suite, with mail, addressbook, todo, calendar, RSS feeds, etc, and for that matter, Outlook has been around for ages anyway.

iChat? Take a look @ Gaim (http://gaim.sourceforge.net). It can connect to AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC and Jabber just to name a few, so now you can chat with friends who don’t have iChat.

Remote Control? That has been around for an age, with VNC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VNC) easily allowing you to do this.

And best of all, all of this is completely free and opensource, and will run on a computer a fraction of the cost of a Mac.

I really don’t see what there is to get excited about.