Open Thread: Leopard Preview

Submitted by Merlin on August 7, 2006 - 8:27am.

Apple - Apple - Mac OS X - Leopard Sneak Peek

Like most of you, I’m keeping an eye on today’s previewed features of the upcoming “Leopard” (OS X 10.5) release.

Looks like some interesting ideas – many of which, as usual, seem inspired by existing third-party products.

I think I’m most intrigued so far by the idea of “to-do” functionality from within Mail.app (thanks for the tip, Matt); let’s hope that also means I can deep link to a given email from my iCal task list. I also welcome the concept of built-in email templates – although I’m kind of bummed that they seem more focused on execrable 1999-style HTML emails than on the kind of functional time-savers found in the peerless MailTemplate.

To be honest, on ﬁrst blush – and I’m sure there’s much more to come by the time of release – this feels a bit cute and a little light on really revolutionary stuff (the long overdue promise of something like Time Machine notwithstanding). Stuff like (yet. more.) iLife integration is handy enough for the notional Swithcher and Grandpa Joe, but in general I guess I’m hoping for some serious power-user improvements to the core functionality. Maybe that’s just me.

What do you think? What’s “Yeah!” and what’s “Meh?” Anybody else holding out hope for some really deep Finder rewriting and more functional iCal updates?