43 Folders

Back to Work

Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.

Join us via RSS, iTunes, or at 5by5.tv.

”What’s 43 Folders?”
43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

Open Thread: Leopard Preview

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?

Other coverage

Daniel's picture

My buddy and I, both...

My buddy and I, both eagerly clutching onto the edge of our seats while MacRumors.com kept updating, gave the Keynote two thumbs up in the end.

The Mac Pro and xServe announcements were expected, but still delightful. But the "taste" of Leopard was what really got us excited.

  • Time Machine seemed very nifty and welcome. This hit me as one of those "Duh, why don't more OSes have this?" features that looks like it'll be really indespensible and will lovingly just fall into my workflow without much attention from me. A lot like Expose or Dashboard (Yes, I use Dashboard - gasp).

  • We cringed a bit at the Mail templates announcement. On the one hand, if you're a grandma and her seven-year-old grandson, templates might be kinda cool and pretty appropriate. But for the rest of us: I fear a rash of overuse, in Comic Sans proportions. Iggh. Still, it's not bad for them to at least offer it.

  • The "system-wide" To Dos service seemed really promising, especially since any application can create one – and, if I understand right, iCal will collect them all. This might just be a good task manager for the "@Computer" context, though I don't see how it'd fully replace kGTD.

  • iChat Theater might be more of a blessing than we anticipate. Sure, it's got cool eye candy and innovation (self-learning background-changess? I had to go "whoa" at that, however useless it might be), but the idea of sharing a Keynote with someone over a video iChat really has me pondering the possibilities.

  • I'm crossing my fingers that there's much more drastic changes in store, too – changes that Steve Jobs lumped into the "Top Secret" category. And hopefully significant Finder improvements. It's interesting that most of the features previewed really do have existing third-party models that they're based on. Good for Apple to help prevent copycatting (though wouldn't THEY be copycatting third-party developers?), but not a very complete picture for us. Unless the whole "Top Secret" thing was a bluff.

This comment is entirely too long. But there was one more thing I noticed:

A very obvious lacking of the "One More Thing." Sure, we might get some iPod/movie store announcements in September, but not having a "One More Thing" at this? That's very, very wrong.

 
EXPLORE 43Folders THE GOOD STUFF

Popular
Today

Popular
Classics

An Oblique Strategy:
Honor thy error as a hidden intention


STAY IN THE LOOP:

Subscribe with Google Reader

Subscribe on Netvibes

Add to Technorati Favorites

Subscribe on Pageflakes

Add RSS feed

The Podcast Feed

Cranking

Merlin used to crank. He’s not cranking any more.

This is an essay about family, priorities, and Shakey’s Pizza, and it’s probably the best thing he’s written. »

Scared Shitless

Merlin’s scared. You’re scared. Everybody is scared.

This is the video of Merlin’s keynote at Webstock 2011. The one where he cried. You should watch it. »