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Apple dropped the Computer from its name this year and released the iPhone and a slew of revamped iPods. But while its hardware has been in the spotlight, Apple has quietly been working on the next version of OS X. The iPhone may grab headlines, but Leopard could well be the most revolutionary thing Apple puts out this year.
Many have criticized Leopard for being light on new features compared to previous releases, but Leopard isn't necessarily about groundbreaking new features, it's about enhancements and refinements that turn ordinary users into power users.
Leopard does have some standout features -- Time Machine, Spaces and Quick Look -- but the real advance in Leopard is in the painstaking attention to detail. Many of the smaller, sometimes neglected features of previous versions of OS X have had new life breathed into them with Leopard.
Take for instance features like Coverflow, once limited to iTunes, which Apple has expanded and modified to fit in the new Finder, giving the feature a new life in a new context.
In its Finder incarnation, Coverflow allows you to visually browse through your files. But where Coverflow in iTunes is simply a browsing alternative, Leopard adds Quick Look, the ability to preview your files without opening an application. It's this kind of well-though out incremental advance that give Leopard its real appeal.
Finder also borrows it's revamped sidebar feature from the iTunes sidebar -- items are grouped into categories and there are predefined date-based file searches just as iTunes offers for your music library.
Power users will argue that it was possible to do this prior to Leopard by tweaking your custom searches and adding elements to the sidebar, but that's exactly the point -- Apple has gone to the trouble of reducing even three step customizations and made them the default view.
Apple's love affair with the iTunes interface makes other appearances in Leopard like the iLife Media Browser which is integrated into the system-wide Open panel or the new "unified" look of windows, which eschew the former brushed metal look just as iTunes first did several versions ago.
But Apple isn't just turning OS X into iTunes, Leopard's refinements go beyond the jukebox app. Consider Spotlight which now includes the ability to search network drives as well as lookup dictionary entries and perform mathematical calculations directly in the Spotlight bar, without opening any additional applications,
Longtime users will also appreciate some of the smaller refinements in Leopard, which may not drop your jaw, but will simplify your experience -- like a revamped Wifi menu that helpfully divides open networks from password protected networks, making it easier to find the right public networks or the new direct access to wikipedia from within Apple's Dictionary application.
While none of these smaller integrations and features are perhaps as revolutionary as the original release of Spotlight or new features like Time Machine, they showcase the kind refinements that make Leopard a worthy successor to past version of OS X.
Another change in Leopard that may not be grabbing headlines, but goes a long way toward protecting your Mac from the increasing threat of attacks, is the inclusion of memory randomization. Apple refers to the feature as "Library Randomization," protects against the all too common buffer overflow attack by which hackers can inject malicious code into your system.
Other protections against intruders include application sandboxing, which tightens controls over applications so hackers can’t exploit them, and application signing, which provides a way for both Apple and third party apps to verify themselves.
Leopard is also the first version of Mac OS X to be fully POSIX compliant Unix and features native support for standards like OASIS Open Document Format (ODF).
The main downside to upgrading is that in the rush to get Leopard out the door Apple has given third party developers precious little time to ensure their applications work on the final version. Mozilla has warned the Firefox still has a few issues under Leopard and Adobe says it hasn't fully tested its Creative Suite 3 on the new OS. Many other smaller developers report that they still aren't sure how their applications will perform.
Still, that won't stop the rush of early adopters and for good reason, not only is Leopard fully of eye candy it's perhaps the most thoroughly thought out release Apple has pushed out yet.
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