Revised Desktop, Finder Highlight Leopard Additions

When OS X 10.5: Leopard debuts in October, it will feature a redesigned Desktop and new Finder. Those new features were among the changes Steve Jobs introduced during a preview of the forthcoming OS X update code-named Leopard during his Worldwide Developers Conference keynote speech Tuesday.

Originally slated for a spring 2007 release, OS X 10.5 is now slated for release in October. It will cost $129, Jobs told WWDC attendees. The finished version of Leopard includes 300 new and enhanced features; Jobs previewed 10 during his Tuesday keynote.

The redesigned Desktop does away with the blue background familiar to OS X 10.4 users. Instead, Jobs said, the Desktop has been redesigned to better accommodate the digital photos that most Mac users employ as the background image on their Desktops. With Leopard, the Menu Bar will be transparent and the Dock will be more three-dimensional.

But more significantly, the redesigned Desktop in Leopard introduces Stacks—a collection of folders that reside in the desktop. Apple sees Stacks as a way to clean up Desktop clutter. Files are collected in the Stacks for rapid access; click on the Stacks icon and the Dock and the files and folders fan out or appear in a grid. Clicking on one of those icons instantly launches the relevant app.

In addition to Stacks, the redesigned Desktop will also feature a Downloads folder. Files downloaded via Web browsers and e-mail clients will automatically get routed to that destination, with the most recent download appearing on top.

Other enhancements in Leopard’s Desktop include a consistent look for windows and a more prominent active window.

OS X 10.5’s new Finder features a new sidebar reminiscent of iTunes. The sidebar is organized by Devices, Shared, Places and Search headers; a clickable triangle next to each header lets you close the section if you’re not using it.

In addition to the List and Column views in Finder, Leopard will add an iTunes-like Cover Flow view—as with album covers in iTunes, Finder’s Cover Flow view scrolls through images of Word documents, QuickTime movies, iPhoto images, and other files as you navigate through the Finder.

The Finder will allow searches of other Macs, Windows machines, and servers on a network to make it easier to browse shared files. A component of that is a new Back to My Mac feature for .Mac subscribers. Using Back to My Mac, .Mac subscribers will be able to search and retrieve for files stored on other computers, even if they’re on the road.

Leopard will also include a new version of Safari. Safari 3, which will run on Windows as well, was released as a public beta Tuesday.

Jobs’ OS X 10.5 demonstration also introduced a new feature to Leopard called Quick Look. The feature offers live file previews without requiring users to launch applications. Quick Look’s previews can be multi-page and are available in full-screen views.

Other Leopard features highlighted by Jobs during his hour-long Leopard demo were recaps of capabilities first previewed by Apple at last August’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Those features included: 64-bit computing; Core Animation; the virtual desktop feature Space; an updated Dashboard that includes widget-building technologies such as WebClip and Dashcode; an enhanced version of iChat that adds Photo Booth effects and iChat Theater; and Time Machine, a built-in back-up tool. Jobs also highlighted Boot Camp, Apple’s application for installing and running Windows on an Intel-based Mac; as announced last August, Boot Camp will be included with OS X starting with Leopard.

Developers attending the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco received a Leopard Developers Preview.

Macworld will have more details on OS X 10.5 throughout the day.