Looking at Leopard Part 1

This is a very exciting time to be a Mac user. With new iPods released last month, new iMacs released just before that (I am loving mine), and now of course the release of Leopard this Friday, Apple lovers are in heaven. So what makes Leopard’s release so exciting? Let’s start off with a little history.

For those who either use Windows, or are unfamiliar with the latest in the Mac community, let me explain what Leopard is. Just as Windows releases new versions such as XP and Vista, Apple releases new versions of its operating system. The difference is Apple’s releases are not always full overhauls. Back in 2001 Apple released Mac OSX (OS Ten), which has then evolved through these updates.

The very first release was coined Cheetah. This was quickly updated to the more functional 10.1 Puma release. Puma was released as a free upgrade, and it added essential features that 10.0 had lacked. Each following release usually sported one or two big additions along with its incremental upgrades. With 10.2 Jaguar, we saw the debut of iChat. 10.3 Panther brought Safari and added video features to iChat.

Version 10.4 Tiger has been around the longest of all of these versions of OSX. This is partly due to the fact that Apple switched to Intel processors midway through the lifecycle of Tiger, meaning they had to rewrite it to work on their new machines. Tiger added a slew of new features, but its most notable was Spotlight, a tool that allowed near-instant searching of any file on your hard drive. I have used Tiger for almost my entire Mac history, as it released about five months after I got my first Mac.

All of that leads us up to arguably the most anticipated and most important release of OSX yet: 10.5 Leopard. Possibly the last feline-friendly OSX (Lynx? Lion?), Leopard will hit stores this Friday and it brings with it a ton of simply amazing features that I cannot wait to get my keyboard on. Let’s start with one of my favorites.

New iChat Features

There are several great additions to iChat that quite simply blow my mind. To experience the full effect you really have to watch the guided tour, but let me explain what makes them so exciting. The new iChat provides various video modifying abilities.

As you can see from the screenshot, both users can manipulate the background of their respective video. This is fun and technically impressive, but my real excitement stems from the sharing capabilities of the program. Not only can you share pictures as standard clients can, but you can now share videos, presentations, and even your screen! I am not talking about sending a video either; both you and your conversation partner can watch videos together as you chat. Either user can share videos.

When sharing presentations, you can click through your Keynote (or Powerpoint) slides. Documents like Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and Word documents can also be displayed using this live sharing technology. The mind-blowing reaches its peak as you can now literally share your computer. Another user can invite you to share their screen, which opens up their desktop as if it was your own. You can now edit a documents or fix a problem they are having as if you were right there. Of course this occurs over a secure connection, and can only be initiated if the party invites or accepts a request.

This is the kind of technology that both astounds me as a Apple user and a computer science student, and also provides an amazingly useful tool.

I’ll be discussing more of my most anticipated pieces of Leopard over the next few days, but you can view the full list of 300 new features or read a more detailed map anytime. In addition to those links you can check out the excellent guided video tour. What are you looking forward to the most, or if you do not have a Mac, what features do you wish you had?