So what's everyone think of Apple's announcements?

You shouldn't be underwhelmed. One of Steve Jobs' first statements was that he was not going to reveal many still-secret features so that Microsoft would not have enoughtime to copy them. We've only seen the feaures that he thinks it's safe to reveal.

As for the catch-up features:
Virtual desktops- Not a big deal, but users will be happy ot have it
iChat enhancments anf parental controls- Safe things to announce
64-bit carbon and cocoa support- Very important. The entire OS is 64-bit compatible now. It was hard to incorporate 64-bit code before.

Other features:
Core animation- It may need the power of the new machines, so making it backward-compatible might cripple it
Time machine- Built in backups and a form of versioning of files? Seems pretty good to me.
Dashboard- New developer tools for it. I don't develop for it, but others will be overjoyed.
Mail- The important thing is that notes and to-dos will be available system-wide. The templates, however, are dull.
Photo booth- just a fun toy. Nothing more.

Not discussed:
The new Finder- As evidenced by their developer want ads.
XCode 3.0- Someone has reported that it has refactoring!!
Objective-C 2.0- Garbage collection and other enhancements.

This is still just the tip of the iceberg. Expect major announcements of more features when Leopard is released.

I could also say that although there are some neat new feature in Vista (although you usually only mention APIs :-), there's a good deal of catch-up and ho-hum there too. As a Windows user, and not a Windows coder, I'm not that excited by Vista.

I consider both Leopard and Vista to be evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Yeah, cuz Apple doesn't turn the Xerox on themselves (look guys! Parental controls! 64-bit API support! Virtual desktops, etc, etc). ;-) It's just a PR-friendly way of taking a dig at the big dog in the market which translates into "we got nothing. yet."

As for time machine -- Vista has had that in the betas for a long time now, and I've found that I really don't need to use it. But that may also be because I back my data up to an external drive anyways, so who knows.

But you are right about Vista having plenty of catch-up stuff as well.

The keynote really wasn't that flashy. The new machines were the big thing. I find it very interesting that Apple is ready to ship Core 2 machines today and Dell says that the earlies delivery time is September. The virtual desktop feature will be nice. For those people running an Intel Mac and VMWare or Parallels I can see it being a nice way to flip between Mac and Windows. The rests is kids stuff but that is what sells these machines in the home market.

Since the rest is under NDA I will only say that Aaron should ask Jon about the developer tools. XCode has definitely had some cool work done to it. There are a few things that it would be nice to see in RB.

Yeah, I've heard that XCode and ObjC have gotten some nifty new features. I'd be interested to see if the UI behind XCode has changed much. I find it to be almost unusable coming from Windows.

I'm keeping my eyes peeled to see if anything great comes along. And I don't mean to sound horribly negative about what's been announced. It's all a step forward, and that's a good deal.

I still feel that MS has been more guilty of copying or emulating Apple than vice versa, but I'd never claim that Apple didn't copy too. Windows (and Linux) features have made it to Mac OS X.

However, now many OS's are pretty mature and are driven by the same user needs. Several similar features are being implemented in all major operating systems -- you can't truly say who's copying who.

That's my take on it too -- everyone copies good ideas from everyone else. For every time MS rips something off of Apple (like dashboard, for instance), there's a case of reciprocating (like parental controls). And it goes back to the dawn of time. Honestly, I don't care who steals what from who since I think it's pretty even anyhow -- I care more about the user experience. If Apple has a good idea that makes the experience better, then I hope MS has the common sense to implement it too. And vice versa.

I think someday we'll simply converge on a single OS in terms of user experience.

There's an overview of Xcode 3 on Apple's site for us poor saps that are out of the loop (small link at the bottom of the Leopard Sneak Peek page). Xray looks very cool - I can't say anything else got me excited, though Time Machine might be handy.

I'm disappointed with the Mac Pro BTO graphics card options (as usual). The default card is pointless - why stick a $100 budget card in a pro workstation? The X1900 is overpriced, and the FX is overkill. Here's hoping some crafty hackers release PC card ROM flashers...

Apple announced exactly what was expected, and I think it's slightly lame that they got punished for doing that. Thank god there's no iPhone! Leave that to Motorola! The Xeon machines are cool, but very expected. I'm waiting for a Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro so I can buy one :-)

I agree with Aaron that Xcode's UI is fairly horrendous. I have a hard time using it coming from RB! I'm hoping that the Finder will be very much improved in Leopard, but the screenshots I've seen look incredibly cluttered, UI-wise. I really hope they clean it up before release (assuming the screenshots are accurate).

My question is, how is Apple pulling off 64 bit Intel chips? Isn't IA-64 a completely different architecture than IA-32 (that's why it never really caught on in the PC world)? Do they have emulation software for 32-bit apps? PPC 64 was very similar to PPC 32, so it wasn't an issue with the G5, but my understanding is that 64-bit Intel chips are *completely* different than 32-bit Intel chips. Anyone want to enlighten me?

Oh, and I like Spaces. Yes it's catch-up, and yes there are third party apps to do it right now (kinda), but...finally! Real virtual desktops on OS X! Now I can have 4x the number of things open at once :-D

I use "Desktop Manager" for virtual desktops on my PowerMac G4. I'm trying to decide whether I should get a Mac Pro or a Mac Book Pro I need to replace my aging tower. I wish Apple had changed the case on the Mac Pro.

The real question is: Core Duo or Core 2 Duo?

OK, the version control stuff is good.

I live and ide by email, for all of my businesses, the integrated TO-DOs and deep linking to messages is exactly what I have needed and longed for. That will be a big productivity jump for me.

It won't help my spelling though. Sigh.

As to the acessibility stuff, Yawn, I ain't color blind and I don't know any defectives who are, so who gives a yap? ;>

I'm guessing there will be *much* more than what we saw to OSX in the final release, some major things I bet. Mainly along the lines of Spotlight integration, since there wasn't really a demo or pictures (that I saw anyways?).

I did however put an order in for a desktop with the Radeon card...which added an extra 5 weeks to the shipping time :(
Oh well, coming from my G3 with a 16MB video card; the 512MB card should make a slight difference.

I thought the keynote was *really* disappointing. Turning Mail.app into Outlook / Evolution is lame. Time Machine is... kinda lame -- it backs up only at specific times, not on every file write. I'd like to be able to say, ok, watch this folder and record all changes. Plus the interface is really bizarre -- I'd have to try it before deciding if I liked it or not. WebClip isn't something I'd really want built into the OS -- tons of 3rd party developers (and Asher) have done stuff like this. The remote spotlight feature will be useless for me -- I have one Mac, one Linux box, and one Win32 box. I can't think of many people with multiple Macs. The new effects on iChat are useless. And I have to wonder about monopoly issues with the iPhoto / Keynote integration, unless Apple gives devs a way to integrate their app as well.

On to the good stuff:
Spaces was cool. It's the first virtual desktop implementation to truly get it right, IMO. Xcode 3 looks like it'll be a much welcome update -- doubly so if they actually put in refactoring support! Objective-C 2 looks *AMAZING*. My biggest gripe with Obj-C is that it lacks garbage collection. But that update has been known since 10.4 developer previews came out (it's in the GCC docs, IIRC). The new voice for the speech synthesis was pretty decent -- I'd love to have a sample from Vista to compare it to. The new dash clip looks interesting at least, but I don't think it's enough to get me to use dashboard. The iChat remote desktop thing looks damn handy!

And the best part is what they left out. It means there's potential there will be a non-sucking Finder!!! Please? :-P

Another thing that will be in 10.5 is display independant resolutions -- it's also been in the documentation since the 10.4 developer preview. You can play with it by opening up /Developer/Applications/Performance Tools/Quartz Debug.app and hitting command-U.

I like how you didn't lump Asher into the 3rd party developers. ;-)

Ok, so WebClip is the name for the dashboard clipping, my bad. I had thought it was a network clipboard thinger.

I'm frustrated that the ADC Hardware Purchase Program Store for developers is not working. I'm ready to buy a new Mac Pro with a discount and can't get it! I've been working with only a laptop for over a year and I'm eager to have a desktop system again.

I haven't done anything like WebClip, but I can't imagine it would be that hard. I mean, widgets are JavaScript/WebKit based anyway...The only troublesome bit would be the Safari plugin to add a "Clip to Widget" button. That and your widget would have to either load multiple copies of itself or display multiple "windows" in dashboard. But that's what tabs and bookmarks in Safari are for! Dashboard isn't a web browser

Scott - I ordered through the ADC program just after the keynote, but it took a while. This is the first time I've ordered through there, but it looks like it finally was "removed" from my assets, so maybe that's a sign that they're getting things back up and running correctly...

So, I've been going to WWDC and have Leopard installed on my Macbook.

All in all... I totally agree with Aaron, but I'd like to take it up a notch: Apple and Mac zealots are going to be in a world of hurt when Vista ships. Apple was all "nyah, nyah, look at how Vista is copying us!" at the keynote and everyone was laughing. Well guess what - yeah, they copied OS X feature for feature and are going to ship an OS that has everything Leopard has plus more.

Vista already has the equivalent of Spotlight, Dashboard, Timemachine, Spaces, Aqua, etc. In fact, at this point, what feature does OS X have that Vista doesn't? It used to be funny "Microsoft just blatantly ripped off Dashboard and added it to Vista!" but now, that has happened like 20 times and Microsoft is still adding stuff like their speech recognition engine: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20060808/vista-speech-recognition-screencast/

If I were Apple, I would have made fun of how archaic Windows XP is, not advertise that fact that Vista has everything OS X has and more. They literally started the keynote off with screenshots of Vista and how it had a bunch of Apple technology. Of course the tone was mocking, but the guy next to me was like "when did Vista get OS X's features?"

Chad- I must have been serendipity -- I'm happy for your success. For the past two days, the ADC Store has been totally inaccessible. There's just a page thta reads "Sorry. This store cannot be reached now."

Oh, well, maybe it's for the best. After initially agreeing to it, my wife later started to panic about paying for it, so maybe I'll put it off a while.

I’d be interested to see if the UI behind XCode has changed much. I find it to be almost unusable coming from Windows.

I find it to be almost unusable coming from Mac OS. Perhaps it makes sense to NeXTStep users? Or perhaps it just sucks.

Sort of underwhelming.
Some welcome dditions (like incrmental backup) built in.
Nothing earth shattering, but SJ said at the outset that several "top secret" items would not be revealed.
New machines look nice. Decent specs and decent pricing.

Haven't looked at the new XCode or Dashcode. Welcome additions to Obj-C.

Mars .... You may feel the Xcode UI sucks but CW IS a dead beast and long term GCC has a lot of utility and has some pretty decent work done to optimize for Intel processors. Maybe we should build a new UI for GCC in RB that doesn't suck ?

I'm having fun. :)

Ahh crap. I didn't mean to post that at all.

Re: back porting, I kinda wish Apple would do it, yes, but then they're wasting _so much time_ on that rather than working on the next new thing. Not to mention that so many of their new technologies are /widely/ integrated all over the system. Apple uses their own technologies immediately because they quite often come out of needs they have themselves. Core Animation for example - tons of their software has these animations and such in them. NSViewAnimation was a good step, but Core Animation being fully integrated makes things happen *for free* when you just flip a switch. That's rad. Not to mention, Apple's users are extremely good at adopting. Tiger was the most successful product ever for example, and the majority of users are running it over all other OSes. That's rad. That means already, we can being to require Tiger for our applications. (I do, but that's because I have a technical audience in which it's pretty much guaranteed to be okay.)

As for being underwhelmed, there's a lot of stuff you don't see in the Keynote and on the website, and there's (as we all know) more that even us attendees/preview receivers don't get to see. Having seen a bunch of the new stuff, it is cool. Besides, how often do you ever get your socks blown off? Being programmers, we know what to expect as logical things to come. What at all blows your socks off about Vista, for example? Talk about catch up. A lot of these "underwhelming" features, you'll still being using. Whether you're "underwhelmed" or not, you'll find them useful at some point and be very glad you'll have it. iChat screen controlling for instance. It wasn't even so much as mentioned in passing at the Keynote, but that's huuuuuge for people trying to remotely give assistance to friends, grandmas, parents, etc. I know I'm going to use it.

About Apple's stock: it also went up $20 in anticipation. Going down a couple of bucks is expected.

Ok, I'll read teh comments after this next session. Gotta go...

@Asher: 32-bit apps are not emulated at all. They're completely native. No emulation or even translation. I don't know the chip details myself, though.

@Joe: "WebClip isn’t something I’d really want built into the OS" -- It's not built-in to the OS, it's just another app and widget that ships with the OS.

@Christian: Go to an Apple store if one is near by. The Core chip is pretty fast on its own. A Core Duo 1.8 is faster than my 2x2.3 G5 at quite a lot of things (compiling especially). The big question is what kind of graphics capability you need. Don't bother considering a MacBook if you really need decent graphics. An iMac or MacBook Pro will do okay, and naturally the Mac Pro will rock your socks off (over and over again, being upgradable).

@Chad: Ouch! I've heard people at the show ordering their Mac Pros and seen them shipping the same day. Pretty cool.

@Joe: The voice in Vista is aaalmost on par. It's a LOT better than the decade+ year old voices in OS X, but the one in Lepoard is noticeably better when you compare them side by side. I laughed when they said the voices in Tiger were "state of the art" :)

@Everyone: It's funny some of you say Xcode is completely unusable. There's a lot of rockin' apps there made in it. ;-) Spending hours in it everyday, it's really not that bad. There's a ton of stuff it needs to add and refine, but they're doing it. To aim to write a world class IDE from the ground up and it see it happening is amazing. (Not that it _is_ world class, but it's clearly headed in that direction.) Plus it's free. That's always cool. :)

Seth, you hit the nail on the head. Apple's stock went up in anticipation of something good happening. And when nothing that terribly interesting came out, the stock went down.

Again, I'm not saying that the changes aren't good. A lot of them are "what took you so long? That feature has been in X for Y years" (which really makes me cringe when thinking about Mr Jobs' photocopier comment -- I guess he forgot the knife cuts both ways). I'll use "Spaces" just as happily as I've been using multiple desktops for the last decade or so on Linux. What I am saying is that there's nothing even remotely *interesting* about the current announcements. There's nothing that makes me think "wow, that's a really neat idea." Nothing to "whelm" me (since, I'm under-whelmed, there must be a state of whelm, right?).

As for the "keeping stuff close to the vest" -- I don't buy it. I'm not saying something won't happen by the time 10.5 manages to ship. What I am saying is that they have nothing right now that's demo-able.

Seth - Darn...shipping 5 weeks earlier would probably have been worth paying for the hotel and WWDC ticket instead of waiting for my delayed shipping. Maybe the wait will just make it *that* much better when it finally arrives (I have to justify it somehow)...waiting...

Aaron,
You DID buy some more when it hit the 50's ... right ????????
It is up 13 - 14 from that point and the buying opportunity has helped push my personal average down quite a bit.

On the WWDC front folks always expect "Oh one more thing" or something that the rumor mills may have missed. I think there is some disappointment that did not happen this time. But this IS WWDC and the new Mac Pro's and XServes are welcome but not unexpected. Not sure what else they might have under wraps.

I'm too lazy to look back at the older WWDC's videos, but did he use the "One more thing..." line with most of them as well? I know he does almost always with MacWorld Expos; but is it the norm for these as well? 6am...too early for my brain to be awake.

He did last year - I remember it. I know I've seen a few times but the line between WWDC and MacWorld is a little blurred the farther back I go.

@Aaron: Stock is never about the actual value of a company though. After Apple's best quarter ever announcement, their share value actually went down the next day or two. I don't think even an announcement of a spectacular jaw-dropping feature in OS X would shoot the stock up another $20. ~$70 was already the highest the stock has ever been.

As for "why didn't we have this ages ago?" -- Apple has only so many people. It's logistics. Not to mention they've actually shipped four major updates already and dozens of minor ones in between, created a number of new apps and updated them handfuls of times each. Apple is cranking out software a heck of a lot faster than MS if you ask me. Feature for feature "copying" on both sides is expected, but how long until Vista is out? How long have people been waiting for it? How long until it'll actually be very stable and useable by the masses? Apple's already done it four times with tons of APIs enhancements that make 3rd party development SOOO much easier now. I think that's a pretty amazing feat on its own! Hip hip for Apple! :)

(Just an FYI, I'm not trying to be contradictory and bring up the MS-Apple battle all the time - we're all friendly here :)

@Seth
- actually about 86 was the highest it's ever been

And I do forgive Aaron the whole "Vista thing" but only becuase he works for REAL so I like him :)

If it weren't for that ... well .....

@Seth: @Aaron: Stock is never about the actual value of a company though.

Yes, but only because there is no such thing as "actual value of a company".