Apple's Leopard: End of the Desktop as We Know It?

When Apple's (AAPL) Leopard was recently delayed until October, the reason given was that the iPhone was taking up more time and resources than expected, but with the "borrowed engineers" from the Mac OS X team the iPhone would at least still make its June launch target. The press picked it up and ran with it like a well-trained dog, or perhaps more succinctly, an innocent but ignorant puppy.

As I noted in our previous post, Apple's most recent developers connection email announced the immediate availability of a series of Coding Headstart videos for Leopard. They want developers to be fully prepared and already familiar with Leopard when WWDC hits us next month, which is still more than three months before Leopard will actually hit the shelves. Why the rush?

That Leopard was delayed seemed like a logical and obvious thing to do to us at Blackfriars, even if the product was secretly on schedule to launch in June. Pitting Leopard against the iPhone and having the two products fight each other for media attention just didn't seem like something Jobs would do, certainly not after making "Business School 101" jokes in his Keynote presentations.

Yet, there could be more to it all, and the Coding Headstart announcement gives us some clues.

If the only reason Leopard was delayed was to give the iPhone its fair chance — after all, this is Apple's most significant product launch since the original Macintosh — there would be no reason to rush developers into learning how to code for Leopard. It would be the opposite, as it would give developers a good reason to breathe and relax a bit.

Thus, it's reasonable to believe that there is an ulterior motive. A good motive would be that developing apps for Leopard is going to be very different from developing apps for Tiger, and by "different" we really mean different in every sense of the word.

It's already known that Leopard will introduce a series of new APIs, many of which will replace existing ones to optimize performance, increase flexibility and generally just make the life of a developer much easier. There will also be several new APIs that have tremendous impact on application development – Core Animation is not just an API to add some sexy animations to your app, it's something that can easily revolutionize the way applications work and exist entirely.

In fact, Core Animation opens up the possibility of a brand new user interface. Time Machine is an example of an application that breaks a lot of conventions about window management, application windows and general user interfaces. Core Animation is what makes it all possible.

When you think about it, we've been using the traditional windows-based interface for over 20 years now. Apple made windowed interfaces mainstream with the Macintosh in 1984, it created a vastly simpler interface for music players in its iPod in 2001, and it appears it will reinvent mobile phone interfaces with the iPhone in 2007. Apple is a company that specializes in great user interfaces, so why shouldn't Leopard itself gain some of the experience gleaned from Apple's consumer electronics successes of the last seven years?

The trend we're identifying here has been underway for a while. Think about it: how many of Apple's new applications actually use traditional, overlapping windows for anything other than a frame around a unique interface? Garageband doesn't. iTunes barely does except for video. All the Pro Apps like Final Cut, Motion, Aperture, and the like all trend toward paned, not overlapping window, interfaces. And new products like the iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV don't use windows at all, relying instead on vastly simplified buttons and interfaces. Further, consumers are gaining experience with interfaces that rely on transparent panes instead of windows on new HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies. Between transparent overlays and Apple's Spaces feature to allow multiple virtual screens, Apple has eliminated many of the needs for overlapping windows cluttering up desktops. And just as Apple first recognized that computers no longer needed floppy disks any more, ridding consumers of overlapping windows may be the first step in a radical simplification of user experiences again.

Such a radical new "feature" in Leopard would more than justify Apple's efforts to rush developers into learning about the new APIs and preparing them to make some serious changes to their applications. For that, 3-4 months may not even be enough, but it will give them a pretty good head start. And the newly launched and readily available Coding Headstart resources allow developers to get a one-month jump on WWDC as well.

One more thing: doing away with overlapping windows in most of the OS would give Apple a marketing bludgeon to use against Microsoft (MSFT). In the marketplace of ideas, it would paint Microsoft's six-years-in-the-making Vista as a completely old school effort. It would take Microsoft's best-known and recognized brand -- Windows -- and make it appear as tired as DOS. It would be a marketing shot heard round the world -- and it would be one that would take Microsoft years to copy.

We might be looking for something that isn't there, and that Leopard was delayed for the purely innocuous reason that developers were needed on the iPhone. But when was the last time that something this significant happened at Apple for an innocuous reason?

Note: Article was co-written by Aric Winton.

Comments

[Malkiel:]

Let's not get carried away here. The difference between what Windows does and what Mac does is mostly the small difference between having your open programs stay "open" in layers or having an open program reduce to a taskbar shortcut when something new is opened. Nobody who works with Windows feels their desktop to be "cluttered" because you're only looking at one fullscreen window at a time (or, in my case, actually have a reason to want to keep multiple windows partially opened to facilitate comparison). Apple's "spaces" feature is available as a Windows powertool and also comes standard on the GNOME Linux desktop.

Though I don't doubt Apple could come up with something interesting, they haven't yet rode roughsod over Windows in the features department. Windowing is something that many of us actually want or need; the ability to change window sizes by grabbing any wndow edge is something Apple doesn't do that it ought to; the ability of the user to change desktop "themes" is something Windows users want more of and Apple users ache for (it's Ubuntu's biggest feature at the moment); and Apple needs to get away from keyboard shortcuts as the only way to do some important things. Whatever Apple comes up with they need to be careful that, like Microsofts' new "ribbon" menus for Office, they don't invent something so cutting-edge that nobody likes or understands it...

2007 May 14 12:30 PM

[dgmithril:]

I acknowledge the getting carried away but I must disagree with a few things.

I don't see what the big deal is with expanding windows from any edge. The bottom right corner worked fine for me. As for having only one window open at any time, that is not the case for graphics artists, photographers, etc. My co-workers are all in the creative fields and a large portion of our customers are as well. And they all seem to run multiple programs, hardly any of them minimized (except like Mail or something).

The technology of Spaces, virtual desktops, yes that has been out for ages. You can easily get a shareware or freeware app that will allow you to do it on Tiger. However, having Apple personally incorporate it into the desktop means better support and probably better execution, if I may say so. Apple doesn't design cutting edge technology so that it is more advanced. Their development usually is to make processes easier. That goes for not only the OS, the specific Apple apps, but also the Core Audio, Core Video, and the new Core Animation, which accomplish what you need to do with fewer lines of code. And I think Leopard will continue on that trek of innovation for simplicity sakes.

My last note is...keyboard shortcuts are a godsend for me. I don't know why but I definitely find it more efficient than clicking.

2007 May 15 10:36 AM

[Alan Williams:]

Apple's design philosophy is, 'less is more'. Simplification is the name of the game at One Infinite Loop. Any changes Apple makes to the windows metaphor will make using a computer, with multiple open programs, simpler and easier.

In Redmond the mantra is, "Let's see how many different ways, to do the same thing, we can build into this puppy." They also think all end users are appallingly stupid. Why else would they repeatedly ask, "Are you sure you want to do this task?" Microsoft calls all these redundancies innovative, new features.

When Leopard is released, Microsoft will be embarrassed into improving Windows for real next time. That alone will be worth the wait.

2007 May 14 04:03 PM

[kabaskar:]

Windows just hoggs the whole PC. MacOS co-exists with the other applications giving the user an experience.

2007 May 15 12:29 AM

[wayne thompson:]

About a year ago I switched from windows xp to mac os I do not understand some of the comments about how great window desktop and how it meets user needs. Now with mac os I use my computer and do not spend all my time fixing windows. Now I use parallel for windows xp so I can use a few old progams and by the way xp under parallel runs beter than my del xps and I am only using a mac mini. The few things that will not work under parallel 3D game I can boot into bootcamp and the run just great.

2007 May 15 10:48 AM

[coolhanduke:]

I have no way of knowing the true reason Apple delayed the Leopard OS until after the introduction of the iPhone, but after years of watching and using Macs, I reckon this: The Leopard software engineers have been assigned to work on the iPhone, because the iPhone is designed for Leopard. They are two manifestations of the same critter.

Apple usually thinks clearer and bigger than the masses.

2007 May 15 04:19 PM

[seekingalpha1:]

Hey- this is my idea. I made a mockup of this many months ago : phillryu.com/leopard.p...
:)

2007 May 15 08:20 PM

[jhakmail2:]

Something somewhat similar to Core Animation exists in Vista. It's part of the .Net 3 Framework, called Windows Presentation Foundation. It encompasses ideas of 2D, 3D, document and multimedia presentation and interaction. Also Silverlight is a cross platform subset of WPF; it lacks certain features like 3D rendering though.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

2007 May 28 07:45 AM