The geek in me: Spot the Leopard
The rumors have started to come out about the future of Mac OS X, which will be seen in the next version, 10.5, aka Leopard.
It is said that Leopard will make extensive use of Spotlight, which was introduced in OS X Tiger (10.4). Apple is said to redesign the whole Finder and bring it much closer to the iTunes and iPhoto interfaces.
The large hard drives that most of us have, and the amount of files that we carry on them, make the task of finding files more and more difficult. On the other hand, Spotlight, a searching tool with journaling method and fast searching ability, provides an easier way to find lost files. The idea behind the redesign of the Finder is to make file searching faster than it is today, when one has to go through all the folders in order to find a specific file.
On the interface design, Leopard will probably incorporate the look of the new iLife ‘06 and iTunes 6, with their smooth merge of Aqua and Brushed Metal. It is possible that Apple will come back to unified menus, as was in the Classic systems.
Leopard is scheduled for end of 2006 or early 2007, but Tiger, and its current version, 10.4.4, is a great in between and a vast improvement to 10.3 Jaguar, if only due to the use of Spotlight.
It is true that Tiger had some problems, and few of Jaguar users decided to stick with it for that reason, but since its recent updates, Tiger’s overall operation runs smooth and fast.
I believe that in order to get used to the changes which are about to occur to the Finder in the next big release, an upgrade to the Tiger environment is needed.
