Leopard Announced!

Apple announced today that Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) will be shipping on October 26th at 6:00pm!

Be sure to order a copy, so that you will be ready to install Bee Docs' Timeline 2.0 as soon we released it.

Quicklook in T2

As noted in this interesting article from Apple Insider, Apple has continued to evolve the Finder in Leopard. In particular, Quicklook and an improved Spotlight make it much easier to find and browse the files you are looking for. However, in order to take full advantage of these features, the software applications you use must support them.

T2 will offer full support for both Quicklook and Spotlight in Leopard. The screenshot below shows the thumbnail view of two Timeline documents, a text file, and a PDF timeline. The icons for T2 documents are dynamically created to match the color and font scheme of the timeline chart they contain.

If you select a T2 document in Finder and press the space bar, a Quicklook preview instantly pops up like this:

Just a few weeks left until Leopard if Apple keeps to their October shipping date!

WWDC 2007

I'm heading down to San Francisco for the Apple Developer (WWDC) conference in just over three weeks. I'm really looking forward to geeking out for a week.

In my dreams, Steve Jobs will reveal an iPhone SDK, uber-thin portable Macs with touch screens, and secret Leopard features that are so great they will double the Mac market share (not to mention free iPhones for all attendees Oprah style)... I guess we'll have to wait and see.

One the sessions that I am most looking forward to is Developing Web Sites for iPhone:

iPhone completely redefines browser-based web access on a mobile phone. Learn iPhone best practices for ensuring optimal web development of your existing website, or hosted web application. Join the iPhone Safari and WebKit browser development teams as they share the latest techniques on mobile browser-based user experience design and development.

I can't wait to design some software for the iPhone and until Apple releases an SDK for the iPhone it looks like the web is going to be the first way to get content on there. Will it support Flash, javascript, forms, Ajax? Can we avoid the zoom-in zoom-out thing if the web page is designed for the size of the iPhone screen? I'm looking forward to finding out...

Of course I've got my schedule packed with Cocoa and Graphics sessions too. Hopefully I can figure out the kosher way to do some of the things I have hacked together for T2 (because there is little documentation of the new Leopard features at this point).

If any of you are going to be there, let's hook up for a meal or a something. I'd love to meet some new folks in the Apple universe. Let me know.

Leopard delay - What it means for T2

If you are a Mac fan, you probably heard Apple announce this week that the release of Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X, is being delayed from June until October. Those of you who are Timeline customers may be wondering what this means for the next major release of Timeline ("T2").

The bad news:

• T2 is heavily dependent on Leopard technologies at this point, so the release of T2 will also be delayed until October. For me, this means a financial hit. For you, this means you'll have to wait a few more months for features that many of you have requested and to see the cool new stuff that I'm cooking up for you.

The good news:

• The more Leopard functionality that I build into T2, the more convinced I am that building it for Leopard was the right thing to do. T2 is going to be a huge leap forward for timeline software and I'm sure both Leopard and T2 will be worth the wait.

• A few extra months of development time means that some features that I had slated for point releases will be able to be implemented by the T2 launch.

• I've got a handful of important bugs that I've reported to Apple about Leopard that directly impact T2. If delaying the launch of Leopard helps Apple fix these bugs, T2 will directly benefit (so will other apps).

• T2 will be a free upgrade to existing customers, so you don't feel like you need to wait until October to purchase Timeline software. If you need to make timelines, go ahead and purchase the existing version which is still great and when T2 and Leopard are ready, you'll be the first to know.

• If the iPhone (which is blamed for the Leopard delay) brings more people to the Mac platform, this will be great news for all companies that depend on the Mac, including my own, which would make up for the delay in Leopard.

My biggest fear is that the delay may be a sign that Apple is losing focus on the Mac. But, it is way too early to be able to make any conclusions about whether or not this is happening...

WWDC will be very interesting to watch. If Steve Jobs amazed us with new Leopard features and some insanely great Mac hardware, and if Apple doesn't make a habit of delays like this, then all will be well and I'll just chalk it up to growing pains.

How does the Leopard delay affect you and your business?

Leopard Tech Talk - Seattle

I'm attending the Mac OS X Leopard Tech Talk in Seattle tomorrow.

If anyone watching this blog is going to be there, I'd be happy to meet you. Send me an e-mail (Adam at BeeDocuments.com) or my AIM is adambehringer.