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Road to Mac OS X Leopard: System Preferences

appleinsider.com — Many functions in Mac OS X are only exposed to the user via System Preferences, so as you might guess, a lot of new things in Leopard show up there. Among them are a few of the "secret new features" that have never been previously announced in demonstrations of Leopard, laying to rest the hopes of certain critics that Steve Jobs somehow failed

Who dugg this? Made popular Oct 24, 2007

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  • valadares, on 10/27/2007, -3/+36Postpone the launch one week and we'll have "Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Mouse Pointer"
    Just kidding .That's one very nice historical review series. Kudos to AppleInsider.
  • TylerJensen, on 10/27/2007, -5/+37Great series of articles.
  • Floris, on 10/27/2007, -2/+14Finally an article that has arguments, indepth, real experience, comparisons, etc .. unlike some digg submissions to blogs that are just 15 lines of text saying 'how cool it is + PIC' .. We need more of these on the digg frontpage.
  • tjkombo, on 10/24/2007, -0/+8Nice to see information architecture taking the front seat.
  • imamessy1, on 10/24/2007, -1/+8This makes me miss the System 7 background image maker. I used to have all sorts of fun making obnoxious patterns with that.
  • natedouglas, on 10/24/2007, -0/+6Yeah, I was never big on the pinstripes. I look back at things like Jaguar and cringe. Of course, I switched at Panther, when it was just beginning to look decent.
  • Balanced, on 10/24/2007, -0/+4The idea is that it's looking at the predecessors to a topic, instead of just looking at the new version of an element. Thus the path, or road, development of a particular feature has taken.
  • danieleran, on 10/28/2007, -0/+4Jobs demonstrated Leopard at WWDC 06, and said in passing there were other things they were working on but didn't yet have to show. Wags have been complaining that there "weren't really any new features" ever since. But that's not true at all.
  • schoate09, on 10/25/2007, -0/+3It's been there since the beta in 1999, you ***** uneducated tool.
  • punkaybbolt, on 10/24/2007, -2/+5I know Steve Jobs is the front man of apple and a lot rides on him, but I don't think he's the only one who works for apple. So can we just say "laying to rest the hopes of certain critics that APPLE somehow failed."?
  • inactive, on 10/24/2007, -2/+5Nope, he's the only one. He designs and manufactures all iPods and computers, and wrote Leopard. Same as Bill Gates is the only one at Microsoft.
  • monarch00, on 10/25/2007, -0/+3Man, those old control panel screens bring back some memories...
  • xxLedheadxx, on 09/12/2008, -0/+3I never noticed how much apple has cleaned up system preferences over the past years...it's nice, i love these articles btw.
  • philz, on 10/24/2007, -2/+4Impressive to say what improvements were made throughout the years, it's even more impressive when comparing between Vista and OSX 10.5
    /Switcher :-)
  • Billions, on 10/25/2007, -0/+2I feel bad even feeding the troll, but honestly, Troll, if you see a NFL pre-game show and they mention that there's going to be a comparison of the quarterbacks after the break, do you stand up and say "Holy *****, are you serious? You mean there are going to be QUARTERBACKS playing in this game?"

    It's not that SYSTEM PREFERENCES are new and innovative, it's just a look at the FEATURES that have been changed for those Mac enthusiasts that care. That is all. No need to embarrass yourself with a dumb post like yours, ok?

    And to be honest, yes, Apple did innovate and create the 'system preferences/control panel' with the Lisa and the Macintosh, many years ago... But maybe you're new.
  • iseth, on 10/24/2007, -0/+2Well, the term "roadmap" seems to be a favorite of software developers... not sure I care much for it either. Still, this article is a really cool timeline of the MacOS Control Panel Evolution. It's really nice to see that definite improvements have been made throughout the years on the look and feel, as well as the functionality.
  • qpdb, on 10/24/2007, -1/+3the new dock icon is really ugly, but amazing how spotlight looks better by making O a little bit bigger.
  • RdHrd138, on 10/24/2007, -0/+2I'm loving these 'Road to Mac OS X Leopard' articles. I've only been a mac user since 2003 so it's nice to be able to read these articles and look at the pictures to see the evolution of Apple's OS.
  • late2digg, on 10/24/2007, -0/+2But they are still actively screwing some things up. The preference for the default browser and default emailer should be set in the Network area of the system preferences (and it was in older versions of Mac OS X) but they changed it so you have to set these preferences _in_ Safari and Mail.app respectively.
  • comradeTJH, on 10/26/2007, -0/+1yeah! And they had all the options packed in that little space. Nowdays a single icon takes up more space... and thats without its shadows and reflections everywhere...
  • superkendall, on 10/24/2007, -1/+2The critics tend to hate Jobs though, not Apple. So the quote is more accurate the way it is.
  • nanboya, on 10/24/2007, -1/+2Loving the new file sharing preference pane. Finally sharing of folders that I want to and not only what the system deems permissible.
  • macpro2006, on 10/24/2007, -7/+8have you read all the other ones? There's I bunch of them and they all are really good
  • michaelb1, on 10/24/2007, -0/+1False. So many people hate Apple for no logical reason (looking at you Alex Albrecht).
    I suppose for the same reason one might hate the super hot chick that is way smarter than you. They just can't stand it.
  • CrushThemTorg, on 10/25/2007, -0/+1I miss Control Strip. It was so classy – if only OS X had an elegant way to hide all those menubar icons.
    And all those System 7 control panels remind me of when I was a whelp just discovering the havoc you could create with Extensions Manager.
  • wtmoose, on 10/24/2007, -0/+1Open the article and read the rest of the sentence: "laying to rest the hopes of certain critics that Steve Jobs somehow failed to deliver upon his assurance that the new system would deliver a variety of other new features Apple was keeping under wraps so that competitors wouldn't copy them before they were released."
  • ferrariman60, on 10/24/2007, -0/+1Well, I never mentioned those, did I? And also, I would say service pack 6 makes sense since apple hasn't even tried to change the name. It's all OS X, man. With a new desktop background, a new cat, a couple of new features, and some security fixes. It's also preinstalled on all of their computers sold from here on until the next one, so, actually, it sounds a lot like a windows XP SP now that you bring it up. SP6 would be appropriate, Wouldn't you say? Well, they did change the dock's background too so now it looks like they're sitting on a table or something. Ok, fine. I'll pay $130 for that sweet feature.
  • smrekar, on 10/25/2007, -2/+3Service pack 6?
    I always find this interesting when people say this because windows 95 and windows 98 were separate OSes and so were 2000 & XP.
  • macpro2006, on 10/25/2007, -1/+1yeah they do :)
  • skyscape, on 10/24/2007, -0/+0is it like windows 3.1 preferences finally being added?
  • natedouglas, on 10/26/2007, -2/+2Job's didn't say that. That was actually a quote from M. Dell... about Apple 10 years ago.
  • macpro2006, on 10/25/2007, -1/+1yeah they do :)
  • macpro2006, on 10/25/2007, -1/+1yeah they do :)
  • Tyr7BE, on 10/25/2007, -5/+3Yep, only took them 8 years or so to get the feature too. Maybe Jobs finally booted up an Ubuntu CD and made some notes?
  • natedouglas, on 10/24/2007, -6/+1Nevermind -- I was apparently feeling strong effects from felching cracksperm out of a Mongolian's german shepherd when I wrote the parent comment. I like these articles. It's the other ones that I don't like. Ones that start with "K."
  • ferrariman60, on 10/25/2007, -8/+2"Road to OS X: Service Pack 6." This is a nice article that goes into some good history. It's fun to see GUIs evolve over time, from the first Mac OS to todays version, which apparently finally does away with those stupid stripes in the background of things. Nice work, guys.
  • natedouglas, on 10/24/2007, -9/+3I bet these articles are somewhat less interesting to someone running Leopard...
  • skyscape, on 10/25/2007, -6/+0only the best features get announced, the rest of the garbage or least useful stuff remains in secret until launch. So I'm classifying this article as spam
  • Tyr7BE, on 10/25/2007, -13/+3Holy ***** are you serious? Leopard is going to have SYSTEM PREFERENCES? Well I guess that's how Apple got to be top dog, right? Innovating and going where nobody has gone before.

    Imagine that, System Preferences. Jesus.
  • newstart, on 10/25/2007, -22/+3Enough with the "Road to Mac OS X" lines. Who started this trend anyway? Why cant you say New Feature or something like that. Are we all drivers here waiting to drive towards OS X?

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