iPod classic: the last hurrah for HDD-based iPods?

By Slash Lane

Published: 10:50 AM EST

The latest incarnation of the classic iPod appears to be a stopgap measure targeted solely at consumers who make extensive use of storage capacity, but at the same time may signal the beginning of the end for hard disk drive (HDD) iPods, based on inferences derived from a recent report by iSuppli Corp.

Echoing sentiments first outlined in AppleInsider's review of the iPod Classic, the market intelligence firm believes the player's days may be numbered, as sales of the Classic are expected to begin their slow and inevitable decline beginning sometime next year.

"Apple’s continuation of the iPod model without adding new features suggests a stopgap measure necessitated by lack of time to develop an HDD-based touch iPod," said consumer electronics Chris Crotty.

Still, the Cupertino-based firm has seemingly managed to squeeze additional gross margin from the new Classic line when compared to last year's offerings, despite its uncharacteristic backward-looking approach to the player.

The new iPod classic carries a Bill of Materials (BOM) of $127 for the 80Gbyte version, and about $190 for the 160Gbyte model, according to iSuppli’s teardown of the players. This includes estimated costs of $78 for the 80Gbyte HDD in the low-end classic and $140 for the 160Gbyte HDD in the high-end model. That means the new 80Gbyte model sports a BOM that is 11.2 percent lower than that of the company's 30Gbyte model ($143) released last year.

However, the Classic’s dated features suggest stopgap measures that are likely to limit the product’s longevity and success in the market, iSuppli believes. The firm tentatively forecasts that iPod Classic shipments will start with a bang this holiday, rising to about 3.1 million units in 2007. However, growth will likely slow markedly after that, with shipments rising by only 12.9 percent to reach 3.5 million in 2008.

In contrast, combined shipments of the new NAND flash memory-based iPod nano and touch models are expected to amount to 26 million units in 2007, rising to nearly 40 million units in 2008 -- a 52 percent increase. iSuppli believes Apple will continue to take advantage of the 50 to 60 percent annual reductions in flash memory pricing to maintain or decrease its production costs, while doubling its players’ storage capacity every year with the solid-state storage technology as the HDD iPod slowly fades into the distance.

Apple Wireless Keyboard (aluminum)

By Daniel Eran Dilger

Published: 09:00 AM EST

In addition to the ultra-thin aluminum keyboard Apple unveiled for the iMac last month, a similarly proportioned Bluetooth wireless version was also introduced. Here's a setup and unpacking tour, paired with a look at its features, an operational mystery, and a tantalizing future potential.

The simple box opens up to reveal the plastic wrapped keyboard, a thin user guide pamphlet, and the included pack of three AA batteries.

Physical Features and Setup

The entire keyboard is ultra thin apart from the cylindrical battery compartment (above), which also serves to raise the top end of the keyboard so that it lays at a comfortable typing angle. A metal plug unscrews from the left end of the battery compartment (below top) with a coin or the edge of a key. Drop in the batteries as indicated (below bottom) and it screws back into place and locks into position.

There's a power button on the opposite end of the battery compartment (below) for turning the keyboard off in order to save your batteries while it's not in use.

After you put the batteries in, it turns on automatically and a green LED begins blinking (below top) through an otherwise invisible window (below bottom) in the keyboard's upper right corner, indicating that it's ready to be set up with a Bluetooth enabled computer.

Comparison to Previous Wireless Keyboard

Like the previous version of Apple's Bluetooth keyboard (and every other Bluetooth keyboard), the new version doesn't have any USB ports for attaching other peripherals. The new version also drops the numeric keypad, inverted T arrow keys and other extra keys on Apple's previous wireless model to deliver a smaller profile device that is nearly two thirds the width (below), and ultra light.

Also missing from the previous model is the bagel bits, dust bunny, and stray hair museum that Apple built into its previous keyboards. If you want a crystal terrarium menagerie for collecting gross things around your work area, you'll have to go out and buy one separately. Getting rid of that allows the new keyboards to be much thinner and lighter. Compare the side views (below top), the top edge that's half as high in the air (below middle), and the bottom edge that is about half as thick as a single key (below bottom)

Keyboard Design

Despite the fact that the new keyboard's keys are a fraction of the height of standard keyboards and have a throw action (how far they depress when hit) that is similarly much shorter, it does not have a "Chicklet" feel. Key presses still feel solidly mechanical and responsive, there's just less finger travel involved. I also found the keyboard angle comfortable. The typing angle is actually surprisingly similar to earlier keyboard, despite being much thinner. The keyboard also has a ruggedly durable feel, and is rigid enough to be impossible to flex. It's built like a solid piece of metal.

The new Bluetooth keyboard is the same size as a MacBook Pro's (below), and has a nearly identical key layout, apart from putting an option key on both sides of the space bar, rather than an Enter key on the right end, as the MacBook Pro does. The actual key design matches those found on the consumer MacBooks; it sports white keys with rounded square edges rather than the Pro's beveled, metallic colored keys. In addition to the unique look, the white keys have a bit more of an audible tap to them, while the MacBook Pro keyboard is softer and has a nearly silent key action. Besides noticing the differences, I don't have a preference for either key style, and didn't really notice the differences while using them.

The back of the keyboard is glossy white plastic (below), with two nub feed on the front edge. The cylindrical portion has two rubberized edges on either end. That means the keyboard rests on plastic and rubber bumps, making it unlikely for the metal edges to scuff up your desk surface as it slides around.

Bluetooth Pairing

With the green light flashing, the keyboard is paired the same as any other standard Bluetooth keyboard. Under Mac OS X, the keyboard shows up as a device under the "Setup Bluetooth Device" assistant (below top), and you are prompted to type in a pairing number (below bottom). Once pairing is completed, the keyboard just works. It can be turned off by holding the power button down, which lights the LED for about four seconds and then turns off the LED to indicate the keyboard is now off. Turn it back on, and it automatically begins working without having to pair it again.

Keyboard range appeared to be limited to about 20 feet in my testing, although Apple says 30 feet on its website. As with any Bluetooth device, usable range will depend upon sources of interference such as metal objects or other wireless devices, including cordless phones and WiFi. When trying to type from a distance, keys seem to stick down like thiiisssss before it loses signal completely. In normal operation, the keyboard worked well, but Bluetooth does not work for long distance wireless, such as typing to a presentation PC from across a large auditorium.

The F Key Mystery

The new keyboard also sports a series of new key assignments. Rather than using the default F9 thru F12 keys for Exposé functions, the new keyboard assigns Exposé's "all windows" hotkey to F3 (it is F9 by default), and similarly maps the Dashboard trigger (usually F12) to F4. Both keys have unique icons that haven't appeared on any keyboards before (below). F1 and F2 are assigned to screen brightness, as they commonly are on Apple's notebooks.

F3 thru F5 are commonly mapped to volume controls on Apple's notebooks, but the thin new aluminum models remap audio controls to the other end of the keyboard. It also adds playback controls for back, play/pause, and forward to F7, F8, F9 (below). These playback controls work for the foreground application. That means if you're listening to music but working in iPhoto, hitting the advance forward button doesn't skip to the next song, but rather advanced to the next photo. Hitting the play icon starts an iPhoto slideshow, and other applications can interpret these keys to mean whatever they wish.

Depending on whether you expect them to only control audio playback (as similar keys on Windows keyboards typically do), or whether you like the idea of having a multifunction set of buttons that work in different applications, this is either a frustrating problem or a great feature.

F5 and F6 have no icons, while audio volume controls are mapped to F10, F11, and F12 (below), next to an eject button.

These controls seemed to work inconsistently. When I paired the keyboard to a MacBook Pro, the keys worked as labeled (for example, F4 brought up Dashboard), while the MacBook Pro's own F4 continued to work as a volume key. The wireless keyboard's actions therefore did not match keyboard settings in Mac OS X. Holding down the Function key on the keyboard had no effect on how the F keys worked either.

When I paired the keyboard to a different desktop system using a Belkin USB Bluetooth dongle, the keyboard paired properly, but the keys did not work as marked; instead, the F keys all worked as they were assigned by Mac OS X. That system also failed to properly display the keyboard under System Preferences' Keyboard section, which is supposed to indicate its battery level. The keyboard worked, it just failed to show up (below).

This puzzle was only solved by consulting the user manual, which indicated that new software needed to be installed. The keyboard does not ship with a CD (it also requires Mac OS X 10.4.10, so you'll have to have an updated version of Tiger running to use it). Instead, the manual tells you to run Software Update. Unfortunately, my system did not find any updates when I did this. I had to search for the update on Apple's site. Sure enough, Apple released a Keyboard Software Update 1.2 in early September. I had to manually install it.

Once installed (it requires a reboot) my battery level indicator worked correctly (below top), the translucent Bezel Services "keyboard disconnect" graphic was updated to match the thin keyboard outline (below middle), and a new check box appeared in System Preferences (below bottom).

The new control in the Keyboard & Mouse settings allows you to choose between using the keyboard keys as they are marked, or to use the default F key settings, which can be configured as desired. Mystery solved.

The other change on the new aluminum keyboards is the departure of the Apple logo from the command key, which now features the word "command" along with the Mac propeller icon (below) used for command in menu listings. The story behind that change was related in the article, "How Apple Keyboards Lost a Logo and Windows PCs Gained One."

Somewhat oddly, the Option, Shift and Esc keys are not labeled with their menu icons. Apple only puts some of these icons on foreign keyboard layouts, leaving new users to guess at what the glyphs might mean.

What's Missing?

One feature I'd like to see added requires new software support on the iPhone: the ability to pair the phone to the Bluetooth keyboard. Imagine using the duo (below) as a hyper thin traveling companion for taping out notes. Unfortunately, while the iPhone now supports Bluetooth pairing with a computer, it does not yet advertise support for any Bluetooth profiles apart from hands free, which used for the Apple Headset Adapter we reviewed in July: AppleInsider | Review: Apple iPhone Bluetooth Headset.

That means no keyboard input for the iPhone, no stereo Bluetooth headphones for music, no Bluetooth sync, support for printers, nor any other features, at least not yet. Until then, Apple's Bluetooth keyboard makes for a stylish way to work without cords, or to control a PC or Mac from across the room.

With a cheap USB - Bluetooth dongle, the Apple TV would also make a keyboard candidate, particularly if Apple expands upon the device with other applications beyond wireless iTunes access. The ultra thin, ultralight keyboard would pair well with the unit to turn a living room widescreen HDTV into a web browsing, iChatting new general purpose Internet device.

Apart from asking more of systems that might make use of this keyboard, it's hard to find faults with anything in the keyboard itself. It's nearly identical to the MacBook's keyboard, which is quickly becoming one of the most popular notebooks available. Unless you're looking for something big and heavy or cheap and flimsy, the $79 Apple Bluetooth Keyboard represents a very well built, attractive wireless keyboard at a reasonable price.

Rating: 5 of 5

Pros:

• Ultra thin, ultra light, highly portable design.
• Ruggedly solid and rigid construction.
• Elegantly attractive design.
• Comfortable typing angle and key action.
• Easy to set up and use.
• Functional even without installing any software.
• Batteries not excluded; reasonable price.

Cons:

• Had to self-search for applicable software update.

Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Dashboard, Spotlight and the Desktop

By Prince McLean

Published: 10:00 AM EST

It's not just major applications that are getting updates in Mac OS X Leopard. Apple has updated and expanded the Desktop, Spotlight, and Dashboard, adding new features, graphical flourishes, and new performance enhancements that add functionality and polish to every app running on the system. Here's a look at what's new in the overall desktop environment of Leopard.

This report goes to great lengths to explore the origins, history, and maturity of the desktop. For those readers with limited time or who are only interested in what's due in Leopard, you can skip to page 4 of this report.

Graphical Desktop Origins

The first graphical desktop arrived in 1963, when Ivan Sutherland developed Sketchpad (below) for his Ph.D. thesis at MIT. The system demonstrated the potential for computer graphics for use in both artistic and technical purposes, and paved the way forward for the development of more human interfaces for computers.

Douglas Engelbart was inspired by Sketchpad in his work at the Stanford Research Institute's Augmentation Research Center. With funding from the ARPA, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force, Engelbart developed ideas related to computing collaboration in a project called the oNLine System.

In 1968, Engelbart demonstrated his work at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco to an audience of around a thousand pioneering computer users, giving them an early look at such inventions as a rasterized, graphical computing interface controlled by a mouse.

The demonstration projected video of high resolution CRT monitors generating text and graphics--including the "bug" dot of a mouse pointer--originating on computer systems forty miles away in Menlo Park. Engelbart could directly manipulate onscreen data using a combination of his mouse, keyboard, and a chording keyset (above), to click hyperlinks and enter gestures to move around text on the screen. Simultaneous users could even control the system at once.

Elgelbart's demonstration pushed the development of computer systems as tools to augment human intellect, rather than just machines used to perform calculations. He used "augmentation" to refer to the idea that computer assistance would accelerate the capacity for advancement. Elgelbart later illustrated the opposite, "de-augmentation," by taping a brick to a pencil. The result was slower writing with larger characters that consumed more paper.

Developments at Xerox PARC

When funding for his lab at SRI began to dry up, many of his researchers went to Xerox's PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center, which continued to advance developments in graphical computing in the 70s with the Xerox Alto. The 1981 Star (below), pioneered the use of windowed work areas and icons representing manipulatable objects.

The Star wasn't a standalone system but rather intended to be part of a networked "office of the future." With a typical installation costing $50,000 - $100,000, Xerox had a hard time selling the Star systems. Attempts to sell a simplified system called Viewpoint in the mid 80s were similarly unsuccessful. Xerox later tried to sell its graphical operating environment for the PC under the name GlobalView.

Apple's Lisa and Macintosh.
Research related to a variety of computing technologies originating at Xerox spread to a number of other companies as developers left PARC. Xerox had also been liberal in demonstrating its technology to outside companies, although as it began to solidify plans to release the Star commercially, it stopped giving inside tours. In 1979, Xerox invested $1 million in Apple as part of a deal that demonstrated some of the work in progress on the Star to Apple's Steve Jobs and Bill Atkinson. When Apple went public a couple years later, Xerox' investment suddenly became worth over $17 million, far more than it made on the Star itself.

Without a clear understanding of how the Star actually worked, Atkinson began work on implementing features he though were part of the Xerox desktop, including the concept of overlapping windows. It turned out that the Star wasn't even designed do many of the things Atkinson assumed it could, as noted in the article SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1980s. Those assumptions pushed Apple developers to deliver aggressive products, and the company poured money into expensive research to pioneer the modern graphical desktop.

In addition to the Apple employees who were excited about what they saw at Xerox, many employees of Xerox got excited about Apple's interest in actually delivering the technology as a product. By the launch of the Lisa (below) in 1983, fifteen Xerox employees had started work at Apple.

The parallel development of the Macintosh gave Apple a system to sell at a much lower cost than the Lisa, which was priced close to $10,000 because of its expensive allocation of RAM. However, the hardware budget for the $2500 Mac meant it lacked enough memory to run concurrent applications. The Lisa's multitasking system was also intended to differentiate it from the Mac and position it as a more powerful system targeted at the higher end of the market.

Accessorizing the Desktop

Despite being limited to having only one main application loaded at once, Bud Tribble suggested the idea of allowing the user to running mini-applications at the same time in a limited environment to perform simple tasks, such as an onscreen calculator, notepad, or a control panel for setting system preferences.

Apple called the idea "ornaments" and later "desk accessories," as Andy Hertzfeld described in his Folklore article Desk Ornaments. Desk accessories outside those included with the original Mac desktop (below) had to be installed by copying them into the system file using a special utility. Later versions made installing new desk accessories easier.

From Multiprocessing Desktop to Simple Web Client

After the Mac desktop gained the ability to run concurrent applications with System 6 and the MultiFinder in the late 80s, the role of desk accessories began to wane. More modern architectures, like the Unix-based NeXTSTEP, could run many applications at once using virtual memory allocation that intelligently managed RAM so that background applications could sit idle without using significant system resources.

With the arrival of the web, the concept of running small applications within the context of a web page again resurrected the idea of desk accessories. Rather than being ornamental or simple accessories to a system that could only do one thing at a time, web applets were conceived to perform tasks in a sandbox, in order to securely interact with a remote server from an environment designed to use minimal resources.

Sun's Java promised the potential for replacing complex and difficult to manage PCs with simple "thin clients" or "network computers" that could centralize computing infrastructure, particularly in corporate settings. That was an affront to Microsoft, which wanted to maintain a market for PCs running Windows. Microsoft partnered with Sun and then worked to tie Java development to Windows, removing any real value from it on the desktop.

From Web Services to Multiprocessing Desktop

As client-side Java died, Sun and other vendors focused on the server side and implemented standard methods of vending services to PC clients. Microsoft had similarly scuttled the market for alternative desktop operating systems on the PC, leaving NeXT to similarly migrate its development environment from the PC desktop into the realm of web services.

NeXT's WebObjects adapted the company's desktop application development tools to instead construct web server applications. Rather than interacting with application windows on a PC desktop, the WebObjects server created dynamic web pages for multiple remote users to interact with in their browser. When Apple acquired NeXT in 1997, it inherited WebObjects along with the NeXTSTEP operating system.

Rather than continue Apple's internal plans to deliver a thin client Mac as a network computer, the newly merged company delivered its NC "work in progress" as the iMac, an easy to use consumer system. That followed the trend toward powerful desktop-oriented machines advocated by Microsoft rather than the stripped down thin client machines that were the buzzword of the day. Like Microsoft, Apple had a desktop operating system to sell; the rest of the industry was competing against Microsoft's desktop. The combined forces of Apple and NeXT decided that if they couldn't beat Microsoft, it would join it.

Apple and NeXT merged their collective strengths to deliver a new computing desktop; NeXT supplied the Unix foundations of its operating system and its rapid applications development tools, while Apple supplied mature application level technologies such as QuickTime and ColorSync. Some technologies would end up as a mix of both legacies; for example, the desktop of Mac OS X based its file browser largely upon the existing Mac Finder, while incorporating the concept of the Dock from NeXTSTEP.

Apple's VTwin Desktop Search Technology

Among the other technologies Apple had in its portfolio to contribute were advanced data indexing and search tools called the Apple Information Access Toolkit or V-Twin. Third party developers had delivered Mac applications using V-Twin search technology as early as 1997. The next year, Apple shipped Mac OS 8.5 with Sherlock, a new application that used V-Twin indexing to deliver full context file search on the Mac desktop.

Sherlock also merged local file search and Internet search results in the same interface. Using plugins, users could query multiple search engines on the web at once. Apple allowed search engines to display their banner ads in the Sherlock application window, which looked particularly jarring in a desktop context (below).

Sherlock 2 (below) followed in Mac OS 9, which introduced a channel bar for searching various websites. It also got the heavy brushed metal appearance that Apple liked at the time. Between searches, Apple even popped up its own ads.

Performing general web searches against multiple sites began to lose its value as Google rapidly replaced a variety of competing search engines by returning more effective results in a simple, uncluttered web page interface.

The evolving idea of accessing the web to quickly capture and distill information from a variety of sources--directly from the desktop without having to fire up a web browser--still made a lot of sense. Apple eventually learned it wasn't going to be funded by garish contextual advertising though.

Watson vs Sherlock

In 2001, Karelia released Watson (below) for early users of Mac OS X. Watson served as a companion tool to Sherlock; it used a similar plugin architecture to rapidly find information on the web without launching a regular browser. Watson's plugins were small Cocoa applets designed to query sites, return results, and display them in a specialized interface showing off the elegant new appearance of Mac OS X's Aqua desktop.

Karelia was outraged when Apple introduced Sherlock 3 (below) the following year as part of Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar in 2002. The new Sherlock matched Watson in functionality, although it was implemented differently. The new Sherlock plugins were essentially small web pages rendered within the app's window in a structured format, rather than being a freeform page inside a browser, or a full development platform like Watson.

Like Watson, Sherlock's design allowed for custom controls and rapid updates without waiting for a regular web page to redraw, but its implementation gave Sherlock an edge over Watson in that its plugins were simpler to develop. Of course, that didn't help Karelia, which immediately lost its market for the shareware-priced Watson. Watson was later acquired by Sun.

Desktop Exposé

In October 2003, Apple leveraged the graphics power behind its Quartz drawing engine to add Exposé features in the release of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Exposé animated all the open windows with a single click, either shoving them all out of the way to view the desktop, or shrinking them down to fit into the desktop view without overlapping. Another key press and the windows all resumed their former size and position. That made Exposé a complex combination of window management features that was easy to grasp and use.

Designer Arlo Rose, who along with lead developer Gregory D. Landweber, created a Mac OS theme skinning utility called Kaleidoscope, had earlier come up with the idea of skinning any given bit of information in the same manner as was popular to do with MP3 players of the time. Rose started work with Perry Clarke to build a system called Konfabulator for developing artistically skinned widgets to display information such as battery level, a calendar, or system resources. Using the network and a scripting later, Konfabulator widgets could also look up weather reports or webcams, and even serve as mini applications such as a calculator.

Konfabulator widgets (below) typically acted like desk accessories, mingling with standard application windows. However, after the release of Panther, Konfabulator's developers borrowed a page from Exposé to create a new feature mode that would bring all the open widgets to the foreground and dim everything else into the background at the press of a defined hotkey. Konfabulator called it Konsposé.

Konfabulator vs Dashboard

In the release of Mac OS X Tiger 10.4, Apple debuted a new feature called Dashboard (below) that did something very similar. Like the earlier scuffle between Watson and Sherlock, Dashboard overlapped in functionality with Konfabulator in a way that essentially rendered it obsolete, despite being implemented differently.

Konfabulator created its own runtime environment that launched widgets as JavaScript applications using an XML interface. That meant it was running in the background all the time to keep widgets updated. Konsposé was an optional feature for highlighting running widgets.

In contrast, Dashboard widgets were launched by the Dock. They were also normally sequestered to their own Dashboard environment, which worked very similar to Konsposé. That design limited the system resources Dashboard widgets would consume when they weren't in view.

Additionally, Apple's widgets were snippets of HTML styled with CSS and scripted with JavaScript. They are essentially just tiny web pages, making them easy to build and easy to test within a browser. The rendering of Dashboard widgets is performed by WebKit, the engine behind Safari. Because widgets are managed by the Dock, rendered by WebKit, and usually exiled away in the hidden Dashboard, there is little overhead imposed.

While Dashboard had the unfortunate effect of killing Konfabulator on the Mac, it was really the natural outgrowth of Apple's development of Exposé, the Dock, and WebKit. Konfabulator, while innovative and attractive, was a flawed design that hogged a lot of memory. Fortunately, Konfabulator found a buyer in Yahoo and went to work developing its widget engine for Windows users.

Searching for a Replacement

Dashboard didn't just kill Konfabulator. It also killed the web services end of Apple's own Sherlock. Rather than pulling up the Sherlock application to load a set of prebuilt web services channels, Dashboard allowed users a highly graphical way to lay out desk accessory style applets that did the same types of things. It could also call them up and dismiss them with an Exposé-style keystroke, rather than only run them within a Sherlock window.

Had Apple not "interfered" in the markets for Watson and Konfabulator, Mac users would be today stuck with two poorly implemented, competing systems with a lot of overlap. Back in the mid 80s, Apple had attempted to maintain its Mac platform without encroaching on third parties, and instead pushed its own apps off into the Claris subsidiary. After ten years of letting third parties fight over shareware implementations of features Apple should have addressed itself, the company nearly died. It now thinks about itself first.

Like Exposé, Dashboard also highlighted the animated, fluid potential in Mac OS X's Quartz graphics engine. Widgets dragged into the Dashboard sea ripple, and individual widgets are configured by touching an icon that flips them around to reveal configurable settings.

The other half of Sherlock, related to local file search and content indexing, remained as Sherlock's iconic magnifying glass under the name Spotlight. Apple's existing V-Twin search engine had shown up in Panther as the Search Kit, but it was further overhauled in Tiger to enhance its performance and add Google-like search syntax and phrase based searching. Back in March of 2002, Apple had hired Dominic Giampaolo, an architect of the advanced BeOS file system. Giampaolo worked to build similar metadata indexing features into the new Spotlight.

New Desktop Features in Leopard: Spotlight

The pace of new development in Spotlight, Dashboard, and the Mac Desktop has continued in Leopard. Spotlight can now index and search network file server shares, and supports a richer query vocabulary. The menu bar Spotlight field will also calculate math equations as fast as you can type them, making it a quick alternative to launching the calculator (below).

If you type a few letters that match an application, Spotlight presents that app as the default highlighted result, so it can be launched with a tap of the spacebar. This makes Spotlight an alternative to standalone launchers. If you type a word that doesn't match an application, Spotlight assumes you want a definition and presents an instant result inline. Tap spacebar to open Dictionary and look up the topic in Wikipedia. The new Spotlight also indexes the text of web pages in your browser history, so it can find subjects you've recently researched. Spotlight finds everything, fast.

If you're looking for files instead of answers, Leopard's Spotlight menu bar search can also serve as a shortcut to the search field in Finder windows. File search results default to bring up phrases found in file content, but if you're searching for a file by name, Spotlight presents an option to rapidly narrow down results that way, too. Spotlight also searches your backups through integration with Time Machine. Perform a search, activate Time Machine, and select any point in time in the past to perform your search. You can also simply search your Time Machine drive directly.

The new reorganization of the Spotlight interface makes it far more useful because it's easier to find what you're looking for without having to think about how to do a search "properly." It simply searches correctly by default.

New Desktop Features in Leopard: Dashboard

The other side of Sherlock's ghost also gets some significant updates. Users who like widgets but don't know how to program now have two tools for building their own. The first is integrated into Safari; simply select a region of a web page with the Web Clip tool, and you get a functional Dashboard widget that updates as that page does. Apple also includes DashCode with the Xcode developer tools for building more involved widgets.

DashCode provides a series of widget templates (above) that make it easy to build a simple RSS feed widget, a countdown timer, or begin from another basic starting point. Fill in the blanks, select preferences, drag in graphics, and DashCode builds you a functional widget. You can also venture into adding your own code and make full use of its integrated development environment with a source code editor for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (below), as well as a JavaScript debugger. A decade ago, NeXT was licensing the forerunner of these tools for $2790 per seat; they're now free with Leopard.

Apple has also thrown in some new widgets of its own, including a movie and theaters widget for looking up show times, viewing trailers, and buying tickets. Widgets can also now be synced between systems using .Mac. It can't be too far off before new widgets start sprouting on the iPhone as well. With the recent announcement of an official iPhone SDK, efforts invested into DashCode should port directly into new iPhone applications.

Other New Desktop Features in Leopard

Despite the placeholder icon that sits in the Dock, Dashboard is actually run by the Dock itself, which was profiled separately. The Dock, along with the Finder, combine with Spotlight and Dashboard to present a lot of new desktop functionality that is greater than the sum of its parts. To make room for all of that extra stuff, you can activate Spaces as the latest expansion of Exposé, and drag your windows off into their own virtual desktop regions.

A variety of new things in Leopard clearly go beyond just checking off marks on a list of required features. New graphical flourish, from the reflective Dock to the subtly translucent menu bar, frame the desktop background picture and add dimension to the desktop. The menu bar's drop down menus, along with other popup menus such as the Dock's, now sport aesthetically appealing rounded corners, and use translucency and blurring to create a look similar to vellum paper. The help menu is animated and alive, with a floating arrow that drifts around the features as it points them out.

Leopard's variety of enhancements, from the major new apps and functions to the ornamental eye candy and the thoughtful refinements, all add up to an experience that calls back to the first pioneering efforts to deliver a graphical desktop, and Engelbart's vision for augmenting human intellect using advanced computing interfaces. Leopard looks poised to push a lot of users to rip the brick off their pencil and investigate the Mac platform.

Check out earlier installments from AppleInsider's ongoing Road to Leopard Series: Safari 3.0, iCal 3.0, iChat 4.0, Mail 3.0, Time Machine; Spaces, Dock 1.6, Finder 10.5, Dictionary 2.0, and Preview 4.0.

iTunes U Expands 'Beyond Campus'

10/19/2007

iTunes U, the education portal within Apple's iTunes, has expanded its content to include educational materials from sources beyond colleges and universities, including Smithsonian Global Sound, KQED, Little Kids Rock, and the Museum of Modern Art. The most recent addition to the expanded content area, known as Beyond Campus, is American Public Media, which is making its radio programming available free for educational purposes.

The programming includes selections from APM's programs American RadioWorks, Composer's Datebook, Marketplace, Speaking of Faith, Word for Word, and The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. The content includes downloadable audio, printable transcripts, and suggestions for discussion points to support classroom use of the programs.

"iTunes U offers an exciting opportunity to extend the value of the outstanding programming produced by American Public Media's radio series, strengthen our relationship with educators, and connect with a generation of students that are already plugged in to iTunes," said Sarah Lutman, senior vice president, Content and Media, American Public Media. "iTunes U will also be a powerful gateway to the dynamic supplemental web content that accompanies our signature programs."



The APM content, as well as other Beyond Programming, is accessible through the iTunes Music Store in the iTunes U section.

Read More:

• American Public Media
• iTunes
• iTunes U

Apple Design Awards 2007

Best Mac OS X Leopard Application

Winner

Delicious Library 2.0 (prerelease)

Delicious Monster

Delicious Library allows you to catalog, browse, and share all your books, movies, music, and video games. When version 1.0 first arrived on Mac OS X, it set a new standard for user experience and redefined user expectations for this category of software. Written using Objective-C 2.0, Delicious Library 2.0 (alpha), which is currently not available, uses a slew of new Leopard technologies to do more with less, such as:

• Core Data - Stores thousands of library assets and increases overall performance
• Core Animation - Adds animation throughout the interface and removes thousands of lines of custom animation code
• Calendar Store - The Calendar Store framework assists the integration with iCal
• Scripting Bridge - Directly communicates with iWeb for web publishing and with iTunes to obtain album cover art, thus reducing its hardware footprint
• Spotlight - Enhanced Spotlight integration and the NSPredicateEditor UI enables smart shelves
• Core Image - Allows visual effects to be applied to cover art and used throughout the UI
• Image IO - Handles reading & parsing images of various formats

Runner-Up

iBank 3.0a (prerelease)

IGG Software, LLC

Best Mac OS X User Experience

Winner

Coda 1.0

Panic Inc.

Coda is a unique web development environment that offers a complete file browser (both locally and remotely), publishing, full-featured text editor, WebKit-based preview, CSS editor with visual tools, full-featured terminal, built-in reference material, and much more. Coda is the Mac's first one-window Web development application that integrates numerous modules into one cohesive user experience. Coda is a great Mac OS X citizen and integrates technologies such as:

• Resolution Independence
• Javascript debugging
• WebKit - Allows web page previews
• OpenGL - Provides silky-smooth transition animations in their 'Books' section
• Quartz Composer - Programatically creates graphics
• Core Text - Provides beautiful text rendering
• QuickTime - Offers image and movie previews
• BSD Layer - Creates networking, filesystem processes, and other features
  

Best Mac OS X Developer Tool

Winner

CSSEdit 2.5

MacRabbit

CSSEdit has a polished and focused Aqua interface that sports flexible tabs, intuitive visual editors, and exhibits extreme attention to detail. CSSEdit offers real-time styling for absolutely any web page using technologies in a variety of ways:

• Websites powered by a complex database or using advanced AJAX can be styled and analyzed without the hassle of uploading or refreshing.
• Advanced Preview and Xray analysis tools make managing complex style sheets easy.
• Source code can be edited using CSSEdit's intelligent CodeSense, or manually.
• Written entirely in Cocoa by one programmer, CSSEdit takes full advantage of the advanced capabilities of WebKit, digging deep into the framework to provide fine-grained updating of style sheets, Quartz, OpenGL, and Core Image to enhance the user experience with crisp graphics, subtle animations, and smooth transitions

Best Mac OS X Game

Winner

World of Warcraft:
The Burning Crusade 2.0

Blizzard Entertainment

World of Warcraft is the world's #1 Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) with over eight and a half million current subscribers. Players adventure together in an enormous, persistent game world, forming friendships, slaying monsters, and engaging in epic quests that can span days or weeks. The Burning Crusade, the first expansion pack for World of Warcraft, continues to be highly optimized for Mac OS X technologies such as multi-threaded OpenGL. The implementation of multi-threaded OpenGL utilizes the multiple cores found in every Mac, and brings a performance gain of 2X. Other Mac OS X technologies used, include:

• OpenGL Arb Shaders - Offers stunning, full screen visual effects
• CoreAudio - Provides rich, 5.1 surround sound
• BSD Libraries - Allows I/O and networking
• iTunes Integration - Allows players to have full control over their iTunes while playing the game

Best Mac OS X Scientific Computing Solution

Winner

Papers 1.0

Alexander Griekspoor

Scientists have been waiting for a solution like Papers for years, and now it's finally here—exclusively on Mac OS X. Written entirely in Cocoa by two part-time programmers, Papers helps scientists and researchers organize their personal library of scientific articles. It also provides a completely new workflow for reading scientific articles with the ability to search for literature through the built-in access to the PubMed search engine, the major source of scientific research in the biomedical domain. Papers offers downloading, archiving, reading, and sharing PDFs all within a gorgeous user interface.

Papers uses a host of Mac OS X technologies, including:

• CoreData - Supports its database model
• WebKit - Enables the display of webpages, automatic downloading of PDFs, and interactive web-based Help Center content
• PDFKit - Allows the display of PDFs both in tabs and fullscreen mode
• NSXML - Framework for parsing Pubmed and RDF records using XPath queries
• Spotlight and NSPredicate - Facilitates database queries and smart groups
• Quartz and Core Image - Creates visual animations such as, switching tabs, sending email, and exiting fullscreen
• AppleScript - Integrates with Mail
• Various system configuration frameworks to change the program's behavior on the basis of network connectivity and default handlers for different filetypes.

Best Mac OS X Dashboard Widget

Winner

BART Widget 1.0

Bret Victor

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) widget allows commuters to plan trips on the BART subway system in the San Francisco Bay Area. Users can glance at the widget to see when the next trains are coming, or explore the BART system in space and time. This widget isn't just a web front-end and it doesn't require a network connection since, after all, there is no network connection in many train stations. It has schedule data built in, and uses integrated routing and scheduling algorithms to calculate the fastest trips.

The BART widget replaces simpler, traditional web interfaces with a more intuitive design incorporating direct manipulation, immediate feedback, and speech synthesis to inform users of arriving or departing trains. In addition, it makes extensive use of the Canvas element and its related methods for the trip timeline and maps, and AJAX and Javascript for the rest of its capabilities — is an excellent example of how much value a widget can provide.

Best Mac OS X Student Product

Winner

Picturesque 1.0

Zac Cohan and Nik Youdale

Picturesque is a batch image beautifier with a simple, modern, drag-and-drop interface. Picturesque easily enhances the aesthetics of images with such tasteful effects as reflections, glows, shadows, curves, strokes and fades. Picturesque shines in its ability to apply all of its included effects on multiple images in batch mode. Designers can save significant amounts of time by beautifying all their images at once using Picturesque's Automator and AppleScript support.

Written by two students, entirely in Cocoa, Picturesque takes full advantage of Cocoa drawing and Core Graphics to provide beautiful image effects, and Cocoa scripting to make all image properties in Picturesque fully AppleScriptable. This scriptability opens the door for nine Automator actions allowing users to achieve gorgeous results in a fully automated manner.