Mac OS X Leopard

New and changed features

User interface

End-user features

• A new and improved Automator, with easy starting points to easily start a workflow. It also can quickly create or edit workflows with new interface improvements. Now it can use a new action called "Watch Me Do" that lets users record a user action and replay as an action in a workflow. It can create more useful Automator workflows with actions for RSS feeds, iSight camera video snapshots, PDF manipulation, and much more.
• Back to My Mac, a feature for MobileMe users that allows users to access files on their home computer while away from home via the internet.
• Boot Camp, a software assistant allowing for the installation of other operating systems, such as Windows XP or Windows Vista, on a separate partition on Intel-based Macs.
• Dashboard enhancements, including Web Clip, a feature that allows users to turn a part of any Web page displayed in Safari into a live Dashboard widget, and Dashcode to help developers code widgets.
• New Desktop, comprises a redesigned 3-D Dock with a new grouping feature called Stacks, which displays files in either a "fan" style, "grid" style, or a "list" style. Rory Prior, on the ThinkMac blog, criticized the shelf-like Dock along with a number of other changes to the user interface.
• Dictionary can now search Wikipedia, and a dictionary of Apple terminology as well. Also included is the Japanese-language dictionary Daijisen, Progressive E-J and Progressive J-E dictionaries, and the 25,000-word thesaurus Tsukaikata no Wakaru Ruigo Reikai Jiten, all of which are provided by the Japanese publisher Shogakukan.
• A redesigned Finder, with features similar to those seen in iTunes 7, including Cover Flow and a Source list-like sidebar.
• Front Row has been reworked to closely resemble the interface of the original Apple TV.
• iCal calendar sharing and group scheduling as well as syncing event invitations from Mail. The icon also reflects the current date even when the application is not running. In previous versions of Mac OS X, the icon would show July 17 in the icon any time the application was not running but the current date when the application was running.
• iChat enhancements, including multiple logins, invisibility, animated icons, and tabbed chats, similar to features present in Pidgin, Adium and the iChat plugin Chax; iChat Theater, allowing users to incorporate images from iPhoto, presentations from Keynote, videos from QuickTime, and other Quick Look features into video chats; and Backdrops, which are similar to chroma keys, but use a real-time difference matte technique which does not require a green or blue screen. iChat also implements screen sharing, a feature previously available with Apple Remote Desktop.
• Mail enhancements including the additions of RSS feeds, Stationery, Notes, and to-dos. To-dos use a system-wide service that is available to all applications.
• Network file sharing improvements include more granular control over permissions, consolidation of AFP, FTP and SMB sharing into one control panel, and the ability to share individual folders, a feature that had not been available since Mac OS 9.
• Parental controls now include the ability to place restrictions on use of the Internet and to set parental controls from anywhere using remote setup.
• Photo Booth enhancements, including video recording with real-time filters and blue/green-screen technology.
• Podcast Capture, an application allowing users to record and distribute podcasts. It requires access to a computer running Mac OS X Server with Podcast Producer.
• Preview adds support for annotation, graphics, extraction, search, markup, Instant Alpha and size adjustment tools.
• Quick Look, a framework allowing documents to be viewed without opening them in an external application and can preview it in full screen. Plug-ins are available for Quick Look so that users can also view other files, such as Installer Packages.

• Safari 3, which includes Web Clip.
• Spaces, an implementation of virtual desktops, allows multiple desktops per user, with certain applications and windows in each desktop. Users can organize certain Spaces for certain applications Users can create and control up to 16 spaces, and applications can be switched between each one, creating a very large workspace. The auto-switching feature in Spaces has annoyed some of its users. Apple added a new preference in 10.5.2 which disabled this feature, but there were still bugs found while switching windows. In 10.5.3, this problem was addressed and was no longer an issue.
• Spotlight incorporates additional search capabilities such as Boolean operators, as well as the ability to search other computers.
• Time Machine, an automated backup utility which allows the user to restore files that have been deleted or replaced by another version of a file. Though generally lauded in the press as a step forward for data recovery, Time Machine has been criticized in multiple publications for lacking the capabilities of third-party backup software. Analyzing the feature for TidBITS, Joe Kissell pointed out that Time Machine does not create bootable copies of backed-up volumes, does not back up to AirPort Disk hard drives and will not back up FileVault encrypted home directories until the user logs out, concluding that the feature is "pretty good at what it does" but he will only use it as part of a "broader backup strategy". One of these issues has been resolved, however; On March 19, 2008, updates were released for AirPort and Time Machine, allowing for Time Machine to use a USB hard disk which has been connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station.
• Universal Access enhancements: significant improvements to applications including VoiceOver, along with increased support for Braille, closed captioning and a new high‐quality Speech synthesis voice.
• Russian language support, bringing the total to 18 languages.
• Leopard removes support for Classic applications.
• Introduced the Alex voice to VoiceOver.

  Developer technologies

• Native support by many libraries and frameworks for 64-bit applications, allowing 64-bit Cocoa applications. Existing 32-bit applications using those libraries and frameworks should continue to run without the need for emulation or translation.
• Leopard offers the Objective-C 2.0 runtime, which includes new features such as garbage collection. Xcode 3.0 supports the updated language and was itself rewritten with it.
• A new framework, Core Animation, allows a developer to create complex animations while specifying only a "start" and a "goal" space. The main goal of Core Animation is to enable the creation of complex animations with small amounts of program code.
• Apple integrates DTrace from the OpenSolaris project and adds a graphical interface called Instruments. DTrace provides tools that users, administrators and developers can use to tune the performance of the operating system and the applications that run on it.
• The new Scripting Bridge allows programmers to use Python 2.5 and Ruby 1.8.6 to interface with the Cocoa frameworks.
• Ruby on Rails is included in the default install.
• Leopard's OpenGL stack has been updated to version 2.1, and uses LLVM to increase its vertex processing speed.
• The Graphics and Media State of the Union address confirmed many other features are possible because of Core Animation, such as live desktops, improvements to Quartz Composer with custom patches, a new PDF Kit for developers, and improvements to QuickTime APIs.
• The FSEvents framework allows applications to register for notifications of changes to a given directory tree.
• Leopard includes a read-only implementation of the ZFS file system.
• Leopard includes drivers for UDF 2.5, necessary for reading HD DVD and Blu-ray discs using third-party drives, but the included DVD Player software can only play HD DVDs authored by DVD Studio Pro.
• Leopard includes a framework implementing latent semantic mapping for classifying data.
• Leopard is the first operating system with open source BSD code to be certified as fully UNIX-compliant. Certification means that software following the Single UNIX Specification can be compiled and run on Leopard without the need for any code modification. The certification only applies to Leopard when run on Intel processors.
• Leopard includes J2SE 5.0.