Oct 16, 2007 11:15 AM
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We talked to Brian Croll, senior director, Mac OS X Product Marketing at Apple this morning about, yep, Leopard. We had quite a few questions, and Brian had answers for many of them. Here's the information we managed to eke out, including Leopard's demands on MacBook Pro battery life, the possibility of Widgets on iPhone, and whether or not that cool R2D2 iChat hologram effect survived. (Care to place bets?) Oh, one more thing: Apple was also quick to reiterate that "Everyone gets the Ultimate version" in a not so subtle dig at Microsoft's confusing Vista variants.
Giz: Can you override Time Machine to seriously delete stuff you never want to see again?
Apple: In the "starfield" view you have an option: "Delete all backup versions of this file." If you do that, you will never see it again. Also, you can select things you don't want to be picked up by Time Machine. You can affect the scope, and specify areas you don't want to cover.
Giz: Will I want to leave Time Machine running when I'm in the field, or will I have to turn it off to preserve battery life?
Apple: No, it is really low over head.
Giz: Will I be able to get as long battery life on MacBook Pro?
Apple: No specific measurement, but don't expect to see a huge difference.
Giz: Are Mail To Do and iCal To Do the same?
Apple: There is one list of To Dos that can be expressed in both iCal and Mail. To Dos are also synced to your mail server, so you can see them from multiple machines.
Giz: What do Mail To Dos look like when viewed from 3rd party mail apps or from an iPhone?
Apple: To Dos show up as normal mail in 3rd Party and non-Leopard mail programs, including iPhones and Blackberrys.
Giz: Are Widgets from Leopard going to be made to work across all Apple platforms (i.e. iPhone)?
Apple: Widgets will work in Dashboard and will continue to work in Dashboard.
Giz: What's new with the Dictionary tool?
Apple: There's a lot of pretty cool stuff. We've added Wikipedia support and a Japanese dictionary as well.
Giz: What are the system requirements?
Apple: Intel Processor, PPC G5, PPC G4, 867MHz or better; 512 MB of memory; DVD drive for installation.
Giz: Will Leopard come with iLife '08?
Apple: No. If you buy a new CPU with Leopard, you get the new verison of iLife. If you have an older system with Tiger, you have to buy both the iLife upgrade and Leopard upgrade.
Giz: Does iChat still have the Star Wars hologram effect? We've added a whole lot of different effects. I am not sure if the hologram one is in there. We included the most effective ones, the ones that work the best. I think [the hologram effect] is not in there.
Giz: What's the name of the next OS update cat?
We don't talk about future products.
Though they couldn't answer all of our questions, they did recommend visiting the updated Mac OS X page, particularly the section on 300+ New Features.
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