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In the first installment of “Exploring the Leopard 300″, we explored what was new in Address Book, Fonts, Imaging and Finder. In Part 2, we will be exploring what new was release in Boot Camp, Desktop, Graphics, Spaces.

BOOT CAMP

For the uninitatiated, as Apple moved to Intel processer architecture from PowerPC chips. People started to ask for installing Windows on their Macs natively, as virtualization products like Parallels were already out their. Boot Camp was available for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger slightly before Leopard release. The following group of 7 features together form the complete product Boot Camp. The group includes:

• Boot Camp: Run Windows XP or Vista natively i.e. to switch from Mac OS X to Windows, you need to restart
• Boot Camp Assistant: Setup assistant to install Windows for the first time
• Copy Files Between Mac OS X and Windows: Great feature, what would be the fun without this
• Restore to Mac-Only Partition: If you finally realize that you don’t need windows and which will surely do sooner or later, the tool to use to recover those much scarce hard disk resources
• Microsoft WHCL-Certified Windows Drivers: No need to hunt for drivers, they come in the package
• Automatic PC Key Remapping: The windows PC keys
• Convenient Boot Camp Task Bar Shortcut: We want to you to start using Mac OS X:)

DESKTOP

• New Look: The Leopard Desktop was a great refresh to most prime element in an OS. Great pixel utilization.
• Stacks: Revolutionary concept in file management. In their own words:
  Organise files in a neat stack on the Dock. One click and the stack springs open, revealing items in an elegant arc or an at-a-glance grid.
• Downloads Stack: Downloads have their own unique stack
• Sorting Stacks: Organize your stacks by by filename, date added, date modified, date created, or file type
• .Mac Sync for Dock Items: Make changes on one Mac and through .Mac (now MobileMe) it gets reflected everywhere
• Spring-Loaded Dock: I’ll use the official word on it
  Items in the Dock are spring-loaded. Just drag a file, hover over any application in the Dock, and press the Space bar — the application opens instantly. For example, to add a picture to your iPhoto library, just drag the image file and hover over the iPhoto icon in the Dock. Press the Space bar, and once iPhoto opens, you can drag the image into your iPhoto library. If you drag a file and hover over a stack, pressing the Space bar opens a Finder window showing the contents of the stack.

GRAPHICS

Mac always have been great with graphics and usually the first choice in the creative industry. Since birth Mac has been a step ahead with graphics. The Leopard release brought in the following updates:

• Core Animation: Create incredible animated user experiences in your applications, combining 2D graphics, OpenGL rendering, and video.
• Updated OpenGL: Run even the most up-to-date OpenGL-based applications that take advantage of the latest technologies and GLSL v1.2 support in Leopard.
• New Core Image Filters: Take advantage of over 20 new Core Image filters built right into Leopard, including Disc Blur, Linear Bump, Comic Effect, Hexagonal Pixellate, Spot Color, and more.
• Multicore Enhanced: Get optimum performance from Core Image, Core Animation, and OpenGL, all tuned to take advantage of your Mac’s multicore processor.
• EXIF Color Space Support: Enjoy improved color reproduction of digital photos, as ColorSync automatically takes advantage of the EXIF sRGB information embedded in image files by many popular digital cameras.

SPACES

One of the most amazing desktop management enhancements available to the Unix/Linux crowd for some time. Spaces provides users the availability to have virtually N number of desktops and dedicate a specific Space for a specific applications. Like I have set Space 1 for nothing, use it as desktop, Space 2 for Firefox, Space 3 for Apple Mail and Space 4 for coding/terminal etc. The Leopard release brought in the following:

• Spaces: In their own words:
  Organise your activities into separate spaces and easily switch from one to another. Make a space for work or play. Choose from a number of convenient options that make moving from space to space fast and easy.
  
• Bird’s-Eye View: View all of your spaces onscreen at the same time.
• Add and Remove Spaces: Easily add or remove spaces in the Spaces pane of System Preferences.
• Application Binding: Assign an application to a specific space. Anytime you run that application, it will open in its assigned space.
• Bump Over to Adjacent Space: Move a window to another space by dragging it to the edge of your screen. Spaces will switch to the new space and take your window with it.

Apple, Mac OS 300, Apple, Boot Camp, Core Animation, Desktop, Dual OS, Features, Graphics, Leopard, Mac OS X, microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Spaces, Spring, Stack, virtualization, Windows XP