Ok, this is a little late, but I’ve been kind of busy (everyday I’ve got to go to this place called the ‘office’ which is really kind of annoying).

Spotty Leopard

So WWDC07 came and went. Leopard was cool but since it’ll only be available in October I think it wasn’t such an attention getter anyway. Plus, I’m not sure which of the new features we saw were the “top secret” features Steve promised us last WWDC. It’s certainly not Stacks, and the new Finder would be a stretch too. Evolutionary for sure, but not revolutionary.

Think Secret has put up a gallery of OS X 10.5 Leopard (build 9a466) screenshots. You can get a good look at the new UI here. I would have said that they were brave, but these days it looks like Apple’s lawyers don’t mind so much about screenshots.

One thing about Leopard that’s drawing strong reactions is the new Desktop, especially its new menubar. “Leopard’s new menubar is hideous!” declares David Chartier.

… I could comfortably say that I wouldn’t buy a copy of Leopard until someone developed a modification that switches the menubar and menu back from the brink of “hey look, Vista went transparent!”-ness (of course, a simple Apple-provided checkbox in System Preferences would do just fine as well).

I don’t know if that was just a piece of linkbait, but that entry got 82 comments. Definitely qualifies as a strong reaction for me.

Safari making waves

Two and a half weeks ago, at the D conference, Steve Jobs said that iTunes for Windows was a glass of ice water for people in hell. At WWDC07, Steve sprung a surprise and offered another drink for our long-suffering Windows friends with Safari for Windows.

If the numbers are anything to go by, it looks like Windows users really needed the drink and downloaded Safari over a million times in 2 days. However, it took just 2 hours for security researchers to point out flaws and vulnerabilities in Safari, prompting Apple to release Safari 3.01 Beta for Windows last week.

Reactions have been mixed as well, with some reviewers not particularly impressed while some niches, like professional photographers, are loving it because of Safari’s superior colour rendering technology.

Another interesting reaction to Safari was from Mozilla’s COO John Lilly who called Apple’s Safari plan “duopolistic”. His opinion was based on this slide that Steve showed at the WWDC Keynote:

John says on his blog that the slide shows Apple’s true intention: to “pick up” users of other browsers, thereby giving control of access to the web to the two dominating operating systems in the world. I don’t know if that’s what Steve really plans to do but if it is, I’m with Mozilla all the way because I believe in choice and I love Firefox.

iPhone, iPhone, iPhone

Then of course there’s the iPhone. iPhone frenzy is increasing to astronomical heights with just over a week to go till its official launch. On Monday, Apple added to the frenzy when it issued a press release announcing upgrades to iPhone’s specs. The iPhone now sports a better better which gives it 8-hour talk time, plus an “optical grade” glass screen.

While developers weren’t too happy that they didn’t get a SDK to develop “real” applications for the iPhone, others are really getting into it and creating web-based apps for the iPhone. Check out iPhoneApplicationList.com to see some of the apps that they’ve been building. There’s also an iPhone DevCamp taking place the weekend following the iPhone’s launch so I’m pretty sure we’ll see some creative iPhone apps soon.

Last of all, John Heilemann at New York Magazine wrote a great feature article that traces Steve Jobs’ career through the years and what the iPhone would mean to it. But he also says that the iPhone inaugurates a dangerous new era for Jobs by leading Apple into totally uncharted territory. A great read - Steve Jobs in a Box.