Looks like we were thinking the same thing. Thanks for backing up my points, even if accidently. ;D

Don't forget about MailTags. http://www.indev.ca/index.html

When I first watched the keynote I saw that leopard was taking a lot from some apps and adding to the OS, but at the same time I see that most of these apps only came out because of people that saw that there was something missing. But is like you said either they evolve or die, but im pretty sure that they will evolve and probably take advantage of some of the other features apple announced. Good luck for all the shareware & freeware developers

I'm looking forward to see what developers are going to do with Core Animation.

You also noticed the same thing!... although your list is more complete than mine. I spent yesterday's keynote hoping they hadn't cloned my yet to be released software!

I always find it funny when people claim that Spotlight is a "LaunchBar / QS" killer.

Spotlight serves a completely different purpose and does not solve the app launcher problem.  In LB/QS, a quick cmd-spaceMreturn activates Mail.  Spotlight?  Mail *might* be in the list somewhere, but I'm gonna have to scroll-and-pick.

Spotlight is good stuff -- use it all the time -- but never for app launching.

As for QS vs. LB;   matter of taste.   They work differently enough in very subtle ways that preference is enough to make someone cough up some $$ for LB if that is what they want.

Personally, I live by LB.  Can't stand using a Mac without it.  I have tried living on QS -- cute UI, but not nearly as fast or accurate as LB.    The accuracy may very much be because (a) I'm used to LB and (b) LB has a learning algorithm that I have been training for years and years through use.

I've used Spaces already and I have to say it is *very* slick. I don't require much in a pager, just a few extra desk tops with an easy way to switch between all my applications and desktops.

Virtuedesktops has been a patch job in the lack of a pager for me on OS X. It's pretty buggy (use apple tab to switch to an application in another window and you're liable to get a different application). It's been useful for me, but I can't wait for spaces.

@bbum : If you set your Spotlight to give the apps first, you pretty much have the essential feature of a launcher.
Past that, if you've been with LB for years, there's no way (nor need) to change to any other system : habbits are hard to die !
MO2C.

raf

Um, that CoreAnimation thing was only a demo app. It has very little chance of ever being released. They just built that to show what developers can do with CoreAnimation. "6 Apps on Leopard's Hit List"

Doesn't Apple also provide many frameworks such as the new Core Animation to help ISVs create more innovative solutions? To be frank, I find Apple is saving them a huge amount of development cost (do not forget the new Xcode 3.0)! Apple itself does not fear to scrap its own fine products (e.g., iPod mini). I think this is the nature of the software business; evolve or die.

(BTW, iWeb is not a Sandvox rip-off)

gdw, in my opinion that tech demo in some form or another is at the -very least- going to replace Apple's current iTunes artwork screensaver. I wouldn't dismiss it off the bat.

I am only a novice user of apples products, but unless you are a person who runs out and buys the newest version of operating System everytimeit comes out. Then all these software will continue to shine in tiger

Apple invents products that appeal to customers and creates a Mac market, Apple invents tools to help developers make Mac products too, Apple holds conference to help developers do a good job building products and businesses on the Mac market Apple built, Apple updates features of Mac due to customer input and invents more tools to help developers make even more products to sell to even more customers.

Developer Good, Apple Bad? Nah. It's a symbiotic relationship.

Apple would not be successful without developers making cool products for the Mac, Mac developers would not be successful without Apple making cool new versions of Mac products for customers.

But sometimes, if you dance between the giants toes you get squished.

Isn't timemachine different than superduper? Or am I confused? Timemachine basically keeps a copy of your system on the hard drive, correct? But if the whole thing crashes, timemachine crashes with it, so you couldn't reinstall like you do with superduper.

Or can you make a backup on an external hd with timemachine like you can with superduper?

We were all thinking the same thing. Everyone in the keynote audience was thinking "so much for virtuedesktops". You can always tell that developers are thinking, "ooh just killed that app" whenever Steve intros a new, nifty feature and no one applauds.

But, I'm not gonna weep. This isn't nearly as bad as the konfabulator/dashboard thing. As I recall most of the apps listed are usually introduced like so: "can't wait for Apple to implement 'feature X'? Well, wait no more. Application Y implements just that feature while we wait for Apple to see the error of their ways."

Time Machine REQUIRES a separate hard drive (maybe a DVD?). That way if your machine gets hosed you just run your restore disc to get it back to it's shipped state and then run Time Machine to get it back to your last backup. Vista is the one that keeps snapshots of previous system states on the boot drive. Superduper grabs the whole drive as a single file, but Time Machine will let you go back to yesterday before you installed the latest Uberutilty that just hosed your Admin account. Just one day or just one account. Not sure SD does that. There are programs that do what Time Machine does, but Time Machine is really just the logical progression of Backup, Apple's .Mac backup utility.

"Dan Wood, developer of Watson (ripped off soon after with Apple’s Sherlock)" Sherlock was out long before Watson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_%28software%29 It came out originally with System 8.5. Dan Wood admitted the name was intended to show that it was a companion to Sherlock when it was released for OS X. Watson was a great tool... up until Karelia sold Watson to Sun who effectively killed it. Ironically since Tiger and the Widgets functionality in Dashboard, Sherlock is basically dead now too. While he did experience bad timing with the release of Sandvox very close to iWeb's release.

The only app on Leopard's Hit List that I am actually happy about is [url=http://andrewescobar.com/frontrow]Front Row Enabler[/url] from Andrew Escobar. Its a great little utility, but it will be nice to actually have an officially supported version direct from Apple.

Until they make the "top hit" the default selection, I'll stick with LaunchBar.

"...Sandvox (ripped off right before its release with iWeb)..."

Huh? How can you be ripped off before release? Does Apple have some kind of time machine so that they can look ahead at what's coming and then jump back a year to start development?

"ChatFX was a really cute... I say was, because it isn’t quite unique anymore. iChat 4 can do all this and more..."

iChat 4 can do all this and more in spring 2007, say 6-8 months from now. Read Script Software's message about iChat Theatre and ChatFX:

It's a real stretch to compare any of this crap to features in Leopard.

Here is one that I was personally involved with the development of for several years that no one has mentioned yet... Now Up-to-Date and Contact. Looks like all of the features and more will be in iCal. Check it out:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/ical.html

I would never trust Apple to backup my software. We mostly need backups because Apple screws up our machines with updates. I'll stick with SuperDuper! 'till death do us part.

It's not brought up much, but DesktopManager/VirtueDesktop use some hidden APIs Apple built into the OS in Mac OS X 10.3, then left unused outside of 1 Infinite Loop for 10.3 and 10.4.

Rich (The DesktopManager dude) talks about them here: http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000300.html (Search for CGSSetWorkspace).

So sometimes people make cool features, and sometimes Apple uses cool features they put into the OS and other people found.

I think this post is a bit of an exaggeration:

1. Coverflow isn't impacted negatively by Core Animation at all. If anything I'd bet that Catfish (the dev, as known to the Mac Ach) is excited by the new capabilities of Core Animation as anyone. It may allow him to extend his app in new and exciting ways, without writing tons of code.

2. It's pretty hard to claim that Spotlight is taking away market from LaunchBar, Butler, or Quicksilver. All three apps do much more than launching, work much faster than Spotlight, and have much better interfaces as application launchers.

3. I'm hoping that apple's spaces stuff is exposed to third parties, so that other ways of interacting with the 'spaces' is possible, besides Apple's interface. If so, it could make multiple desktop programs more powerful, as other third party devs will hopefully code support for spaces into a variety of apps. Previously, to do so they had to cater to at least 4 different virtual desktop implementations I can think of: Virtue Desktops, Desktop Manager, Virtual Desktop Pro, and You Control Desktops. Now all four, and possibly others, can provide unique but compatible layers on top of Spaces, or so I hope.

4. The new workflow tools in Mail are going to be systemwide, which means that any organization apps will be able to tie into them. This empowers developers, rather than putting them out of business.

5. Furthermore, Mail's new templates are based on HTML, which is anathema to most of the users of existing templating plugins. So I would imagine these plugins will continue to sell well, while Mail's new templates attract newbie users who would otherwise never use such a feature.

6. iChat enhancements: yeah, they'll be stomped on. Too bad for those devs, but good for users, and the community. Some of the features, like tabs, should have been in iChat long ago.

So, in summary, I think the new announcements do far more to empower new development than they stomp on existing products. The idea that Apple is "scalping the community" for ideas is kind of ridiculous. Most of the devs of the products listed are probably just as happy as any of us about the new announcements, and particularly things like Core Animation and XCode 3, which will make their lives much easier.

3rd party developers do tend to come up with the most creative and useful ideas, and in that sense I'm glad that Apple rides on their coat tails. Otherwise we wouldn't have half the cool features we do. On the other hand, it would be nice for Apple to compensate or at least recognize certain developers as the source of their inspiration (assuming they really are). I think the nature of the big business - small developer relationship makes that pretty unlikely though.

I am a novice to the Apple seen and have actually been looking for an app that will allow me to put photos or video behind me while in front of the iSight and record it. I have not used Chat FX before and when i was watching the keynote the new iChat 4 feature went off in my head as exactly what i was looking for (well almost. As cool as doing that all in chat is i wanted to know if there is an app that will allow me to apply a video or photo backdrop and record myself?

Another one that was missed is Searchlight. Searchlight already brings the power of Spotlight to the network.
Searchlight has even more features than the network enabled Spotlight like instant notification of changed files through RSS.
More can be found on http://caseapps.com/searchlight.html

Chax, ChatFX, ShowMacster... So wait, when a developer makes a product that adds functionality to an *Apple* app, they are supposed to be shocked and horrified when Apple adds that functionality to their app themselves? Ohhh, okay.

Leopard's release needn't be the death knell for these apps. Apple often releases functional, pretty, but very limited applications. RSS in Mail, for instance, won't upset NetNewsWire. I'm still happy to pay for LiteSwitch rather than use Apple's cmd-tab switcher, because although it does the same thing, it does it so much better.

oh boo hoo. apple is giving people features they want. i'll agree these programs are great but many of them would never even be known to the majority of mac users until after apple "steals" from them.

i remember when microsoft shipped a defragger with DOS and it killed central point's pc tools (sad thing was they licensed it from CP and nobody purchased their deluxe version which is what killed them). it was a shame, but most folks never even knew what a degrag app was before ms put it in the box. same thing happened when ms enclosed doublespace (later drivespace) and it killed stacker and stac inc.

it's always a shame to see developers getting trod on but at the same time if it is an obvious or must have feature you probably won't get too many tears shed for the developers...

Chax sets out to fix iChat until Apple does so themselves. Now Apple did that themselves. I wouldn't call that "Apple stealing", but rather just getting time to do it properly. Same for VirtueDesktops, the API was already Apple's waiting for an Apple interface, and Desktop Manager and VirtueDesktops just provided alternative interfaces. Time Machine and SuperDuper are two different things, and I can't believe that you're complaining about Apple adding backup to the OS. The CoreAnimation/CoverFlow jibe is just silly. And so on . . .

So someone made a hack to add tabs to an Apple-app or re-add functionality way old in the Unix-society. And then Apple implements the same ideas themselves to their own already existing software. Man, stop whining.

You think it's a shame as well that cars comes with rear view mirrors built on nowadays?

dan: Time Machine backs up to an external hard drive.

Time Machine won't kill SuperDuper yet because TM doesn't appear to do backups to removable media and it will require copius amounts of disk space. You ever seen how fast a SuperDuper backup grows if you don't overwrite chnaged files?!

So all your TM backups remain onsite... a fire or burg and your done. All TM protects against are file deletions/corruptions and hard disk crashes.

You forgot iChat's built-in VNC client (screen sharing), which for some reason many people think is a new technology.

I think you are not seeing what apple is doing really. Apple is just adding to their OS what Users want it to be. For example, Virtual Desktop (that I'm using for few months now). VD is great App but it not perfect, I know for fact that sometimes it 's oding so weird stuff. Spaces is Drag and drop combatible whereas VD isn't and lack it.

All these are great I loved cover flow, but I loved better a cover flow that is integrated to iTunes or FrontRow.

The only thing that bother me in apple action, is the fact that they present all these new features as if they came out from their brain only.

ps: The Time Machine is not really a backup app...

iChat?! Huh, I like Adium

We thought that the iCal server announcement would kill our first product SyncBridge (http://syncbridge.com). However, Apple have actually given us the advantage by releasing the server as open source. Now we can give people calendar sharing in Tiger, and migrate them as they move to Leopard - we can also allow for mixed Tiger/Leopard environments, and the server can run on Linux or FreeBSD.

When we first saw the announcement, we were totally gutted though One good side effect of that was we came up with three new product ideas!

I just want to add another comment in defense of Apple, or for that matter any OS/platform vendor.

If you are writing "utility" applications or applications that fill a perceived feature gap in the OS or platform, you must be prepared for the OS vendor to fill that gap at any time.

So how do you compete? You compete by offering a solution that now adds more value (if possible) to the vendor's new feature. I as a LaunchBar user find incredible value in what it is capable of. Spotlight also has its uses. I really don't foresee myself abandoning LaunchBar because of what Spotlight may eventually be capable of. To be sure, Spotlight in the future will probably account for the needs of 80% of the market, what LaunchBar must do is ensure that the needs of the 20% are met well.

I have been using ShowMacster for a couple of years. It's got several other features beyond desktop sharing (which I've in fact never used) that still seem to be unique to the app and very neat - I think it still has a solid future, and if the developer is smart he/she will take advantage of the new iChat features to perform some even neater tricks (I can think of one or two).

Well, coming from a nice open-source, mostly free background, I find that people who create Apps from minimal code input shouldn't be surprised when Apple decides to incorporate minor changes into their next product. iChat plug-ins and replacements were mentioned, but Adium is still 100% free, and going strong. My point: free open-sourced based programs for the Mac tend to offer different or more functionality and aren't subject to pity if Apple decides to throw a few features into their apps.

(PS: Great blog, btw!)

"Dan Wood, developer of Sandvox (ripped off right before its release with iWeb)..."

Hardly a ripoff. If iWeb was "ripping off" anything, it would probably be RapidWeaver.

core aniamation is a framework -- part of the os. that's a good thing. it allows for 2d animation to be much smoother and faster -- that app you mention will benefit from this.

additioanlly time warp is a documention versioning systyem much like the VMS filesystem. it keeps track of document versions, noit doing full back ups.

you'd have more more correct to note Subversion or CVS as apps it take sit's cue from but then again it's automatic and requires no real set up from the comman dline, so it's entirely different.

Don't forget MailTags. Though it offers many more features (especially in the upcoming 2.0) than just notes and todos, several core functions of this insanely useful Mail.app plugin are rendered unnecessary by Mail 3.0.

iChat Screen Sharing is very different from ShowMacster. Screen sharing actually does an Apple Remote Desktop like thing and lets remote chat buddies control your screen or vice versa. It looks like ShowMacster only supports screen captures. 

The new iChat Theater, on the other hand, will put the hurt on ShowMacster.

Well...maybe one day apple will write 90% of the apps for the OS, eh?

I find it more that a little disturbing that people seem so cavalier about this. Look guys, everytime Apple kills one of these baby kittens, thats probably 10 kittens never to be born.

Say what you want about microsoft, but at least they *buy the solutions* they want to include, more often than not.

Apple is a multibillion dollar multinational corporation...not some Mom and Pop underdog being held down by the Man.

In the Mac "ecosphere" they ARE "The Man".

So cheers to Apple for demonstrating that if your idea has validity and isn't a Full Blown App (~90% of the time) that your work will be recognized as a re-implementation in the next OS revision.

If nothing else, its a wake up and warning call to Mac Devs; write apps, not one-trick utilities.

Of course, the downside of THAT is developing more full-featured apps cost *actual money* and, well, anything over $10 gets blogged in the Mac Blogsphere as a "Rip-Off" more likely than not, or 17 free alternatives are thrown up for comparison.

Just be careful what "side" you root for; eventually users won't be able to console themselves with the "bah, we didn't need them anyway" salve if another massive Mac Developer exodus occurs...but this time it won't be "The Mac Market isn't large enough" it will be "The Mac Market isn't large enough for ISVs and Apple."

good to see that apple is improving too. Feel sorry for the hard working developers that got ripped of by apple. at least apple improved all photocopy code.
As they say - if you can not innovate - recode it

Quicksilver will have absolutely no trouble at all. There's too much extensibility beyond launching that it's laughable to imagine it going away for quite some time. That, plus the hardcore userbase, keep it on my system for quite beyond Leopard.

Kai,

I would agree with you except that often times apple will call up the developers of those apps and hire them. A perfect example of this is soundjam. The developers ended up creating itunes at apple.

Being a developer for the mac I think Phill's opinion should hold some weight on the issue and he doesn't seem to think it's a massive problem... similarly, being a developer for the mac myself, I don't see it as a 'OH GOD STOP DOING THIS TO US APPLE!' either.

I think we'll be ok. Apple is just spurring us to make better apps, that's all!

It was amazing to me that apple stress was on Microsoft copying them. yet, apple is copying off of little third party company who are only trying to feed their families. FOR SHAME APPLE!!

ATLEAST MS is fighting against someone their own size (sorta).

I don't get it. Besides Dan Wood (who, despite your inferring, actually said nothing negative) the other developers you spoke to seemed quite excited by the new features of Leopard.

I think if these guys are upset, they'll make that known themselves. No developer needs you to act as their mouthpiece - certainly not when you spin it with your own opinions.

I prefer Apple adding features to OSX, 3rd party devs will have to come up with something better or useful.

I dont think OSX's time machine will replace SuperDuper since most SD user will prefer efficiency over eye candy, I dread to think how much space time machine would take on the boot drive.

Complaining when Apple adds features that are loosely similar to things already in the market is 100% lame.

Sicne you're complaining, why don't you offer up a suggestion. What should Apple do? Pay off the other develoeprs? Buy out their crappy solutions? Not implement the features?

Don't forget about Note To Self...

We'll be keeping superduper around for sure - we need a bootable backup on a frequent basis as well, that's saved more than a few computers and servers in my experience. Anyone who's managed an xserve, wether it be carbon copy cloner or super duper, won't see time machine as a server replacement for industrial usage.

You can add Grammarian PRO X and Grammatica to that list.

Regarding MailTags. -- I actually wouldn't add it to the list. Mails implementation of notes and to do's seem a little underwhelming. First and foremost, it doesn't implement keywords and projects and user set priority which is big. It isn't clear how notes and to-dos are linked back to messages. (ie if you look at a todo in mail or ical, can to link back to the original message that was the source of the todo) But we will find out more about that in months to come.
So right now I see lots of room for MailTags to complement Mail 3.0. (not to be rendered useless by comparison)

Hmmm ... Dave Nanian is correct about the current and future positioning of SuperDuper!f I don't think it's killed by Time Machine.

If you want to be able to pick up your work without missing a beat, you need a bootable volume with all your work where it's supposed to be and with all your workflow, fonts, DRM intact. You can't wait for a recovery process.

SuperDuper! is a good and inexpensive way to achieve that redundancy.

Great list - I just wish Apple would fix some of the simple things that OSX should be doing properly out-of-the-box (FTP in finder - each release I wait for FTP write privileges).

Some mentioned compensation. I remember Bob Young's team at Red Hat bringing in a lot of developers from the open source space and also spreading a lot of stock around and other means of compensation to those that inspired open source bundled with Red Hat.

Wonderful! Coverflow was bought by Apple and implemented in iTunes 7!

You have a good website! I want to say that you have interesting info in this website. I was looking for.

[...] Three Apps the New Leopard Desktop Hurts I’m probably one of the few Mac bloggers that didn’t post a prediction WWDC 2007 post. However, I did make one prediction over on an episode of PreviewCast the night before the keynote took place, and that was that Leopard was probably going to include features that would attempt to knock off some more third party software. Apple doesn’t want to get rid of their third-party developers all together by any means. But Apple wants Leopard to be an all-in-one operating system (just as their computers are all-in-one machines) that can do anything the average user could demand from it right out of the box. Here are three additional applications that the newly publicized Leopard desktop is unintentionally killing (not including the original few listed by Phill Ryu). [...]

[...] Nachdem ich den Artikel “7 apps that Leopard kills” gelesen habe musst ich kurz an meine Windows Rechner denken die ich so nebenbei zu warten habe. [...]