Apple posts guided Leopard tour

Apple has posted an official Mac OS X Leopard guided tour, leading viewers through many of the operating system's new features. Mac OS X Leopard is scheduled to hit store shelves on October 26th, is called the most impressive upgrade of Mac OS X yet. Boasting more than 300 new features. Apple's tour covers the new 3D dock, "stacks" of items that fan out automatically with one click, the Finder with integrated CoverFlow technology, Quick Look, Time Machine, Spaces, Mail, and iChat. The tour povides an intuitive, easy to understand look at some of Leopard's most unique features while showing viewers how those features work together. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is already available for pre-order from Apple's online store, Amazon.com, and MacMall in both individual and family packs as part of a new promo.

Apple's new Stacks technology provides one-click access to numerous items in folders right from the Dock, displaying a grid by default when too many items are present to produce a reasonable "fan" effect. The company's CoverFlow technology is built into the operating system, and works with Quick Look for browsing through documents and previewing their contents without launching the actual application that created them.

Time Machine, as demonstrated by the guided tour released today, makes creating as well as restoring backups extremely simple for Mac owners who also haven external hard drive. The software appears to lift users up off the desktop, revealing a 3D view of the front most item in the Finder as it progressed throughout each backup on a given date. Apple Mail, meanwhile, integrates with iCal and includes a new technology to recognize dates, times, and contact information automatically.

Leopard's iChat enables real-time backgrounds and special effects during video chats (only on faster Macs), and supports screen sharing to view as well as control another user's Mac (with authorization).

Filed under: Apple