The hidden technologies of Leopard, or what Mac OS X may have learned from the iPhone

Apple Recon has the first rumors that the next Apple special event will take place on February 20. The rumor is that this event will be used to promote the coming of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and iWorks '07 on March 24, the sixth anniversary of the introduction of Mac OS X. Also rumored to be in this release are new Mac Pro computers, probably with eight-way processors based on the Intel quad Core 2 chips.

Blackfriars noted previously that the iPhone was just the start of Apple's launch plans this year. This calendar appears to have been planned carefully to spread out announcements throughout the quarter. We get the Beatles on iTunes at the beginning of February (and possibly a new Yellow Submarine themed video iPod), new Mac Pros at the end of that month, and a new OS X Leopard in March. That's a minimum of one special event a month, which is just the sort of pace a marketer wants to keep the brand on the tip of everyone's tongue.

But at the end of the day, this all seems too predictable for Apple, whose marketing modus operandi is to keep the best surprises the most secret (skeptics, see the iPhone feature set). So the open question is, is Leopard full of more surprises than we think?

When I look at the technology Apple has announced, both in Leopard and the iPhone, there are some natural opportunities for Apple to differentiate its products and delight it customers with Leopard. Here are some of Blackfriars' speculations on Leopard's secret features:

1. Multi-touch gesture support everywhere. This technology isn't just for the iPhone. We should expect similar capabilities for touch-sensitive computers as well, suggesting that a touch screen notebook may be in the works. But more likely, multi-touch may become part of the standard notebook trackpad support as well; after all, all new MacBooks and MacBook Pros already support two-finger scrolling and right-clicking. Pinching and stretching probably aren't far behind.
   
   How would this serve Mac Pro and iMac users, who don't have touchscreens or trackpads? Simple: Apple currently bundles mice with those machines. It wouldn't be a stretch to replace the built-in mouse with a multi-touch supported external touchpad or keyboard with a built-in trackpad. Oh, and these add-ons would allow older machines to take advantage of multi-touch as well.


2. A redesigned-from-the-ground-up Finder. After thirty years of click-and-drag user interfaces, multi-touch trackpad gestures open up a new vocabulary for human interaction. So why shouldn't the basic operations of moving files on the screen get an update as well? The preliminary builds of Leopard have had no Finder changes at all. Given Apple's interest in improving every aspect of the user experience, that suggests that Apple doesn't want to show its hand there yet. But think about moving the flick-scrolling and Cover Flow-like browsing available on the iPhone to the Finder, and we could see a dramatic change in the day to day Mac experience.


3. New environmental sensing. Jobs made much of how Apple had integrated proximity and orientation sensors into the iPhone experience. Well, Apple's regular computers have been growing sensors by leaps and bounds over the past few years as well. One clear opportunity: using the iSight cameras built into nearly every Mac for such presence-related operations such as logging in users via face recognition and recognizing when the user has left the machine. Using the camera for these security functions could make Macs both significantly more secure and easier to use -- while putting even more distance between the Apple and Windows worlds.


4. New screen sizes supported by resolution independent interfaces. The iPhone demo showed that Apple has resolution-independent applications up and running. Why wouldn't Apple put that in their latest and greatest OS release? Further, Leopard's new Spaces workspaces allow users to multiplex any small display into a larger virtual environment. This suggests that Apple has a small-display platform planned for support this year, such as Apple Recon's MacBook Mini. You don't need a resolution-independent system for those notebooks, but it would certainly make them more flexible -- and open the door to very small form factor devices other than the iPhone.

This isn't anywhere close to a complete list of the opportunities Apple may be pursuing in Leopard. But putting my marketing hat back on, features like these add huge differentiation to Apple products and to the Mac user experience. They also justify Jobs' insistence that Mac's must run on Apple hardware. While you could duct tape on cameras and sensors onto a Dell to attempt to replicate the Mac environment (as dramatized in the Tech Support Mac/PC ad), such a Frankensteinian system wouldn't drive the same user impression or brand value. In short, Leopard could reinvent the user experience with its union of software and hardware -- and makes competing systems look like only half a solution.

Technorati Tags: Flick scrolling, Consumers, iSight, Beatles, Apple, Leopard, Cover Flow, Mac OS X, iPhone, Finder, iMac, MacBook mini, Multi-touch, Opinion, Dell