Core Animation to take center stage on Monday?

Wired Magazine has an article today, titled, Kiss Boring Interfaces Goodbye With Apple's New Animated OS . The article claims that Apple's will use its new Core Animation technology in Leopard to drive a new round of user interface experimentation. At the same time, it will create applications that are truly Leopard-only:

After getting a peek at Delicious Library 2, which hasn’t yet been shown publicly, Mac programmer Scott Stevenson wrote that the program is "going to be a major eye-opener for Mac developers. This last point is important. Whatever you thought was state-of-the-art in Tiger is going to be blown to bits with all of the new API (application programming interface) available in Leopard."

Allan Odgaard, the developer of TextMate, says the next version of the text editor will only work on Leopard. 

Because of Apple's nondisclosure agreements, most of the Mac developers approached by Wired News declined to discuss Core Animation or any interface changes they might be planning. None would provide screenshots.


Given these new applications, we could see a new, Core Animation-powered user interface as Blackfriars predicted last month, even though the major commenter of the article dismisses the death of the windowed interface as unlikely later in the article.

While it seems logical to speculate that interfaces like those of Time Machine and Spaces will lead to the end of the familiar "window" framework for desktop applications altogether, many Mac developers predict that the most basic elements of the current user interface forms won't disappear entirely.
Flying desktops and animated scrolling actions can enhance a user interface in many instances, but applications like browsing the web and writing an e-mail will still require a traditional environment.
"I really don't think that the desktop will ever become 'windowless,'" says Panic's Sasser. "Windows present a very familiar and natural way to work and multitask, and to radically change it might just mean desktop suicide."

So what Leopard secrets lurk in the hearts of developers? We'll see on Monday when Steve Jobs takes the stage on Monday at the World Wide Developer's Conference.