FYI: Mac OS X Desktop

[Derek Simkowiak <dereks kd-dev com>]

	I just saw a preview of Mac OS X Desktop edition on ZDTV.  Mac OS
X (pronounced, "Mac O.S. Ten") is the new operating system from Apple that
is built on top of a modified FreeBSD.  It runs on the G3 and G4 Macs.

	It's very nice; lots of alpha transparency and animation.  More
impressive and polished than Enlightenment. :)

	Menus have the way-cool "fade out" that Win2000 does.  Not only
that, but the menus are also translucent (you can see the application
underneath the menu, but only slightly).

	Minimizing does something they call the "Genie" effect.  It warps
the image of the window (as if it was liquid going into a funnel) down
into the icon that resides in their panel.  However, the icon is NOT a
generic, meta-data (or "registered") icon.  The icon is, in fact, a
miniaturized picture of the actual application window.

	The guy minimized a JPG of some fruit, and the icon was then a
64x64 image of that fruit.  In real-time.  They've taken the idea of an
abstract "icon" and made it into a non-abstact reality--that is, a
miniature version of a file and/or application.  The Genie effect makes it
completely obvious what the icon is and what it means to click on it.  My
mom needs this.

	Their Panel does not use wide, text buttons like the Gnome panel
or Win9x panel.  All little iconized images.

	Putting the mouse over the panel invokes a lensed "zoom" effect,
similar to the zoom that the Enlightenment Pager has.  Again, all in
realtime.  Very spiffy!

	Finally, the guy brought up a tcsh terminal window and ran "top"
to show the processes.  That certainly got my attention :).

	I wonder if Nautilus/Helix could put any manhours into X alpha
transparency, or maybe fixing the crap-ass X font system...?


--Derek Simkowiak