Vista is just playing catch-up, says Jobs

Taking a few not-so-subtle sideswipes at Microsoft’s forthcoming Vista, Apple CEO Steve Jobs used his keynote speech at the company’s World Wide Developer Conference to demonstrate some of the new features that will be included in Leopard – the next version of the Mac OS, which is due for release in spring 2007.

Kicking off with a slideshow that demonstrated how Vista has ‘photocopied’ many of the features and interface elements of the Mac OS, Jobs claimed that Vista was merely catching up with the existing Mac OS. Then he introduced the new features with which Apple hopes to steal the limelight from Vista.

Typically for Apple, there was eye-candy aplenty. The company even managed to create an eye-catching backup tool, called Time Machine.

When you activate Time Machine it displays the contents of any folder superimposed over an animated 3D starscape, allowing you to move back in time to locate old files that you may have lost or deleted.

Another extremely practical tool that makes impressive use of the Mac’s graphical capabilities is Spaces. This allows you to create multiple workspaces, with each workspace set up for specific tasks.

You could have one workspace set up with tools for designing a website, and other workspaces running video-editing software or a presentations program. You can then switch from one workspace to another with just a click of the mouse, or even drag and drop documents from one workspace to another.

Other crowd-pleasers included Core Animation, a new animation system that makes it easy to add animated effects to applications or even to the Mac desktop.

Jobs also demonstrated a new version of the iChat video-chat program that can create ‘blue screen’ effects where your image is superimposed over a live video background.

However, Jobs left his audience with the teasing announcement that some of Leopard’s best features are still being kept secret as Apple doesn’t want Microsoft to ‘photocopy’ them for Vista.

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