Latest Tiger builds sport new QuickTime controls, iCal 1.6, Font Book 2.0

Information on recent builds of Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" continues to find its way outside of Apple's corporate headquarters, as engineers diligently work to further develop the next-generation OS.

Sources close to the Cupertino, Calif-based Apple Computer have most recently provided AppleInsider with exclusive details on iCal 1.6, Font Book 2.0, and QuickTime 6.6 interface enhancements, which are present in the newest private builds of Tiger.

Screenshots: iCal 1.6; iCal Prefs ; iCal Prefs; Font Book 2.0

iCal 1.6

The latest developmental version of Apple's calendar application—iCal version 1.6—will reportedly allow users to search for events and To Do items through a new pop-up menu, view meeting proposals and responses in a single window, and easily update and cancel events from calendars shared over the internet. Likewise, iCal will gain support for grouping of calendars and To Do lists and drag-and-drop reorganization of To Do list items.

Sources also claim that the new iCal will let users transform event items into To Do items by dragging the event to the To Do list, or vice versa to change a To Do item into an event.

Other iCal enhancements include the automatic creation of birthday calendars from dates present in a user's address book, and a new dialog box that will ease printout creation by formatting calendars and To Do items into weekly, daily, or monthly views.

Screenshots: Action Menu; About Font Book ; Font Book Prefs; Font Book Prefs

Font Book 2.0

Apple has also focused its energy into the further development of its Font Book application, which allows users to easily preview, install, and manage font collections. A new version, Font Book 2.0, is reportedly speedier and smarter than its predecessor. The application will validate font files prior to installation and let users choose whether it should halt installations after an error, or treat errors like warnings.

The font application will also sport a handy action menu, populated by shortcuts to common tasks. At the base of the menu are options to open the vendor, designer, and license websites related to a selected font.

Screenshots: QuickTime Controls; QuickTime Player ; About QuickTime; Player Prefs

QuickTime 6.6 Full Screen Controls

While sources have fully divulged the technical details surrounding the QuickTime 6.6 update that will ship with Tiger, the latest builds of QuickTime player are flashing some fresh eye-candy. Movies presented in full-screen mode are accompanied by a set of semi-translucent, dashboard-like controls that fade in and out of view.

Mac OS X Tiger is currently undergoing private seedings with builds in the range of 8A2xx. Some of the most recent builds have revealed iChat Jabber support, application specific parental controls, Address Book sharing, PDF bookmarking, advanced Energy Saver configurations, Safari RSS feed customization, and a new Graphing Calculator purchased from Arizona Software.

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82 Comments

bwhaler

said about 19 years ago

All I want in iCal is one feature. Just one.

And I would buy Tiger for this reason alone.

Yet, even after requesting it dozens of times, it's not in the current builds.ALL I WANT APPLE is the option to have alarms automatically set on new appointments. As a busy exec, I don't always have ical in front of me. I need a reminder.

And it's easy to forget to set the alarm when one's calendar changes frequently. Plus, it's a repetitious pain in the butt to set them.

Come on Apple. Put this one feature in. Every single calendar program on the planet offers it.

jklimeck

said about 19 years ago

On QuickTime 6.6This is what we need and need it yesterday.

QuickTime 6.6 or 7 or whatever Apple calls it needs to be:

A COCOA Application, amongst other things

do you believe QT has not been re-written as a Cocoa Application.

Why is this important?

Amongst other advantages, one is, So QT can take adavantage of the Core Audio architecure, which includes (but not only limted) to such things as multiple audio channel ins and outs.

This is also important as it relates to Final Cut Pro and the whole pro video industry "Using" QT as "the file" format.

Apple do it, in Tiger , do it soon, very soon

Appleinsider, can you find this out, it is extremely important if QT 6.6/ 7 will be a Cocoa App and / or tap into Core Audio

kim kap sol

said about 19 years ago

Quote:

Originally posted by jklimeck
On QuickTime 6.6This is what we need and need it yesterday.

QuickTime 6.6 or 7 or whatever Apple calls it needs to be:

A COCOA Application, amongst other things

do you believe QT has not been re-written as a Cocoa Application.

Why is this important?

Amongst other advantages, one is, So QT can take adavantage of the Core Audio architecure, which includes (but not only limted) to such things as multiple audio channel ins and outs.

This is also important as it relates to Final Cut Pro and the whole pro video industry "Using" QT as "the file" format.

Apple do it, in Tiger , do it soon, very soon

Appleinsider, can you find this out, it is extremely important if QT 6.6/ 7 will be a Cocoa App and / or tap into Core Audio

If you had read earlier AI news bits, such as the article on QuickTime 6.6 (there's a link in the article you just read) and read user experiences, you'd know that QuickTime Player in Tiger *is* a Cocoa app rewritten to use QTKit and that it does indeed use Core Audio (amongst a million other niceties.)

Read up about QTKit here.

jklimeck

said about 19 years ago

kim kap,

Yeah, I just realized this, I saw the link under "fully divulged".

Man I am so glad this is happening, this will make QT so robust and do tons to make QT the format in pro video, broadcast, especially H.264, which will eventually be the standard and oust (that is prevent further incursion) of WMP 9/10.

The QTKit will be great for QT dev on Linux, Windows, etc,
and I am really excited by the new API's for metering, audio extraction and conversion. (the extraction / conversion API's may be borrowed from iTunes), since iTunes is much better and faster at this, or brand new ones, we'll see.

Metering API's will be great, getting very accurate readings of levels, etc.

Very exciting.

kim kap sol

said about 19 years ago

Quote:

Originally posted by jklimeck
kim kap,

Yeah, I just realized this, I saw the link under "fully divulged".

Man I am so glad this is happening, this will make QT so robust and do tons to make QT the format in pro video, broadcast, especially H.264, which will eventually be the standard and oust (that is prevent further incursion) of WMP 9/10.

The QTKit will be great for QT dev on Linux, Windows, etc,
and I am really excited by the new API's for metering, audio extraction and conversion. (the extraction / conversion API's may be borrowed from iTunes), since iTunes is much better and faster at this, or brand new ones, we'll see.

Metering API's will be great, getting very accurate readings of levels, etc.

Very exciting.

Yup...IMO, QuickTime has gotten such a huge overhaul that it might be the biggest Tiger feature, right up there with Spotlight, but possibly more important than Spotlight.

QuickTime was good back in the old days but once Mac OS X hit the scene, QuickTime was starting to look old and dated. The APIs were vague and poorly document and some completely undocumented. Sound Manager was a huge problem and overhead. The threading was poor and caused apps that used QuickTime to stall or even crash (until only recently QuickTime was not thread-safe.)

Starting with QT6.6/7, both developers and end-users will benefit from the heavy rewrite. Developers will get a clean set of APIs. The end-user will get a more pleasant experience viewing QuickTime content in QuickTime Player and other apps that use QuickTime. Content creators will be able to use CoreAudio/CoreImage/CoreVideo frameworks for much better sound and graphics effects, and even use movies as textures in OpenGL.

Mac OS X is a platform. But so is QuickTime. So while news of Tiger is exciting, news of QuickTime is even more exciting since it extends beyond the Mac platform and onto PCs...PC users essentially decide which format becomes the standard.

I can only hope Apple gets the world to adopt H.264. This will pave the way to larger resolution and cleaner-looking video on the web and possibly making streaming video to a TV a reality.