When It Comes To Leopard Is Bigger Really Better?

Leopard’s Spaces has been one of the few heralded features of the new Operating System, which even though Windows users and Linux have enjoyed this for years, to me seems to hint at some things: the removal of small-screened Macs, multiple desktops, and the lack of tab utilization. It seems Apple’s mentality has been “Bigger is better” and I don’t mean price, but in pixels.

Low-end but Dead Macs

17 Inches of Dead Weight
It’s been rumored that Apple would not include the 17-inch iMac in its summer planned updates or might even discontinue the model altogether. The reason for this would be very foolish should previous rumors of the Mac Mini’s demise come true as the 20-inch would be the cheapest desktop Apple would sell.

Apple must have intentions other than tempting users with more expensive Macs. But it seems Apple hasn’t had the greatest luck with the low-end Macs as we’ve seen with the eMac and Mac Mini. Consumers may have been turned away by the low hardware specs and opted for the more expensive yet more powerful models, and if that’s the case then I can see why Apple would want to justify scrapping the 17-inch iMac, but a mass of potential buyers would be left out in the cold. But it could be that new designs must have more space, including proper ventilation, and that every inch counts. Either way Apple is prepping not only a higher spec machine but one with a bigger screen.

Small ‘Books Have A Small Lifespan
I myself have never used a 12-inch PowerBook but it seems to be one of the more popular Mac notebooks Apple has manufactured, even though it’s discontinued. Although it was our favorite, in a big way Apple’s intentions were to market it towards professional users who wanted a lot of power on the go. It was introduced after the 12-inch iBook, and Apple must have noticed the demand for a small but powerful portable Mac, yet they’ve gone and killed both 12-inch ‘Books.

One thing that both the 12-inch PowerBook and 12-inch iBook (and even the 14-inch model) had in common was one native resolution, which was 1,024 x 768. Keep in mind that Apple’s MacBook, a cross between the two deceased machines, runs a resolution of 1,2800 x 800 on a 13.3 widescreen display. This consolidation and increase in size both physically and pixel-wise seems to be a growing trend within Apple’s product structuring. Even the high-end Mac Book Pro enjoys a massive 17-inch screen cramming an endless resolution of 1,920 x 1080 (1080P), which tends to tire your fingers from scrolling too much.

Leopard

Spaces
Although similar solutions have been enjoyed for quite some time by Windows and Linux users, Apple is touting this as one of Leopard’s amazingly great features. This got me thinking, is Apple prepping better machines and utilizing bigger displays for a massive increase in productivity? I don’t mean to sound so obvious but we’ve seen Apple axe the 12-inch ‘Books and they may as well kill off the low-end iMacs as well as the entire Mac Mini line. Or is Apple acknowledging that it will take some serious resources to really make Leopard purr or even 10.6 and beyond?

Alright, back to Spaces. From what we’ve seen it’s an easy way to consolidate or distribute work across many virtual desktops, taking advantage of every available screen to maximize the amount of windows you can visually see. This is great but Apple is taking it one step further by allowing users to assign applications to any Space. You’d think Apple would actually invest in ultra portable Macs with smaller screens because Spaces would allow for dozens of virtual desktops on, say, an 8-inch screen running at 800 x 600. Not so: a whole window and then some would engulf your screen, it never even had a chance to show that whole row of buttons too! How would this look on Apple’s part? Not optimizing OS X to run on smaller screens and instead giving you the option of switching between desktops just to do anything? No way this would happen, Apple would rather have Spaces shine on a 30-inch cinema display than that ultra portable Mac you long to have. Spaces seems like Apple realizes, or is trying to create a need for, high resolution screens and that this will benefit computing.

No Tabs?
The next logical implementation for Spaces is Tabs. They’re heavily promoted in pretty much every web browser known to man as of now, and following the idea of Spaces, allow multiple work places in a single work place. But Apple didn’t do tabs in Leopard even though a Tabbed Finder would’ve been awesome. The reason for this is the trouble of recreating every app to take advantage of Tabs. Face it, more and more applications are going to corners you never knew existed on your screen; implementing tabs would mean that app still takes up that same amount of space on the desktop except it’s better managed. Apple wanted to implement something that would be universal and create little to no burden on developers and users.

More, More, MORE!
An important thing is happening right now concerning screen sizes and Apple. They’re willing to axe off the dead weight to support great and new features even if it means potential buyers are left in the cold. It’s all about the current install base that Apple is worrying about but it will get to the point that others need to be addressed as well.