In addition to the Core Audio, Core Video and Core Image features that professional apps can leverage for incredible performance, Leopard introduces a fourth core framework, Core Animation. Core Animation is an API that enables developers to create stunning UIs with very little code. For example, the album art screen saver required more then 4,000 lines of code in open GL -- and only 400 lines when using Core Animation. Developers, rejoice.

One thing still notably missing from the Leopard -- Apple engineers, are you listening? -- is a way to assign an application to a particular processor and set the level of resource use that app can have. As a creative pro, ideally I'd like to be able to assign high processor usage to the processors and RAM for something like Final Cut Pro. This would allow end users to maximize their processor and RAM use depending on their needs.

Time machine

The basic premise of this homegrown Apple application and API is that backup needs to be set and forget until needed -- and then simple-to-use and well integrated for restoration needs. While there are several relatively easy-to-use backup applications for Mac OS X, none compares with the context sensitive Time Machine at the file system integration level.

For example, let's say you have a folder that is set to back up incrementally as changes occur, and you need a file that was once there. You look in the original folder for the file that by just clicking in the folder (not the backup), launch Time Machine and then click the back-in-time arrow. Time Machine takes you back to the last change in the folder. Or in a folder where files are stored, you can type the name of the file in a search window, then launch Time Machine and click the back-in-time arrow. It will take you to the most recent instance of the file you are searching for and then restore it to the folder.