New Old Features in 10.5

Mac OS X 10.5 is out today, and as usual I'm waiting for a while to see how it shakes out before installing it. In fact, I think I'm looking forward to the usual review by John Siracusa on Ars Technica more than I'm looking forward to the OS itself.

Nonetheless, with the release providing fodder for commentators and reviewers everywhere, I have picked up on a few of the new features of Leopard that I'm looking forward to. The thing is, I have a long memory, so some of them are actually old. In fact, they date back to System 7 or Mac OS 8.

• Grid Spacing - an old Finder feature, which Pogue accepts is a rerun
  
• File Sharing - as with the old Mac OS, you can now share folders other than just ~/Public
• Sharp Corners - again, Mac OS 9 didn't draw rounded corners on an LCD. Bafflingly, people have got so used to something that was originally a workaround for CRTs that a hack is apparently on its way to restore them
• Apple Data Detectors - a strange little feature that I've covered before on the 2lmc spool
  

All in all, it sometimes seems that bits of Apple have a reverse gear. Mind you, given how much of the baby got junked with the bathwater of the old Mac OS, it's not exactly unwelcome. Roll on a decent spatial Finder in 10.6! (Well, you've got to have a dream, haven't you?)