As you probably know, I've written Take Control of Customizing... books for Panther and Tiger, and for the past two weeks I've been busily working on what might be the last major draft for the Leopard version. These books are not really just about customizing; the "customizing" concept is more a way of introducing what's new and important in the system. So when this book comes out, it could be a good way to get acquainted with Leopard in general. That's what I'm aiming at, anyway.

I can't tell you anything secret about Leopard - that would be a violation of the non-disclosure agreement under which I get to see beta versions of it at all - and I don't even want to give an opinion of it (though I do really like [BLEEP] and [BLEEP]). But I can say that historically this book has been kind of a nightmare because Leopard has been such a moving target. Apple originally slated Leopard to come out before the summer of 2007, so back in April or so, we (the Take Control authors) were busily working on our books about it and scratching our heads in disbelief that the system we were seeing was the system that was going to be released. Then Apple announced that the Leopard ship date would slip to October, and we all sighed with a mixture of relief and frustration and put our manuscripts away. Then Apple re-introduced Leopard at WWDC with a heavily revamped interface, and we were all glad we'd postponed taking any screen shots!

Anyway, this time I have been taking screen shots. On the one hand I hope Apple doesn't change the interface again, because I don't want to have to take the screen shots again. On the other hand I hope they do change it, because there are some pretty fundamental things about the present interface that I think will make life hard for users and are just unnecessary changes. So we shall see what we shall see...