Ergonis Software has announced today that it has updated KeyCue for Leopard, the next generation of OSX due to release early next month by Apple, Inc. If you’re not already familiar with KeyCue, then you’ve been missing short cuts. Ergonis has created a delightful application that is a menu shortcut cheat sheet of sorts. Simply by holding down your Command key for a few seconds, you’ll be soon presented with a menu displaying all the possible keyboard shortcuts for the application you are currently in. If you’re like me, I’d rather keep my hand on my new aluminum keyboard then have to take my right hand off and move it to the mouse for some screen navigation. It’s all about saving time, folks. But don’t worry, if you like using your mouse, new in 4.0 is the ability to click on menu shortcut in the display and off is the command executed. Best of both worlds. I know.

“KeyCue is for menu shortcuts what PopChar is for special characters. A simple and unobtrusive utility that makes your daily work easier and automatically enhances your productivity,” Christoph Reichenberger, founder and CEO of Ergonis Software, told SvenOnTech. “With the new version we are happy to deliver the number one customer-requested feature and to take the productivity boost to the next level.”

Take it from me a long time user of KeyCue. This is a great program and now the power of clickable menu, you’ll easily be able to find unforeseen menu items that are easily lost in the dizzy of drop-downs from above!

Users that have purchased this in the last two years receive a free upgrade to 4.0. New users can pick it up for EUR 19.99 (about $25 USD).

Apple showed off it’s upcoming operating system, OSX 10.5 (code named Leopard,) today in front of a crowd of 5,000 in San Francisco at WWDC this morning. CEO Steve Jobs showed off a slew of new features including a revamped Finder. New to Finder is a Dock that reflects icons images and holds a new feature called Stacks (picture). Finder has also changed its window to look more like iTunes complete with Cover Flow. With the ability to view any file without opening it in its native application, Quick View will be another killer application in Leopard many will talk about in the new Finder. A favorite of mine is better network browsing that even includes the ability to browse other Macs over the Internet via a .mac account.

With too much to list here of the new features in Leopards 200 plus pack, Apple has secretly put all the details on it’s undisclosed new site which most likely is just waiting for a switch over. But see it now thanks to SvenOnTech.

Remember all the Mac users giving Windows users flack over Vista’s delay last summer? How everyone said Microsoft promised this and promised that and it once again was slipping? Well, where are all these same people now that Apple quietly announced that it would be slipping it’s next OS X release, Leopard, until October? Not a peep! In fact, some are sticking up for Apple! Please.

Two weeks ago on April 12th, Apple announced to the world that the iPhone had but a slight burden on the Cupertino-based computer company and that it had to “borrow” some engineers from the OS department. The statement read:

iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS® X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard’s features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us.

If you haven’t taken a drive through Infinite Loop in Cupertino lately, you may have missed the ten huge buildings on Apple’s campus. Now, last I remembered, when I read Andy’s great book, Steve Jobs had little problem churning out the Apple II updates while creating a new department for the Mac back when it was still a dinky company. By Hertzfeld’s accounts, their working space was small and isolated from the rest of corporation.

So why now does Apple with all its millions of dollars for R&D and its claimed work of four years on the iPhone have to steal engineers from one of those ten large buildings? Well, because it doesn’t have to. It’s called the “we never were going to release Leopard in June and now we have a great excuse as to why.” Using the very same tactic Bill Gates and his borgs used in Redmond, Apple now is making statements of delay without remorse. Heck, Apple had even told Michael Gartenberg, analyst for Jupiter Research, a week before its statement of delay that everything was right on schedule. Errg.

After hyping up Leopard and telling Redmond to start its photocopiers, it appears upper-Washington can cool down the toner in those machines and maybe even get its first Service Pack release for Vista out before Leopard makes its prowl onto Macs. Microsoft may have more time than it — we — think.

You know, I don’t have problems with delays and such, things happen, I know that from my day job. But a company of Apple’s caliber doesn’t slip six months due to the development of a phone. Yes, I remember Steve saying the iPhone runs OS X; however, Vista wasn’t delayed due to the release of Window Mobile 5, the CE (Compact Edition) of Windows, was it? Microsoft may in fact be kicking itself now not realizing it could have used that excuse, too. No my compliant is that this is a blatant lie. Curious in light of Steve Woz’s comments in his book iWoz and how his dad instilled that lying was the worst thing you could do. I guess that attribute didn’t rub off on his friend and co-founder of Apple, Jobs, huh?

I’m sorry, after churning out updates in such a quick fashion since the release of 10.0, I just don’t buy the iPhone bit. With the limited amount of features of Leopard we do know about (as I wrote about last year,) this OS should have been in beta when the iPhone was sprung on us in January. Again, at Keynote, Jobs told the world that they had been working on this phone for years. How Tiger ever make it out the door, I’ll never know.

I hope, first, Mac supporters aren’t so quick to point the finger at Microsoft for its delays next time. Ya, ya, ya, I understand that this Leopard first slip; however, it’s the principal of the matter, not the quantity of slip. Second, Jobs should sit down with his old high school buddy and have Woz personally tell him the story about his dad and ethics. Jobs needs a little refresh. Third, Leopard better be amazing or, well, there may be a few pissed off people in the Apple boot camp.

Even Steve likes looking up at those words. Yup, SvenOnTech will be reporting live from Keynote tomorrow morning at 9:00 am. If all goes well (we get out badge, get into the Moscone in time, and have either a Wi-Fi or EV-DO signal), you’ll be able to catch the updates as Steve pronounces them. So keep an eye here and refresh the post ‘Live from Keynote 2007″ and you’ll be good to go!

Our predictions? Okay, here it is in print and we can’t back down from it now…

• NO iPhone
• Airport Extreme MAX (or whatever — 802.11n Draft 1.0 wireless)
• MacBook and MacBook Pros announced with 802.11n upgrades (date TBD)
• iTV (with 802.11n)
• iLife 07 (with new added component — like last years iWeb and GarageBand before that)
• Leopard (with release date)
• Slew of iPod news including Alpine’s iDA-X001 with its iPod like look-n-feel

Plain and simple, Microsoft knows Leopard will have virtualization. Yes, Apple is denying left and right about virtualization being standard in Leopard but it’s done this same thing for years only to later release what it denied. Truth is, Apple can’t let — excuse the pun — the cat out of the bag too early or many developers may stop developing Mac ports of Windows software. This may still be a problem when Leopard releases, but for the time being, Apple wants to encourage Intel-based ports of Windows software now. Telling everyone that the famous bloat-ware will run natively on Macs in about six months will just stop that momentum.

With the success of Boot Camp so vivid and Parallel’s Desktop becoming a must-have software install on all new Intel Macs with Apple’s blessing, things just seem to point in the direction of native virtualization.

I truly believe that there will be a big announcement at this January’s Macworld and it won’t be the iPod full-screen video player, either. You’ll see.

SvenOnTech reported early this month how many of the features Steve Jobs showed off from the preview of Leopard were really not ground breaking. One such feature was Spaces, the virtual desktop option that allows for multiple desktops to be used in one current session. I’ll give Apple credit for implementing a new and convenient way of invoking your various desktops; however, it’s a technology that has been around for over a decade and to borrow Steve’s phrase to Micorosoft, Apple got out its photocopiers going on this one.

You Control software makes a very sophisticated virtual desktop called You Control Desktops. With it, you can, “multitask like never before.” For instance, one can, “create a desktop for various workspaces that you define to help you organize your personal workflow. Create a desktop for your email. Create another for your image editing and organization. Create yet another for web-browsing.” Like Steve Jobs showed at the Moscone Center last month, you can drag and drop open windows to other virtual desktops as if you were simply moving an icon from one folder to another.

You Control Desktop will let you, “Simply click on an icon to switch to a different desktop, use “Palette” mode to drag and drop apps & windows between desktop, set customized hot-keys to switch desktops, assign different background images to your desktops, easily consolidate all applications and windows to a single desktop, drag applications and windows between desktops, assign an application to a specific desktop, (and) automatically change desktops when you switch applications.”

With You Control Desktops, you don’t need to wait for Leopard, you can do Spaces today.

Did Apple hand deliver a copy of its coveted operating system to Microsoft? Maybe. At the conclusion of the WWDC opener, in which Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed a preview of Leopard, happy developers left with a beta copy of OS X 10.5 in their hands. While each developer has to sign their life away in the form of a NDA (non-disclosure agreement) promising many things, namely not to reveal or use the technology for their own gain, it’s hard to think anyone wouldn’t take such a hot commodity and ignore some of the rules.

With Microsoft developing Office for OS X, it’s little doubt it had some developers right there in the crowd. That said, one only has to imagine the glee on the MS developers face when they walked out of Moscone Center with Leopard in their bag. Yum.

Now it’s entirely possible that Apple’s NDA would exclude Microsoft from this due to a clause about competitors with operating systems. Apple’s lawyers aren’t dumb…they’ve had lots of practice with the Apple Corps lawsuit in the last few years. I haven’t seen the NDA, so I can’t say for sure, but it is a tantalizing question to ask if Apple handed it’s photocopying friend to the north a beta version of its latest baby. And if it did, what does Microsoft’s ethics say to this?

So Apple is having its fun calling Vista a copycat and Vista 2.0 Leopard. Kinda reminds me of the Windows95 campaign of the duck thing. But you know what? Leopard ain’t that big of a deal. I mean, let’s look at what’s new.

Spaces: Ya, it’s nice and all but truth is virtual desktops have been around a long time. There are some great third-party applications for both Windows and Macs that do this quite well right now. Granted, it’ll come with the OS now, but still, nothing ground breaking here. Also, why limit it to just four “spaces”? Available memory should be the key to how many spaces you have if we’re talking “cool” here.

Mail 3.0: Really, Steve, copycat? Dude, have you looked at Outlook Express? Stationery templates have been there for a good while, buddy. I don’t know, man, but someone copied someone here and it wasn’t Microsoft running with something new up north to Redmond!

Dashboard Dashcode: Hey, I appreciate the ability to make my own Dashboard now, but if this is one the main highlights Apple is pushing for reasoning of the $129 price tag Leopard will be sure to claw from your pocket book, then I’m not scratchin’.

Spotlight: Being able to search network-mounted folders is nice but really is just the next logical step in Spotlight. Nothing cutting edge here.

Parental Controls: Copycat? Again, not a new thing and something that has been a well known feature of Vista. I saw it myself at CES in January, eight months ago, and apparently so did someone at Apple.

Time Machine: Okay, this is cool. Not only will this help bust more white collar criminals as they’ll have no way to erase their criminal past, but it’ll also remedy bonehead mistakes from costing many lost hair and hours of anguish trying to recreate a perished file from scratch (if it’s even possible.) Without a doubt, watching Scott Forstall demonstrate how to bring back an accidentally erased contact in your Address Book was the coolest.

So out of this entire list, only one item grasped the audience enough to bring resounding applause. Remember, these are the highlights, the really BIG stuff! If this is all Leopard has to offer, I’d say this is more a meow than a growl of the name in which this OS shares with. Definitely not worth the common $129 Apple asks for and absolutely not a reason to have to wait until Spring ‘07 for it.

So what of this? A lesser upgrade than we all expected and to be released after Vista. Wouldn’t it seem one should release its copied product before the copycat?

I think Apple is treading on thin ice with this campaign and should really just drop it. There’s enough Microsoft fanboys about that will have a field day with this lackluster release that comes well after the fanboys are doing Windows XP SP3 on their tired PCs.

Sneak-peak pictures are already leaking out from this years WWDC show at Moscone Center in San Francisco and if you look real close, you’ll notice the 64-bit logo on the banner toward the end. No real news since the G5 and Tiger both do the 64-bit thang now, but the G5 will be history by the end of the year as will will Tiger. A new push on to 64-bits may be what developers will hear Steve Jobs pounce next week as they all marvel at Leopard’s new innovation running on the rumored MacPro.

It’s been over a year since Apple gave the world 64-bit power yet only a few, such as Photoshop, programs have taken advantage of this power. Why don’t we see more? Apple is experience the same problem Microsoft did when it released Window95, a 32-bit operating system, from it’s developer core. Like Apple, Windows XP has a 64-bit version but little can be found to take advantage of that, too. Is 64-bit useless then? No.

64-bit CPUs offer great speed performance gains as well processing power for video and graphic applications. Having twice the instruction set capabilities of a 32-bit CPU, more complex information can be processed and thus quicker computation occurs. For example, rendering video or a picture with a complex filter will see noticeably quicker completion times than with the slower 32-bit CPU. Further, boot-up times of the OS are quicker as is built-in features such as the animation and Genie-effect of the Dock in OS X. Remember when Genie first presented itself, many complianed of poor performance but with twice the instruction set availability, it’s a no-brainer for the OS to perform.

Next week will be the right time for Steve Jobs to push 64-bit computing, again. With a new CPU to play on and an OS that is surely going to fully utilize the power of every bit in that CPU, developers will this year be encouraged to take the 64 plunge. Universal Binary was last year, 64-bit is this year. Apple needs the support of the development community and the development community needs the push from Apple. Here’s hoping.

More Reading: Why you WANT a 64-bit Mac OS X 10.4 and Mac.Ars takes on 64-bit computing