Being a member of Apple's Developer Connection (ADC) not only provides access to developer releases of some of Apple's software like OSX, SDKs, or the XCode developer tools, it also provides the opportunity to attend events like the Leopard Tech Talk, which took place in L.A. on Friday, January 19. Apple had sent its technology evangelist on the road to meet Mac developers and present the latest Leopard development information. It was a no-fluff event, which didn't focus on the new application that will be included with OSX 10.5 Leopard but on upcoming changes in the technology necessary to build these apps. All of the great and compelling desktop applications for the Mac are written in Objective-C, a somewhat strange language but still very similar to C and C++. And for the first time in a very long time, the Objective-C language is being changed and not in a small way:

• Objective-C will now be able to create managed code, meaning like C# and Java, Objective-C object falling out of scope will be garbage collected by a Runtime Engine and not being released by developer written code.
• The dot notation to access properties just like one would in C++ will most likely be added
• and another example of Objective-C borrowing a feature from a different programming language, would be the automatic generation of property accessors.
  A property just needs to be annotated in the Interface (yes, Objective-C like C and C++, separates definition and implementation) as readable or read-write, and accessor methods (setters and /or getters) will be generated automatically at runtime at first use.

Some of the new Objective-C features will only be available in the 64-bit version, meaning the compiled code will only run on PowerPC-G5 and Intel-Core-2-Duo powered Macs, leaving all those 1st generation Intel Macs (Core-Solo and Core-Duo) in dark .. there had to be a reason why the Mac Mini and the iMac have the processor on a socket instead of being directly soldered onto the board ..
Moreover, XCode, the only development environment on the Mac, able to generate Universal code (the fat binaries, containing code for both, the Intel and PowerPC chip) finally gets the ability to refactor code and a fully integrated CVS and SubVersion client.