I noticed when I was working on my Web Worker Daily piece about the Leopard keynote at WWDC that Apple pulled the iChat remote desktop feature. Originally, you were going to be able to control another computer through iChat. Promise of real-time collaboration built into the OS is good stuff, even if it’s only Mac to Mac. Remote Desktop and VNC aren’t exactly user-friendly to get going.

At one point, this was on the iChat page:

Share and share alike

Remote control takes on a whole new meaning with iChat in Leopard. Thanks to iChat Screen Sharing, you and your buddy can observe and control a single desktop via iChat, making it a cinch to collaborate with colleagues, browse the Web with a friend, or pick the perfect plane seats with your spouse. Share your own desktop or share your buddy’s – you both have complete control at all times. And when you start a Screen Sharing session, iChat automatically initiates an audio chat so you can talk things through while you’re at it.

Now that paragraph is gone. Apparently this is now something you can do in the Finder between computers connected via .Mac? In other words, slow and practically useless if it only works with computers that my particular .Mac account knows about. Oh well.

There was also a Bootcamp-related menu item to restart directly into Windows that was included in the latest press and was pulled.

I’m not faulting Apple. These things happen all the time when a product is announced months in advance. Deadlines loom, priorities have to be set and some things don’t make the cut. They’re very clear that everything is subject to change. I’m just curious, that’s all.

I didn’t see anything in the Leopard demos to make me want to rush out and get it right away. It’s not the $129. We’re used to that by now, aren’t we? It’s the hours of installation, testing and tweaking that always goes into upgrading the operating system. And that’s if it goes smoothly. It can be days of downtime if there’s a serious problem. I’ll probably do what I did with Tiger and wait a while. I waited months…until at least the 2nd or 3rd .update was out and I was sure all my applications and utilities were fully compatible and there were few surprises.