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Apple Asking Feedback for Leopard 9A499

Leopard will ship with bugs, just like any other OS has in the past.

While the survey provides Apple with a general feel of the developer community it is going to be the individual bug submissions that really matter. I'm betting that they are assigned a "before release" and "after release" priority as they are being received these days.

At some point Apple will decide that they can ship it and then work on an update that will be posted the first day it is available. They will have some time between going gold and the first selling date and a lot of work can be done during that period.

If things get really tight I can see Apple releasing the Intel version on time, with the PPC version shipped a month or two (or three) later. That would resolve the issue of shipping Leopard with new computers sold, take care of the MacTel user and keep the stock market reasonably pleased. Since we have G4, G5 and Intel Macs in the house I'd have to wait until the full Family Pack is ready, but I can live with that.
 
mwxiao said:
That's interesting. When VISTA got delayed, we all laughed at MS.

Now leopard is delayed, you are telling me it doesn't matter?
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Uhm... VISTA was delayed by years - even after pulling all of the major features. Leopard is delayed by less than a year, no features have been pulled.
 
TheSpaz said:
Okay... so you're happy. Awesome. I've been a hard core Mac user for 10 years or so and this is the first time I haven't been excited for an OS update. I'm losing faith... I really am.
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When I was younger I was excited for every new announcement, but as I got older, I realized that MacOS X is just a tool to help me get work done. Either it has a new feature that will help me, or it doesn't. Was Tiger really a big improvement over Panther? Dashboard is nice, but not everyone uses it, and I don't like Spotlight at all. To me, the last really exciting release was Panther because of Exposé - that changed the way I use my Mac.

I really don't get why the bashing of the menu bar. A menu bar becomes useful when you learn muscle memory for the commands. I rarely even look at the menu bar these days. I couldn't care less if it is transparent or not. And if it really upsets people, they can set their desktop to a picture with a white stripe at the top.

Time Machine looks useful, but to me the useful features are the under the hood, the new iCal, to-dos in mail, and the beefed up Automator.

If you don't find anything useful for you, then that's good - you get to save $129.
 
hayesk said:
Uhm... VISTA was delayed by years - even after pulling all of the major features. Leopard is delayed by less than a year, no features have been pulled.
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At least none that we know about. ;)

Look, I can't wait to see what Leopard is all about but lets not get into this cat fight.

Does Apple usually do this type of survey before a release? I think its interesting none the less.
 
Pre-Release Survey

A survey like this is most likely not to figure how to fix stuff; so you can all stop worrying and shaking in your boots saying "oooh my gosh you mean there are things still broken in Leopard and we're only a couple of months from release?" They don't need to mail out survey invites to get feedback from ADC members under NDAs.

It is, on the other hand, a great way for the Marketing Dept to get some ideas on how to market Leopard when it comes out, based on the opinions of people who have actually used Leopard in its late stages of development.

Plain and simple.
 
I will fill out this survey later tonight.

I will tell them that the see-thru menu bar is tacky and all the service bloat: Dashboard, Spotlight, Time-machine which are always running and taking up memory and accessing the disk should be able to be turned off cleanly in System Preferences.
 
aLoC said:
I will fill out this survey later tonight.

I will tell them that the see-thru menu bar is tacky and all the service bloat: Dashboard, Spotlight, Time-machine which are always running and taking up memory and accessing the disk should be able to be turned off cleanly in System Preferences.
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Sadly, you'll probably have to fire up Terminal to do all that.

Hopefully this means that Leopard is somewhat on track and we can expect it earlier then later in October.
 
I just sent my feedback. The next build better be really good if they're going to have Leopard on the shelves in October. I wouldn't consider 9A499 a release candidate by any means.
 
*Cue the whiners and complainers saying the glass is half empty; how Apple is really going downhill/they really will hate Apple forever this time/"guess I'll have to buy a Vista machine :(:(:("/etc.*


Darn, looks like I'm already too late. Seriously, some of you should write novels. You can pour more drama into a post than I'd ever imagine possible over an OS. I love OS X as much as the next guy, but stop making it your life and acting like some change Apple made will forever change how food tastes or what colors look like. Again, this is only to a few select of you. This crap also applies (even more so) when new hardware comes out. Leopard will be pimptastic.


Anyway, looks like things are coming along nicely. Glad to see Apple asking its users how its software is stacking up.
 
Can somebody with the latest Leopard build tell me the version numbers of:

1. zsh (run "zsh --version")
2. Python (run "python -V")
3. cups (run "cups-config --version")
4. rsync (run "rsync --version")
5. gcc (run "gcc --version")
6. wxWidgets (run "wx-config --version")
7. OpenSSH and OpenSSL (run "ssh -V")

Despite all the hype about the new graphical features, these are the things that matter most to me, and nobody talks about them. Also, does the Apple GCC build happen to include a FORTRAN compiler?
 
aLoC said:
I will fill out this survey later tonight.

I will tell them that the see-thru menu bar is tacky and all the service bloat: Dashboard, Spotlight, Time-machine which are always running and taking up memory and accessing the disk should be able to be turned off cleanly in System Preferences.
Click to expand...

Aaaactually that's only Spotlight. Dashboard is off unless you have widgets loaded or activate it*, and time machine only runs if you set it up.


*technically it makes Dock.app a few kilobytes larger in code size, but that's totally irrelevant and wouldn't go away even if there was an off switch. It's the widgets that munch ram.
 
I was terribly surprised to get bugs using the Print Picture functionality of iPhoto 08 in the 3 picture layout.

The Leopard builds are buggy as all, not enjoyable to use, and I can't see that Apple will be ready to release something in October. Even if the do release it on the 31st, it will be renamed the Spooky Buggy release.
 
Lets face it. The leopard release is a train-wreck. It's visually arresting, and completely out of character for apple's usually top notch design. They overstretched themselves for the iPhone and leopard releases, and are now paying the price.
 
kenaustus said:
If things get really tight I can see Apple releasing the Intel version on time, with the PPC version shipped a month or two (or three) later. That would resolve the issue of shipping Leopard with new computers sold, take care of the MacTel user and keep the stock market reasonably pleased. Since we have G4, G5 and Intel Macs in the house I'd have to wait until the full Family Pack is ready, but I can live with that.
Click to expand...

That would be a terrible mistake and PR disaster we have ever seen in the computing industry. First of all, there would be market confusion. Existing Intel Mac user goes to store and buys the Leopard PPC for his Intel Mac. Existing PPC Mac user goes to store and buys Leopard Intel for his PPC Mac. They insert the disk, "platform not supported error message". Your method is possible, but to be safe, it will never happen. Some stupid user ends up buy both just to be safe.

There is no problem in the Universal Binaries themselves to justify your probability. Your probability is likely confused by the fact that Intel Macs come pre-bundled with Tiger for Intel already. But the reason is simple, there were no Intel Macs in retail prior to January 2006, so there was no reason to provide a retail Intel Tiger version then or even now. That is simply why Apple continues to sell a retail version of Tiger PPC. There are many users who are running older versions of OS X that Apple still see as ripe for an upgrade.

When Leopard is ready, there will be one non-confusing version on the market, for existing Intel and PPC Macs.
 
hob said:
Is it not more than a little late in the day for them to be asking such questions?
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That depends entirely on the nature of issues reported. Developers submit comments and bug reports throughout the process. That's not what this is for. This is designed to assess workflow and usability. It seems to me they're looking for what areas need polish and for any potential backwards steps introduced by new features. They're turning their attention to tying up loose ends other than general bugfixing.

Not all of the issues they find will be fixed by the time Leopard ships--not all of them will be fixed at all.
If so, will there be delays? If not - is this just for marketing purposes?
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It's taking a step back and looking at the big picture. Developers work so hard on the little details and the single issues and bugs that sometimes it helps to be reminded to lift your nose out of all the corners and crevices.

All it really shows is that they're looking to start the polishing process and to make sure everything is integrated well. I seriously doubt they have any plans to do any major rewrites this close to release. This probably has the greatest benefit to the UI people, not the coders. It has the convenient added benefit of point out areas to highlight in advertising (and areas to avoid calling too much attention to).
 
aLoC said:
I will fill out this survey later tonight.

I will tell them that the see-thru menu bar is tacky and all the service bloat: Dashboard, Spotlight, Time-machine which are always running and taking up memory and accessing the disk should be able to be turned off cleanly in System Preferences.
Click to expand...

You're a developer? Spotlight is always running, yes, because a constantly running daemon is essential to properly accomplish what its supposed to do. Dashboard isn't taking up your cpu cycles in the background (sure, its running...so what?), and Time Machine isn't even constantly running. All Time Machine functions are (currently) handled by a pair of launchd jobs -- the backup daemon is only running right after 1) you plug in a new drive, or 2) its *'o clock on the dot. :rolleyes:
 
arn said:
yeah, not sure how much meaningful feedback and changes they can make for something like this.

(by october)

arn
Click to expand...

I think you're missing the point. The idea is they want a COMPARISON of various changed features between Leopard and Tiger. I believe the idea is if people think a new feature 'sucks' then maybe they'll either switch said feature back to Tiger's functionality (for now until they can address it in a future version of Leopard) or maybe at least offer some kind of preference option.

One thing that comes to mind to me is the new 'stacks' system. It looked great on the keynote, but as subsequent testing has shown, if you have more than a few applications, for example, it will look like CRAP from the dock. Compare this to Tiger's functionality where if you hold down the mouse on the application folder in the dock, it presents something VERY VERY similar to the Windows style "Start Menu" whereby you can view the contents of the folder in a menu style list and branch off to view sub-folders and it will scroll up and down. Stacks just make a big mess if there's too many items in a given folder, looking more like a convoluted finder page in a pop-up bubble than something nice and orderly like was apparently intended. Personally, I'd prefer Tiger's scroll menu style to a big mess in Leopard.

I'd be voting 'roll it back for now' until they can come up with something more orderly to do with folders that have dozens of things in them or at LEAST offer the OPTION of using the old style. Really, I think Mac OS should have a lot more styling type options to pick from to begin with.

As nice as MacOS is, I can't help but feel it's also a little like McDonald's. If you don't like it 'their' way (the McSteve way?), you're going to be waiting a LOOOOONG time to get it your way, if at all. They ought to be more like Wendy's, made fresh to order with fresh beef, never frozen! Or better yet like Ruby Tuesday, hand-crafted and made to order with ground sirloin.

System Preferences should be greatly expanded, IMO so you can set MacOS to be YOUR way.
 
Sbrocket said:
You're a developer? Spotlight is always running, yes, because a constantly running daemon is essential to properly accomplish what its supposed to do. Dashboard isn't taking up your cpu cycles in the background (sure, its running...so what?), and Time Machine isn't even constantly running. All Time Machine functions are (currently) handled by a pair of launchd jobs -- the backup daemon is only running right after 1) you plug in a new drive, or 2) its *'o clock on the dot. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Time Machine and Spotlight both rely on the fsevents framework. This sits in the background monitoring your filesystem activity and keeps an on-disk log, which is never erased (in the normal course of things) of every folder you ever modified and when you did it. This is the kind of thing I think should be opt-out.
 
Peace said:
*snippet*



I'm not going to say anything groundbreaking except this.If you have been doing a lot of coding it must be on the PPC and not Intel.


Next time you're playing with Leopard go have a look at the Intel code for the Kernel..;)
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True. I only have a G4/G5. My user base is still only using PPC and I do not yet have an Intel Mac. As I originally aid, the legacy users will feel this update has some issues at the current stage.
 
PlaceofDis said:
the menubar look has already been said that its optional. but i don't see them doing that for the dock. i just don't like the 'flashlight' look over the current arrows.
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Yea that was said, but in both 466 and 499 there is no option from what I've seen that actually allows for this. Thus, where is there a source from Apple stating that it will be optional?

Nick
 
acris10 said:
this news does make me a little leery of the october release date, like the move of the spring release date to october, there wasn't much warning
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Agreed. I think if the negative feedback is majority, leopard will be late..
 
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