Apple Seeds Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) 9A559

[mklos]

I also see no compelling reason to upgrade and am not impressed by what I've seen so far. The whole thing looks extremely tacky — aimed at teenybopper switchers, in my view — and the feature list is underwhelming.

As per usual, I will read what everyone has to say here upon release and make my mind up in a few months time. And it's not going near the work Macs until I've tested it out at home first.

While the new feature list may not appear all that hot to some, there have been many "under the hood" changes. Meaning there's lots of code cleanup, and optimizations for Intel Macs. Sometimes this is actually a good thing because it cleans up the OS and doesn't turn into Vista (aka bloatware). This is something that isn't always obtainable with a dot dot release (ex. 10.5.1). Apple did a lot of work in Tiger to make it work on Intel Macs and Leopard gives them an opportunity to clean up a little bit.

As far as the appearance goes, its the best look in OS X since its inception IMO. Most importantly, its a consistent through out the OS. So there's no gradient gray interface in Mail, then brushed metal in QT, then something different in iTunes and iPhoto, etc. Everything looks the same. I think it looks a lot more professional than the cheesy brushed metal look.

I would actually like to see Apple target kids for their computers. If you can get someone started on a Mac early, or even using Apple products, you tend to grasp a few. There's always room for more customers.

But....if you don't like Leopard then just don't buy it. Tiger is still an awesome OS and Leopard isn't going to appeal to everyone. Its impossible to make everyone happy without pissing a few others off. Happens all over different companies who deliver products.

Quit complaining. Leopard has tones of little features which make the whole experience so much more enjoyable. Just a few:

- Printing much improved
- Selecting wireless networks (you no longer have to click the wireless tab about 5 times trying to select a network when it keeps on refreshing the list)
- Networking in System preferences has been tidied up greatly
- The whole universal application style is great, no more brushed metal.
- System updates are a lot better

These are just a few things which makes leopard buying, and they aren't even major.

You sound like Steve Jobs! Not that its a bad thing. He's a heck of a salesman!

 

[rented mule]

As a professional designer, I think I'm qualified to make a judgement on what looks professional or not.

Me too!


Anyway...the much improved Spotlight and the new Quick Look is a godsend. Like Exposé, you'll wonder how you did without it.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Meaning there's lots of code cleanup, and optimizations for Intel Macs.

That's a good thing for the MBP at home.

So there's no gradient gray interface in Mail, then brushed metal in QT, then something different in iTunes and iPhoto, etc.

That has little relevance to our work setup. My point is, apart from the external look, there's nothing I seem to find in there that's compelling at this stage relative to the cost.

 

[heisetax]

Am I the only one starting to think that Leopard is going to be pushed back again??? I know Apple still has a little bit of time, but I am starting to think it might not be released til November or even early next year.

Do you mean that we will be able to purchase our copy of the just released Mac OS 10.5 on the same day as MS releases MS Office 2008 for the Mac?

Bill the TaxMan

 

[mklos]

That's a good thing for the MBP at home.

Yes it is! I'm sure many others will agree as well.

That has little relevance to our work setup. My point is, apart from the external look, there's nothing I seem to find in there that's compelling at this stage relative to the cost.

Well, like I said, Leopard won't appeal to everyone. If Tiger is working fine then I would see no reason to upgrade either, especially in a professional environment. You will also want to make sure 3rd party apps work with Leopard too before just installing it to have the latest and greatest. Sometimes thats not always a good thing as I'm sure we've all experienced at some point.

Me too!


Anyway...the much improved Spotlight and the new Quick Look is a godsend. Like Exposé, you'll wonder how you did without it.

Don't forget about Spaces too! It was actually pretty cool using it. Takes a little getting used to just like Exposé did but once you start using it, you won't see how you lived without it.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Actually, this might sound boring but I would really like to see some substantial Finder improvements with networking. Just that alone would convince me of its value.

 

[iGrouch]

If Apple makes it so you can't install it on anything under 800 MHz G4 there are ways around that. If you have it, or have access to it, take an external HD case and put the HD out of your Mac into it. Plug that case into a PPC Mac (not intel) that supports the OS and install the OS. Then take the HD out of the case and put it back into your Mac and it should work fine. I've installed Tiger on a couple of 233 and 333MHz iMacs that way. Its also a great way to get Leopard or Tiger for that matter on a Mac that doesn't have a DVD drive in it.

Or, put the older Mac in Target Disk Mode and attach it to a Mac that fulfills leopard install requirements. The older Mac will be seen as an attached HD and you can point the installation at it.

 

[manu chao]

Does anybody know what the 9A in the build number stands for? Did the Tiger builds have 8A and Panther 7A? And Jaguar 6A and Puma 5A and Cheetah 4A? The public beta 3A and the and Mac OS Server 1.0 from 1999 2A?

 

[mediaholic]

Does anybody know what the 9A in the build number stands for? Did the Tiger builds have 8A and Panther 7A? And Jaguar 6A and Puma 5A and Cheetah 4A? The public beta 3A and the and Mac OS Server 1.0 from 1999 2A?

Yep, yep, yep, yep, and yep. I'm not sure about the public beta and earlier though. The "9" stands for the version of Darwin/NeXTstep. It is a continuation of NeXT's versioning.

The "A" stands for the first revision of a major release (such as 10.5.0 or 10.4.0). Other builds of OS X for new hardware have their own letters too (usually in-between the current version and next version, like 10.4.6 and 10.4.7).

 

[bananas]

Out of curiosity, developers, should I see good performance with these specs?

PowerPC G5 1.6GHz
4GB RAM
256MB ATI Radeon 9600 Pro

I'm not a developer, but since I have a clue about hardware I can tell you that's a powerfull machine you got. So don't worry, I'm sure Leopard will run just fine.

 

[samh004]

It doesn't even appear in disk utility. And there is a big thread on the Apple forums about that problem.

Here is what I get in system.log:

...

Oh - and of course it works in Windows on the same machine (Boot Camp).

Sorry, don't know much about what that means.

The whole thing looks extremely tacky — aimed at teenybopper switchers, in my view — and the feature list is underwhelming.

I semi-agree with you, some of it does look a bit... off, but it's not too bad once you've used it a bit, as I have found. I can't wait for the official release and to slowly get into new trends or using my computer.

I think you'll find it the same for your mac at home, but not sure if you'll see much use out of it at work, other than, if your applications run on it fine, the finder being more speedy will be helpful to you.

Apparently Stacks are customizable now.

As in the cool effect of it rising out of the dock in a single stack of images works with the dock on the side of the screen, or just that you can do other less trivial things to it ?

Oh, and mod's note: please watch the flaming in this thread. Thanks.

I would of thought that counted a few pages ago, but luckily things have calmed down a bit. People went to sleep or whatever

Anyway...the much improved Spotlight and the new Quick Look is a godsend. Like Exposé, you'll wonder how you did without it.

I dunno if Quick Look is going to be as much a part of my daily life as Exposé, Spaces yeah, sure, but Quick Look... not sure.

Actually, this might sound boring but I would really like to see some substantial Finder improvements with networking. Just that alone would convince me of its value.

I thought that was one of the big features Steve was touting on stage at WWDC. When he showed the shared macs and mounting other volumes, it seemed to work really well, as oppose to right now. I tried it out and it was quick, but I'm not sure how much quicker.

 

[mklos]

Actually, this might sound boring but I would really like to see some substantial Finder improvements with networking. Just that alone would convince me of its value.

Yes, I would like to see that as well. Networking has improved in Leopard. I never got a chance to test Windows networking. That needs a lot of improvement. IMO, its still not as easy and as reliable as it should be.

One of the nice things in Leopard is that it will automatically show computers on your network in the sidebar if you choose to do so. Its actually nice if you only have a few Macs connected to your network. With a single click of the mouse you can see and connect to any Mac on your network. You don't have to go nosing around to the Network section to see your Macs.

I would also like to see the long pause if something goes wrong with the network. For example, if you were connected to a shared hard drive and the Mac that was sharing the hard drive was shut down the Mac connected to the shared drive shouldn't just sit there for 5 minutes with the spinning beach ball. It should either ignore it until the network is re-connected or just immediately pop up an error.

Or, put the older Mac in Target Disk Mode and attach it to a Mac that fulfills leopard install requirements. The older Mac will be seen as an attached HD and you can point the installation at it.

Yes, you can do that, but only if the other Mac has a FireWire port...

 

[aLoC]

Like, what do you mean about the disk management problems?

I mean if you are using two programs that make heavy use of the disk, the OS should manage their access. It should give each app say 2 seconds in turn, swapping back and forth.

Instead it seems to let both apps at the disk at once which just results in a lot of disk thrashing and neither program getting anywhere.

And, what about the background tasks? Can't you shut those off?

I don't know, maybe.

Oh, and what is 'garbage collection'? (From your last point)

Is is a programming language feature that means the programmer doesn't have to think about memory management. They don't have to explicity tell the OS when they want some RAM for their program and when they're done with it.

Unfortunately when a programmer stops having to think about memory there's a bigger chance of them being wasteful with it.

 

[FightTheFuture]

Leopard won't appeal to everyone. If Tiger is working fine then I would see no reason to upgrade either,

i agree. tiger is the best selling  OS to date. it got a lot of switchers on board as well. i'm sure it'll be around for at least a year after Leopard launch - and the lack of Adobe Support will probably keep a lot of us on Tiger for awhile.

but dont forget that when iPhone Generation 2, or new Generations of iPods come out, with a new version of iTunes - you can bet that Leopard will be a requirement.

 

[iGrouch]

As in the cool effect of it rising out of the dock in a single stack of images works with the dock on the side of the screen, or just that you can do other less trivial things to it ?

I saw in a screen shot somewhere that right clicking the stack icon in the Dock gave the option to make the stack appear as an erectile fan or grid. Someone may be able to confirm this. I also remember S Jobs making a stack by selecting file icons from a folder and dragging just these to the Dock. In other words you don't have to be stuck with every app shown in an Application folder stack. What would be nice, for the Downloads stack, is a limit to the number of downloads represented in the grid based on most recent downloads. I can't bear the idea of viewing 8 x 25 icons just to access the latest file.

One thing I did see was the ability to click folders in a stack and and navigate into a new stack view of that folder's contents.

 

[weckart]

Or, put the older Mac in Target Disk Mode and attach it to a Mac that fulfills leopard install requirements. The older Mac will be seen as an attached HD and you can point the installation at it.

The obvious problem with that is that it will install all the kexts and drivers, which relate to the host, not the target. You will be lucky if it even boots up.

For instance, I took upgraded the hard drive in my MB, put the old drive in an external case, which I hooked up to my MBP to boot from. It did not boot past the grey swirls before it crashed with a kernel panic. Hardly surprising given the difference in logic board architecture between the MBP and the MB, even if the CPUs are broadly the same.

 

[Transeau]

I saw in a screen shot somewhere that right clicking the stack icon in the Dock gave the option to make the stack appear as an erectile fan or grid. Someone may be able to confirm this. I also remember S Jobs making a stack by selecting file icons from a folder and dragging just these to the Dock. In other words you don't have to be stuck with every app shown in an Application folder stack. What would be nice, for the Downloads stack, is a limit to the number of downloads represented in the grid based on most recent downloads. I can't bear the idea of viewing 8 x 25 icons just to access the latest file.

One thing I did see was the ability to click folders in a stack and and navigate into a new stack view of that folder's contents.

Here ya go

 

[Wayfarer]

^Gorgeous.

Customizable stacks confirmed.

 

[samh004]

but dont forget that when iPhone Generation 2, or new Generations of iPods come out, with a new version of iTunes - you can bet that Leopard will be a requirement.

It'll need to be compatible with XP or Vista too, so I don't see how Leopard will be a requirement on the mac side.

Here ya go

Do that when the dock is on the right or left of the screen and I'll be happy

 

[celebi23]

^Gorgeous.

Customizable stacks confirmed.

That was also in 9A528d and since 9A499

 

[72930]

It'll need to be compatible with XP or Vista too, so I don't see how Leopard will be a requirement on the mac side.

Tiger is a requirement for the new iPods, even though XP is older than Panther...

 

[0007776]

The obvious problem with that is that it will install all the kexts and drivers, which relate to the host, not the target. You will be lucky if it even boots up.

that is only if you are using the origional disks that came with your computer, if you are using a retail disk it will install all drivers unless you specifically deselect them so from a retail disk you can switch boot drives between computers.

 

[Whistleway]

From what I hear, this .0 is something you want to stay away from.

 

[72930]

From what I hear, this .0 is something you want to stay away from.

Panther (10.3.0) apparently was stable (not that I used it), while Tiger (10.4.0) was not...

 

[samh004]

Panther (10.3.0) apparently was stable (not that I used it), while Tiger (10.4.0) was not...

10.3.0 had a major firewire issue, although whether that was a software or firmware problem I don't know ?