Leopard is Great!

[macgeek2005]

I just had the opportunity to use a 20" Intel iMac which had the Leopard Beta installed on it, and it's great!

It's not buggy at all, the iChat effects are lovely, although there were no backdrops or iChat theatre in there yet.

I haven't used time machine because the guy who installed it on his computer didn't have an external hard drive when he was installing the system. Spaces workes great. Spotlight is great. It's all great!

I just can't wait to see what those Top Secret things are, because they're not in the operating system yet.....

 

[ghall]

Your so lucky! I wanna use Leopard!

 

[tipdrill407]

what?? you need an external hard drive to use time machine??

 

[eva01]

what?? you need an external hard drive to use time machine??

or a separate partition.

But why the hell wouldn't you use an external HD. It is for backups and why do backups on the same HD. It crashes and your backup is gone too

 

[macgeek2005]

what?? you need an external hard drive to use time machine??

You need another drive to back the stuff up too. If you have 2 internal drives, you can use one of them, to back up the stuff from the other. In an iMac, theres only one internal drive.

In my Mac Pro, i'm gonna have a 250 and a 320 internal, and i'm gonna use a 250 and a 320 external to back them up.

 

[tipdrill407]

or a separate partition.

But why the hell wouldn't you use an external HD. It is for backups and why do backups on the same HD. It crashes and your backup is gone too

o okkkk... i'm still backing up to cds lol..

 

[HGW]

so to clarify, you cant use a partition? anyone tried

im guessing if your able to use an ipod it will get used alot

 

[ghall]

What whould be the point of using a partiton? It's pretty much backing up to the same Hard Drive. Makes no sense.

I won't be using Time Machine anyway, I prefer backing up the old fashioned way.

 

[mkrishnan]

But why the hell wouldn't you use an external HD. It is for backups and why do backups on the same HD. It crashes and your backup is gone too

Well... There are two very important reasons to back up:

1) To protect against crashes / drive failures -- this is the more important one, obviously, because even with care it is unavoidable.

2) Rollback capability. This is mostly avoidable based on skill level, but let's be honest. *You* might avoid these mistakes completely, and I may avoid them 99% of the time but for the average user, this is the one that represents the most lost data. If we look at threads requesting help on MacRumors and compare drive failures to idiocy, even here among the elite of the Mac user community I think it is still safe to say that #2 outweighs #1 practically.

So, if Time Machine could take advantage of OS features (i.e. ZFS or a system that automatically holds onto information about deleted or overwritten copies of a file as long as possible while opportunistically making sure the OS and user have enough disk space) and/or a separate partition on the same drive, even though it would do ZERO for #1, I think the practical ramifications of #2 are still huge.

For you, even if you never accidentally delete or overwrite a file, you at least will not have to deal with friends and family members who do and come whining to you!

 

[eva01]

*post*

even then wouldn't it just be more intelligent to have both #1 and #2 covered by using an external HD (considering the external doesn't crash at the same time)

 

[mkrishnan]

even then wouldn't it just be more intelligent to have both #1 and #2 covered by using an external HD (considering the external doesn't crash at the same time)

Of course, but you're feeding right back into my point. 99% of users don't have an external drive. Of all current Macs, the only one that can fit a second internal drive is the Mac Pro. A good handful of users will walk out the door and buy external drives when Leopard comes out because it makes them so much easier and more powerful. But that handful isn't even going to be ten percent of Mac users....

Making this feature work without a second drive, to accomplish my category (2) of issues, is a much bigger contribution to the majority of Mac users.

Not because using two drives isn't better in every single way. It is. But because of reality....

 

[quigleybc]

My buddy pirated the beta too, and I could if I wanted, but I figure i'll wait till the real version comes out and buy it. It will be worth the wait IMO.

 

[SpaceMagic]

My buddy pirated the beta too, and I could if I wanted, but I figure i'll wait till the real version comes out and buy it. It will be worth the wait IMO.

You figure, huh

It's also ILLEGAL.

 

[HGW]

any leopeard users= partition?

 

[illegalprelude]

this will be such an awesome feature, i would love to set a second drive in my G45 or an external to be making a backup all the time

 

[m-dogg]

Is there any free space in the current iMac? I wonder if Apple will update the iMac to include a second hard drive bay for time machine purposes by the time Leopard comes out?

 

[0098386]

I can't wait for Time Machine personally. It's just been today that I realised I really need to keep good backups, both my HDD and MySQL databases (which I can already auto backup in Tiger, I believe).

still. roll on 10.5. I have a juicy 300gb external to match my (haha, match) 60gb internal on my PowerBook. and another 60gb for kicks.

 

[wbread5]

Is there any free space in the current iMac? I wonder if Apple will update the iMac to include a second hard drive bay for time machine purposes by the time Leopard comes out?

It's more likely that they're assuming if you want to backup your stuff, you'll have an external.

 

[m-dogg]

It's more likely that they're assuming if you want to backup your stuff, you'll have an external.

Yeah, I know...but they do like simplicity...and what's more simple than having the back-up drive built right into the machine? Obviously that's a little hard on a notebook, but maybe on the iMac?

Just a thought. On the other hand, I can see how they probably would not want to do something like that if they couldn't do it across the board on all their models.

 

[tjwett]

gotta disagree here a bit. i've seen the Leopard beta and it's buggy as all get out. essential apps do not work properly, stuff like iWork is unusable. i think it looks like it *will* be great but i wouldn't be in hurry to use the beta for anything other than brief curiosity fulfillment. it's got a long way to go yet.

 

[georgi0]

time machine

isn't it making the system to perform overall slower in terms of hard disk access times?

i mean for evey little change you make on files, an instant backup has to be made on the ext backup drive, so the trough-output of the system should get slower.

i am just wondering here...

 

[twoodcc]

isn't it making the system to perform overall slower in terms of hard disk access times?

i mean for evey little change you make on files, an instant backup has to be made on the ext backup drive, so the trough-output of the system should get slower.

i am just wondering here...

i think it makes back-up at certain times, which you tell it what time, like 3am or something. it's not constantly backing up (i don't think)

 

[mkrishnan]

i think it makes back-up at certain times, which you tell it what time, like 3am or something. it's not constantly backing up (i don't think)

It also appears to be a feature you can turn off if you want (unlike, say, Spotlight, which is pretty tough to disable, or Dashboard, which needs a third party tool). But for most users of new Macs, it seems like it'll be a nice feature, with at least some folders turned on.

 

[7on]

If anybody is really curious how Time Machine works sign up for the trial of .Mac and download Apple's Backup application. Should work EXACTLY the same way albeit different UI and system level as opposed to .Mac level (Backup backups to external drives too)

 

[simonthewolf]

Has anyone used the Leopard preview on a Power Mac G5 yet? If so, what is the performance like compared to Tiger? And has the incredibly annoying power supply chirp, which disappeared with later releases of Panther but reappeared under Tiger, making itself heard?