Leopard Previewed

[59031]

Is Leopard going to take advantage of the 64 bit Dual G5?

Yes, absolutely:

Enhanced 64-bit Support
Leopard delivers 64-bit power in one, universal OS. Now Cocoa and Carbon application frameworks, as well as graphics, scripting, and the rest of the system are all 64-bit. Leopard delivers 64-bit power to both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs, so you don’t have to install separate applications for different machines. There’s only one version of Mac OS X, so you don’t need to maintain separate operating systems for different uses.

Bridge the Generation Gap
Now that the entire operating system is 64-bit, you can take full advantage of the Xeon chip in Mac Pro and Xserve. You get more processing power at up to 3.0GHz, without limiting your programs to command-line applications, servers, and computation engines. From G3 to Xeon, from MacBook to Xserve, there is just one Leopard.

 

[dejo]

Would Dashcode be considered part of the "Enhanced Dashboard" choice?

 

[kiwi-in-uk]

... as of present the trash can will not allow you to selectively undelete a file?

What?

 

[DeepIn2U]

Excellent SHOW Apple EXCELLENT!

I think I just creamed my shorts.

THATS the last straw NO MORE EXCUSES for not owning a MAC FULL Out.
the piggy bank is now gonna be frugal!

 

[the.snitch]

Holy crap, Time machine looks amazing! I'm happy with all the other features, about on-par with what I expect. That french dude in the presentation really made Microsoft look like fools - infact, just this iteration of OS X seems to add more features than Vista adds over XP. I'm looking forward to leopard, and I wonder what the "Top Secret" features are, that are yet-to-be-revealed.

 

[aswitcher]

Norton's GoBack, which was purchased from some other company, has a similar feature for restoring single files. This isn't quite the same thing, but the whole concept isn't entirely new. GoBack was introduced well before Microsoft came out with System Restore... That said, I think its a great feature to include and I'm sure I'll find many uses for it.

GoBack was key to my last 2 years as a PC owner.

 

[Ladybug]

Yeah, I recommended GoBack to a number of users back in the day (I think it was Adaptec that owned it at one point). No-one seemed to like it at the time.

As I and others reminisce it's a feature that has been around for well over 20 years in VMS. It's only relatively new to personal computers.

B

Great info Balamw, your memory is much better than mine 😀

I also used GoBack for a short period. The problem with it that I had, was how slow it actually made my computer. I haven't used it in recent years so I really can't say how well it progressed after version 2 I think it was.

 

[JakeM.]

Did anyone else think it was odd that many of the features seemed so poorly presented. We didn't actually get to see anything new in Spotlight. And no new features of the actual Dashboard were even discussed.

It just doesn't seem that Leopard is as far along as Tiger was when previewed even though Leopard is suppose to ship in the spring just as Tiger did.

 

[chasemac]

Yes, absolutely:

Enhanced 64-bit Support
Leopard delivers 64-bit power in one, universal OS. Now Cocoa and Carbon application frameworks, as well as graphics, scripting, and the rest of the system are all 64-bit. Leopard delivers 64-bit power to both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs, so you don’t have to install separate applications for different machines. There’s only one version of Mac OS X, so you don’t need to maintain separate operating systems for different uses.

Bridge the Generation Gap
Now that the entire operating system is 64-bit, you can take full advantage of the Xeon chip in Mac Pro and Xserve. You get more processing power at up to 3.0GHz, without limiting your programs to command-line applications, servers, and computation engines. From G3 to Xeon, from MacBook to Xserve, there is just one Leopard.

Excellent! Thanks for the info!🙂

 

[swingerofbirch]

I have two questions.

Do you think that one of the top secret features they didn't show was a unified interface? Because the UIs they showed looked just as hodge-podged as Tiger, ie iCal and Finder still brushed metal and Mail is still plastic. They talk about Microsoft copying Aqua, but I can't think of one app that is aqua anymore! What does Aqua look like?

Second, did the developers get a beta of Leopard? If so, won't we be hearing about whatever top secret features they didn't show? Surely one of the 4200 is a snitch!

 

[Tomaz]

sadly I cant by any more letters to complete a better signature.!

You should at least "by" a "u"... (and maybe an apostrophe) 😀

 

[Tomaz]

Did anyone else think it was odd that many of the features seemed so poorly presented. We didn't actually get to see anything new in Spotlight. And no new features of the actual Dashboard were even discussed.

It just doesn't seem that Leopard is as far along as Tiger was when previewed even though Leopard is suppose to ship in the spring just as Tiger did.

Maybe they moved the spotlight bar to the top left and don't want MS to do the same before the Vista release 😉

 

[bankshot]

As others have said, Time Machine is likely either a direct port of Sun's ZFS, or an equivalent implementation in HFS+. Actually, that's an interesting point -- if it's ZFS, it'll require a reformat in order to use it. If they did it themselves in HFS+, that's a lot more useful for anything besides brand new machines. Though ZFS is a much more modern design, despite all the things Apple's done to extend HFS+ in recent years (journaling, case-sensitive option, etc). Might be good to make a clean break and move forward.

Anyway, no real surprise there, unless you count the fancy glitz that Apple put on top of it. And of course, who's surprised when they do that? 😉


What I'd like to know more about is Spotlight. It was one of the most disappointing features in Tiger for me. It was supposed to revolutionize how you use the computer, but it turned out to be extremely slow and almost useless to me. I suggested from day one -- in fact from the day Steve demoed Tiger at WWDC in 2004 -- that Spotlight should not only index your online drives, but also network drives and offline media (backup CDs and DVDs). The latter two are far more useful to me personally, as I have data scattered across several different computers and on dozens of backups.

According to today's keynote, Apple has finally added support for network drives. But I wonder -- does this mean only other Leopard Macs, or any shared drive that the Mac can connect to? Can I index a Windows shared drive from my Mac, or even a Unix NFS mount? Or is it only other Macs? Once again, if it's limited to other Leopard Macs, then this would be useless for a lot of people (mostly ME! 😀).

Also, will they add indexing of offline media? There's no mention of it on the Leopard Spotlight page. Do I still have time to suggest it (again)? Hmmm....


Finally, gotta wonder what those "top secret" features are, and why so secret? Maybe they might not get done in time for release, and therefore Apple doesn't want to look bad like MS pulling Vista features left and right? Surely there's not enough time for a competitor to steal the idea and get it out before Apple does? Even if "next spring" means early June... That's no time at all in large scale software projects.

 

[clevin]

I keep reading stuff like this. I don't think Time Machine works with the reagular harddrive. You have to use it with an external drive.

thats a kinda harsh requirement, i would think it will allow you to choose local/external hard drive/network server.
Buts till, it will cost lot of space, no matter where the space is from.

 

[SWC]

This is interesting; how do they figure that they can get the service to a mobile phone?



Discuss!

Cheers.

Quicktime. they have had mobile phone support for a while. since h.264 i beleive.

 

[eMagius]

As others have said, Time Machine is likely either a direct port of Sun's ZFS, or an equivalent implementation in HFS+.

I don't think we can say exactly how things work underneath. Windows 2003 offers differential snapshots without making massive changes to NTFS, for example. It would be neat if Apple did throw its weight behind ZFS, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen with 10.5.

According to today's keynote, Apple has finally added support for network drives. But I wonder -- does this mean only other Leopard Macs, or any shared drive that the Mac can connect to? Can I index a Windows shared drive from my Mac, or even a Unix NFS mount? Or is it only other Macs? Once again, if it's limited to other Leopard Macs, then this would be useless for a lot of people (mostly ME! 😀).

I don't see how this would work for anything other than other Leopard (maybe Tiger, with a software update) Macs. Spotlight has to have the indexes pre-generated, after all.

Finally, gotta wonder what those "top secret" features are, and why so secret?

Call me a cynic, but I'd say Apple either hasn't implemented them yet or hasn't thought of them yet.

 

[SiliconAddict]

The Meh was strong in that keynote. I was looking for something explosive and found a snap bang that someone threw to the ground. Short of those top secret features 🙄 being something earth shattering Leopard looks to be another micro update to OS X. While any forward momentum in the OS is a good thing what we've seen of Leopard does not suggest that gulf that will be closed with Vista (After SP1 & 2 that is.) is going to be widened again with Leopard.
The things dumped into the OS are simply more addon crap. That isn't to say adding new features aren't welcome but the time is right for a serious revamp to the UI of OS X.
I'm not happy about this development. It seems as if real forward momentum in OS X has all but stalled. Like most of Apple now a days they aren't taking chances anymore with their wares be it software or hardware. They seem to focus on finding previously used ideas, slap a new coat of paint on it, buff it up to a nice shine, then give it some "fun" name and call it innovation.
Apple may have been in decline in the 90's but at least that Apple took chances. Took risks on new and innovative hardware. I want the old Apple back. . . to a point. More then anything I want to get excited in a product that is revolutionary not evolutionary. 🙁

Call me a cynic, but I'd say Apple either hasn't implemented them yet or hasn't thought of them yet.

Or they are so buggy at this point they aren't ready to demo them. That is my guess. This crap about not wanting MS to copy. Sorry but Windows is feature locked at this point. There is simply NO way for Microsoft to roll out anything new unless its such a minor thing that it would be easy to do. I really wish Apple wouldn't spit in my face and call it rain.

 

[macintel4me]

thats a kinda harsh requirement, i would think it will allow you to choose local/external hard drive/network server.
Buts till, it will cost lot of space, no matter where the space is from.

From the Apple website...

Backup Disk: Change the drive or volume you’re backing up to. Or back up to a Mac OS X server computer.

 

[rolandf]

I agree

Good lord. Whatever happened to simplicity? It looked like a three ring circus up there today.

Now come on. Time machine? With a picture of outer space and stars? This looks so gimmicky. They are getting to be like Microsoft and just adding new features instead of making things easier and streamlined. Why not just improve the Backup program that comes with .Mac or include it for free? Do we really need another interface? To me it looks like form over function.

Not very innovative so-far. The Intel change took the OS's soul and the inspiration. Very disappointing. Mail, completely overloaded, like MS office.

No mentioning of resolution independent GUI, etc. There are a couple of UNIX OS's out there that are more innovative.

All in all, Apple seems on the wrong track.

 

[Liebo11]

does upgrading to leopard cost money for tiger users?

 

[SiliconAddict]

Not very innovative so-far. The Intel change took the OS's soul and the inspiration.

Give me a fracking break. Intel has NOTHING to do with this. NOTHING. I wish PPC fanbois would just give it up. Soon they will be claiming that ozone depletion is due too Intel chips.

does upgrading to leopard cost money for tiger users?

Yes.

 

[Liebo11]

great . . . i just get a new macbook with tiger now i'm gonna have to get leopard . . . how much will this put me back?

 

[SWC]

great . . . i just get a new macbook with tiger now i'm gonna have to get leopard . . . how much will this put me back?

$129 is history proves true

 

[jackc]

great . . . i just get a new macbook with tiger now i'm gonna have to get leopard . . . how much will this put me back?

We're talking about at least 6 months before Leopard, it'll cost you $129 I think without an edu discount.

 

[iMikeT]

I don't believe that we have to wait until Spring 2007.😡

Oh well. Wait or not, Apple will still be way ahead of Microsoft!

I loved the Vista bashing. Better yet, it came from a French guy!😀