Leopard seeded to ADC members?

[burgerboy9n]

Wow, at this rate of progress, Apple will never release Leopard. I mean they haven't changed ANYTHING since WWDC.

Also, I visit Apple's web site on a semi-regular basis, and I don't see an option to download the preview. Aren't I supposed to have access to it?

I dont think it is nesciccarry? to change anything since wwdc. alot of the packages in leopard are old and were assembled in April 2006. so they probably have allready fixed any problems in the software the devs recieved

 

[ctachme]

If you have select you are entitled to ONE hardware discount as well. For the Mac Pro that is $500 or more off... That makes back your $500 spent on the membership. http://developer.apple.com/membership/usa.html

I had Select in the past, but didn't renew the last couple of years. I am intrigued again.

However, I'm one of those jerks who already has a 24" LCD monitor and wants something more expandable/powerful than a Mac mini but finds the Mac Pro too expensive for features I'd never use. So I'm still hoping and waiting for Apple to fill that hole.

I was excited for a moment there, but the savings fore MBP's is only $100 (over the student discount) :/, which still means you're paying $400 for beta software.

 

[Eraserhead]

The reason they don't is because they don't want to deal with people who think its a final release. Trust me, people don't read or sometimes even understand. Its simply because they don't want to. Its just something else they'd have to deal with.

They could only allow Developer Members to do it or something, that way they could be clear that it was unsupported.

i dont understand why people are so anxious to download the beta which definitely would have some stability issue. im more than willing to wait for the final product.

For the a similar reason some people (including me) run nightly builds of web browsers, it's good fun and great to have the latest features, like spell checking in Camino, but I think I probably would only install Leopard on an external HD or on a spare Mac if I could...

 

[Krevnik]

They could only allow Developer Members to do it or something, that way they could be clear that it was unsupported.

They do, they just make you take a bunch of other extras as part of the deal... its called Select membership.

was excited for a moment there, but the savings fore MBP's is only $100 (over the student discount) :/, which still means you're paying $400 for beta software.

You mean /you're/ paying 400$ for beta software. Someone who isn't a student doesn't get an EDU discount, so you have to factor both in. Also, if you still have your account when the GM hits, you get that sent out on disc to you. Sure it lacks manuals, but it is a fully legit final copy of the OS to use.

The select membership is really aimed at developers who do development for a living. A student doesn't have a huge need to test their apps (for the most part) on pre-release operating systems. Why did I? I have a kernel driver which I need to test and validate against. If the kernel is truly 64-bit, then I have work ahead of me making sure that my driver is 64-bit clean for MacPro users, and that I didn't do any funny business (which I did) which would not make it 64-bit clean.

 

[Mackeyser]

Actually, a dirty 64bit driver should be fine since both 32bit and 64bit will run without emulation.

I think Apple worked their collective butts off to ensure that if ANYTHING, they didn't break printer drivers (unlike Vista 64bit, for example).

You should be fine, but only testing will reveal that for certain.

 

[Krevnik]

Actually, a dirty 64bit driver should be fine since both 32bit and 64bit will run without emulation.

A process really needs to be either 32-bit or 64-bit... Even with 10.4, the kernel is 32-bit, with a memory manager that knows about a 64-bit address space. Mixing 32-bit code and 64-bit code within a single process is a really poor scenario and nearly impossible to get working correctly. Especially when you are dynamically linking C++ objects into your process.

I still can't determine precisely what the situation in Leopard is. The userland properly supports 64-bit (all the frameworks have binaries for all 4 platforms)... but the kernel still seems to be 32-bit like in Tiger, same with kextd. But of course, I wouldn't know this unless I made sure I had access to the information.

I think Apple worked their collective butts off to ensure that if ANYTHING, they didn't break printer drivers (unlike Vista 64bit, for example).

Printer drivers in Unix-based systems exist in userland, and PPDs are just scripts that are interpreted. It is actually pretty hard to break unix printing in the way that you can on Windows.

 

[Mackeyser]

You're right, of course

I took it from the Steve-note that the kernel would be 64bit since Apple is going to submit Leopard for Unix certification and I don't think it works to do that with just about all else being 64bit and the kernel being 32bit. I could be mistaken because I've never submitted my OS for Unix cert (well, in truth my 'OS' is a vine-type plant that keeps falling off my windowsill, but it's still more stable than Vista RC1 64bit...lol).

Anyway, this is just one of dozens of reasons that Vista will just flop around like a fish out of water....

 

[Krevnik]

I took it from the Steve-note that the kernel would be 64bit since Apple is going to submit Leopard for Unix certification and I don't think it works to do that with just about all else being 64bit and the kernel being 32bit. I could be mistaken because I've never submitted my OS for Unix cert (well, in truth my 'OS' is a vine-type plant that keeps falling off my windowsill, but it's still more stable than Vista RC1 64bit...lol).

Well, as of the WWDC version, the kernel and kernel extensions are still 32-bit, but they might start doing 64-bit builds of those pretty soon. The big win is that you can write a 64-bit app that accesses the UI, which you couldn't do in Tiger.

 

[Mackeyser]

I think that makes sense, to bring the changes along in stages to narrow the scope of debug.

I expect the kernel and kernel extensions will be 64bit sometime in October.

As much as I expect a late March ship date for Leopard, for some reason, I've got a sneaking suspicion that it will be available to the public as of the MWSF keynote date.

Mr. Jobs has been banging on Vista and Longhorn before it for some time. Stealing the launch thunder of Vista would be GOLDEN...

How does that affect developers? Well, that means the 64bit stuff, if it's gonna happen, will happen soon. If Halloween comes and no 64bit stuff is in evidence, then either it ain't gonna be there or it will be a late March date.

Here's hopin' for that MWSF launch....

 

[Machead III]

Any chance of the rumored Finder redesign, so the graphics are all consistant and something like iTunes 7, and Spotlight plays a big part of basic file browsing?

That'd be worth an update.

 

[eric_n_dfw]

NDA's

Just a friendly reminder that ADC members are held under non-disclosure agreements -- be careful what you post in public forums about unreleased Apple software.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Anyone know if the Server version is made available?