Mac OS X 10.5.3 9D29, Time Machine on Battery Power

[ingenious]

I find it interesting that Apple continues to make changes like this.

On the one hand, it's good that Apple is adding functional enhancements and re-engineering poorly designed and thought-through components of Leopard.

On the other hand, Apple had two years between releases, and clearly Leopard was a more poorly designed and buggier than any release we have seen in a very long time. 10.4, 10.3, 10.2...none of them needed patches this large or some massive re-thinks like Leopard.

I just hope Apple learns from the Leopard experience. Some components were very poorly designed, and Leopard was--and still is--way too buggy. In general, Leopard has some very poor engineering.

Apple is going through some interesting changes. I hope it is learning and growing into a great company at "the next level."

Really? I've had almost no problems whatsoever with Leopard. In fact, I've found Leopard in its early stages to be Apple's most stable and bug-free release yet! With Tiger, it was until 10.4.3 that I didn't experience hard freezes and other shenanigans... I think it's been since 10.2.5 that I've had such stability.

 

[nintyuser]

How does someone go about requesting a feature be added for 10.5.4?

The feature is disabling the power button when the computer is on.

My friend thinks it's funny to press the button and shut off my computer.

Is there an apple script that I could write to turn this feature on and off at will?

I think this should be added as a simple checkbox option in sys prefs. It can't be that hard to add.

Thanks.

 

[adrian.oconnor]

How does someone go about requesting a feature be added for 10.5.4?

The feature is disabling the power button when the computer is on.

My friend thinks it's funny to press the button and shut off my computer.

Is there an apple script that I could write to turn this feature on and off at will?

I think this should be added as a simple checkbox option in sys prefs. It can't be that hard to add.

Thanks.

You should look at Energy Saver in System Preferences. In the 'Options' tab is the setting 'Allow power button to sleep the computer'. That does what you want.

However, holding the power button down for 10 seconds will still cause the Mac to instantly shutdown, so maybe you need to 'educate' your friend.

 

[BWhaler]

Really? I've had almost no problems whatsoever with Leopard. In fact, I've found Leopard in its early stages to be Apple's most stable and bug-free release yet! With Tiger, it was until 10.4.3 that I didn't experience hard freezes and other shenanigans... I think it's been since 10.2.5 that I've had such stability.

You can't be serious.

 

[retro83]

Are there any updates to iTunes/Frontrow?

Currently it will not show album artwork when using a shared library, hence making it useless as a media centre as the text is too small to read from any distance away.

It used to work in Tiger, fix it please Apple.

Also my GUI performance is very poor indeed. I have an X3100 graphics card and the desktop is often dropping frames when minimizing or displaying animations. Again, did not ever happen on my old Macbook with Tiger.

 

[jellomizer]

Is it just me, or does it seem like Apple has been a LOT more responsive to customer concerns since Leopard came out?

I'm thinking of the un-do-the-clear menu-bar option, the changes to stacks to add list view, and now this.

I seem to remember the Tiger updates being the kind of things that needed improving just because they needed fixing, not because someone asked for a feature online somewhere.

But these days it seems like they're changing a lot of little things that I've seen complained about here first. If this is an actual change in policy on Apple's part, I heartily approve!

Apple is getting a lot of new customers who are not so Mac Faithful as Mac users typically are. A lot of them are first time Mac Owners and if OS X doesn't do what they want they wil fairly quickly install Windows or Linux on their system and use that as their primary OS. And when it is upgrade time again they will go with an other probably "more affordable" PC Manufacturer.

 

[dal20402]

On the other hand, Apple had two years between releases, and clearly Leopard was a more poorly designed and buggier than any release we have seen in a very long time. 10.4, 10.3, 10.2...none of them needed patches this large or some massive re-thinks like Leopard.

You have a short memory. The initial releases of both Panther and Tiger had the same sort of stability and usability problems.

Plus, in Tiger's case, the 10.4.0 implementation of Spotlight caused performance problems the likes of which we've never seen with Leopard.

While there were some bugs and headaches, I was able to use Leopard as my daily OS from day one, and Spaces and Time Machine made the headaches worth putting up with. I was not able to use Tiger as my daily OS when it came out.

Of course, had I ever experienced any of the WiFi problems I keep hearing about, I would have felt differently... but I never have. In fact, WiFi under Leopard has been generally more reliable for me than it was under Tiger, but I have a feeling that's because my school improved its WiFi network.

 

[SilentCrs]

I know ... but, if my laptop is running on battery that means the power went out. I don't want it to start a backup because it won't finish before my UPS gives out. (Resulting in a corrupt backup)

If you're only running on AC power, what's the point of getting a laptop to begin with?

 

[kolax]

I know ... but, if my laptop is running on battery that means the power went out. I don't want it to start a backup because it won't finish before my UPS gives out. (Resulting in a corrupt backup)

I'm sure Apple will implement a way so when the battery is getting below 10% it will stop the backup to prevent a corrupt backup. I doubt they will just let it keep backing up till the computer turns off.

 

[mreg376]

Apple is getting a lot of new customers who are not so Mac Faithful as Mac users typically are. A lot of them are first time Mac Owners and if OS X doesn't do what they want they wil fairly quickly install Windows or Linux on their system and use that as their primary OS. And when it is upgrade time again they will go with an other probably "more affordable" PC Manufacturer.

I don't think that will happen. OS X at its worst is legions better than Windows, and Linux is like computing back in 1985. Anyone who's switched to the Mac knows that. If finding the cheapest computer is important to them, they would have never considered the Mac in the first place. Come to think of it, I don't know anyone who's switched back. Do you?

 

[MartiNZ]

Well I spent a few weeks mainly running in Vista on boot camp because of Leopard's unreliability, and I was getting tempted to switch (and I've been using OS X since 10.1.2, and used System 7, just missing out on those dark intervening years), as Vista was completely reliable and actually quite enjoyable to use.

Then Apple shipped the boot camp 2.1 update, and it killed Vista's reliability. I'm pretty sure that was mainly to stop people thinking about switching to Windows. But still, in the last few weeks there have been a few dozen updates for Vista, with a lot of bug fixes, while for Leopard we have to wait for 300 to be fixed at the same time, while potentially all 300 are pissing someone off at any given time.

Apple is getting to just really like big numbers ... and big waits.

 

[mreg376]

Well I spent a few weeks mainly running in Vista on boot camp because of Leopard's unreliability, and I was getting tempted to switch (and I've been using OS X since 10.1.2, and used System 7, just missing out on those dark intervening years), as Vista was completely reliable and actually quite enjoyable to use.

Then Apple shipped the boot camp 2.1 update, and it killed Vista's reliability. I'm pretty sure that was mainly to stop people thinking about switching to Windows. But still, in the last few weeks there have been a few dozen updates for Vista, with a lot of bug fixes, while for Leopard we have to wait for 300 to be fixed at the same time, while potentially all 300 are pissing someone off at any given time.

Apple is getting to just really like big numbers ... and big waits.

Congrats. You're a minority of one. Even Microsoft admits that Vista has problems. Good luck with that.

 

[MartiNZ]

Congrats. You're a minority of one. Even Microsoft admits that Vista has problems. Good luck with that.

Compared to the 300 bugs we're waiting on getting fixed .

Anyway, as I was saying, their releasing a bum boot camp update brought me to my senses. I just hope 10.5.3 breaks Apple's bad run - 10.5.2, the Leopard Graphics Update, the boot camp update - all introduced problems as well as solving them.

 

[AidenShaw]

Congrats. You're a minority of one. Even Microsoft admits that Vista has problems. Good luck with that.

There are a lot more people running Vista than Leopard, and like the other guy, most of them aren't having serious problems. Most of them aren't even having minor problems.

Don't expect to get switchers by bashing Vista, instead talk up how flawless and totally reliable 10.5 has been.

 

[bobber205]

It's nice to see Leopard coming along. Me thinks the iPhone kind of threw off the development team...

 

[adrian.oconnor]

I don't think that will happen. OS X at its worst is legions better than Windows, and Linux is like computing back in 1985. Anyone who's switched to the Mac knows that. If finding the cheapest computer is important to them, they would have never considered the Mac in the first place. Come to think of it, I don't know anyone who's switched back. Do you?

That's a pretty disingenuous thing to say. We all know Windows isn't great, but it certainly gets the job done, and that is what most people need from an OS. As for Linux, it fairly rocks. It is simple and efficient. All it needs to be more successful is a small design team (with a strong leader to keep things on course) to create consistent and beautiful overlays for all of the major applications and it'll be there. Anybody can use Linux today, unless they need Flash, InDesign/Quark, Photoshop, Visual Studio or one of a handful of other applications.

Apple have built a good base - Cocoa is fantastic, Quartz is best-of-breed and the OS X interface in Leopard is stunning. But they (and they already know this) need to build on that by improving the areas where they don't do so well. In particular, they really need to integrate with Windows networks better.

Rubbishing the competition out of hand is no way to keep ahead of the game.