Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) at WWDC

[Spinnetti]

I'd be happy if Apple simply tests more thoroughly this time, and makes the UI consistent. There are so many little misses in the current stuff, it detracts from the experience.

That being said, the only thing I'm dreaming of is iPhoto that doesn't crash, spotlight that works without returning nothing or bizzare results and something to replace the dreadful finder.

 

[amac4me]

I am eagerly waiting for the Leopard preview.

I'd like to see it out by the end of 2006, can anyone say Vista delay?

 

[AidenShaw]

it should be safe to say *never* in this case

I'd also love to see them enable their pro apps to be able to see more than 4 gigs of ram (even on the PPC macs), but that's probably total fantasy world.

This is what true 64-bit would make much easier - recompile the app (click the button for "even fatter binary") and the 4 GiB per app limit just disappears. (Programming errors and shortcuts will probably add from a little to a lot of extra work, though.)

But, it's safe to say that Apple will *never* do true 64-bit for PowerPC. Not only would it take a lot of effort, but it would be an excuse not to buy a new Intel 64-bit system!

 

[janstett]

Best.undercut.ever.ruining.hardware.sales.ruining.Apple.

May OS X never be allowed to be a native option on FUGLY peecee! If you like peecees so much there's this crappy OS that works good (well, good for someone who likes peecees) called Windows. Too cheap to buy a Mac? Too bad.

What if you want hardware that's better than Apple's? For example, I can get a 2.7 pound dual-core Thinkpad that weighs HALF of the 12" Powerbook and run OSX. That would be pretty sweet. What if I have screaming AMD 64 x2 desktop and want to run OSX on the best desktop hardware that's out there?

BTW I"m already running OSX on a Gateway.

 

[interlard]

New Kernel?

I'm not so interested in "new features" as improvements to what we have. Especially regarding the kernel.

I've read a lot of materian on the net, criticizing the kernel in Mac OS X. Some of it from Apple. It seems there's a lot they could do to speed it up, and they're working on it.

 

[milo]

Most apps only use one or two CPU's.
But allowing more apps use more than one CPU is quite cool.... 😉

Too bad games hardly ever use more than one CPU 🙁

Logic is one that uses two, I assume most pro apps use two or four. Apple REALLY needs to get them all to use all four processors fully, without that it's kind of a joke that they're selling quad machines.

I think most games do use two cpus, it just doesn't make as much of a difference as other apps.

Another great feature would be putting distributed processing into other apps, or even creating a generic way for ANY app to be distributed. Just see remote machines as additional processors for things like rendering.

But, it's safe to say that Apple will *never* do true 64-bit for PowerPC. Not only would it take a lot of effort, but it would be an excuse not to buy a new Intel 64-bit system!

You're probably right. I wonder if they'll come up with a hack to allow apps like Logic more memory access on PPC?

What if you want hardware that's better than Apple's? For example, I can get a 2.7 pound dual-core Thinkpad that weighs HALF of the 12" Powerbook and run OSX. That would be pretty sweet. What if I have screaming AMD 64 x2 desktop and want to run OSX on the best desktop hardware that's out there?

Too bad. What if I want to run Xbox 360 games on my N64? What if I want a pony?

 

[Bosunsfate]

...a Quicken-killer! I know that's not exactly a feature, but I've been absolutely HATING Quicken for OS X forever, and today installed Quicken 2006 Premier on my Windows XP machine at work, and WOW - what a difference.. UI is vastly superior, way more features, etc. It made me actually think about running Quicken in XP under Parallels Workstation for OS X. But I want a "native" OS X app.

That's my $0.02 😡 😡 😡

Given that Steve Job sits on the board of Inuit....I don't see a Quicken killer....beside, virtualization in the OS will replace the OS X version of Quicken for the Windows version......not exactly what I'd like but the Windows version does have more features.....

Which is my two bits.....Boot camp yea....the killer app.....OS virtualization, not just dual boot.

 

[TumbleDryer]

Whoa, you must be a recent switcher? You cant get much more user friendly than OSX and there is a Help section in the 'toolbar' at the top of the screen in almost every application made for OSX. Or you could just hover over stuff to get a help bubble to appear. 🙄

 

[dr_lha]

I've said it before and I will say it again : If Apple wants any chances to gain market shares, they need improve gaming performance under MacOS X. It's the onlly reason why apple is still being consider as a niche market.

I love MacOs X. I think it's the best operating system ever. It is stable and comes with all the application you need for a home users but it lacks something : Good gaming performance. It's the only thing missing. The OpenGl subsystem under the MacOs X is suffering from low framerate. The reason why PC are so popular it's because of games.

PC Gaming is a niche market. The only way for Macs to get into that niche is BootCamp. All the time Macs are a niche of a niche there will be more games for Windows than Mac. This won't change until after Mac's market share is bigger than Windows (most likely never gonna happen).

 

[Whistleway]

Leopard will _NOT_ be released in 2006, that's a given. Steve most likely wants to take as much as possible away from the Vista hype Microsoft is trying to generate; so Leopard _WILL_ be released shortly after Vista, if it's not to be once again delayed -- therefore early 2007 is pretty good estimate.

If Steve is brave enough to be on the bad side of MS, they should release it the day the vista ships, ~ Jan 07 not later than Vista. That way, they can show off that how much they are advanced than the newer shiner Vista 😉

 

[Project]

That ThinkPad doesnt have an optical drive built in, hence the lightness.

 

[Twenty1]

virtualization

I guess I'm jumping on the virtualization bandwagon... Virtualization would be the best new feature of 10.5 and would offer the best of both OS worlds for most users. Sure virtualization wouldn't be as fast, but that technology would further reinforce to "switchers" (not to mention business customers) that Apple is a viable alternative to windows.

I would also expect Apple to really push innovation in 10.5. Whether fair or not, Vista is going to garner a significant amount of publicity and mindshare in early 2007. We all know 10.5 (and 10.4) are more advanced than Vista, but there really needs to be a "wow" factor for 10.5 that draws attention away from Vista - I think virtualization would accomplish this.

Also - why hasn't anyone mentioned new 10.5 widgets!!!!! They're so cool!!! (sarcasm) 😱

 

[supremedesigner]

No, no Chess 3.0

Nah, Sherlock 7.3.6 😛 🙄

 

[cybermiguel]

Best.undercut.ever.ruining.hardware.sales.ruining.Apple.

May OS X never be allowed to be a native option on FUGLY peecee! If you like peecees so much there's this crappy OS that works good (well, good for someone who likes peecees) called Windows. Too cheap to buy a Mac? Too bad.

Umm... ¬¬ 😡 I think we have a troll here.

That said, I think that some of you guys have never built a computer for yourself and have never had the pleasure of choosing each and every device on your PC.

Did you know that Asus is a great motherboard manufacturer, but not the best???

Yes, that's right, and guess what motherboards use the Apple Macs....yes, Asustek mainboards.

For what I have acknowledged, the best motherboard manufacturers in the world are DFI, Abit and Epox. Those motherboards have so many features that can blow away every Powermac mainboard.

If you build yourself a top-notch computer, you will see that you could spend about the same money that if you would have bought a PowerMac. The difference is that your compuer will be much faster than a Powermac (sometimes, as twice as fast).

Having said that...wouldn't it be nice to have the best hardware (and when I mean the best, I mean considering Apple's hardware as good, not the best) with the best OS in the world?

I hope maxxuss (the guy that cracks the OS X kernel to work on every PC) keeps doing his great work. I've seen machines that kicks the Intel iMac ass in performance, running OS X beautifully.

Now, about virtualization...I think you guys are missing the point. Sure virtualization is good and it has it's advantages, but it's not enogh for serious business.

Have you ever listened about darwine? It's a serious effort to get Windows apps running NATIVELY on OS X. Sure they look ugly, but the project it's in an early development stage.

http://darwine.opendarwin.org/

Leopard will be a killer OS if it has some sort of wine implementation in it. You wouldn't have to buy windows to run your windows apps, you wouldn't have to wait for the guest os to load to get your apps working, you wouldn't have to have all the hastle to get your files from the windows image to the Mac OS hard drive...and the best of all is tha teven if you download a malware, IT WON'T INFECT YOUR SYSTEM, because you are running a Unix system and there is no possible way that a malware can affect the system, because the structure is completely different than Windows.

 

[milo]

I hope maxxuss (the guy that cracks the OS X kernel to work on every PC) keeps doing his great work. I've seen machines that kicks the Intel iMac ass in performance, running OS X beautifully.

You can't really compare an iMac to a tower. Apple has yet to release intel towers, when they do you can make that comparison.

So can you build your own all-in-one that beats the iMac?

 

[MacsRgr8]

I think most games do use two cpus, it just doesn't make as much of a difference as other apps.

Another great feature would be putting distributed processing into other apps, or even creating a generic way for ANY app to be distributed. Just see remote machines as additional processors for things like rendering.

Most games do not use more than one CPU, I'm afraid.
You can get the MOH series to use two, but the only other game I know of that uses SMP is Nascar 2003. UT 2004 uses sound on the 2nd CPU, but games like Doom 3 (which would really benefit of SMP) COD, X-Plane don't.

A generic way for ANY app to be distributed using Apple's Xgrid technology would be awesome!!! Imagine using FCP, and letting an idle Dual G4 somewhere on the subnet "help" render...! 😎

 

[displaced]

Umm... ¬¬ 😡 I think we have a troll here.

That said, I think that some of you guys have never built a computer for yourself and have never had the pleasure of choosing each and every device on your PC.

Did you know that Asus is a great motherboard manufacturer, but not the best???

Yes, that's right, and guess what motherboards use the Apple Macs....yes, Asustek mainboards.

For what I have acknowledged, the best motherboard manufacturers in the world are DFI, Abit and Epox. Those motherboards have so many features that can blow away every Powermac mainboard.

If you build yourself a top-notch computer, you will see that you could spend about the same money that if you would have bought a PowerMac. The difference is that your compuer will be much faster than a Powermac (sometimes, as twice as fast).

Having said that...wouldn't it be nice to have the best hardware (and when I mean the best, I mean considering Apple's hardware as good, not the best) with the best OS in the world?

I hope maxxuss (the guy that cracks the OS X kernel to work on every PC) keeps doing his great work. I've seen machines that kicks the Intel iMac ass in performance, running OS X beautifully.

Although I can't fault your logic (although I'd question exactly how much better a DFI would be compared to an Asus-manufactured board - for example, Dell don't offer a choice of mobo), I must point out the harsh reality:

If Apple do not sell hardware, they have no money to invest in improving OS X (plus all their other frankly top-class software).

Even if they sold OS X for non-Apple machines, the profit would be nothing compared to that gained from the hardware sales.

To quote the excellent DaringFireball weblog, who has seriously nailed this subject:

So, let’s say today Apple makes $500 in profit on a $2,500 MacBook Pro. Tomorrow, in Boutin’s and Cringely hypothetical world where Apple sells $130 copies of Mac OS X for any PC, they might make about $100 in profit when someone buys a Sony Vaio and a copy of Mac OS X.

Cringely’s statement that “getting even 1 percent of PC users to switch to OS X would be a huge new business for Apple” ignores the fact that it might also completely sabotage Apple’s existing and very profitable business of selling Macintosh computers. Cringely seems to be making the assumption that everyone who’s currently using Apple hardware would keep buying Apple hardware, and that these retail copies of Mac OS X that run on generic PCs would be sold only to new customers.

Read the full article here.

Apple makes money selling computers. Period. Without those sales, there will be no OS X development.

 

[cybermiguel]

DFI, for example, offers overclocking options, as well as temperature warnings and dual-bios in case that you want to go back to your "safe" settings. Also they have a good cooling system and better integrated components (among other more technical stuff).

😕 Seems like nobody read what I said about darwine....:sigh: ....It would be a GREAT feature.

 

[Stella]

I'd be happy if Apple simply tests more thoroughly this time, and makes the UI consistent. There are so many little misses in the current stuff, it detracts from the experience

DAMN RIGHT!!! Plastic, Metal themes, different icon sets ( i.e., Mail ).

Apple -> pick one and be consistent.

Consistency makes a GUI better than the average.

 

[CubaTBird]

so final release comes out around the same time tiger did? cept' now it'll be april of 06'?😕

 

[bryanc]

Darwine will be irrelevant with full Vanderpool virtualization running 2D apps at native speed, and boot-camp for running games.

What I expect Leopard to do is:
- FTFF (incluing spotlight integration)
- bring in a new kernel for better performance (esp. in servers)
- resolution independent UI
- Virtualization of any/all x86 OSes, making macs the only machines that can rull *all* the software you want
- 64 bit throuout
- significant advances in Front Row, including DVR
- significant advances in voice recognition and speech synthesis
- something no one has thought of, and which we never knew we needed.

Cheers

 

[AidenShaw]

The hack exists - it's called "Tiger"

You're probably right. I wonder if they'll come up with a hack to allow apps like Logic more memory access on PPC?

See http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/64bit/

Unfortunately, you have to re-architect your application into a 64-bit compute process that's separate from the 32-bit process that does the GUI and other system calls in Cocoa and Carbon.

 

[mox358]

so final release comes out around the same time tiger did? cept' now it'll be april of 06'?😕

You mean 07' ?

 

[Peace]

Leopards leaping..

About 2 months ago Microsoft gave Apple it's Frameworks to work with.😉

 

[dr_lha]

That said, I think that some of you guys have never built a computer for yourself and have never had the pleasure of choosing each and every device on your PC.

Yes, its nice, I built all my PCs before I converted to Mac. However I have to say that the pleasure of building a quality PC is far outweighed by the pleasure of using a computer that actually works flawlessly. I've had a Mac now for almost 3 years, and that same Mac (a 12" PB) still works flawlessly, has never needed a driver install or an OS re-install. It just works. This is the difference.

For what I have acknowledged, the best motherboard manufacturers in the world are DFI, Abit and Epox. Those motherboards have so many features that can blow away every Powermac mainboard.

Features that are considered important to PC hardware geeks, but to normal computer users are unimportant.

If you build yourself a top-notch computer, you will see that you could spend about the same money that if you would have bought a PowerMac. The difference is that your compuer will be much faster than a Powermac (sometimes, as twice as fast).

This is true of course, Apple Hardware comes at a premium cost. This cost is for the overall experience however. If you're not willing to pay the premium cost, fair enough, you can build your own PC, but you just can't (legally) run Mac OS X on it.

I hope maxxuss (the guy that cracks the OS X kernel to work on every PC) keeps doing his great work. I've seen machines that kicks the Intel iMac ass in performance, running OS X beautifully.

Piracy, plain and simple.

Have you ever listened about darwine? It's a serious effort to get Windows apps running NATIVELY on OS X. Sure they look ugly, but the project it's in an early development stage.

[OS/2]