Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard - Still Waiting

[Stella]

You heard it from me before, and I will say it again, (send me kudos when it is announced) Leopard will amazingly allow you to share your computer to your iPhone and Apple TV. You will be able to check email and surf on your TV in your living room, and you will be able to operate your computer from your phone. You will also be able to share all media content seemlessly between the three. Screen sharing on Apple TV and iPhone allows your computer to house the memory and power and simply uses the your television and iphone to mirror the screen. It's simply genius. Everyone will want all three and a .Mac account to boot. Also, it will be unveiled in June. This is why it's Top Secret.

Since iPhone doesn't support 3G - sharing iPhone to computer is going to be SLOOOOW.

iPhone supports WIFI... but if I'm in range of my home WIFI, why wouldn't I just use my Mac in the first place?

There are plenty of solutions available for sharing existing phones to computers, as some one pointed out, there is microsoft remote client for pocketpc. There are VNC clients for other phones, such as Symbian.

If OSX 10.5 does allow sharing, you can bet it'll be based upon a opensource product like VNC - just like the Apple Remote desktop is.

 

[Slumbercub]

Mac User's web-site in the UK posts speculation that Leopard may be delayed until October due to additional work being required to make Boot camp fully compatible with Vista.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/macuser/news/108605/leopard-delayed-until-october-report.html

Hope this is not true. I would expect that they could release leopard with a final XP compatible version of Boot Camp and then add the Vista capabilites through a later update.

I am not fussed about any Windows support, why am I being discriminated against because some people want to run an inferior OS on their Macs?

 

[johnee]

I'm so sick of apple tv and iphone and ipods

I wish apple would stick with their "core" business : computers!

 

[Stella]

Its been my experience that people do use their addressbook ( but I do realise this is one person's experience ).

From what i've seen of the addressbook on the iPhone, its a UI nightmare, for example, you cannot search for a contact, you scroll down a big list, with an index on the right side of the screen. Horrid.

What people do not do is sync their addressbook <-> computer.

You are right, it is how a device can do it. However, the iPhone is over priced, IMO, for its capabilities. Other smartphones phones provide the same functionality at a suitable price.

Its the same reason why people buy a $300 PC instead of a $999 Mac. The $300 PC does everything that the user wants. Its a price <-> functionality trade off. In fact a $300 PC can almost certainly do pretty much everything that a $999 mac can do.

Steve Jobs was right when he said most people do not use the address book on most phones - I don't have a phone, but some people I know (same people, in fact, who claim that their phone does what the iPhone does) don't bother using the address book as it is too difficult, and rely instead on their "recently called" list.

It isn't what the device CAN DO, it is HOW IT DOES IT.

 

[Stella]

I'm so sick of apple tv and iphone and ipods

I wish apple would stick with their "core" business : computers!

But its not their core business any more. Remember they are no longer called "Apple Computer".

 

[dashiel]

I think you are wrong; having been a Microsoft beta tester, I know large features can be thrown in last minute. It happens, get over it. So what if it hasn't happened on the betas you've been on, it has in large products because companies do it to hold onto surprises. It generates PR. Large corporations don't care about bugs as much as they do free press. If they announce all their features early, the buzz will have died off.

The fact remains, apple can and most likely does have a internal build with major changes that seed users do not have. That is a fact of life. And I don't think Steve Jobs or Steve Balmer will decide not to ship because you fly over there and tell them not to. These guys have their own list of show stoppers; after that it goes to the first maintanance release.

how can something be a "fact" if it's "most likely". here's what i'll concede --

1) based on feedback from developers there are things about leopard in the current builds we don't know about, these things might be the top secret features or may very well lay the groundwork for them.

2) if there is some super secret build, with loads of top secret features lying around, leopard will not be shipping in june. if you've been a beta tester then you should know that inserting new features always introduces new and unexpected bugs and delays release.

by the way, you're wrong about when microsoft introduced luna. the new ui was released between beta 1 and beta 2 in february of 2001 which meant there were 8 months of beta testing with the new UI.

as for steve jobs and balmer not shipping because beta testers say no... why do you think tv was late? why do you think vista was late? because beta testers, whether internal or external said "we can't ship this, in this state."

 

[milo]

Why do we need Leopard anyway? Tiger works fine anyway. There are no noticeble new features. 'Top secret' features will most likely turn out to be a part of Steve Jobs' reality distortion field campaign.

I need it because the 64 bitness allows more than 4 gigs of ram use from a single app (and that's theoretical, in practice for Logic is more like 2-2.7). And yes, I run into that maximum in my daily work and will take advantage of the extra ram available.

I'd consider that a noticable new feature.

 

[CoreWeb]

Its the same reason why people buy a $300 PC instead of a $999 Mac. The $300 PC does everything that the user wants. Its a price <-> functionality trade off. In fact a $300 PC can almost certainly do pretty much everything that a $999 mac can do.

Actually, I think people tend to buy PCs instead of Macs less because of price (though that does enter into it) than because of Window's current market penetration.

In addition - you get what you pay for. I have an old Windows laptop, was very very cheap when it was bought (something like <$600)... and guess what? I press the start button, nothing happens for a full twenty seconds. So, does that do everything a Mac can do?

I'm don't think you can compare simply by "what it can do". It is how well it does it. A 60 MHz PC could do word processing, some form of web browsing, all with Windows 95! Even a 233 MHz machine can do most anything a Mac or Windows Vista machine can do! I can get a computer like that for $50! So, why doesn't everyone just do that?

 

[johnee]

But its not their core business any more. Remember they are no longer called "Apple Computer".

for some very strange reason, reading that just made me very sad.

 

[shawnce]

I'm so sick of apple tv and iphone and ipods

I wish apple would stick with their "core" business : computers!

I'm so sick of folks making this claim!

...look Apple has grown its engineering teams to match the breadth of products they now make. They have the resources to work on all these things in parallel.

Its not like Apple hasn't spent the last ~4 years working on technology that will become available in Leopard whose primary target is their Macintosh hardware. They aren't ignoring that aspect of their business.

If you look at what is currently available from Intel it is kinda of obvious ... so far nothing new is online in the volumes Apple needs to make changes to their product line (not even really for a speed bump). Sure Quad core Xeon have been available but they really aren't a compelling upgrade for desktop/workstation class systems just yet given clock-rate, limits of the current chipset, and limited (ok, generally non-existant) support for thread/core affinity in Mac OS X 10.4.

In the near future (Q2-Q4) new mobile chipsets, new Xeons, Leopard, etc. will become available that will make for compelling system upgrades. Actually many interesting hardware technologies will become available (or go mainstream) this year that should result in some nice systems from Apple (and others).

 

[willybNL]

Leopart later?

http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20070322PD214.html

Apple reportedly to postpone Leopard to support Windows Vista
Hot systems
Ruby Huang, Taipei; Joseph Tsai, DigiTimes.com [Friday 23 March 2007]

Apple is expected to launch its next generation Leopard operating system (OS) in April, but according to industry sources, the release of the new OS will be postponed to October to allow Apple to make Leopard support Windows Vista through an integrated version of its Boot Camp software.

The sources pointed out that the launch delay is not due to software design problems with Leopard but instead is attributed to Apple's plan to have its new OS support Windows Vista through an integrated version of Boot Camp. Boot Camp is an Apple software application that currently assists in the installation of Windows XP on computers using Apple's latest OS. The company hopes with support for Vista, Mac computers using the new OS can grab more market share, according to the sources.

If Leopard supports only Windows XP, then the chances of the new OS attracting Windows users to buy an Apple computer decreases, stated industry observers, noting that with Vista support, Apple's chances of increasing its share of the PC market would increase.

 

[shawnce]

Why do we need Leopard anyway? Tiger works fine anyway. There are no noticeble new features. 'Top secret' features will most likely turn out to be a part of Steve Jobs' reality distortion field campaign.

Speaking as a Macintosh software developer Leopard makes available many new capabilities and technologies that will allow us developers to make better applications for you.

I don't think you understand all that Leopard has to offer.

 

[CoreWeb]

Speaking as a Macintosh software developer Leopard makes available many new capabilities and technologies that will allow us developers to make better applications for you.

I don't think you understand all that Leopard has to offer.

CoreAnimation is very, very exciting in my opinion. Maybe enough to make me start writing programs with GUIs again.

 

[Dokter_Mac]

of course they have internal builds, but to expect the internal build has vastly different features than the seeded build is just nuts. there would be almost no point in having a beta cycle if apple engineers were working on a significantly advanced build. beta bug reports would be useless.

look i've been a beta tester for years on software you're probably using right now. i've been flown to corporate headquarters as early as the pre-alpha phase to advise on features and been around all the way through the release candidate phase where the companies would fedex me daily builds to install; if i said the software wasn't ready -- it didn't ship no matter what the ceo or marketing department had said (i wasn't the only one there were usually a dozen or so others).

when you change software, whether it's adding a new feature, fixing a big or removing something, that change cascades across the entire project. it is impossible for one engineer to anticipate how their change might affect the work of an entirely different department.

apple has the added responsibility of needing to appease developers as well, they cannot under any circumstance spring a release version of leopard on the public that breaks 3rd party apps. for one thing it's just bad practice, but apple really pissed off developers in the 90's, they can't afford to make the same mistake again.

bottom line, are there internal builds? yes, absolutely. do those internal builds have some new features? maybe. do they have a new UI? maybe. is the internal build at release quality stage? absolutely not.

if there are new features and a new ui, the only way apple will be able to keep it a secret is to follow the same formula they did with iphone. pre-announce the features, seed the new build to developers, then go through the beta, release candidate stage, gold master. the problem with that is the longer we don't hear anything means one of two things: 1) there aren't any top secret features or 2) the release date is going to be pushed back.

I'm a also a betatester for many years now. Because of the NDA I can't say much about this. But one thing I can say is this: There is a game that is going to be released very soon and is still not working well on PPC (it has a memory leak) but it works great on Intel and they are going to release it!

Also, do not compare software/game with a majore OS release!

Regards

 

[johnee]

I'm so sick of folks making this claim!

Yeah, i know they have to grow their business, but I liked it when apple was computer centric and small. I feel that by reaching out to windows users, they are becoming, well big. I suppose I have a personal preference for small, tight nit communities, and apple's decisions show their vision is different than mine. nothing gold can stay....

 

[twoodcc]

Since iPhone doesn't support 3G - sharing iPhone to computer is going to be SLOOOOW.

iPhone supports WIFI... but if I'm in range of my home WIFI, why wouldn't I just use my Mac in the first place?

yes, but what if you're in range of someone else's WIFI?

 

[Dokter_Mac]

The "TOP SECRET" features will probably not be as MIND BLOWING as some people might think...

That's where you are wrong!
Anyone ask themselves why "Inputmanagers" will be locked in Leopard?
Think about it? Because it's a security issue (like in the past) and because it's a reason that could endanger the release from Leopard!
To bad for developers that are making use of it... They will have to be creative and think about it.
It's not the first time that a release from Apple is killing apps from developrs because Apple want to control something or give it for free.

 

[andiwm2003]

I'm so sick of folks making this claim!

...look Apple has grown its engineering teams to match the breadth of products they now make. They have the resources to work on all these things in parallel.

Its not like Apple hasn't spent the last ~4 years working on technology that will become available in Leopard whose primary target is their Macintosh hardware. They aren't ignoring that aspect of their business.

If you look at what is currently available from Intel it is kinda of obvious ... so far nothing new is online in the volumes Apple needs to make changes to their product line (not even really for a speed bump). Sure Quad core Xeon have been available but they really aren't a compelling upgrade for desktop/workstation class systems just yet given clock-rate, limits of the current chipset, and limited (ok, generally non-existant) support for thread/core affinity in Mac OS X 10.4.

In the near future (Q2-Q4) new mobile chipsets, new Xeons, Leopard, etc. will become available that will make for compelling system upgrades. Actually many interesting hardware technologies will become available (or go mainstream) this year that should result in some nice systems from Apple (and others).

apple could offer different new configurations of the MB/MBP line and iMacs (e.g. 7200rpm HDDs, higher clockspeed CPU's, 256mb GPU's in all MBP's, 2GB Ram standart, cheaper 3GB option, software bundles, black iMacs.....).

that would be small changes essentially just price drops. but would keep the models a bit fresher. and it would make you feel more comfortable to buy now because even if they update in 4 weeks you still would have gotten a upgraded system.

 

[morespce54]

Apple said June. Why is this a surprise to people?

Not everything at Apple is a magic trick.

-Clive

eh... no... is June in spring?
Well, it is (technically until June 21) but when they said "spring 2007" most of the peoples were thinking then meant *before* June... IMO

 

[Dokter_Mac]

Yeah, sure, like there have been two 4K78 builds, how could I forget about Apple's famous double build strategy! ;-)

Yeah, and you still believe that the Earth is flat
Like there was never a Intel version of OS X before the big switch
Dream on... If you think that every developer seed from Leopard is the only developer build, then this is your naive opinion.

 

[Dokter_Mac]

You heard it from me before, and I will say it again, (send me kudos when it is announced) Leopard will amazingly allow you to share your computer to your iPhone and Apple TV. You will be able to check email and surf on your TV in your living room, and you will be able to operate your computer from your phone. You will also be able to share all media content seemlessly between the three. Screen sharing on Apple TV and iPhone allows your computer to house the memory and power and simply uses the your television and iphone to mirror the screen. It's simply genius. Everyone will want all three and a .Mac account to boot. Also, it will be unveiled in June. This is why it's Top Secret.

I agree! And the secret USB port on the TV is for a keyboard and mouse

 

[CoreWeb]

of course they have internal builds, but to expect the internal build has vastly different features than the seeded build is just nuts. there would be almost no point in having a beta cycle if apple engineers were working on a significantly advanced build. beta bug reports would be useless.

look i've been a beta tester for years on software you're probably using right now. i've been flown to corporate headquarters as early as the pre-alpha phase to advise on features and been around all the way through the release candidate phase where the companies would fedex me daily builds to install; if i said the software wasn't ready -- it didn't ship no matter what the ceo or marketing department had said (i wasn't the only one there were usually a dozen or so others).

when you change software, whether it's adding a new feature, fixing a big or removing something, that change cascades across the entire project. it is impossible for one engineer to anticipate how their change might affect the work of an entirely different department.

apple has the added responsibility of needing to appease developers as well, they cannot under any circumstance spring a release version of leopard on the public that breaks 3rd party apps. for one thing it's just bad practice, but apple really pissed off developers in the 90's, they can't afford to make the same mistake again.

bottom line, are there internal builds? yes, absolutely. do those internal builds have some new features? maybe. do they have a new UI? maybe. is the internal build at release quality stage? absolutely not.

if there are new features and a new ui, the only way apple will be able to keep it a secret is to follow the same formula they did with iphone. pre-announce the features, seed the new build to developers, then go through the beta, release candidate stage, gold master. the problem with that is the longer we don't hear anything means one of two things: 1) there aren't any top secret features or 2) the release date is going to be pushed back.

I know perfectly well about how changing anything will cause problems. Small little improvements I've tried to make to my programs have often ended up crashing everything entirely.

But, the bugs I have seen mentioned so far look fairly simple. Why would Apple not be fixing them? Are they having that much trouble?

More likely, the "real" beta builds are being used by OTHER beta testers, not just anyone who pays $500 for an early start kit. Because right now, if anyone wants those seeds that developers are getting, they only need go to http://developer.apple.com/products/, drop $500, and start downloading seeds. Hardly secretive.

 

[shawnce]

(e.g. 7200rpm HDDs, higher clockspeed CPU's, 256mb GPU's in all MBP's, 2GB Ram standart, cheaper 3GB option, software bundles, black iMacs.....).

You can get 7200 rpm as a BTO for MBP already (iMac already has 7200 rpm drives).

The MBP are already using the fastest clocked Core 2 Duo mobile chips currently available. The MB wont get a bump likely until the MBP can get one. Again the Santa Rosa chip-set is when this will likely happen.

You can get RAM form 3rd party vendors for less then what Apple offers (at least for MBP, MB, iMac systems). Apple almost always charges more for RAM then you can get from a quality 3rd party vendor.

The iMac does have a little room (aka 0.16 GHz) to go up in clock-rate.

...but nothing really compelling.

 

[Dokter_Mac]

I'm so sick of apple tv and iphone and ipods

I wish apple would stick with their "core" business : computers!

Computers are not the core business of Apple anymore That's why Apple Computer is changed into Apple Inc.

 

[3282872]

If the TV is any indication on how "great" OS X Leopard will be, I think we're all going to be very disappointed. Steve Jobs has a great way of talking things up ("top secret features" ??? ) for marketing, but I'm not expecting the next best thing.