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I think he's probably referring to using Time Machine for version control or accidental deletions. An extra drive requires carrying it with your laptop constantly. However if Time Machine worked on a second partition or a network drive this wouldn't be as bad (does it?)

It does work on a second partition. I'm using it that way right now on my MBP. You'll need a decently quick HD though.
 
1000000 said:
maybe you should re-read it then.

I did. I don't understand your point of view. I like to get both sides of the argument but you haven't stated why you think his comments are "idiotic" (which is rather inflammatory by the way).



Before you two get into an argument, maybe the OP should explain his brief remarks. Again, he made rather short comments and did not reason anything to a conclusion. He simply stated his opinion, which should not be confused with a reasoned position. He has yet to explain his opinion.
 
I stopped reading when he said it was "idiotic" that the dock contains running and non running application, as well as folder shortcuts, and the Start button is superior.

I guess it is idiotic....if you like having all the stuff you use in one place! Hard to take him seriously as knowing anything about UI/computers after that.
 
I thought that this Paul guy just ranted and raved about everything...except of course the Xbox 360 :p
 
My time is far too precious

to be spent or misspent on reading that overlong review. I am a little surprised at the number or those who think it was "spot on". I swear there must be two versions of Leopard, and I got the good one.
 
qualified

The review had a few misses, but I felt it was, overall, accurate. Leopard has a few solid new features, but 300? Eh, not quite.

"[We don't want Microsoft] to start their photo copiers any sooner than they have to," right. Nothing revealed after that statement truthfully qualified as something groundbreaking. Leopard's not groundbreaking - it is a great OS, no doubt, but then again, so was Tiger.
 
you could delete most of his review. A good part of it is "Please don't beat me up, I do like Leopard. But..."

As for time machine and Shadow Copy (as it's known in Server 2003) you never ever ever store your copy on the same drive. As somebody has already pointed out, it's just plain dumb to do so.

Something he did miss out, when I bought my copy on Friday, the only decision I had to make was do I get the single computer version or the Family Pack. That was pretty easy as I'm an honest bloke and have three Macs at home I bought the family pack. Didn't have to stand there for an hour trying to work out which version would actually work on my machine and then which features I could live without to bring down the cost from something that is close to a 3rd world country's GDP to an acceptable price.

Let's be honest, Vista (premium or ultimate) is an OK product, it has some nice features but Leopard blows it out of the water. Both are really aimed at the home market (Vista Business and Enterprise are way over the top of any business) and where home users concerned they just want something that works and is stable. Leopard offers that, Vista doesn't
 
My Refutation

I've compiled a somewhat lengthy rebuttal to this nonsense and if you can correct me on this then please do. In my perspective, Thurrutt is twisting the truth and hardly "overall" accurate.

Paul Thurrutt said:
While the Apple hype machine and its fanatical followers would have you believe that Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" is a major upgrade to the company's venerable operating system, nothing could be further from the truth.

Hype machine? I guess, but you also forget to mention that Microsoft did the same with "WOW" campaign. At least Apple lives up to that hype especially with the iPhone IMHO. While it may be "over-hyped" that would be in large part due to people who are excited about it. Vista was so bad though, that Microsoft had to over-hype the product themselves. Pretty sad if you ask me.

In my opinion, Leopard is most certainly a evolutionary upgrade and to borrow from Apple, "Is the most impressive Mac OS X version yet". It seems Thurott here is being a bit biased here by putting down Apple for being a "hype machine". At least we are well under reason to do so as their products are one of the best on the market.


OS X is so solid, so secure, and so functionally excellent that it must be getting difficult figuring out how to massage another $129 out even the most ardent fans.

This is good to hear but improvements can always be made right? Security has definitely gone through a number of enhancements thus making it even safer, more solid, and more functionality.

If it ain't broke, it's hard to fix.

Couldn't agree more! However, if we had this mentallity for making "better" products, then the wheel would've never became a car. I mean, why fix a wheel when it isn't broken right? ;) Thurrutt must have been living in the caves recently cause Apple has always put forward the slogan "Think Different". Why use an idea for the same uses when it can also be applied differently or elsewhere? Apple's goal is to make things better

Both Leopard and Vista were horribly late, Vista even more so than Leopard. (But then Apple CEO Steve Jobs did once proclaim that Leopard would ship before Vista, so Leopard is plenty late as well.)

Thurrutt is a exaggerated machine who makes something small seem very bad. Leopard was only late by around 5 months! Is Paul living in another dimension where time is longer? Please provide sources before making such a claim btw.

That said, there is one real difference between Vista and Leopard. Unlike Leopard, Windows Vista has been rearchitected from the ground up into a componentized new OS that is both more secure

Oh really? So they redid the underlying API's where Windows is built upon? I believe this gives a totally wrong impression that Vista was redone in a whole new way. Significant changes would be a better way of putting it! You want to know the difference? Welcome Paul to the world of reality, where it smacks you on the face.

The real difference lies in the fact that Mac OS X is continually evolving where as Vista is a bunch of junk that was compiled around 5 years of unreleased development. Recall that during Apple's transition from Mac OS 7 to Mac OS X was a path of trials and uncertainty for us mac users. NeXT was able to bring things back on track but even then, we were still worried about where Apple will go. Soon enough, it became pretty obvious to where they were going at and hope was restored. With Jaguar in 2002, Apple managed to catch up with XP and it continued to improve with Panther and Tiger.

Microsoft, on the other hand, was busy dropping features, announcing delays, and revising it's plans. Vista is still built about on it's baggage of legacy code which devevlopers have insisted upon where as Apple did away with at least most of it's legacy. This has proven vital to the development of a stable Mac OS X foundation which can be built upon. The fact that Apple partners with open source developers gives high quality code and improves on the core architecture of the OS. This makes for regular improvement to the OS technology while allowing for further concentration on GUI and usability. Again, Microsoft fails to realize this and maintains their OWN code which really makes them isolated from outside developments in technology. Fewer people will get the chance to see the code in order to fix problems and point to bugs.



Meanwhile, Leopard is an incremental, evolutionary update over the previous release with no major architectural changes, which makes me wonder why Apple is even charging for it

What a bunch of crap... Why should we expect "major" architectural changes with Mac OS X when they're development process is different? The major changes would come in Mac OS 11 as was the case from Mac OS 9. Actually, I would have to ask Thurrutt what he specifically means by this because we've gone from PowerPC to Intel and from 32 bit to 64 bit, all of which run seamlessly. These are major changes if you ask me but what does Paul want Apple to improve with in the architecture?

Unix works perfectly and the goal of Mac OS X was to provide a solid foundation which was lacking previously. Why abandon this and do a whole change again? Would this not prove that Apple lacks foresight in making a foundation that's good enough to last for at least a decade? Apple has made plenty of improvements such as Core Animation which is just huge and will change the way developers make apps. I also here that Apple has put forward some parallel processing or whatnot. These changes are very welcome. Hardly a service pack...

Apple advertises that Leopard includes over 300 new features, but even a casual examination of the new feature list reveals that the vast majority of those "features" are hardly anything to write home about.-(It comprises and brings together the whole operating system hence SYSTEM)-

The commentator has a good point here because no where on Apple's website does it say that these features are entirely new. Nothing is actually new really. Using Thurrott's logic, nothing that is improved on a computer is new such as back up because the basic idea is there. He just doesn't get the idea of making things BETTER rather than having revolutionary ideas which is what he's expecting. Many of Vista's new features are already in Leopard... For example, it features a faster search as new but in reality, we've always been able to search.

I am stopping here because his arguments gets crappier... One thing that refutes most of his arguments is this:

If we argued that cars are the same as a charriot because they both have wheels then this would be pure ignorance. Thurrutt insists on this reasoning with Shadow Copy, Virtual Desktops etc as not being new. Apple never said that Leopard is revolutionary as far as I'm aware... Rather, the focus is on revolutionizing the idea to make it better. Paul Thurrott as someone mentioned before, merely focuses on features to features but not necessarily on what was improved and if it was for the better
 
I don't understand the confusion ;

1: You buy a new mac you get Leopard included
2: For your existing Mac which included Tiger when you bought it - you buy the new release that didn't exist back then.

Or put it less simply ;

The hardware subsidises the OS if you buy it on a new mac - if you've already bought your mac why should you get the new OS for free?

Whichever way you look at it a 1000's of engineers, designers and R&D people spent a couple of years creating it - I for one don't see why Apple should just go and give me that for nothing.

Now I've purchased Leopard I'm legitimately in the 'upgrade and update' cycle for Leopard that will run another couple of years and that won't cost me anything for the additional engineers development time that goes into it.

Leopard is quite simply the most elegant and powerful OS in the world today and I get to use it as long as I like - for a few bucks. Lucky me!.

Given the choice of paying for Leopard or running a free copy of Vista - I'd pay for Leopard...I expect most mac users would feel that way too.
 
Must say I agree with people who say he occasionally missed, but was generally accurate.

As for time machine and Shadow Copy (as it's known in Server 2003) you never ever ever store your copy on the same drive. As somebody has already pointed out, it's just plain dumb to do so.

I didn't try any of the developer builds so before Leopard came out, I didn't know what to expect from Time Machine, but the keynotes I've seen and articles I read all had me convinced it will also be able to use the current drive. It seemed somewhat similar to Shadow Copy, yes, and perhaps even more to System Restore (except that it could be used per-file and not just for restoring the whole system state). Both of which normally use the primary drive.

The ability to restore previous versions of files (by just storing changes) and the ability to backup your files periodically are IMHO two different features. They do mix well, but at the end of the day, it would still be nice to let people who want to use just one of them do that. And at this point I'd have to disagree with people claiming Shadow Copy is an advanced enterprise feature (ok, if you're reffering to Microsoft only including it in more advanced versions of Windows, you're right, but still). My opinion is that getting another drive just to make periodical backups every day is more of a business thing than being able to revert your text document because you overwrote it by mistake.

Since TM also works from a seperate partition on the same drive withouth a problem, Apple probably did take into consideration that some people won't need its backup capabilities, so I don't see why they don't let us stick it in a folder without repartitioning, which is more or less the same.
 
Given the choice of paying for Leopard or running a free copy of Vista - I'd pay for Leopard...I expect most mac users would feel that way too.

I do actually have that choice, I have a free copy of Vista from the university running on a desktop dedicated to it. The desktop is lying in the corner somewhere, and my copy of Leopard is waiting for me when I go home later. :D
 
Wow.

The Places section, like the Favorites list in Vista's Explorer, includes shortcuts to oft-needed shell locations, such as your home folder, the desktop, the documents folder, or your applications folder. And as with Vista, you can easily rearrange these shortcuts, remove shortcuts, or add new shortcuts.

You mean like you could already do in Panther/Tiger? The customisable sidebar is not new in Leoprd. Vista copied OSX on this, not the other way round. I have no problems with Vista using it as its a great time saver, but lets get our facts straight.

Search For, as you might expect, is OS X's answer to Vista's Searches folder. Here, you'll see links to prebuilt searches such as Today, Yesterday, Last Week, and links for searching for images or documents. And as like Vista, you can create your own saved searches. These will automatically show up in the Search For list in the Finder when saved.

Again, Smart Folders are in Tiger, so how is it an answer to Vista when it came out on OSX two years before Vista?

QuickLook...It's typical Apple: Over the top and flamboyant, but very attractive.

This is why this guy just irks me. Quick Look is fast becoming my favourite feature of Leopard, yet he says that its over the top and flamboyant? It is far better than the first page previews in Vista.

When enabled, Quick Look utilizes a resizable Vista-like window with translucent edges:

Really? It looks just like the black HUD panels Apple has been using since 2004.

If you open a text file with, say, a software registration ID inside, you can't copy and paste from Quick Look. You'll have to open your text editor first.

Yes, hence the name Quick Look. Clicking the file in Quick Look opens it in the editor anyway.
 
Thurrott can be a bit of a clown. He has periods where he will engage in silly Apple bashing, and periods where he will be quite sane. Windows is his bread and butter, so I guess he's wary of burning that bridge.

This review seems to be more like the "silly" Thurrott, if you ask me. He seems to be OK for a while and then engage in mindless Apple bashing, as if he thought "OK. Time for a troll column to boost readership".

Complaining about Leopard not being revolutionary was completely stupid. Revolutionary upgrades are those like the original Macintosh, which took years to catch on. There's no sensible business reason Apple ought to try that with its OS at this point in time.

Leopard is evolutionary, but in a rather radical way. You can see the direction Apple has been nudging users in for some time. They want to replace the spatial Finder with a Finder built on the idea of a database, which is accessed and used like iTunes is. But Apple couldn't abandon the Finder overnight, because users wouldn't take it. Hence, we are being gradually pushed towards a new method of file manipulation. To the extent Leopard is revolutionary, it is for this reason. I expect the next version to push even further away from the traditional Finder.

Wasn't Windows Vista supposed to be like this? Apparently it isn't and it was never going to be because Microsoft hadn't really thought about how the UI was going to work (at least not in any mockups I saw).

Windows is essentially a joke OS now. They aren't even going to update it for another three years, and a lot of people don't like the current update, and Tiger was already better than Vista in any case.
 
One thing I noticed and found odd is how he's quick to compare Leopard features with Vista features (makes enough sense, right?), but when it comes to web-browsing he compares Safari to FireFox. Last I checked, Internet Explorer was the built-in browser for Windows - shouldn't Safari be compared to this, then, rather than an open, user-contributed browser? Just slightly confusing.
 
It would be quite simple to write a critical review of Leopard, but this review is more about the insecurities of the author than anything else.

Also, this review is just begging to be fisked by a blogger. EDIT: Or by Veri, talk about taking one for the team having to go through all that....
 
While the Apple hype machine and its fanatical followers would have you believe that... Still, I'm amused that simply stating such an obvious fact is enough to send the crazies rushing out of the wood pile...
Flamebait to attract eyeballs. Irrelevant to content, but foreshadowing article tone.

Jobs and Company have spent the past several years being more fixated on Vista than perhaps even I've been.
Nothing.

Windows Vista has been rearchitected from the ground up into a componentized new OS... Microsoft abused this functionality and its user base by bifurcating the Vista product line into far too many versions
"Bifurcating" into "many" versions? Etymology! Anyway, Windows XP Embedded. And "ground up" - what kernel features have made it easier to separate Ultimate from Basic? It's just a matter of enabling or installing particular executables; don't confuse "an if statement" with "rearchitecting from the ground up".

Leopard... no major architectural changes, which makes me wonder why Apple is even charging for it: In the Windows world, such releases are called service packs.
"I'm not paying $20,000 for this new car! It's architecturally very similar to the old one! I'll pay for materials only." Earlier in the article, Thurrott states:
If it ain't broke, it's hard to fix.
He has the right idea, but isn't applying it in the right place.

...while Apple fanatics will blissfully skip over any...
"Please, Apple fanatics, make angry responses, then I'll get more hits. I'm big in the Windows world but I want my name in the Mac world."

They'll quibble that I'm not getting it because Leopard is the basis for future iPhone releases or whatever, or because I just need to wait and see what developers will do in the future with the unbelievable underlying new technologies
Strawman.

No, the updated DVD player in Leopard is responsible for fully 10 of the operating system's new features. Among these "new" features are a time slider, auto zoom, and the ability to display the DVD player application on top of other windows. If Microsoft used this loose definition of the word new, it might have advertised Vista as having 11,000 new features. Heck, maybe it should.
If I add 4 new features to an app, that's 4 new features - in both layman and engineering terms. Apple's chosen 300 (of many more) features that it considers worth marketing. Any user that was expecting 300 new "major architectural" changes, or whatever, will be in for a surprise - non-research OS design is fairly routine, and I'd have trouble listing 300 major decisions that define any particular OS. Fortunately, this is another strawman - only Thurrott is claiming that users would expect 300 new major features and then knocking down the argument. Anyway, Apple makes it quite easy to read the full list before purchase - if you purchase on the tagline alone, you need to review your spending habits.

feature must actually be new (i.e. have not appeared in any form in a previous version of the product)
All software can be compiled for a One Instruction Set Computer. The same instruction, just appearing in a different "form" in a "previous version of the product" (or any other product) - eep, no new software has ever been written!

exactly two major new features in Leopard
Let me guess, he's going to list the most interesting features for me... garbage collecting Objective C 2.0 and the new security framework support for MAC/sandboxing/code signing? No? Two completely different answers? Hmm.

Time Machine is Apple's version of Microsoft's Previous Versions feature, which first appeared in Windows Server 2003 over four years ago.
How is it similar? Don't just list two features and say they're similar, give me evidence. For example, is Previous Versions targeted at home users? That one's easy to answer - no, because it's only available in Business/Ent/Ult. I need explanations, not handwaving conclusions.

Apple also blows it by requiring a second hard drive:
And that falsehood is evidence that he's never even tried the product he's reviewing. You get a warning - "Are you sure you want to back up to the same disk your original data is on?" - and right below, the button "Use selected disk". Much as the Harry Potter fad annoys me, I'm going to confess never having read even a whole chapter of one of the books, so I'm not about to write a review.


Time Machine has a very basic problem. If you've unplugged the drive that's storing all those backups, you're out of luck: You'll simply get an error dialog if you try to run Time Machine.
Wait, you're telling me that if a piece of computing hardware is unplugged, I can't use it? I am biting my lips here resisting the urge to warn users that their new Dell Vista box in the living room won't display if they carry their LCD to their neighbour's, plug it in to a random power outlet, and hope really hard. As above, use a partition on your internal drive.

though I wish Apple would consider adding a Pro interface as well.
  • Find Time Machine volume.
  • Double-click Backups.backupdb, then volume name, then date or "Latest", then volume name again.
  • Browse, restore at will.
What do I win? I can make a soft link to the "Latest" directory or lower if I want to skip steps 1 and 2.

Spaces is one of those power-user features that sophisticated users will latch onto immediately
I've never taken to multiple desktops, though I've had it available since the mid-'90s using NetBSD. Covered, docked, reduced to title bar, even*made invisible, I want elements of my desktop *on my desktop*. It's great that Leopard introduces the feature, as some love it, but the "will latch onto" language betrays Thurrott's "my opinion is your opinion" approach.

you can tap CTRL + one of the arrow keys to move between the various spaces. (I found this to be problematic because I'd often inadvertently tap CTRL + RIGHT ARROW, for example, while trying to navigate word-to-word in Microsoft Word documents.)
So, from the same Pref panel that you enabled Spaces, change the shortcut modifier.

Now, not only are menus more translucent than ever in Leopard,
No. Third image of 10.0.

Worse is the updated Dock, which now sports a gratuitous and pointless "3D" shelf effect.
Unless placed on the sides. (And you have the com.apple.dock no-glass pref to fix it at the bottom.)

highway median strip
That's Abbey Road, I'll have you know ;-).

suspect it will lead to Dock overloading as some users will be tempted to keep aliases off the desktop and use Dock-based Stacks instead.
You can bet your bottom dollar I'll not be filling my desktop, which is behind everything, with aliases. Although this does seem to be a choice for some people, I want the background to be clean - otherwise it is noise distracting me from the content of windows that aren't fully covering the screen. Anyway, "lead to Dock overloading" implies some sort of obligation. "If I give an adult a knife to cut his food, it will lead to stabbing". No it won't. Make a stack from a folder full of aliases, keep your folder under control.

Leopard finally sports a consistent look across all applications.
This rare compliment is misplaced. Consider iTunes scrollbars and the buttons on the Time Machine pref pane. It's like Apple was edging away from Aqua blue, then changed its mind at the last moment.

(Shared is disabled if you're offline)...(It will also include a link to iDisk if you're one of that service's 17 users.)
For me, Shared is "disabled" if OS X decides it can't find any shares, which is more often than just when the Ethernet lead is unplugged (however, that might be a bug, looking at other posts). I'm not one of iDisk's "17 users", but I still have a link to iDisk - so why add the "if..." clause? I want to stop pointing out all these inaccuracies, but I don't see the point in writing a detailed review that is full of little errors.

And as with Vista, you can easily rearrange these shortcuts, remove shortcuts, or add new shortcuts.
But not, apparently, add new shares, which is what we were just talking about.

Quick Look...apparently modeled after the preview feature in Windows Desktop Search
Or the ability to take a quick look at something in a folder in a physical drawer without actually taking it out and putting it on your desk.

It's typical Apple: Over the top and flamboyant, but very attractive.
The Time Machine starfield is probably OTT and flamboyant. How could Quick Look be made less minimalist? (yes, I can think of some answers, but to call it "OTT and flamboyant" is stretching it).

Cover Flow... It's attractive put pointless... There's also a completely pointless preview mode for multi-page PDFs
I guess when I was showing someone a quick slideshow yesterday and they could be reminded of what photo they'd just seen / were about to see for context, it was "pointless". "Over-hyped" perhaps, but "pointless" has a specific meaning.

When Apple copied Microsoft's instant search
Why is there this desire for competition? Everyone's done something similar before. Every change is evolutionary. A few weeks ago I was studying the three decades leading up to Newton's Principia; Kepler's laws having been established by observation (but without casual basis), and looking at the retrograde behaviour of the Great Comet contradicting Descartes' hypothesis, the discussions of Halley, Hooke, Wren, etc. and independent Leibnizian calculus, much of what's in the book would have inevitably been soon developed. Indeed, Newton was threatening to withdraw the third volume when he found Hooke had proposed inverse square law. But is this any insult to Newton? Goodness, no! Brilliant ideas evolve - they don't appear out of thin air - and much of the hard work is about putting those ideas together to form a coherent system. For any "X did it first", I can give you a "no, Y did something similar earlier".

lets you write notes in Mail. This feature is weird because notes have nothing to do with email
E-mails generally contain snippets of info and instructions. Notes generally contain snippets of info and instructions. The two are suitable for exchange. Whether you have a separate notes app and allow it to communicate well with a Mail app is a fair question, but "nothing to do with email" is simply wrong.

Boot Camp lets you dual-boot between Leopard and Windows XP or Vista. Not to be a jerk about it, but this could prove to be Leopard's best feature:
Because multitasking is overrated and it's better to reboot into Windows than run it alongside OS X with Parallels or Fusion? And they're cheaper than a Leopard upgrade, too, if that's all you want.

Note that Boot Camp only works with 32-bit versions of Windows for some reason. If you were hoping to use Vista x64 on that Macbook, as I was, you're out of luck.
"For some reason" - research produces answers. Perhaps even ask on these forums, which I'll do right now: Is it actually impossible to install Vista x64 under Boot Camp, or is it just that certain drivers aren't available? Windows Server 2008 RC0 64-bit works fine under Fusion, so solution as above.

Front Row... something very positive has happened since Tiger: It no longer appears to quietly launch iTunes
Why is this "very positive"? The Apple logo has also changed colour, but it's not "very positive".

As is usually the case, Apple has provided a number of updates for developers and other technical users. The AppleScript scripting language and Xcode and Dashcode development environments have been improved somewhat, and the Automator feature that was so heavily promoted when Tiger shipped in 2005 can now record user actions and recreate them as a workflow. UNIX fans can exult in the fact that Leopard is a fully certified UNIX operating system that conforms to the Single UNIX Specification (SUSv3) and POSIX 1003.1. That should move some boxes.
Ah, all the features that will make the OS more pleasant to develop on, so there is better third-party application support, so more people choose OS X, are brushed over in one paragraph. Bravo.

It's not like OS X, which has had no real world viruses or malware attacks over the year, has gotten any more secure in a realistic sense.
If he doesn't want to read the developer docs, perhaps Thurrott could read this article (the Time Machine example is stretching it, as backups aren't secure).

Taken a step further, there's no real effort with Leopard to attract Windows users, no application compatibility mode,
Only the Boot Camp he was talking about only minutes ago. And, assuming he hasn't forgotten that a Mac isn't an iPhone and is open to third party development, Parallels, Fusion, and Crossover (Wine) are also good.

no wizard for moving over documents and settings automatically, nothing of that kind at all.
It's true, Move2Mac doesn't exist (disclaimer: not tried it, but "nothing of that kind at all" is pretty much disproven).

What isn't debatable is that Leopard does nothing to tilt the scales any further to the Mac side.
That statement contradicts the whole article: for the scales not to be tilted, new features that would appeal would have to be cancelled out precisely by new features that detract from the platform. Since he has identified not more than a couple of feature removals (e.g. the Start Menu style precursor to stacks), for this statement to be true, Thurrott would have to be arguing that all the features he described are completely useless both from a productivity and entertainment standpoint, for end users and developers.

Microsoft has sold 85 million copies of Vista in 9 months, and it's selling 25 million copies of the OS every quarter.
Incl. OEM?

Make no mistake: Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" is the real deal, a mature and capable operating system and a worthy competitor to Windows Vista. But then, so was Tiger, Leopard's predecessor.
"The current product is good. But so was the last one." A proven track record! That sounds like two good reasons to upgrade.

Some of those (ahem) 300+ new features actually require a .Mac subscription at a hefty $99 a year, while others require the latest version of iLife, also updated annually at $79.
I'm sure tech enthusiasts feel that there's some sort of obligation to purchase the latest version of every piece of software the weekend of release, but iLife '06 still works; the juxtaposition with .Mac, which must be paid for yearly to maintain subscription, is misleading.

Another problem with Leopard is the unmet expectations. Apple, like Microsoft with Windows Vista, promised more than it delivered with Leopard, and even went so far as to promise secret new features that never materialized... That's pathologically dishonest and disillusioning.
This one appears to have been worked through at least $n$ times in the archives; the "secret features" quote is iirc from WWDC 2006, and the secrets were revealed by 2007. Pathologically dishonest, indeed ;).

Leopard is also incomplete. If you purchase this product on October 26, you'll be getting pre-release quality software that Apple will update early and often... While your garden-variety Mac zealot may bristle at this suggestion, people who actually beta tested Leopard know what I'm talking about.
"People who actually beta tested" will be aware that the GM was not legitimately released to testers before end users: 581-559>0.

(insert pithy finale here)
 
Wow.



You mean like you could already do in Panther/Tiger? The customisable sidebar is not new in Leoprd. Vista copied OSX on this, not the other way round. I have no problems with Vista using it as its a great time saver, but lets get our facts straight.



Again, Smart Folders are in Tiger, so how is it an answer to Vista when it came out on OSX two years before Vista?



This is why this guy just irks me. Quick Look is fast becoming my favourite feature of Leopard, yet he says that its over the top and flamboyant? It is far better than the first page previews in Vista.



Really? It looks just like the black HUD panels Apple has been using since 2004.



Yes, hence the name Quick Look. Clicking the file in Quick Look opens it in the editor anyway.

This is the stuff that makes him so hard to read. It's like hearing someone attribute a famous quote to the wrong person - repeatedly. Does he mention how aqua also copies Vista's amazing 'glass' interface too? :rolleyes:
 
An open letter to Mr Thurrot

I read your Leopard review twice, because I wanted to be fair towards you. Some points you mention, you are absolutely right:
  • The 300 Features aren't really features. They are changes to the OS.
  • Leopard is an evolution not a revolution. I think this will be the case for all upcoming OSes for the next 5 years.

Now, lets get on to the list where you are absolutely way off the truth:
  • Comparing the Previous Versions feature with Time Machine is entirely inaccurate: Previous Versions could restore different versions of files. Time Machine can restore the whole OS. The fact that by default Previous Versions use the same HD to keep this info, is fatal. What happen if the HD fails? Please tell me Mr Thurrot. FYI, you can live partition the disk in Mac OS and use the second partition for Time Machine backups. I expected that you knew that Mr Thurrot.
  • I am impressed by the way you compare Windows to Mac OS X. You actually try to make a "feature" comparison but forget to mention some really important things that differentiate the two platforms:
    Windows users should change to Mac (Tiger or Leopard is not important) because Windows lacks many important infrastructure that Mac OS has: * Application Installation doesnt mess with the OS, in Windows you have the DLL Hell!
    * In Windows you have Viruses, tons of Spyware, you need to keep installing things to keep the OS running...In Mac you have nothing of these!
    * In Windows you have Driver issues, get a Mac, you ll forget the thing. It just works!
    * In Windows your OS will become slow with time because of Registry fragmentation. The only thing that you can do about it is install the OS from scratch. Great? Of course a Mac doesnt suffer from that crap.
  • You forget to mention how great Quick Look is.
  • Spaces is also implemented in a way that sets it apart from any other implementation
  • Actually the issue here is not about the features, but how they are implemented. Thats all what a Mac is about! Mr Thurrot you forget that! How can I use a feature if the GUI doesnt help me? The success or failure of a feature depends on how easy it is for normal people to use it! This is sth that Microsoft has totally forget. Please have that in mind when you also compare Frontrow with Media Center! Media Center offers more options but Frontrow can use everybody! Please Mr Thurrot, wake up!

I find Windows to be useful in many situations, but please Mr Thurrot, don't take your audience for stupid. They all have an opinion and you have no right to do that. Its absolutely desrespectful.
 
Oh well, Leopard is buggy anyways. I can't even unmount earlier mounted .dmg files :) Spaces is buggy as well. If you drag a Safari window from Space 1 to Space 3 and ask to open the Safari About dialog it will show this dialog in Space 1 8)7.
 
"purchase new Leopard-based hardware"

what the hell is that? leopard based hardware?? is this guy on crack?

and his comments about spotlight were just toally ridiculous! It can actually search files now??? holy crap!!!

as somebody who used vista, I can say that the reason I got rid of it (and went back to XP) was the lack of driver support of ALL or my audio equipment. after contacting the companies, they said they had no plans to offer support for vista in the near future because of problems with the new DRM embedded in the OS. so for me, vista was totally unusable. now, with OS X, I can just plug my audio interfaces and mixers in and the just work, without me having to install anything. its truly amazing. that is the major reason i am now using OS X.
 
I think people are being too defensive about this review. I admit that I'm biased in this case since I enjoy reading Paul's Supersite and listening to him on Windows Weekly with Leo Laporte. But I must say that Paul writes critically in all his reviews, including his Microsoft ones. Yes he is partial to Microsoft, and yes he likes to needle Apple fan boys. But I think he receives so much hate mail from crazed Apple fan boys that his attitude has been poisoned somewhat.

Despite all his "criticisms" of Leopard, he still gave it a 4 out of 5.

BTW, I'm really enjoying Leopard so far. Time Machine is great, I'm finding Spaces very useful, the new Finder is a big upgrade and the unified look is nice. I agree with Paul that these are mostly evolutionary upgrades but I disagree with his argument that Apple is somehow over-hyping it. Apple is trying to sell this product, what would you have them do? The wow starts now? Please...

I also disagree that this was some sort of missed opportunity to steal market share. Mac sales were at an all time high last quarter; before Leopard. The trend towards the Mac doesn't require some sort of out of this world new OS. The trend towards the Mac is great hardware, the Vista disappointment, young consumers looking for something that's not their Daddy's OS and the fact that OS X is already really, really good.

What Paul forgets is that part of Apple's success is constantly updating their products. Apple has successfully kept itself at the forefront of consumers minds, especially young consumers. At this point OS X is a new and wonderful experience for most of these new users so there is no need for something revolutionary. Despite Leopard being a few months late, it is the 5th major update to OS X in 7 years. This is where (in the consumer market) Apple got it right and Microsoft got it wrong Paul.
 
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