Apple posted a Leopard guided tour video, in the same format as the earlier iPhone and iPod Touch guided tours. It mentions the new Finder, stacks, Time Machine, Quick Look, Spaces, and so on. In Quicktime, of course.
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2006-12-30
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I downloaded the high res version and sat there watching it, waiting to see something new that The Steve hadn't already shown us, but there was nothing new in it...
I find it quite amusing that going through 300 new features, Apple lists screensavers as a 'new feature'. Since when do we buy operating systems based on screensavers??!
I will of course, go to the Apple Store like a good little sheep and pay for the upgrade as I don't want to be left behind.
pac
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I would just like to add (but not in response to yourself), that your computer with Tiger does not suddenly become anything less than it was just because leopard has come out. There is no "suck switch" that Apple flip to make Tiger totally inadequate. 
Tiger is still better than Vista, and I have a G4 MacMini that I could upgrade, but that I will keep Tiger on, running just as well as it has since 2005.
Edited 2007-10-21 12:12
Member since:2005-07-06
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I recently upgraded from a PC to Macbook, and I'm genuinely shocked/surprised just how good it actually is. It is a rocket fast it is. Believe me, you won't be disappointed when you move. Leopard apparently has had big kernel changes to fix long standing threading/process performance issues.
Hopefully Arstechnica will have a good review once it has been released - including information on the kernel underpinnings and low level features.
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Un. Be. Lie. Va. Ble.
Of all people, you, kaiwai, are the one I'd expect not to switch, ever.
Perhaps from now on you won't hang around here bashing the nostrils hair out of Apple?
j/k
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Of all people, you, kaiwai, are the one I'd expect not to switch, ever.
Perhaps from now on you won't hang around here bashing the nostrils hair out of Apple?
j/k
lol, well, call my PC experience something as a result of 'optimistic youth' - prior to that PC experience I was Mac person. I guess one needs some experience in hell to realise just how great life really is.
This Macbook is damn good. I was sceptical at first, Intel integrated etc but I bit the bullet and realised just how badly Windows utilises hardware. Windows Vista with Intel 950, its painful. With MacOS X, its a joy.
Oh, and I've got iWorks; its awesome - truly is. Does what I need at a reasonable price. Well supported etc. etc. Its just awesome to see how well things perform.
Member since:2005-11-10
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In all honesty, what's so bad about the features they did show?
Leopard is stunning. It's simple, efficient and these features are fantastic for regular users.
Just imagine trying to demo the same feature set in Vista:
OSX: Plug in disk, click Yes
Vista: Plug in disk, click on Start orb > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Backup status and configuration. Click Run a backup now. Click Allow on UAC...
This is beyond confusing and doesn't even begin to cover trying to restore a file based on a search query.
Member since:2005-06-29
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Well, you know, they might be new features for OSX, but other operating systems have been having these things for ages. Sure, Apple made them easier to use than ever (supposedly, we haven't used them yet), but that's it. That's commendable, but not trendsetting, like OSX used to be.
So, I assume you've been trying out the betas?
Leopard is stunning in that it is Mac OS X, the best desktop operating system for normal users - not for its "new" features.
Member since:2005-11-10
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Usable means everything. How many people backup? 5%? If that? Backup software has been around for eons - so why don't people back up?
A lot of geeks come to the conclusion that users are stupid and do not know how to backup. A feature that cannot be found, simply does not exist. This goes for Thom who thinks VSC >= Time Machine.
Methinks not enough forum users have regular every day contact with regular every day people. Time Machine blows everything out of the water because there's a whole 95% market open to capture with attachment sales.
Why does Leopard have to have some ultra cool feature, when you're already staring at one. Backup that just fecking works. That alone is worth the price.
What would you rather: something that works, or "The Wow starts now"?
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I only said that VSC is more powerful than Time Machine. Sure, it doesn't have flying stars, but it is set up to work by default, and works as advertised, and can be accessed easily via the properties dialogs of files and folders. The crap thing of course is that you need Windows Vista Superbly Ubercool Ultimate Premium Monster Edition to even have Previous Versions/VSC in the first place.
VSC is more powerful because it combines a back up featureset with a versioning system featureset, without one of the featuresets depending on the others - in other words, even if you do not back up (i.e. you have no external hard drive, like me (too expensive)) you are still free to use the versioning system featureset of VSC, because it stores previous versions of files and entire directories on its own filesystem.
Time Machine is an extremely crude implementation with a flashy GUI, where VSC is a very elegant and advanced implementation with a rather crude GUI. However, even this causes problems with Time Machine: Time Machine may have a flashy GUI but it's hopelessly modal - in other words, if you are using Time Machine, you are forced to use only Time Machine, because it is a full screen application. VSC is surely more of a framework on which to build for the future. I think it would be elementary for a programmer to write a flashy interface on top of VSC/Previous Versions.
Only time will tell. You still need to buy an additional external hard drive, seeing all home user Macs (so non-Pro) do not even have the ability to carry an additional internal hard drive. Additionally, Apple's strongest market is laptops- and they move around all the time, and do not have continious access to an external hard drive. So, how is Time Machine going to work for lots of students who carry all those MacBooks around?
That's why I call Time Machine a crude implementation. It only caters to one specific use case: namely, computer solidly at home, with an external HD plugged into it. The problem is that this specific use case is growing ever more dated, as the laptop market is increasing in size.
That's the weirdness of the RDF. Microsoft completely overhauls its operating system, adding more features than OSX has all put together, and it's "minor change" and just "XP with a coat" - Apple adds some features other operating systems have had for ages, dresses them up with flying stars, and suddenly it's all revolutionary or "who needs new features".
Edited 2007-10-21 12:36 UTC
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Not hard to get 300+ feaures when you count tabs in the terminal as four features:
Tabbed Windows
Keep multiple Terminal sessions going in a single, tabbed window.
Movable Tabs
Rearrange your tabs with just a drag and drop. Change the order in which they appear or separate them out by pulling them into a separate window.
Pull Tab into New Window
Separate a tab into its own window with a simple drag and drop.
Merge All Windows
Combine all your open Terminal windows into a single window with multiple tabs.
First two aleast should count as one, or all four.
Member since:
2006-01-09
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Will view and review this as I have to advise clients; and some of these technologies will be very relevant to them. A backup system that end users can work is no small thing, and the secure desktop sharing almost lets me consider .Mac (as a business expense!). Not because any of this is novel technology but because it will be usable technology for end users.
The other big reason for getting a new release of OSX is the drivers recognising printers, cameras and so forth.
On the other hand some boxes will need to be replaced and that ain't cheap; and when you use the bells, whistles and glitz .... even the new boxes ain't gonna be that quick.
Looking at this G4 Powerbook; I think I may well get a 7200RPM hard drive with a large cache before installing Leopard.
Oh and finally they provide multiple virtual workspaces ....AT BLOODY LAST.
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2006-10-23
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Given the amount of time for Leopard to come along and all the hype I had hoped there was one or two amazing features that were under wraps.
I should have learn this with Panther to Tiger. Nothing amazing changed.
Sadly it looks like an upgrade I'll be picking up later on when the dust settles and the bugs are patched
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I should have learn this with Panther to Tiger. Nothing amazing changed.
I'm getting tired of hearing this. What exactly amazing features do people want other than a more polished and well functioning OS? What constitutes an "amazing" feature? If it's so apparently easy to do that, name it and Apple will probably implement it for the next MacOSX version, so you can marvel at this "amazing" feature, until someone claims they copied it from someone else and then it wouldn't be "amazing" anymore. It's a dumb and unmeasurable way to judge whether you want to buy an operating system or not.
Since Leopard lacks "amazing" features, MacOSX Cheetah will probably suffice, if you want to write letters to your mom or check your email once a month and don't care whether it runs 3 times slower than Leopard and doesn't take advantage of OpenGL 2.0, more APIs that make it easier to program for or multi-core Intel CPUs.
I'm sorry that Tiger doesn't contain any "amazing" features compared to Panther, just old fashioned polish, bug fixes and support for newer hardware. Leopard will do that as well compared to Tiger. In fact, perhaps Apple should just stop OS development and just stick with Cheetah with all new Intel Macs, since they have such a hard time coming up with those "amazing" features.
Edited 2007-10-21 13:34
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What I imagine the GP is missing (and me too, to be honest) are the "top secret features" that Steve couldn't tell us about when he first demoed Leopard because they were just too cool and Redmond was going to copy them. And what did they turn out to be? I honestly don't even remember, though I was expecting something like "Time Machine brought to you by ZFS." During WWDC I was mostly busy being embarrassed for Apple by the transparent menu bar and 3D Dock. Two big steps back in usability, all to bring teh prettiez.
Anyway, there's tons of new stuff in Leopard to recommend an upgrade. I pre-ordered my copy the day Apple announced the ship date, mostly on the anticipation of the new Xcode tools and the better multithreading OS-wide. And contrary to what seems to have been the experience of many here who watched the video guide and didn't see anything new, I saw lots of "hey, that's really nice" features that I hadn't heard about before. Not top secret, and not, by themselves, $129, but a solid step forward when taken together.
Edited 2007-10-21 18:13
Member since:2005-11-21
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Top Secret was a play on words against Microsoft. The features not shown that will make Leopard incredibly productive are there. They weren't visible at WWDC and most of them are the underlying technologies to make the computer do some incredibly difficult complex tasks in a matter of a few simple actions.
Member since:2006-11-24
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It takes at least 2 versions of Mac OS X to make new features standard.
You got the partial brushed-metal interface in Panther, but it became standard in Tiger. Alot of things introduced in Panther became standard in Tiger, which also became host to a number of new components and features. Tiger's features have become standard in Leopard, where they are improved; Leopard has its own "beta" features to account for.
So switching from Tiger to Leopard is, IMO, unwise. Switching from Panther to Leopard, a good idea.
So you're on Tiger at the moment: DON'T SWITCH TO LEOPARD. There is obviously very little incentive to switch from Tiger to Leopard, despite the "300+ improvements". You should switch only if you are a sucker for "beta" features crashing on you all the time (not just spinning beachball, we're talking "closing up at any point at the slightest fault").
Just wait until 10.6, at the least. Apple has followed this pattern since the Public Beta.
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Uhuh...
Based on your "2 versions" logic, people should have used OS X until Jaguar (which actually is when it became "massly" usable) and then not upgraded until Tiger.. but whoops - Tiger was "buggy" and "beta".
When actually, each version has gotten entirely better. 10.0 was pretty unusable, I can remember it on my old iBook when it came out. 10.1 on the other hand was WAY better (at the time). Afterwards, 10.2 was a huge leap from 10.1. 10.3 was also a huge jump as well, and so on and so on.
I for one never had any issues when I upgrade to 10.4.0 when it came out. None.
If you couldn't tell, I plan on upgrading to Leopard the day it comes out - I don't anticipate any problems either.
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Me too - a bit off-topic but I have gone from Big Cat to Green Chameleon, and on my machine the difference is between a lean rapid scooting lizard and an indolent post-prandial tabby (and this without 3D acceleration, being now a humble PPC Linux user...)
Edited - typo
Edited 2007-10-22 16:58
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2006-02-28
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Thom, you say "But even without an external harddrive, you can still use the file versioning bit of VSC/Previous Versions - something which you cannot do with Time Machine. Time Machine is incapable of doing local versioning"
In my previous post I've already advised you how to do this with OSX, yes it requires partitioning the internal drive (non destructively I should add) and it is a bit beyond the thickest of Joe Public but so is using VSC & backing up a drive in Vista.
To set the record straight could you answer these questions:-
Do you think it's good to have versioning on the same hdd?
Do you think it's a good idea to backup your hdd onto an external hdd?
Do you think it's a good idea to have a *Versioned Backup* on an external HDD?
What's more preferable to you - versioning on your main drive or a backup of your main drive on another drive?
thingi
p.s. fair point on the grammar - now updated
Edited 2007-10-21 14:26
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Note: I removed the "or not" behind each question for clarity purposes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Both. That's what Previous Versions/VSC can do, but Time Machine cannot. That is why Time Machine is the cruder of the two (technicaly speaking).
Edited 2007-10-21 14:23 UTC
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2005-07-06
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...whatever people. And now OS X has them all together in one place, and they have made them all easier to use. And no one talks about the underlying kernel changes and the like. I echo another poster's sentiment and eagerly anticipate a substantive review by AT or some other site.
Member since:2005-11-21
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Yes. Other OS's have pure 64 bit platform with 32 bit apps running natively, using an optimized OpenGL 2.1 toolkit, offering the latest JDK from Sun and modified by their OS to have the native OS UI, UNIX 03 certified, Objective-C 2.0 and elaborate set of Frameworks under the Cocoa umbrella, running the most current EFI Firmware from Intel, integrated Ruby, Python with DTrace, the basic Text Editor that read and writes ODF/OOXML, System-wide scripting for Ruby, Python and ObjC, Universal Access features from the Installation onwards that recognize the Blind as being important to computing, Virtual Desktops via Spaces that show what a more advanced Window Server and Quartz Rendering Engine with a better Distributed Objects model can do without tasking the shit out of your OS, etc.
This shit bores the average user, until third party developers augment their flagship apps and create new applications to leverage them. Suddenly, Leopard will be the Shiznit!
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2005-09-21
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You guys are all pissing in the wind talking about the new features. The new features are only so so, but what is really important to me is performance. This statment is what piques my attention:
"Leopard apparently has had big kernel changes to fix long standing threading/process performance issues" Now this is something to be anticipating, especially for the G4s.
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"Leopard apparently has had big kernel changes to fix long standing threading/process performance issues" Now this is something to be anticipating, especially for the G4s.
What I hope is that the features don't require more memory; minimum specifications is 512MB RAM - however, I'd be interested to see what the reality is when it comes to the real world and those who do have 512MB RAM.
The 'improvements' are rumours I've seen on think secret. Ultimately the big decider will be once the code hits the dvds and then loaded onto machines. Given there hasn't been massive screaming and complaining from the testers, one can assume that things haven't slid backwards.
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2005-06-29
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Yeap, its a sexy black MacBook, memory upgraded to 2gigs, 3 years of Applecare and a copy of iWorks. Everything I need at a reasonable price.
Edit: Thom, would you like me to write an article on my 'transition' to this Macbook? I'm happy to write one, I just don't want to waste time if it is never going to get published.
Edited 2007-10-21 18:00
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There's no point in starting an argument with this guy. He has never had one positive thing to say about Apple since he started posting at this site. I have been coming here long before he started posting and remember when it was just Eugenia who was always pretty fair and didn't have to take a shot at Apple on every chance. He just has the same argument everytime about how he uses a cube as him main machine if you confront him about it. If anybody ever happens to say anything positive about what Apple is doing then Thom labels them a fanboy and starts with the RDF crap. He just doesn't understand Apple at all. Mostly apple isn't about creating new technologies, they are about making existing technologies easy to use for everybody and not just geeks who read osnews. If we are Apple fanboys as he says then he is a Apple fanboy hater fanboy.
Edited 2007-10-21 18:47
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I'm a happy Ubuntu GNU/Linux user, but must admit that OS X is now looking pretty tempting. For one thing: "Spaces" -- glad to see OS X now has virtual desktop workspaces. Another thing is that Apple now seems to support the Python-Cocoa binding (or "bridge" as they're calling it).
Preview.app's pdf "annotations" feature looks pretty neat as well.
Also, looks like TextEdit supports ODF .odt files now.
Still, dunno if I could handle the downgrade from Ubuntu.
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Downgrade? Yeah right...
Yes, textedit is supposed to handle bort odt and whateverxmlcraptastic2007wordimbadocumentspecs5000+pagesformat is called.
Before using OS X I thought the fact it lagged virtual desktops was very weird and lame, but since using it I have never had a need for it thanks to exposé.
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2006-03-17
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Got to be said, i was a little skeptical about this new version of OSX and all the new features i have been hearing about .. after watching that presentation i am bowled over .. sure its a lot more eye candy but it looks like it provides much more usability with it.. Cover flow all over the place .. Time Machine looks cool .. Quick Look.. ill use that a lot and even the changes to Mail all a step forward imho, very nice ... Spaces, yep looks like its well done too.. Even iChat, an app i never use under Tiger has got me wanting to play with some of that Photobooth incorporated geekyness. Ill be one of the sheep who makes the jump regardless if Tiger is suiting me well just now ... Bring it on !
Edited 2007-10-22 01:10 UTC
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Here come a nice MS ad:
http://www.blimptv.net/mostpopularV1.html
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2007-10-18
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I don't exactly remember the joke over att WWDC, but I think Steve said something similair to that you get the basic version for only 129 dollar or whatever it is, and then keeped on saying that you also got <insert versions> here, or if he just said that those was 129 dollar aswell.
Anyway, yes, there are only one version so you get all functionality.
Beyond that all macs ships with iLife and you can buy iWork for 79 dollar I belive.
