“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. Instead, Leopard is yet another evolutionary upgrade in a long line of evolutionary OS X upgrades, all of which date back to the original OS X release in 2001. But let me get one huge misunderstanding out of the way immediately: That’s not a dig at Leopard at all. Indeed, if anything, Apple is in an enviable position: OS X is so solid, so secure, and so functionally excellent that it must be getting difficult figuring out how to massage another USD 129 out even the most ardent fans. Folks, Leopard is good stuff. But then that’s been true of Mac OS X for quite a while now.” Additionally, Apple acknowledges installation problems caused by Unsanity‘s APE, while others are complaining about problems with Java, or visual oddities. Additionally, there are hacks that restore the black dock triangles, opacify the menubar, and to enable Time Machine on Airport disks. Update: It appears the Leopard firewall has a dent in its armour.
Its important to know the bias of the people who write these articles…sorry link sheet, perhaps this one should be followed by a Leopard 6 months on.
Although it is nice that, these Leopard articles have finally arrived. Perhaps a massive link section for the positive leopard articles will follow.
…I wonder what happened to all those Ubuntu articles. I feel drenched with the BSD ones…go BSD.
All in all though its good that “google news” has a workout.
Ah, the usual OSNews-eats-fluffy-puppies-and-kills-babies complaint.
I’m sorry there are negative reports on Leopard. I’m also deeply sorry for putting all those into one single story, together with some very useful hacks and an informative (but obviously biased) review. How dareth I place even the faintest of shadow of a doubt on the greatness that is Apple.
Get over yourself. We did similar round-ups when Vista launched. It’s a nice way to group similar stuff together, in one story. If I were to smear all these stories out as individual stories, all the Mac fans would be all over me too. We can never do it right, and honestly, I’m okay with that. Comes with the job.
Mmmm, tasty tasty fluffy puppies.
“I’m sorry there are negative reports on Leopard. I’m also deeply sorry for putting all those into one single story, together with some very useful hacks and an informative (but obviously biased) review. How dareth I place even the faintest of shadow of a doubt on the greatness that is Apple.
Get over yourself. We did similar round-ups when Vista launched. It’s a nice way to group similar stuff together, in one story. If I were to smear all these stories out as individual stories, all the Mac fans would be all over me too. We can never do it right, and honestly, I’m okay with that. Comes with the job”
Clearly you missed my point, while censoring other similar points made to mine. Using Vista as an example is poor, regardless of my personal preference of OS…it was major launch, whatever you thing of it as a product, and everybody here lives in a Microsoft world.
I am always happy to have criticisms of an OS, although you spend times defending Vista in your “My Lies” at the end of a topic summary, because every release of *any* OS will contain regressions; changes; ommitions that are unwelcome.
The bottom line is Leopard articles were sparse until well this page…BSD seems to be all over the place, Ubuntu seems to have vanished off the map…to be replaced by Linux is rubbish “because of” articles. Thats the state of this site.
The fun thing is if you are ashamed of you bias then really *you* must feel threatened. You can talk about Mac fans but from my posts your fully aware I’m not one.
…as a side note just for fun http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php shows that MacOSX took Vista’s second place spot, jumping from fourth place. You really can’t trust those stats.
Edited 2007-10-29 23:33
So an article when every new developer build comes out isn’t enough?
Posting several reviews isn’t enough?
Every OS bigot always says that OSNews is biased towards other OSes, it’s getting (has been) really old.
Off topic:
What would be really nice would be if every article had a big, attention-grabbing button to generate an I-call-bias form letter response from the following template:
IMO, OSNews coverage of [topic] is biased. Most of the linked reviews are [positive | negative], and [author] has a slanted viewpoint that follows up even [negative | positive] articles with opinion pieces [singing-the-praises-of | senselessly-bashing] [topic]. Finally, I see [too-little | too-much] coverage of [related-topic].
(Optional fields could be provided for generating commonly-used personal attacks against the author or life in general.)
And then all these form-generated reponses could be put in a section of the site that is only accessible through a small-text hyperlink at the very bottom of the comments section labeled anti-OSNews attacks or something similarly obvious. Furthermore, the section would be linked to all the other, contradictory form-generated responses so we would see OSNews-is-rabidly-pro-Linux right alongside OSNews-is-just-an-Microsoft-shill.
😀
That’s not exactly what I consider to be a conclusive argument. More like a text-book example of observer bias.
Ah, the usual OSNews-eats-fluffy-puppies-and-kills-babies complaint.
You like to say that, don’t you?
ok so where is the ars technica review if your so unbiased in your roundup?
Your article links to paul thurrot (sp???) for gods sake… he might have a clue about Windows software but he is the last you should ask advice from for Apple. And yes I listen to his windows weekly podcast and his apple comments on that were STUPID. Add the ars technica link to this roundup or its quite obvious that your just trying to fan the flames against apples OS.
BTW… I dont disagree with this roundup, but if your actually looking for equality like you supposedly did for Vista then missing the ars technica and linking to Windows supersite of ALL people is an obvious stab against it. And I dont care the Ars technica article is just down from this, it wont be in 6 months time.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,139038-c,macos/article.html
Users will still by an actual Mac though since they’ve been successfully brainwashed into believing that it’s any different to a PC.
I’ve been running Kalyways 10.4.10 for awhile now, and it works great on my HP Pavilion dv9000. Incredably responsive, very stable. Audio/video work great.
Unfortunately, the intel wireless drivers are only about half done for my card, i can manually put it to sleep, but it wont wake up, it is unable to monitor my battery beyond being able to tell if its plugged in or not, the built-in camera doesnt work, and it doesnt detect the lid closing.
All things considered though, I consider these to be minor issues.
I have to agree with the complaints against Apple’s Java “support.” Supporting Java applications for Mac OS X is such a headache. One can be assured that the UI will remain basically the same for Linux and Windows, but will NOT be the same for OS X. In fact, some people write special wrappers to Swing that will change the appearance if the platform is OS X. The “compile-once, run-anywhere” idiom is broken by Apple’s “support” for Java.
Just out of curiosity, how is it support be microsoft? Is it microsoft that support Java or the java comunity/Sun who invest energy in Windows?
Because people are complaining about java6 not on Leopard, but I dont recall any installation of Windows and Linux(which may change with the new license) with java preinstall.
Are the these probleme also with SWT or just with swing?
Tiger got an old (at the time) version of python and wxpython. But Leopard is out of the box with the most recent python, ruby and wxpython.
No, Microsoft does not support [1] Java, but–and here’s the crucial point–Sun does. You cannot download the JRE or the JDK for OS X from Sun’s website. Apple wanted to develop their Java tools in-house. In fact, Apple has been providing their JRE since the days of Mac OS 8.0. That’s why people complain to Apple about OS X’s Java, because it’s Apple’s responsibility.
1. By supporting, I think you mean pre-installation or in-house development at Microsoft. The reality is Microsoft and Sun work together to release the Windows version.
But on the other end, microsoft does not preinstall java the make .net a better alternative. It is no secret that Microsoft tried more than once to harm java.
If Apple stop making java and ask Sun to do so (with their help). Apple could then remove Java from OS X without being hung?
I think you have something a little off here. Microsoft did have an in-house java (the MS JVM), that was considered faster than the Sun JVM (I was not very perceptive of these things at the time, so I don’t know how good or bad it actually was). Due to a legal settlement with Sun, Microsoft was forced to remove its own JVM and cease distributing it widely (I think it was still available to enterprises that had systems deployed with it).
As far as I can tell, Sun’s concern was that the MS JVM had some extensions that made it easy to call down to the underlying platform. This is basically the idea that became P/Invoke in .NET. Long story short, Microsoft doesn’t ship a JVM because the company seems to have made a legal agreement not to.
Edited 2007-10-30 02:19 UTC
Incorrect. Microsoft said that they either ‘use their own’ or not ship one at all. Sun wanted to work with Microsoft and get the Sun JVM included with Windows – Microsoft refused to play ball.
In the end, it doesn’t matter, Sun has a relationship with all the major OEM’s, and Java is shipped by the OEM vendor rather than Microsoft.
Incorrect. Microsoft said that they either ‘use their own’ or not ship one at all.
Incorrect. That happened afterwards. They extended Java first by providing hooks into OS specific stuff. McNealy referred to what they did as adding poison to Java. So they lost their license and ended up developing .Net instead.
Please, read what I posted. Microsoft lost their licence but Sun offered them the ability to ship Sun’s own JVM with Windows. Microsoft could have partnered up with Sun, shipped SUN’s own JVM with Windows, and all would be well. It was Microsofts arrogance which stopped them.
Oh, and it wouldn’t be the first time Microsoft shipped non-Microsoft software in their operating system. Their defragmenter for example is licenced from Excutive Software. Their old hyperterminal in previous versions was licenced.
There is a precedent, again I stress, Microsoft were too arrogant to accent Sun’s very respectful offer. Microsoft on the other hand was simply looking for yet another excuse to butcher a standard and make it their own.
Apologies if I misunderstood. I agree that Microsoft was butchering Java.
The only purpose of the ms java was to use the popularity of java to attract developper in a pseudo multi-platform. Then make portable code microsoft OS centric.
But what amaze me with the java problem, is the developper on his blog is ready to burn out Apple because they are now so bad. But in fact, if you take any OS out there except solaris, there is not a single one that does any better, not even the same.
But in fact, if you take any OS out there except solaris, there is not a single one that does any better, not even the same
On java.sun.com you can download java for solaris, windows and linux, but not for Mac. Why are Java developers pissed with Apple rather than Sun for this mess? Isn’t it their freaking platform? At the very least they should share the blame.
Apple wanted to develop their Java tools in-house. In fact, Apple has been providing their JRE since the days of Mac OS 8.0. That’s why people complain to Apple about OS X’s Java, because it’s Apple’s responsibility.
they didn’t want to take that responsibility, they had to because the halfassed implementation of java 1.0 on mac os by sun sucked and sun wasn’t inclined to invest the ressources required to change this.
the OS racism i alive an well!
hope you are all having fun attempting to belittle one another!
the truth is…. all your OSs suck!
and who is the tHom guy any way?
http://www.heise-security.co.uk/articles/98120
The firewall isn’t needful at all and they are using, according to Heise, several open source packages with know and already fixed holes!
I actually was wondering why did they leave the firewall off by default i checked out ipfw list I was wondering why it has allow all in/out. I am not sure what is going on here.
EDIT: bahh it seems that ipfw list isn’t that insightful there are other things going on here check out /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall
Edited 2007-10-29 21:59
I am the author of the article cited in the headline about “the lack of Java 6”, I would like to clarify a bit. The fact that Java 6 is missing is not my only complaint. It’s not even my most serious complaint.
The real problem here, is that not only did they not ship Java 6 with Leopard, but they broke key parts of Java 5 on Leopard, mostly having to do with Java2D. Java2D happens to be a key part of one of my projects. And currently, it is unusable on Leopard.
That, combined with Apple’s typical policy of arrogance where they think they have no obligation to their customers whatsoever to keep them informed about why plans were changed, why they yanked previews of software, and when we can expect to see the situation remedied, is really the critical mass point that drove me to give up on Apple. It wasn’t just one thing. It was a combination of all three things. And given Apple’s long history of keeping their customers in the dark, I don’t expect the situation to get any better.
Edited 2007-10-29 22:14
Thanks for the clarification, Mike. I updated the article to make the complaint a bit more general.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
The real problem here, is that not only did they not ship Java 6 with Leopard, but they broke key parts of Java 5 on Leopard, mostly having to do with Java2D. Java2D happens to be a key part of one of my projects. And currently, it is unusable on Leopard.
Yer. Apple doesn’t get backwards compatibility either, even in places where you would think it would be easy to keep.
Just as an update on the Java2D situation, it turns out there is a workaround for this that a few people have pointed out to me. For those of you who are experiencing slow performance problems with Java in Leopard, you can issue the following parameter to to Java when you start it:
-Dapple.awt.graphics.UseQuartz=true
On Java 5 in Tiger, the default rendering pipeline was Quartz. For some reason, however, Apple decided to switch the default rendering pipeline to the standard Java one on Leopard. The standard Java one is not accelerated, and thus the slow performance.
Why Apple decided to change the default pipeline is beyond me. On most other platforms, Java uses the OpenGL pipeline by default. And until now, it used the Quartz pipeline on Apple. But none of the other platforms were still using the plain old unaccelerated Java pipeline anymore.
You can read more about the Quartz pipeline switch here: http://weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici/archive/2007/10/leopar…
Don’t tell anyone, but Microsoft Windows XP was only a point release on Microsoft Windows 2000!
–bornagainpenguin
Well this is an interesting little moderating war that’s been going on with this comment of mine! At first it was voted down to 1 and then someone popped it back up to 2, now its been voted down all the way to 0! Still as amusing as it all is, could one of the people modding my comment down kindly leave a POST about why it is they feel the need to mod me down?
According to the vot confirmation page you are only allowed to vote a comment down under the following conditions:
Yes, this comment includes personal attacks/offensive language
Yes, this comment is off-topic
Yes, this comment is spam or includes advertisements
Could someone kindly tell me which of the three my previous comment violated?
–bornagainpenguin
The article puts everything out of perspective.
For example, he says that both Vista and Leopard were late but from his wording, it sounds like vista was a about month later than Leopard. Yup, 4 years is only a bit more than 3 months. Bravo Paul, Bravo.
Next he compares Time Machine to some odd-ball, unrelated, obscure server backup thing. WTF? He also says it requires an external drive WHICH IS FALSE! JUST REPARTITION YOUR DRIVE STUPID! He also says it will take hours and hours to pick the correct version of a file by using a much quicker date picker. Great, I guess you are unable to read dates and use Quick Look, Paul.
How about Vista’s 11,000 new features? Give me a list. I bet you’ll have a hard time finding more than 500 after 5 years unless you count each pixel in the windows logo a new feature.
How about spotlight being copied from windows? Searching for files has been out for ages, the only new feature vista added was a method to slowly search the start menu and to make searches painfully slow.
As for Safari features, did you notice many of them appeared in firefox after them being demoed in WWDC ’06. Many still aren’t in it yet. How about IE7? It’s too bad for you to mention.
The list goes on an on but i’ll end it at that. Your article was 10% fact and 90% bias and misinformation, Paul.
Edited 2007-10-29 22:38
WHICH IS FALSE! JUST REPARTITION YOUR DRIVE STUPID!
This is just classic. Completely defeat the purpose of a backup by enabling it on the same drive. Oh god.
For example, he says that both Vista and Leopard were late but from his wording, it sounds like vista was a about month later than Leopard. Yup, 4 years is only a bit more than 3 months. Bravo Paul, Bravo.
I believe based on officially announced release dates, Vista was no more late than Leopard was.
It won’t protect against hardware failure, but it will keep track of previous versions, so it’s still very useful if your drive doesn’t die.
True, the ’03, 04 and 05 release dates weren’t formally announced but how about this? http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/aug04/08-27target2006…
Still an year late.
Time Machine Has 2 Purposes. one is back up for an emergency failure and the other is to recover lost files and revert to older versions of files. For hard drive failure, your point is valid. But if you just want to recover lost files and old versions, backing up onto the same hard drive is fine. If he wants a failure backup, why is he complaining about needing an external drive?
I’m not saying Leopard is perfect (there are still many areas where improvement is possible/needed) but many of Paul Thurrot’s points are quite weak. After all, he runs the windows supersite. He ought to be biased towards windows just like a mac fan will be biased towards macs.
Edited 2007-10-30 00:23
Yeah. It says they will “target”, not release.
W/E if you go into detail. But if you want to continue this (useless) discussion, Apple never officially announced a specific release date, they just said Spring 2007 which is a target which you say does not count. Therefore, Leopard’s official, planned release date was October 26th which they did meet and therefore it was on time. I know this is stupid but it is logical if target’s don’t count.
http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/gartenberg/archives/200…
Schedules and targets actually are slightly different.
>>WHICH IS FALSE! JUST REPARTITION YOUR DRIVE STUPID!
>>
>This is just classic. Completely defeat the purpose of a backup by >enabling it on the same drive. Oh god.
not really
>> For example, he says that both Vista and Leopard were late but
>> from his wording, it sounds like vista was a about month later than
>> Leopard. Yup, 4 years is only a bit more than 3 months. Bravo Paul,
>> Bravo.
>I believe based on officially announced release dates, Vista was no
>more late than Leopard was.
HAHAHA that is funny
))) I wish MS learns to ship there products when they say they will. Not delaying them for YEARS. Lets see when will they ship Windows 7 from the officially announced (2-2.5 years after Vista ships) and we are already half way there and there is nothing yet out and there wont be until who knows when. Dream on bro…. But that is very funny what you wrote! 
))))))
“For example, he says that both Vista and Leopard were late but from his wording, it sounds like vista was a about month later than Leopard. Yup, 4 years is only a bit more than 3 months. Bravo Paul, Bravo. ”
Leopard was slated to be released before Vista, it’s not really that important but it is entertaining seeing Karma bite Steve Jobs in the ass.
“Next he compares Time Machine to some odd-ball, unrelated, obscure server backup thing. WTF? He also says it requires an external drive WHICH IS FALSE! JUST REPARTITION YOUR DRIVE STUPID! He also says it will take hours and hours to pick the correct version of a file by using a much quicker date picker. Great, I guess you are unable to read dates and use Quick Look, Paul. ”
Time Machine is nothing but a gimmick. It’s a feature that’s existed in Windows since the 2003 Server iteration, and is definitely included in Vista.
“How about Vista’s 11,000 new features? Give me a list. I bet you’ll have a hard time finding more than 500 after 5 years unless you count each pixel in the windows logo a new feature. ”
Considering that apple.com names things like “Zoom in on iDVD” as a feature, it shouldn’t be too hard to find 500 features.
Hell, I’d bet I can twist words around and get 300 new features out of Windows Vista SP1 alone.
“How about spotlight being copied from windows? Searching for files has been out for ages, the only new feature vista added was a method to slowly search the start menu and to make searches painfully slow. ”
Longhorn showed off instant search at a PDC before it was even introduced into OSX. It’s sort of hard to take you seriously when you tack on stupidity to the end of every one of your statements.
“Longhorn showed off instant search at a PDC before it was even introduced into OSX.”
Actually, indexing the drive has been around a lot longer than that. Can you say “Magellan”? And it came on 5 1/4″ floppy disks. 🙂
But it was probably around before that as well.
Having been burned by backups on the same disk (when the physical disk fails… kaput! Never mind that the backups actually weren’t being done and no one was told…) While it can be done, backing up onto the same drive only guards against software failure.
You want a backup in another physical device. Really, you do. Maybe even in another computer. In another room. In another building. On the moon.
I’d recommend that you read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Windows_Vist…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_safety_features_new_to_Wi…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_networking_technologies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_I/O_technologies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_features_new_to_Windows_Vis…
and corresponding main articles. You’ll get your features.
Edited 2007-10-30 09:57
Unfortunately, to reach the 300 new features for OS X, Apple had to do just that, among their 300 new features:
– A link to Google Maps
– Boot Camp adds SEVEN features of the 300 (Boot Camp, Boot Camp Assist, the drivers, copying files, keyboard support, and a taskbar shortcut are among the new Leopard features, Microsoft would have just listed “Boot Camp” as the new feature
– Apple specifically lists “New Look” as a new feature for Safari
– 14 of the new features on the list are for adding new langauges, which takes up to 3 new features each (X spell check, X support in dictionary, X localization support)
– Apparently “Printer Support” is a new feature in Leopard
– Safari’s list (13 features) is mostly talking about the addition of DnD support for tabs, same for Terminal (same exact new feature)
– 6 new screensavers, errm, features were added
– Spaces adds 5 features
– Empty Trash Button is a very impressive feature
– Time Machine is 11 features
I could go on, but as you can see, if Microsoft measured features like that (“New Look”, 8 different new features for each application where they added tab DnD support, 3 features for each language it supports, and stuff like “Printer Support” as new features, you can get to whatever number you want pretty quickly.
I mentioned over 60 of Leopard’s new features in this post.
Edited 2007-10-30 16:19
>if Microsoft measured features like that (“New Look”, 8 different new
>features for each application where they added tab DnD support, 3
>features for each language it supports, and stuff like “Printer Support” as
>new features, you can get to whatever number you want pretty quickly.
Well why MS doesn’t measure features like that? They are free to. I dont think anyone will mind or have a problem with that whatsoever. So your post is kind of pointless my friend I have to say.
To help you get it, the problem people have is there product “Vista” is slowwwwwwwwww as hell and annoying like having food stuck between your teeth that you cant get out. Constantly gets in your way of doing things, lowers the productivity and demoralizes people emotionally by frustrating the user.
For Microsoft to be great, again, they will have to STOP releasing new features for then next 10 years and just work on improving/revising the existing functionality to the point it is perfect again and usable by human beings.
This isn’t about Vista. This is about the deceptive, lying marketing practices that Apple is doing, showing they are MORE dishonest then Microsoft.
Come on, if Microsoft came out with a feature list like this with Vista, Apple and others would have been running all over it pointing out how all the new features are just restating the same one 100 times. The fact is, the article is right, this isn’t a real major release of OS X. Beyond what the article said, it really doesn’t have a lot of new features, and none of the new features are really impressive and make switching to Mac worthwhile over the previous releases. The vast majority of new features in this release are rather small and not very impressive. The most impressive features is Spaces, which linux has provided for years and is readily available on windows.
Am I missing something here? What deceptive practices are you talking about I mean you aren’t surely saying that MS doesn’t engage in such tactic right?
If you think Spaces is the most impressive feature you are either intellectually dishonest or simply not reading about the other features.
You know, when you have a very small market share like Apple (in comparison with the total computer market) it would seem sensible to attract developers to your platform like crazy in order to get the applications that will increase your userbase. Not so it seems:
http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t102936.html
Ahhhhh. Microsoft can always count on Apple’s smugness in the end, and basically not having a clue.
What, the complaints that JOptionPane respects the Aqua UI guidelines instead of the Swing guidelines by showing the application icon instead of some foreign Swing icon is a bad thing? Really? I thought everyone wanted to make Java look as native as possible?
As for Java being released late, look at how Apple has historically released Java. http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2007/10/28/os-x-java-definitive-ti… . Java 6 will come in a month or two and may be pushed out via software update.
Java is just fine on the Mac. In fact of all the Java implementation out there, it’s the one that looks and feels the most native. I’m actually using Netbeans on OS X instead of Eclipse while I can’t stand how Netbeans looks and performs on Linux. Says a lot about how Java feels on OS X to me.
Is Java on OS X perfect? No. Then again Java isn’t perfect on any platform. This thread on Javalobby is just a bunch of people giving a knee jerk reaction to Leopard, pointing the finger at “Apple arrogance” etc.
I Purchased Leopard for my Mac Mini, a PPC 1.25 with 1 gig of ram.
Installed, works ok, but my menu bar isn’t transparent, it’s not my “wallpaper” or anything, it’s opaque.
I ran one of the last seeds for a bit, it had the transparent menu bar.
Everything else seems to work fine, reflections on the dock, but no transparent menu bar.
I know some people would kill for this, but I for one liked the transparent menu bar.
Hope an update sorts it, maybe apple will give us an on/off switch for it?
This sounds like a lack of support for these features from the ATI Radeon 9200 graphics chip in your Mac Mini. It’s probably somewhat the same thing that makes it unable to display that hideous ‘ripple effect’ when adding widgets to your Dashboard …
And since it’s probably a lack of hardware support, you’re never gonna see the effects in question on your Mac Mini …
And so the Apple bashers come out in full force. One thing atleast you can be assured of, it’ll actually get fixed.
1) Java was not merged because Java 6 was probably not mature enough – do developers want a framework that work, end users want a framework that actually works.
I’d say to Apple, take your time, get 10.4.11 sorted out, get 10.5.1 sorted out and when you ship Java 6, make sure it actually hits the ground running rather than bringing in something that is buggy and problematic.
2) There are bugs with x.0 releases; whether its Windows or Mac OS X – but lets not blow this completely out of proportion. The vast majority of people and reviewers who have installed Leopard have raved about how surprisingly good it is for a x.0 product.
3) For those having problems – interesting, almost everyone of these people seem to be those who don’t take the advice and do an ‘archive and install’. If you do have problems, don’t lie about the fact you didn’t follow good practice – then spout garbage on your blog about issues that you yourself created.
Umm what are you talking about? Java 6 has been out for a long time for other platforms how is it not mature?
well, for java, lets hope so. but Java 6 already had 3 updates in other three major platforms, so it would be no so fair to call it “buggy and problematic”. what apple really did wrong was not to give any explanations about it. there is a big java developer crowd using macs and this attitude is disappointing them badly.
Dear god, ok, I’ll go and get the source code, find some operating system and just compile – I can’t? it might need to be ported! but according to ahmetaa and siimo, not testing should be required, it all works!
Please, get a clue. Just because Java 6 is available for Linux and Windows, doesn’t mean that its just an automatic compile away; get a clue on what Apple does, then come back spouting uninformed garbage.
Edited 2007-10-30 03:59
+1 kaiwai!
Having worked to port Java 1.4.2 to BeOS, I know what Apple goes through to get it working.
The Sun code (last I looked) didn’t have a PPC hotspot implementation. So Apple for all these years has been maintaining PPC hotspot in server and client versions, and more recently x86 hotspot in server and client versions. That’s FOUR VM’s to maintain! FOUR. The only other company that does that much work is Sun, and I guarantee they have more engineers dedicated to Java than Apple does.
Java 6 made a lot of changes to the hotspot VM, and backporting those changes to a PPC VM would certainly be difficult.
I’m going to guess that the changes to coreimage, the 2D rendering on Leopard, etc. are the core problems with the Java2D breakage in Java 1.5 on Leopard.
My gut feeling is that Apple was ‘close’ to getting JDK6 out the door with Leopard but that the Oct deadline to ship by the Christmas shopping season put too much of a squeeze on their efforts.
My guess is that when the JDK6 does ship, it will be fantastic. I’ll probably have the entire Java2D implementation updated to work with the new rendering models on Leopard, it’ll probably integrate better than the previous JDK’s on the previous releases of OS X, and it’ll probably be one of the best JDK’s and JRE’s out there once again.
This has all the classic marks of ‘feature cut to fit timeframe, expect it in a point release’. Seriously.
Another tell-tale sign for me is that not too long ago, Apple was looking for people to work on AWT bindings. The old Apple JRE from OS 9 was Carbon. There’s good reason to believe that they kept it as Carbon when they moved it to OS X. The future of Carbon is Cocoa… why not take the opportunity of redoing the rendering model for Java2D to also update your AWT stack? The two are very tightly married, and the engineer in me see that it would make total sense to do it all at once.
I just have a hunch that their ambitions for the update made them bite off more than they could chew.
Sun is restructuring a lot in Java 6. I’d rather Apple wait to release Java 6 after Sun releases their upcoming update. The JavaFX, the Consumer JRE and changes to threading and Applets are just a few major changes that depending on how they are implemented will have to be addressed at Apple and it’s Java infrastructure.
The only thing I’ve seen so far that’s of genuine concern to me is the anemic firewall. Other than that, I have absolutely no problem with any of the UI changes in Leopard. Call me esthetically clueless if you will, but I’m an unabashed fan of eye candy, and I’ve had no usability problems whatsoever.
*Sees many positive reviews and cannot tolerate it.*
Damn Leopard! Worst piece of crap ever! Let’s just poach it!
I would do the hack to get the triangles back, except I went with the classic flat OSX docker on the bottom and that is a transparent black so it would defeat the purpose. Coincidentally (or not) the blue sphere works perfectly and fit well on that dock. Kind of stupid of Apple to put blue on blue. If only we could change the color. The “classic” dock is smoother than the new one by quite a bit, there seems to be a bit of dropped frames on the flat dock, most likely because of the reflection effects among other things.
I enjoyed reading some of the in depth features.
Instead of watching Jerry Springer these days, I just log onto OSNews and find the nearest “Windows Vista” “Leopard” or “Ubuntu” news piece.
From the article:
While the Apple hype machine and its fanatical followers
Why is it that all who like Mac OS X are stamped as “fanatics”
Let me show you fanaticism: out of last 70 news on OSNews 28 are about Linux and it’s relatives. That’s 40% folks! 40% of the stories are about an operating system almost no one use. 40%. That’s a good portion of “fanaticism”
————————————————-
– Leopard: Review, Complaints, Hacks – Posted on 2007-10-29
– Introducing FreeBSD 7.0 – Posted on 2007-10-29
– Microsoft Apologizes for Update Blunder – Posted on 2007-10-29
– Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: the Ars Technica Review – Posted on 2007-10-29
– Common Usability Terms, pt. II: the Icon – Posted on 2007-10-28
* ‘Linux Doesn’t Lack Drivers, It Lacks Complete Drivers’ – Posted on 2007-10-28
– Mother Goes Against Universal Music – Posted on 2007-10-27
– Create Lisp Apps with Cusp Eclipse Plug-In – Posted on 2007-10-27
– The Unlocked iPhone – Posted on 2007-10-27
– Review: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard – Posted on 2007-10-26
– Microsoft Beats Street, Reports Strongest Q1 in 8 Years – Posted on 2007-10-26
– Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Released – Posted on 2007-10-26
* Gobe Productive Running in Haiku – Posted on 2007-10-26
* The Linux-based Neuros OSD – Posted on 2007-10-26
– ‘Apple’s Leopard Leaps to New Heights’ – Posted on 2007-10-26
* ‘Linux Losing Market Share to Windows Server’ – Posted on 2007-10-26
– Common Usability Terms, pt. I: Spatial Memory – Posted on 2007-10-25
– Opera 9.5 Beta Released – Posted on 2007-10-25
– OpenBSD: Virtualization Security – Posted on 2007-10-25
– Reviews: Mac OS X Leopard – Posted on 2007-10-25
* Red Hat Voices Concerns Over Microsoft Patent Model – Posted on 2007-10-25
* Fair User Scheduling for Linux – Posted on 2007-10-25
* Ubuntu 7.10 Pragmatic Visual Presentation Critique – Posted on 2007-10-25
* Gimp 2.4 Released – Posted on 2007-10-24
– ZFS Puts Net App Viability at Risk? – Posted on 2007-10-24
– Microsoft Releases Virtual Machine Additions for Linux – Posted on 2007-10-24
* Asian Linux Distributor Strikes Patent Covenant with Microsoft – Posted on 2007-10-24
– The Helios-Labs H4000 DVD/DivX Player – Posted on 2007-10-24
– Mac OS X Leopard Gets Last Minute Tweaks – Posted on 2007-10-24
– Apple Reports a Stellar Quarter – Posted on 2007-10-23
– Experimental ‘Functional’ Language Emerges from Microsoft Research – Posted on 2007-10-23
* AMD 8.42 Linux Driver Brings Fixes, Aiglx – Posted on 2007-10-23
– FreeBSD 7.0 Beta 1 Released – Posted on 2007-10-23
– ‘Driver Updates Causing Vista to Deactivate’ – Posted on 2007-10-23
* Fedora 8 Renews Tradition of Innovations – Posted on 2007-10-23
– Review: HTC TyTN-II (“Kaiser”) – Posted on 2007-10-22
* Trolltech Discontinues Linux ‘Greenphone’ – Posted on 2007-10-22
– Sun Scrapping Mobile Java, Moving Devices to Standard Java – Posted on 2007-10-22
– Thoughts on ‘MinWin’, Windows 7, and Virtualisation – Posted on 2007-10-22
– A History of the Amiga, Part 4: Enter Commodore – Posted on 2007-10-22
– Microsoft Finally Bows to EU Ruling – Posted on 2007-10-22
* Winefix: Improved Desktop Integration for Wine – Posted on 2007-10-22
– Core of ‘Windows 7’ Taking Shape: Meet the ‘MinWin’ Kernel – Posted on 2007-10-22
* How to Replace Windows Completely with Ubuntu – Posted on 2007-10-22
– Classic AmigaOS 4.0 To Ship on November 30th – Posted on 2007-10-21
* GNU Classpath 0.96, IcedTea 1.4 Released – Posted on 2007-10-21
– NetBSD 4.0 RC3 Released – Posted on 2007-10-21
* SELinux Sparks Tussle Over Linux Security Model – Posted on 2007-10-21
– Apple Publishes Leopard Guided Tour – Posted on 2007-10-21
– DOS Lives: Secrets of the Windows Command Prompt – Posted on 2007-10-21
* Ubuntu 7.10 with WINE vs. Windows XP – Posted on 2007-10-21
* xmonad 0.4 Released – Posted on 2007-10-19
– States Ask for Microsoft Oversight Until 2012 – Posted on 2007-10-19
* Ten Years of pkgsrc – Posted on 2007-10-19
* Linux Assemblers: Comparison of GAS, NASM – Posted on 2007-10-19
* GNOME 2.20.1 Released – Posted on 2007-10-18
* Review: Inspiron 1420n with Ubuntu – Posted on 2007-10-18
– Firefox 3 To Go Native in Appearance – Posted on 2007-10-18
– Review: Windows XP SP3 Beta – Posted on 2007-10-18
– The House of the Future – Posted on 2007-10-18
* Ubuntu 7.10 Released – Posted on 2007-10-18
* KDE 4.0 Beta 3 Released – Posted on 2007-10-17
* ‘Linspire 6: Two Steps Back’ – Posted on 2007-10-17
– Third Party Applications on the iPhone and Touch – Posted on 2007-10-17
– Nokia Announces the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet – Posted on 2007-10-17
* KDE 3.5.8 Released – Posted on 2007-10-16
* Review: Mandriva PowerPack 2008.0 – Posted on 2007-10-16
– OSI Approves Microsoft License Submissions – Posted on 2007-10-16
* Project Indiana Release Brings New Package Manager – Posted on 2007-10-16
– Review: A9home vs. Koolu – Posted on 2007-10-16
————————————————-
Should I stop reading OSNews ?
that it must be getting difficult figuring out how to massage another USD 129 out even the most ardent fans
While I would argue with the ‘excellent’ part, that one phrase hits it on the head because only apple has the balls to charge as much as the original OS for what would in the Windows world be a service pack… Frankly there’s nothing in Leopard that warrants the price of the upgrade – ooh look, goofy eye candy.
Goofy ***ing eye candy and bloat there should be a way to turn OFF at that.
Edited 2007-10-30 04:57
A quick diversion to something totally unimportant, to some anyway.
The holographic printing on the box is really well done. Kudos!
Now back our regularly scheduled technical broadcast. 😉
The interesting thing is Thurrot’s ‘suggestive wording’. While he does have some good points, they are buried in the suggestive wording of the article. The intention seems to be to paint a bright(er) view of Vista while appearing to talk about Leopard.
Let’s read between the lines:
“While the Apple hype machine”
Translation: Apple is nothing more than a hype machine
“and its fanatical followers”
Translation: Apple users are fanboys
“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.”
Translation: actually it’s not a major upgrade at all (like Vista is)
“Instead, Leopard is yet another evolutionary upgrade in a long line of evolutionary OS X upgrades, all of which date back to the original OS X release in 2001.”
Translation: Apple has not succeeded in delivering a revolutionary upgrade ever since original OS X in 2001.
“But let me get one huge misunderstanding out of the way immediately: That’s not a dig at Leopard at all.”
Translation: let me regain some of my lost credibility so I can continue to manipulate you through the rest of the article.
“Indeed, if anything, Apple is in an enviable position: 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.”
Translation: 129*5=645 , hey that’s even more than Vista Ultimate! (‘Apple users sure pay a lot’)
“See the compliment for what it is: As is the case with Windows these days, it’s getting hard for Apple to top the last release.”
Translation: in the following paragraphs I am going to make faulty comparisons in order to make Vista look better.
(Some example quote tidbits):
– ‘Unlike Leopard, Windows Vista has been rearchitected from the ground up’
– ‘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: In the Windows world, such releases are called service packs.’
“With that clearing of the air out of the way”
Translation: desinformation mission accomplished
“Is it enough to make Vista users switch to the Dark Side? You know, I don’t believe so, but I’ll get to that in a bit.”
Translation: since the objective is to make Vista look better, you really didn’t think I was going to say they were going to switch, were you?
‘even a casual examination of the new feature list reveals that the vast majority of those “features” are hardly anything to write home about’
Translation: there are not many really worthwhile improvements in Leopard.
“There’s Time Machine, a bizarre take on the Previous Versions feature in Windows.”
Translation: Time Machine fscks, all hail Previous Versions
“And there’s Spaces, a pleasant graphical front-end to the workspaces functionality that’s been available in UNIX and Linux since, well, forever. What’s old is new again.”
Translation: this Leopard is a copycat
I’m going to stop here, the rest of the article follows the same theme/meme. Just count the amount of negatives in the articles:
– ‘nothing could be further from the truth’
– ‘that it must be getting difficult figuring out how to massage another $129 out even the most ardent fans’
– ‘Both Leopard and Vista were horribly late’
– ‘Unlike Leopard, Windows Vista has been rearchitected from the ground up’
– ‘no major architectural changes
– ‘which makes me wonder why Apple is even charging for it’
– ‘that the vast majority of those “features” are hardly anything to write home about’
– ‘there are precious few truly new features’
– ‘Time Machine, a bizarre take on the Previous Versions feature in Windows’
– ‘workspaces functionality that’s been available in UNIX and Linux since, well, forever. What’s old is new again.’
– ‘though third party tools have provided most of this functionality for years’
– ‘with a truly juvenile user interface, one that is horribly out of place’
– ‘The restore UI, as mentioned previously, is absolutely insane.’
– ‘Not to belabor the point, but this is a problem Vista users won’t face
– ‘Apple takes a big step back in Leopard’
– ‘The effect is ugly’
– ‘It just looks ugly.’
– ‘worse is the updated dock’.
– ‘As ever, the Dock is a usability nightmare’
– ‘Its added a useful if limited new feature called Stacks to the Dock to close the gap with the superior and more logical Windows Start Menu’
– ‘Apple’s lackluster Safari Web browser ‘
– ‘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.’
– ‘shipping such an inconsequential upgrade in the wake of Hurricane Vista was a mistake’
Paul’s conclusion: Leopard is ‘good’… and by good he means: incomplete, expensive and (drum roll) NOT AS GOOD AS VISTA (all hail Longhorn).
I’ll take the Ars Technica review over this drivel any day, thank you very much.
Edited 2007-10-30 07:38
I agree. The article is full of double-talk. While appearing to do a review of Leopard, it is in fact trying to do a not-so-subtle comparison of Leopard vs Vista, which is many times in-your-face and utterly unprofessional from someone like Thurrot. The entire gist of the article is aimed at holding Windows users who could be eyeing the purchase of a new Mac in the holiday season with Leopard on it.
Also, Thurrot is trying his very best to make the (uninformed) reader believe that Leopard is nothing but a poor copy of Vista and it will be a very bad idea to switch to the “Dark SIde”. See these pearls of wisdom for illustration…
“Indeed, the parallels between Vista and Leopard are hard to ignore, and not just because Jobs and Company have spent the past several years being more fixated on Vista than perhaps even I’ve been.”
We know who run the copiers and in which direction. It would be stupid to argue that Leopard was delayed so it could copy the “fine” features from Vista. The 6 months delay was due to reassignment of internal resources to the iPhone project.
“here’s Time Machine, a bizarre take on the Previous Versions feature in Windows.”
No sense in comparing a server-only feature with one of the best features in Leopard, which has been pretty nicely done. It looks like Apple might actually succeed in making backing up look like a sexy thing to do with the “bizzarre” interface and all, which Microsoft has been unsuccessful in doing even with their many years of Desktop domination. The only thing lacking from it is that it backs up whole files instead of diffs, but this could be on the way when the Mac port of ZFS is complete.
“Its added a useful if limited new feature called Stacks to the Dock to close the gap with the superior and more logical Windows Start Menu.”
I do not get the comparison. Windows start menu is a completely different user interface from the Dock. The Windows start menu is like an “application menu” for the entire Windows, where as the dock isn’t. The Stacks /grid feature gives an entirely different user experience from the Windows menu.
“Apple’s file manager application, the Finder, has always been adequate, but this time around it’s been upgraded with a number of Vista-like features, including a new look and feel (based, go figure, on iTunes) and a semi-customizable sidebar.”
Again the not-so-subtle talk about the reverse xerox at work…
There are many more. I dont want to carp on these. The article should be renamed as “A comparison between Leopard and my favorite Vista” instead of “Apple Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard review”.
Paul, do yourself a favor and read up the excellent and informative article on Leopard by the consistent
John Siracusa who actually seems to know what he is writing about. I would take a Windows review anyday from you, but you have not done your homework before doing this Leopard “review”.
Hey, thanks for the great rebuttal. I laughed all the way through it. It seems like such a waste of talent, though, taking all that time replying to such a bad article. 🙂 I had a much easier time wading through the Ars article. They at least seemed to be a bit more objective.
Given John Siracusa’s excellent article on Mac OS X just a few days ago, that statement is laughable. For example, the kernel and the addition of DTrace, FSEvents, Resolution independence and better task scheduling. These aren’t necessarily visible to the user, but they require a lot of work to implement.
I look forward to reading “Linux: It’s better than smashing your thumb repeatedly with a hammer” in the near future.
Classic example not to take security for granted. The first thing i do when i have a new firewall is conducting a leaktest.
Agreeing with Darkelve above, ArsTechnica has spoken the other day about Leopard. And as always, any other review after them seems just litter.
Agreed, there is a lot of similarities with leopard and Vista in that a lot of changes have happened under the hood.
The Ars artical summed everything up nicely, in fact i don’t think ive ever read a bad review from that site, very trustworthy review source.
Hi Thom, sorry to use this method to communicate with you. I have sent two e-mails (last weekend and the weekend before). It seems like you never got them. Plz check your spam and/or contact me under christian DOT paratschek AT gmx.at
Thank you!
Are there problems with Leopard? Sure. I point first to the price, $129, which is extravagant for a product that’s been updated so frequently since 2001.
After which i stopped reading. I should have known better the article is just a cheap attempt to bash OSX.
The all situation with Java on Leopard just goes to show that all companies can be bad or good with their customers
as Microsoft.
If Apple already has this type of attitude with a small market share, how would it look like if they changed place with Microsoft?
Add this to the article. Leopard BSoD during upgrade:
http://daringfireball.net/2007/10/blue_in_the_face
You mean the BSoD that is caused by having a third party app installed in a place it isn’t supposed to be installed?
I’ve never done upgrades and never will and thats your reason why. Apple have already admitted the problem and made solutions, it’s not just OS X that has upgrade issues.
“When Apple copied Microsoft’s instant search feature to create Spotlight”
I’m sure this glorified blogger has heard of BeOS – perhaps even that the BFS creator now works at Apple – but he isn’t interested in accuracy or objectivity, because it doesn’t fit his template.
Doing a rough “Vista-like” find function on that page, I counted 46 mentions of the OS that Thurrott seems to be so keen on.
He seems to think that dismissing Apple users as fanboys exonerates him from all criticism of poor journalism. If only that were true, Paul.
Make no mistake. Vista is causing our PC shop to take Lithium. I’m sure OS X will do the same for me.
Greetings all, allow me to introduce myself.
I’m not a developer, or computer professional of any kind, just someone interested with technology in general.
Mac is my platform of choice, I dabble in Linux and recommend it to many people, I don’t use any MS products, I have used a terminal, but for my needs it is not required, I am a software junky of sorts and have discovered a lot of great apps over the years from the open source community, and third party developers, that I use on a daily basis.
Unlike an average user, I have to know how everything works, and what it does, so when I upgrade my OS, or load new software, I open every app on the system, press every button, look at and reset all the preferences to my liking, and see what they do, if it’s useful, I use it, if not, and if its not essential to the OS, I toss it.
I’ve been coming to read articles at osnews on a daily basis for about five years now, I have posted a couple times in Mac threads, got jumped on once by the experts, but all in all, through all the bickering between the various camps, I’ve learned a lot.
After reading the Ars article yesterday, I read Thurrott’s piece.
What can I say, it’s already been said further up the thread, and quite well I might add.
Regarding the incredible high cost of OS X’s incremental upgrades.
Coming from 10.28, I was happy to be able to drop $129.00 on 10.4.8 for the speed bump alone, and it will serve me well on my 1 gig lamp for years to come, or until I purchase a new Mac with 10.5 or 10.6, or whatever, and if they don’t anger me.
Tiger also runs great on a 400 mhz G3 Sawtooth with 640 mb of ram, but you can probably run Vista on old hardware just as well I would assume, although I know nothing about Vista except for what I’ve read here at OSnews.
(had to take at least one cheap shot)
Just imagine what that guy running classic is going to do when he upgrades to the latest version of OS X, it will be like getting a brand new computer for $129.00!
Concerning the chink in OS X’s armor, specifically the horrible firewall.
Like I said I’m not a computer professional, I’ve been doing a little reading, and I know there are people here who can answer my question and shed some light on my shortcomings, without crucifying me.
Is it possible that the passive ftp mode in: system preferences/network, show: VPN/proxies/ passive FTP mode, has anything to do with the firewall fault.
Please be gentle with me, I like my babies and puppies deep fried!
I’m running Vista on a dual core AMD64 3800+ and an integrated Radeon graphics card and it is not enough. It starts up fine but the usage is slow and even with 1GB of ram its still slower than it should be. In comparison Ubuntu runs faster if not comparably on a T42 laptop.
OSX runs rather well on our old 1st gen Mac Mini. It ran well with just 256MB of ram, with just a noticeable lag in application usage. You can’t even use XP reasonably on 256MB of ram. Vista wouldn’t even run on so little ram. Apple’s success in this area has a lot to do with perception. The UI is smooth and makes up for a lot because eventhough the truth may be otherwise, the smoothness implies speed.
Vista is an okay, OS. It had a lot of potential, but over-ambition is its largest failing, imo. I think MS could benefit greatly from incremental releases, its a steady stream of revenue (only if the user actually want to upgrade) and Vista could have been a whole different beast if they had taken out incremental versions along the way.
I take issue with the comment that Windows XP doesn’t run well with 256MB of RAM. There’s this popular misconception that Windows XP is extremely slow. This may be true if you install off the CD and leave it as-is, but with a bit of simple tweaking the OS is very fast. I’ve run XP on this laptop that had only 96MB of RAM, and while it wasn’t a speed demon, it was faster than any other OS with the same level of usability/ease of use was on it. I used nLite to customize the install and get rid of all the stuff I didn’t need, considerably tweaked services, and ran the classic interface.
Windows XP may have its fair share of issues, but speed isn’t one of them.
Just to throw in there for fun, I have also installed Vista Ultimate (vLite/Tweaks) on this laptop after putting 512MB RAM into it. It installed and worked fine, just slowly.
Overall, I prefer to use Linux here, though this old hardware (Inspiron 5000/P3 600MHz) seems to be barely supported.
Edited 2007-10-30 17:23
yes but the point is that out of the box XP is not optimized. This is not just a misconception. XP is slow, before SP1 it was fast after SP2 its slow. MS cheats quite a bit with their startup times by starting services after the user logs in. This can be a painful process sometimes. With all the crap that people install it freaking incredible how slow windows can be without 512MB and up. OSX’s startup time is pretty quick and sometimes I’m surprised at how quick the desktop loads. I can say the same thing about Linux. Ubuntu startup, especially a clean installation is pretty damn quick, and eventhough the desktop doesn’t load as fast as I would like, when its up its up. You on’t have to wait for an hourglass to go away before you can use the desktop.
I work in an office which primarily has Xp machines, and 256MB is nowhere near enough for XP to really be speedy, 512 is fine ( I remember when the recommended specs for XP came out, I was like “What?! 64 MB should be more than enough to run anything”, now I think 2GB isn’t enough.
Hillarious! Gosh I hope my government is paying attention to this Thurrott character since they are banning Magic Mushrooms here in Holland. Could one of you civil servents please contact this Thurott to ask what he has been smoking in order to write this “review” and please, please, please make that stuff legal.
I have to say that I was really looking forward to Stacks, but was seriously disappointed by it out of the box. I hated the way the Applications stack simply could not display all of my apps, and that I could not turn off the stacks function and turn it back into a menu, which I always used in the Dock. And making the stacks take on the icons of the first items in them? OOF!
But once I started thinking about it, I realized that I could create a folder in my home directory and place other folder within it each named by category (Office, Internet, Utilities, etc.)and then simply put aliases of whatever apps I wanted to put in the categories, and then place those folders on the Dock as stacks. It Rox!
The only problem was the icons, but that is quickly solved by putting an empty folder named with a space as the first character in each folder, and that give the stacks a folder icon.
It rox, and I’m glad I didn’t just give up on stacks. Now I have to find some cool icons to give the folders to give them very distinct appearances…
I installed Leopard on my macbook, and it makes things so difficult on macbook’s small screen. I use small sized dock (smallest possible), and in leopard, with that size, dock is nearly useless. I can hardly distinguish icons. Also overall effect of the visual changes is retrogressive. Plus without the options to move and open files from keyboard, it makes my life hell. I am as usual seeing wheel of colors and I feel leopard responsiveness is not that much different from tiger’s. Coming to spaces, when Cmd+Tab is used all the open apps in different spaces are shown. There are no other options to choose from. Also the transition effect when moving from one space to another is straining my eyes. IMO, the concept of spaces is half implemented, and in its current state, it is useless for me.
I don’t care much about the under the hood changes and for me leopard is a let down.