Submitted by Apple has revealed Leopard’s releast date to be 26th October, confirming earlier rumours. “Packed with more than 300 new features, Mac OS X Leopard goes on sale Friday, October 26, at 6:00 p.m. at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, Apple announced today. And, beginning today, customers can place pre-orders on Apple’s online store.”
I’m really happy with this news and cannot wait to test new OSX. However I am still going to use Thunderbird instead of Mail.app since the latter (still) cannot do propper mail threading.
Kind regards,
I’ve read some truly messed up comments up and down the web today. Here’s some salvo’s to ward off the stupidity landing here.
a) A number is not more important than actual functions. Calling Leopard a “point release” is dumb. Windows is after all just as much a “point release”. Windows 2000 -> NT 5.0, Windows XP -> 5.1, Windows 2003 -> NT 5.2. Point is moot.
ii.) The 300 number is a little stretched, but not totally devoid like some try to make it out. Here’s a list of genuinely serious features:
* UI recording for Automator. Make OS macros just by point and click. No such thing in Vista.
* Spring-loaded dock. The dock finally gets the Windows feature of being able to drag objects onto a minimized window! Hurrah, finally.
* Wikipedia in the Dictionary app. A system wide dictionary is joy. No such thing in Vista.
* Japanese «» English dictionary. This is a big thing for someone like me, and even if you never use it, it’s still a big accomplishment for Apple to create, and include in the OS. No such thing in Vista
* Chapter thumbnails in DVD player, Automatic pillerbox removal, scratched disc recovery. No such thing in Vista.
* Screen sharing. Only present as a client app in certain versions of Windows.
* System Font Protection. Delete fonts willy nilly and don’t worry about accidentally deleting your defaults. Vista kind of does this by annoying you so much with the UAC that you wouldn’t /want/ to delete fonts.
* CalDev Group Scheduling in iCal. No such thing in Vista, go buy Outlook.
* Photobooth and backround effects in iChat, no such thing in MSN.
* Simple mail setup. POP details auto filled for 30 popular mail services. Go fish in Windows Mail.
* More photobooth features, like animations and backdrops. Nothing like this in Vista
* Better preview, better PDF features (Vista doesn’t even support this out-of-the-box), “instant-alpha”.
* Printer updates via Software Update! Hurrah. Windows users have to live with ten items from HP in their startup list.
* Download tagging – a somewhat annoying feature from XP, now present on Leopard. Sandboxing, present in Vista, Apple have now catched up on this one; that said Apple are not the ones dealing with hundreds of thousands of virii and malware.
* Spaces. No such thing in Vista.
* Calculations in the search field. No such thing in vista
* Dictionary definitions in the search field. No such thing in Vista.
* OOXML support in TextEdit. That would be like WordPad having .docx support. Do you think that is *ever* going to happen? Not when Microsoft can sell you Office.
* Time Machine. Backup that just f*cking works. For regular people. VSC != Time Machine, go do some research before even bringing VSC up.
* Accessibility that goes beyond everything in Windows
* XCode3. The full IDE provided with the OS. No Express editions, no silly EULAs restricting you to toy making. XCode3 is a serious piece of kit, now with DTrace.
Exactly. VSC is much more advanced than Time Machine. It just doesn’t sport the flying star UI.
Guh, this is what I meant. Time Machine is a piece of backup software, VSC is versioning software. These are not the same things. Please go back to backup 101.
Mac OS X already supports versioning, but just not as well as VSC; which only has a UI on the most expensive versions of Vista, and even then – it is not a regular user backup solution.
These two things are so disparate it only dumbfounds me that people can think VSC is “better” than time machine.
How is time machine NOT versioning? Vista simply has two tools to fit the same space, one for versioning, the other for backup.
There are two major differences between the two.
1) Time machine plunges you into a temporal vortex with folders cascading back to the big bang, which you can see throbbing in the background. Shadow copy is a tab in the properties dialog.
2) Time machine REQUIRES an external hard drive. Shadow Copy works on your existing one.
If you want to see the regular user backup solution for vista, it is here http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/det…,
the slightly misleadingly named Windows Backup and Restore Center.
A backup on the same disk is not a backup at all.
Time Machine allows you to do full search queries through the entire history, VSC does not because VSC is just a versioning system like Journalling on HFS+ is.
…which is why I pointed out that this is the backup solution for vista (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/det…)
Journaling on HFS+ is a crash recovery mechanism so that the file tables arent fragged due to an unanticipated power loss. That is not versioning. Versioning keeps multiple versions of the same document available to you. This is what both shadow copy and time machine does. Time machine is meant to be a backup solution TOO, which is why an external HD is required. The Vista way is you have versioning and your backup system as two separate processes.
Which is a better idea is up for debate.
And the full list can be found here :
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html
ODF and OOXML in TextEdit.
Personally, ODF in TextEdit will be a big hit for OS X and Linux clients that will grow in collaboration.
I personally think it’s good because I won’t have to run OpenOffice.org on Mac OS X just for ODF files.
You know, I run both Linux (OpenSUSE 10.3) and Windows (XP), but I must say this Leopard thing looks like it will be very pleasant to use; lots of practical touches like the To-Do feature in the mail client, calculations in the spotlight thing, stacks and auto-downloads to the downloads folder (I always create such a folder myself anyways), … I must admit it all looks pretty sharp (although I don’t like the fact that there are no sideways borders around certain apps, looks ugly IMO)
Also, now that you mention Automator, I see it’s not any longer in the list with features on Apple’s webpages… and when I search for it on Apple’s website I get an error 404.
It’s a shame, I really wanted to take another look at it.
Edited 2007-10-17 06:43
Okay… so I finally found it. Here is the link on Apple’s site in case anyone else is interested (since most other links to automator on Apple’s website do not work… I believe it had a seperate page before but somehow that is gone).
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html#automator
Edited 2007-10-18 19:14
In the past the educational pricing for OS X has been around $69 dollars in the US. I’ve just noticed that for Leopard it’s $116 – a whole $13 discount from the normal price. Oh well.
Well, the dollar has changed in value since initial Mac OS X pricing in 2001, a lot. Mac OS X has been getting cheaper year on year. I suppose they have decided to make up for this by raising education prices instead of retail prices.
Update: From MacRumors
Education institution pricing is still $69, including for Leopard. Institutional pricing is what departmental components of universities pay for the product.
Universities can still choose to resell Leopard in their own stores for $69, since that is the institutional price. For example, Leopard will still be sold to indivuduals, including faculty, staff, and students, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for $69.
The $116 is for individual home/office use who have a valid university id. You could be taking one class for your university and work full-time and want this for home use. You pay it for $116. Or, you go to your institute and request they get Institutional level pricing and it’s up to them if they want to make the resale value $69.
£85 for leopard, makes Vista look like a right ripoff. Oh sorry correction, it was anyway.
http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore/
Bargain price. Here’s a retail copy of Vista Ultimate http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?MS-VUR £351.32 ($713.88)
And you’ll need to contact Microsoft to get a 64-bit disc, because Leopard comes with 64-bit and 32-bit versions together.
Such value for money.
And with Leopard, everyone gets the ultimate version .. lol priceless 🙂
You are forgetting a few things:
a) Microsoft fixed it so that you only need to buy the upgrade version. Nobody needs to spend that amount for Ultimate. Microsoft has no intention of ‘unfixing’ this anytime soon.
b) Shop around and you can get this much more cheaply. Apple does not offer OEM versions, for one.
c) Retail versions come with both disks, so no need to contact Microsoft. I know; I am running Ultimate on my MBP.
d) Students will not be paying anything like $116 for Ultimate. Discounts are more generous, here.
e) Microsoft supports many more native languages out of the box. This is a big deal for me, and the only reason I got Vista over XP. With Leopard, you get Russian, Polish and Iberian Portuguese over Tiger. Big whoop.
No, let’s compare like for like:
a) Leopard ships as a non-upgrade disc so that it can be installed on a blank hard disk. Upgrade Vista is not a comparable version therefore.
b) You can shop around for Leopard too, Amazon are selling it cheaply. But £300 is par for course and that still doesn’t compare to Leopard
c) Okay. I just went by the eBuyer page that warned that you would need to contact Microsoft – also you don’t get the extra disc with the home versions, so Leopard still trounces Vista here
d) There’s been confusion over the education price. It is still $69. Even if Vista is cheaper on education, Leopard is still a better OS
e) Leopard now supports Russion, Polish and Iberian Portugese. XP didn’t have more than one language on the disc, at least Tiger supported 20 odd languages whilst XP users had to buy new discs to change language. Tiger / Leopard have better localisation features regardless.
Thats kroc (pardon the intended pun), the Vista upgrade edition is the same as the standard disk, except that you need to enter a key from an old version of Windows. Vista Upgrade Editions are comparable with Mac OS X, as they do not offer any non-upgrade editions. You must own a previous version of the Mac OS (the one included with your Mac) in order to purchase the next one. And saying Leopard is a better OS then Vista doesn’t make it true, neither does the supposed better localization features of Leopard. I’m personally one to hate Windows myself, but that is just a horrible comparison.
The fact that your having to explain this shows how confusing Vista’s version are. Both companies want to make money dont get me wrong, but charging £200-£350 for a OS that goes on 90% of machines is scandalous .
Actually my Windows Vista Business upgrade requires that I have a Windows XP install already accomplished…which requires me to put my windows 98 disc in during the upgrade.
It’s hardly as convenient as me just putting the “upgrade” disc in the drive and installing like Mac OSX has allowed me to do since 10.1.
“a) Leopard ships as a non-upgrade disc so that it can be installed on a blank hard disk. Upgrade Vista is not a comparable version therefore. ”
Vista upgrade can be installed on a blank hard disk, it just asked for a product key from an upgradable product.
Not only that but for that price you’ll actually get an OS that won’t run out of memory when copying files unlike its “competition” ( http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=829 )
Said bug was caused by third party software. It’s one thing to beat Vista down, but let’s not make up lies about its mother.
Said bug was caused by third party software. It’s one thing to beat Vista down, but let’s not make up lies about its mother.
I understand it’s a bug in the way file streams are handled which are rarely used in Windows except by said third party app. Still, have you tried copying a large amount of files under Vista ? Slow as molasses. People using Vista are using special software to handle copying a large number of files (robocopy apparently.)
You won’t have that in OsX not only do the basics work in the gui as advertised but if I want some more power I can just drop into the cli and pipe two tar’s together to copy files with optional compression.
I was trying to unzip 400MB in Vista. It was quoting over one hour to complete. I installed WinRAR, and unzipped the file in three minutes.
Said bug was caused by third party software. It’s one thing to beat Vista down, but let’s not make up lies about its mother.
The 3rd party app (coughkasperskycough) exacerbated the problem, that is to say it made it worse, but it didn’t cause it. The underlying issue is a Windows bug.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942435/en-us says
“When you try to copy files from a Windows Vista-based computer to another computer by using Windows Explorer, you may receive the following error message:
Out of memory
There is not enough memory to complete this operation.
…
This problem occurs because of a memory leak in the Windows OLE component. This memory leak is triggered by the way that Windows Explorer deals with the extended attributes of the files.
Finally it seems as if they’ve made iCal usable as a serious Calendar application. Apparently you can actually set a default alarm now, and it also has numerous Outlook features (Auto Pick, Availability, Delegation, etc). Nice.
My biggest decision is going to be, do I upgrade Tiger or blow it away and install Leopard fresh. For whatever reason, a fresh install always “feels” better… Hmmm…
Just one other thing, last year Jobs said there were going to be Top Secret new features he wasn’t able to show back then. What were these?
Didn’t you hear? The Top Secret feature is that Leopard will be based on the NT kernel
Nay, it’s the new Apple Genuine Advantage tool! To prevent malware before it happens, Apple have DRMd every part of the OS. Every CPU instruction is wrapped in a 128-Bit AES cypher to gaurantee that only Genuine code can run on the system.
All third party software has to be submitted to a verification programme (fees apply), which is only valid for one version (all software updates require further verification and digital signing), and will run only on the original computer the software was installed on – for a limited period, depending upon Internet connection for regular audits.
Apple Genuine Advantage provides Mac OS X users with the real enhanced and enabling experience that isn’t present on dangerously open, unsafe and unverified systems such as Linux.
That was funny… you must have been channeling Balmer for that.
Wow, replying to my own comment…
Don’t get me wrong, I think a lot of the 300 or so new features are very welcome and some are worth the price of Leopard by themselves. I am looking forward to XCode, IB and DTrace, Time Machine (which is nothing like what Vista has), faster performance of gfx, Spaces and so on.
Not so fussed about Quick Look however, but a friend of mine loves it. It may grow on me.
The new look of the dock is wierd too.
I had a good play with a Leopard build a few months back (back when it was still slow and gfxs were all over the place, esp. in apps like ichat and photoBooth). I loved Mail.app, Spaces, sharing on the network and just lots of little things…
From what I have read and seen, I think Leopard will be well worth the money. Their are OS’s out there at 3 times the price for nowhere near the same level of bang per buck.
But the question comes back, what was the Top Secret stuff that Jobs wasn’t able to tell us back in August last year. I wonder if he’s still to announce it/them, prob. not, but a thought still the same 🙂
“Just one other thing, last year Jobs said there were going to be Top Secret new features he wasn’t able to show back then. What were these?”
1. Smoke
2. Mirrors
But in all seriousness, I don’t think any new features will appear anymore… too late for that, methinks. If they will, I’d be quite (pleasantly) surprised though.
I have already pre-ordered mine, but I am curious to know if anyone has heard about Java 6 support in in this release yet.
Edited 2007-10-16 23:13
It’s been in beta status for a long time on Tiger. Don’t be surprised it gets updated within Xcode 3.0.
Apple, at one point, took down the beta from the developer.apple.com site.
Wikipedia integration. (A) 10.4 already has this on the Dashboard. (B) Online resources don’t count as a feature (for me) since I can just load it up in a web browser anyway.
Grapher is wonderful, but doesn’t fit in with the rest of the system with AppleScript or Automator. This prevents me from doing really neat stuff. Grapher is also buggy and needs to be fixed. (Also, why is Grapher in Utilities.) Apple, please fix Grapher!
Yeah, there are nice touches. Not sure if they’re worth a hundred bucks though.
Has anybody gotten any confirmation as to whether or not Leopard will install on a 867 MHz G4 TiBook?
Which platforms are actually prevented from installing, or can Leopard be installed but just not run as well?
How come every release of Mac OS X has 300+ features. Since I can remember I think it was Panther (Mac OS X 10.3), each upgrade has 300 odd new features, whats up with the 300 obsession. Don’t get me wrong, love the fact Leopard is going to have awesome features upgrades and new features, but was just wondering about the number 300.
Edited 2007-10-17 05:29
Never undestimate the ultimate power of the marketing department. They are counting each silly little thing to reach the 300. If you’re looking for significant features the number will be *a lot* smaller.
Well, i don’t care if Crapple manges to build a faster OS faster, please, faster, please faster. Will the new finder handle 10.000 files per folders in a blink of an eye? I doubt this.
Edited 2007-10-17 21:04
Slightly off topic, but does anyone here knows if Apple is planning to update the (non-pro) MacBooks in the near feature (for instance, before the end of the year)? A friend of mine may be planning to buy a MacBook so I’d like to know if I should advice her to wait or to buy.
Personally, I think Apple hold off any new Mac hardware anouncements until MacWorld (January 14 through the 19th, 2008).
I am so happy =)
I can’t wait to install it on my MacBook – and the really great thing: it IS even faster! =)
LOL
Did anybody test Paralells 3.x on a Leopard Beta? I depend upon Paralles for daily work. I wouldn’t want to install it if Paralells doesn’t work.
http://parallelsvirtualization.blogspot.com/2007/10/parallels-deskt…
And in Windows Live Messenger which doesn’t cost anything and works on the most current OS and the previous one.
What are you bragging about? Vista gets driver updates via Windows Update all the time.
FYI, Vista includes backup software based on VSC.