As scheduled, Apple has officially released its next operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The OS is being bundled on all new Macs and MacBooks on the Apple Store, and Apple offers Leopard as a retail-boxed product for $129, as well. Folks who need to upgrade multiple Macs at home can cough up an additional $70 for the $199 Leopard "Family Pack," which includes five licenses.
Apple’s new baby comes packed with 300 new features, including a redesigned desktop and user interface, a new Finder (which features iPod- and iPhone-like Cover Flow file browsing,) automatic backup software dubbed Time Machine, Windows dual-booting software known as Boot Camp, a virtual desktops implementation named Spaces, and full 64-bit support. In Apple tradition, a QuickTime "guided tour" showing off the operating system’s new features is available on the Mac OS X page.
Leopard has already been reviewed by a number of mainstream columnists, including the Wall Street Journal’s Walter S. Mossberg and the New York Times’ David Pogue. Both laud the operating system’s new features, although Walt Mossberg points out that Leopard is an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, upgrade to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.
I’ve decided I’m going to invent my own operating system and give myself free updates every 3 weeks.
Been there, Done that…..
….almost.
The question I have is what Apple is going to do when they run out of big cats to name their OSX revisions after.
I can see it now: OSX 10.99854 ‘Liger’.
OS 11 “Tabby” lol
OS X 10.6: Kodkod
OSX 10.5.1 (revolver) Ocelot
q[
Hugely inefficient? You mean like having to copy-paste in order to quote someone instead of just hitting the reply button? Sounds like you really thought that one through.
I love the threading. Topical organization for the win.
/agree, threading rules. you know exactly what someone is referring to rather than having to guess which post # or poster someone is commenting on.
flip-mode is on point.
Well… I don’t want to ruin the fanfare.
But we’d better wait for a few days or weeks later
when some bugs bite this Leopard.
q[< $129 for a service pack that adds features which should've been in the OS to begin with. Makes Microsoft look generous by comparison.<]q Indeed. It's pretty offensive, but Macolytes jump at the chance to pay their annual OS X fee. Pretty smart on Apple's part.
(offtopic)
there is an annoying tendency for people to post replies as standalone posts, because obviously what they have to say is too important to just be a reply…
what’s the point of having threaded replies for organisation if people don’t use it out of arrogance? it should be switched off for a month until people like you realise how much clutter it causes.
pui: it’d be nice if the front page was organized like the forums; but its not. many people just click the “reply” button at the bottom of the page instead of the “reply to post.” and i’m also sorry that you have to make a personal attack just because you disagree with his post.
There was no personal attack in his post whatsoever. Please learn the difference between a personal attack and plain old criticism, well, and a hint of sarcasm. But still not what I’d call a personal attack.
$129 for a service pack that adds features which should’ve been in the OS to begin with. Makes Microsoft look generous by comparison.
You’re right cause Vista came with all those features. Plus it came with all of its originally advertised features.
Oh wait….*scratches head*
Anyways, considering that each OS update is half the price of the lowest version of Windows I’m not sure how your claim really holds any merit. And you’ll notice the OSs have been coming out an average of about 1.5-2 years.
And no, I don’t own a single thing made by Apple (not even an iPod).
Riiiight…
Because Windows ME was such a huge upgrade from Windows ’98.
Also add the fact that 2k and XP were so far apart in terms of timeline.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Windows user. Heck, the only Apple “thing” that I have is a 4gb mini. That being said I’d rather have a 129$ “service pack with extra features”, family versions, and unforced upon me than a 300$+ OS that comes “single use only, gotta love multi-computer homes!” where everyone says “Oh, don’t judge it now, give it a service pack or two!” and “You’ll see, next year, when this will mature, it’ll be great!”
Judge with unclouded eyes…
$130 every 2 years is defs more agreeable than $200-300 every 4 for a pos os.
but that doesnt mean its not retarded
Let’s see, Microsoft’s recent desktop OS’s, excluding Vista (which is about to get a Service Pack):
Windows NT4 = 6 service packs (7 if you count SP6a)
Windows 2000 = 4.5 service packs (includes a post SP4 rollup)
Windows XP = 2 service packs (one of which damn near re-rolled the OS)
Total = 12.5 service packs with another about to come out for XP
Total Price = $0
Between NT4, 2000, and XP there were large technical leaps. Between 2000 and XP, the initial leap wasn’t that great until SP2 corrected that situation.
You say to your brother, “Ye have a splinter in your eye” when ye hypocrite have a plank in your own. Maybe your should uncloud your memory before I “uncloud my eyes”.
Sorry but that was just plain silly. You’re talking like this is some moral issue, or something.
I suppose it doesn’t help that you forgot one thing. The three MS OSes cost at least $750 total; not $0. Mac is $129 x 5 = $645 if you bought single license copies. If you buy the family pack for $199 you can install it one 5 computers costing $40 per computer. And these are for the “Ultimate” editions. Now how much does Windows cost you?
And last I checked Apple releases the updates via “Software Updates” under the Apple icon in the upper right hand corner of the OS desktop. No need for Service Packs when you can just keep up to date with that.
MS invented the “Service Pack”. Other companies don’t have to follow suit.
P.S. I use Windows and don’t own a single Apple product. These (this and the original) comments were so out of line that even I had to say something. By your posts, it is clear you hate Apple and are not a hypocrite. 🙂
So!?…….
/puts on flamesuite and pulls helmet over head.
Apple’s multi-system license pricing is awesome. Even though this is just an ‘evolutionary’ upgrade I’d love it if MS would make additional licenses for a single home this affordable.
Let’s break it down:
– OSX, single user
– OSX, family (5 license)
– OSX server, limited # of users
– OSX server, unlimited # of users
Yeah, that’s pretty damned simple.
It would be nice to have cheap home licenses for Windows, yeah.. on the other hand, what Apple is asking $129 for is not really that impressive over the previous version of OS X. Apple may release more frequent updates than Microsoft have been, but they do make you pay a fairly sizeable amount on a regular basis if you want to stay up to date.
Yawnnn. So I guess it’s about FreeBSD 6.1 by now. Nothing exciting for an *nix user that I can see.
What a sweet lookin OS, and practical too. As a mac hater throughout the years, my jaw dropped when I watch the osx 10.5 video guide on apple’s website. Its amazing how efficient and uncluttered osx has become. Vista is no where near that level and alot less responsive. Quicklook and Coverflow is amazingly useful. I guess we have to wait for MS to copy it… the best it can. Bottom line, Apple has to make an x64 version for the rest of us.
X64 version? You haven’t read enough.
He meant x86
No, he meant a PC version. Leopard already is x86 if your mac is intel-based, and it already is x86_64.
Switcher §[<http://insentient.net/<]§ is awesome for Vista users looking for an exposé clone.
q[
The thumbnail preview is nice, but it’s nothing like Expose where a screen corder is designed to activate it when the mouse goes there.
This is a killer implementation and even Linux has started adopting it as default in their 3D window managers.
Adi
Actually i just use my middle button because I have an ms mouse… Which takes the windows and changes them to giant thumbnails.
I’m not saying Expose is bad. I use Switcher on Vista, it’s great. 🙂
I actually hate that feature. I don’t like applications/operating systems doing anything just because I move the mouse. I want them to wait until I push a button. To each his own, of course.
Now we should all prepare for another round of MacOS 10.5 vs Vista.
Aye, already unpacked the asbestos-suit 🙂
There are people who defend Vista? Really? 🙂
Of course. Honestly though, Vista is not so bad as people say it is. But even if it was, there will be people to defend it.
I can defend it. You likely have no idea how many licences for all sorts of things come free with vista. For example, try connecting to a remote ODBC database. From Vista, it’s a breeze, from linux, it’s a $1’500 third-party expense.
There’s a lot in Windows that you don’t see until you try to build something. Few people build for OS X.
Yes, people with a brain.
Mostly real gamers and some modern power users.
Hear ye, all Gerbils that are Project Managers for a living.
§[<http://www.apple.com/macosx/guidedtour/small.html<]§ (about 3/4ths way through tour) The changes Leopard makes to Mail effectively changes Mail from an email app to a GTD-based app. The built in "To Do" function within notes is crazy-awesome, and auto updates iCal. Look out, Chandler.
was just reading appleinsider regarding parallel threading on leopard. supposedly this means less system hiccups now? vista still becomes unresponsive on occasion.
might soon cough up some dough to test it on a new mac mini. hehehe.
Yep, it means exactly that. Many apps have been rewrote to be multi threaded including the Finder. In Tiger if you had a mounted network share and the network connection died, the entire Finder would freeze trying to figure out where the share went. In Leopard, the Finder keeps running as before and you eventually get a message saying the share is no longer there.
This is a night and day difference. Thanks Apple !
Adi
I have to wonder why it took so long. It’s the single most irritating thing about Windows XP in my opinion, and it goes against the one of the most basic rules of GUI design: maintain responsiveness.
How does Vista handle a lost network share?
I think Cover Flow is Mac OS X’s version of Flip3D. Useless, but cool looking.
Funny you should put it like that, since Flip3D is Vista’s attempt at copying Exposé, which failed.. horribly.
Actually, you’d be surprised how much easy it makes finding files for a n00b.. It’s just soo much more intuitive looking for what the file looks like with a live preview then looking through the file names..
Adi
That depends on how variable your documents look.. if you have 300 letters written using the same template then it’s not going to be much help. If you’re an artist, then probably a lot more useful.
I agree. Cover flow looks like a solution in search of a problem. But then I haven’t used it so I’ll reserve final judgement.
FP
Meh