Time for a bit of fun and some reader participation, and let’s see if this time we can add a few more of you to the ‘usual crowd’. Don’t be shy, shout out your views and join the fun.
What I want to know is what feature of Leopard are you most looking forward to based on what you have read, heard and seen to date AND as importantly once you have had the opportunity to use Leopard how does that feature match up to your expectation and has it been superseded by any other features?
I think on balance Spaces gets my vote because of the way that I use my Macs, but the new mail application runs it very close!
Without a doubt the new Objective C 2.0 and Core Animation – the leopard only apps you are going to see are going to be stunning.
However, I like the new iChat. Lots of collaborative opportunities with the new “iChat Theater”. I can think of lots of projects where this will be useful. (hint hint)
@Danny, oh sure. Get all geeky on us! 🙂 One thing I thought that was downplayed, but I see a lot of use for is iChat Screen Sharing. Being able to take over like Remote Desktop is pretty cool!
@Wayne – I could get more geeky and explain why 😉 The new garbage collection in Obj C 2.0 is going to be sweet (Tom Im sure will agree with me) and theres a new tool (called Instruments) that helps you to debug your apps using a garage band style timeline.
Seriously cool!
leopard is going to be a nice upgrade. I don’t have anything specific I’m excited about. Pretty much everything that was already announced sound and looks pretty cool. Reading the initial reviews from the big wig reporters, it just makes me more excited. I will be at my local apple reseller getting my copy. The weekend will be busy with backups and clean installs. I never liked doing upgrades, so it will give me a great opportunity to start clean and fresh. One thing which bugs me a bit is, that no one is talking about file tagging. Spotlight seems to be nice, but tagging files makes searches so much easier. Right now besides Default folder x, and quicksilver there is no easy way to assign tag to your files. It would be nice to see responses from people on this blog about their initial experiences.
@Wayne: that sure is a neat feature, yet another thing that Apple have integrated from the ‘open’ market. I have looked at a number of options for remotely accessing a Mac to support etc so this coule be the easiest and simplest
@Danny: whatever 🙂
@Mac: several pre reviews have sort of come to the conclusion that the power of Leopard is in its entirity rather than any specifics and that sort of sums it up for me. A lot of it is very clever, and will sort of be beneficial, but when you strip away the hype, and break down each bit it is more OK than amazing – bit like the iPhone. I tend to agree with you that to integrate tagging throughout the OS would be far more useful and productive, than allowing me to change how I look on iChat! Time Machine is another example – is great concept but who is going to leave an external hard drive connected and powered up all the time? Who is going to remember to turn it on every hour? For those that want to do backups there are some great solutions already (better in many ways as they are bootable) whereas Time Machine looks ‘sexy’ but doesn’t really deliver that much more, and I think will be popular initially and then fase away.
Am I the only one that finds the time machine interface silly? To me it doesn’t look ‘sexy’ at all. More childish than anything. I don’t think it was designed as a full fledged back up, but people usually do not need a that, they need something that backs up in the background not eating up a lot of resources, and that if they delete a file by mistake, (and everyone did that at some point), there will less smacking of forheads, and cracking of fingers. I actually have 2 external HD connected and powered on my Mac, which is running all the time. Monitors get shut off when not used (actual power button is pressed), but the system keeps on chuging away. On my laptop I have 2 external drives that are always plugged in when I’m at work, since that where my tunes and photos are, plus a whole slew of other things. The nice thing about all these new things in Leopard is that they are built in. Part of the package. People don’t have to scour the internet in search of this perfect but elusive backup utility. One thing that time machine will do, is increase sales for external HDs. One thing I read today, is Apple is touting that Time Machine can do network backups as well. Yes but to a point. If you have a third party NAS, that does not have (like most do not) apple file sharing, you cannot use that as a backup drive. So unless you have another mac or a mac server to back up to… time machine will not work over the network. Kinda silly in my opinion.
Well I think it looks sexy to a point, but I also get tired of it very quickly – more gimmick than substance!
I am actually thinking that I may set Time Machine to do backups to an internal drive and keep Super Duper and my external drive set up as it currently is.
Who knows, as usual I expect that it will change over time 🙂
@Mac – Time Machine can back up to any mac on your network running Leopard with an External HD.
As for Time Machine’s interface and functionality I think some may be missing the point. This is not meant to be the SuperDuper, go-to bootable backup when your HD dies, its there so you can quickly find mussing files.
The interface, imo, (if a little gimicky) is genius. Think about it. In that backup there is going to be sitting loads of different versions of the same file. So what is the best way to sort through this information in a way that the average user isnt going to get lost. What divides all of these files? Time! The metaphor for your system going back in time is an easy one to understand and the interface implements it well.
Out of interest, what would you prefer to see?
@ Danny
I think the only thing that I really mind out of the whole Time Machine’s interface is the spacy theme with a big vortex at the end. Yes I can see the analogy, but I would prefer for the desktop to go blurry and the rest of the Time Machine interface to appear. Then again, really as long as it works I’m fine. I’ll get over the worm-hole effect. I can definately see the potential, especially with documents and revisions. For a normal user this will be a god send.
@Mac
Yes I do think the space theme was a tad gimicky (or an excuse to let the Apple designers show off).
if you mean core animation, I think they should do that in screen savers. I don’t know if there are any screen savers that show off core animation, like the album art one only more fun…. We will see tonight…. when I finally pick up a copy and won’t sleep, reinstalling everything again…..
This is excelent. An inteligent discussion, with out fanboyism. That’s why I love this site.
I think they just wanted to copy early Dr Who episodes with the interface. As I said you get tired of it pretty quickly!!
As for intelligent conversation – you saying that just because it is you and Danny talking to each other 🙂
Serioulsy though – thanks!
Wayne must have been part of the design then…. I would like to hear the Dr. Who theme playing in the background, and a little Tardis flying about 🙂
I think Wayne would feel he had died and gone to heaven if they did that.
Now I would have thought that between the two ‘clever dicks’ Tom and Danny they would be able to fix that for you 🙂
I have a friend who’s working for Apple in New Zealand who says that already there are serious issues with Adobe CS3 (no surprise there… I mean when have Adobe ever been ready for anything), Filemaker (which was kind of publicised anyway), but more interestingly he says that at the minute there are issues with some users running the installation as either the Upgrade and Archive and Install options.
This is probably due to a number of Apps not being totally compatible yet, but is does strengthen the case for holding back on being an early adopter… or should I say Beta Tester.
My guess is that 10.5.1 will be a 300MB+ download. Any advances?
That truly would be the coolest. I wonder if there is any way to have it trigger an mp3 file when you bring up Time Machine. I do have a different mp3 for every Doctor. They all had there own little nuisances in their opening themes.
@Mac – As far as tagging goes, I’ve been using a beta of Leap. It’s by the same developers as Yep. It’s basically Yep, except for all files. It’s pretty slick, if you ask me, and I like it a lot.
@Chris – I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but I think today is Leopard day! 😉
Now why doesn’t that surprise me Wayne? A different theme for each Doctor – that makes you king of the fan club without doubt!
Leap is pretty cool, looked at it a while ago, should go back and play with it again I guess.
My biggest question is: What is everyone doing to install? I know that I should wipe clean and install, but I’ve never done it before with OS X. My only experience is with Windows, and I just hate the thought of putting in all serial numbers and tracking down all the apps that I use. Any thoughts?
Well either way you need to do a back up first of course so I would suggest trying an upgrade first and if that works (which it should *wink*) you are all set. If it doesn’t then do a clean install.
The techies will tell you clean install and it does make sense as it is by far the safest and best way, but in my view it depends on how long you have had your Mac i.e. how much crap it has accumulated.
As yours is pretty knew and I guess you are pretty good at keeping it updated, removing old apps etc I think an upgrade will be just fine.
@Chris – Thanks. Will try that. I’ve asked this to you before, but I’ll throw it out to the masses:
Are there any differences between the single Leopard pack and the Family Leopard pack? Right now, I only have 2 computers that can run 10.5. Any other computers I get will probably come with the new OS. I hate to pay roughly twice for only the two computers. Besides the the “correct” and “legal” way of doing it, any other reason to pay double, (in my case,) for the “family edition?”
Also, off topic, Chris did your iPhone have any pictures or anything on it?
Technically no difference between family and individual as far as I am aware – I think it is just a matter of ‘conscience’.
iPhone – nope hadn’t been opened at all it seems.
@Andy – sorry missed you out 🙁
Yep, a update within a week is almost certain!!!
As ever I think it makes sense to wait and see how others get on. Hopefully we will get some shared experiences on this post 🙂
I will share my experiences for sure – although they are a bit varied as I have had beta copies for a while and pre release version as well, so I need to compare how those went with the ‘proper’ version that is in the post.
Xcode 3, Interface Builder 3 and Objective-C 2.0 hands down. I personally don’t think this is an overly end-user orientated release of OS X, more of a developers release, but the things developers will make with this release makes it more than worth the upgrade. In my opinion.
Time Machine I still need to get in to. I don’t have a hard drive big enough to back up my iMac, so thats more money I got to fork out.
@Chris: I used to use Spaces all the time, when the beta first came to the scenes, but I’ve all but stopped using it. I’m constantly doing drag and drops with files, clippings etc and Spaces was a huge obstacle for my way of working.
@Danny: Instruments is definitely the ultimate debugging tool, though the information it presents still instant, shall we say completely friendly. Its definitely a step in the right direction though, I used to live in ObjectAlloc, MallocDebug and Console when debugging, now I can remain in just Instruments! Its great.
One thing which doesn’t seem to have been included on the list of new features is Quartz Visualizers in iTunes. Jelly, Stix and Lathe are truly beautiful visualizers. Oh well, Apple must not have deemed them important. Shame.
Another useful one (again not listed) is the ability to adjust partion maps with out erasing all data. If you have multiple partions like me, this is an extremely useful feature. I hope I’m not breaking my NDA here, I mean its only 2 and a half hours until launch!
Finders good, but not revolutionary. Its more stable, but not the improvement so many were “craving”. I was personally hoping for full spotlight integration. Nope. Infact, in my opinion they’ve take a step back with spotlight. You used to be able get this search results window similar to the RSS feed in Safari. Now its just a Finder Window with no real organization. Pity.
Dashboard, no real change. Web Clippings are alright, but take up way too much screen real-estate.
I’ll stop here, and will post up a full post on my blog soon, as this is turning in to a post of its own! Sorry Chris.
I should be around for a bit tomorrow to catch up with some stuff btw.
No problem at all Tom, all welcome!!! I posted these 10 items to keep an eye out for on Appletell earlier:
@wayne
The problem I have with this Leap, that it is another app I have to run, I want to be able to tag my files when I save them, more natural that way, at least to me. So far Dafault Folder X does the job perfectly. As for your install question, I’ll be doing a fresh install. There is nothing better than spring cleaning in the fall 🙂 …. Probably the upgrade will work fine, but I’m an stubborn old windows user, and where there is a new os it means clean install. Yes it means serial numbers, time wasted with installs and stuff. But at the end you’ll feel fresh and clean and happy that everything worked.
Hi Guys, late to the party but installed Leopard last night – first look at it as I’ve not had any of the developer builds. So far pretty impressed although there is nothing that instantly screams wow for me, more a case of some nice upgrades visually, some useful new features and some things to explore.
I’ve set up my time machine backup using a 120Gb firewire external but this won’t replace my Super Duper driven bootable back-up procedure.
Spaces I’m so so about – tried a similar freeware app and didn’t get on with it but remain open to being convinced about it.
Like the updated mail set-up and ical looks sharper and cleaner.
Also like a lot the cleaner and more functional sidebars in the windows.
One query though – I see a shared PC network called Thompson and can’t get rid of it! I assume a neighbour must have something open on wireless but I don’t want to have it on my mac!
@Dunks
I would disconnect from his wireless, unless you are using that for your net access 🙂
You can also suggest to him that his wireless is open and that he is sharing files over it. I can see a friendly service call in your future at $80/h 🙂
@Mac: Nope, not connected to his wireless! I am connected to my own which is WPA protected. I am not sure how this is appearing and can’t find a way to remove it!!
That is weird, is almost like he is on your network. Maybe worth setting a new password just to see?
Yep – freaking me out a bit.
Ok, have read up that the shared section of the sidebar automatically shows all ‘shared’ folders/computers etc. One article mentioned that ‘as PC’s announce themselves to anyone who is listening, this sidebar can become very cluttered…’. Surely, if this is the case there is a way to remove this unwanted clutter. On the other hand this could be something more sinister.
Never seen that. You should be able to get rid of it you would think.
the thing is you would have to be connected to his network somehow or he to yours. Like Chris said I would change the password on your wireless, also I would check the dhcp table on the router to see if be is not connected somehow. Windows machines do annouce themselves to anyone, but on order to see these annoucements you have to be connected someday. So check your dhcp tables and change the password on your router.
Well, I change the security method from WEP to WPA-psk (which I should have done a while ago) and used a random 63 character key (generated via the excellent GRC tool) and restarted the laptop. It’s still there!
Under shared I see a lovely icon for a PC and the name Thomson. When I use ‘get info’ all I can see is that it is a PC server.
Have been googling away but can find no way of removing it from the shared and still confused as to why it is there.
Logic tells me that as I have altered the security and router password etc if it was someone leeching onto my network it would have disappeared. Any thoughts anyone!?
Can you access this system? Maybe it’s some old pc on your network that woke up and it’s hauting your wi-fi…. we are getting closer to halloween 🙂
Seriosly though, this is the strangest thing I have seen. Check if you can access the files or shares on this system. Can you get the IP address of it?
Ok – have now logged onto laptop at work and have been able to verify that this ‘thomson’ is not showing up under shared on the sidebar (however all the schools computers do show up!) so it is specific to being logged onto my network.
Last night I checked the router and it shows no-one else is logged onto the network (it shows computers who are able to but not logged on eg: my wifes Mac mini was on the list).
Could there be software on my laptop that’s causing this??? I have removed a virtual pc, wonder if running mamp or similar could do it? Very confused.
Do you actually know anyone called Thompson? This may sound really stuoid but maybe it is worth actually seeing if you can find out who it is and see what is happening at their end? If they are trying to access you for ulterior motives you will scare them off, and if it is as I suspect a weird glitch I am surethey will be happy to help.
As Mac said very weird indeed – will keep thinking of options!
I got to the point of thinking my mysterious Thomson shared must be an internal issue and finally find this on the Apple support site:
‘Although not advertised (and I believe, not supported) the BT Home Hub runs an SMB sharing service which shares out one of its USB ports under the name thomson (name of the supplier of the Home Hub to BT)….’
Thank goodness for that! Panic over.
@Mac & @Chris: Thanks so much for the help and suggestions. In the end a good thing as I have upped my network security as a result which is never a bad thing.
For any other BT Home Hub users be warned that at present the admin control panel does not work with the leopard and safari combo at present – access via firefox and all is well.
That is a relife, very bizarre, but also very funny!!!!
Would not been able to help even if I could. This technology is foreign to Canada. We get simple modems from our ISP, and none of that fancy stuff.
Glad it worked out well in the end, and yes it is an interesting tid bit of info.
Heres a theoretical question?
If you owned a laptop and had installed Leopard, could you install it on say a Mac mini also? Obviously this should be done via a family pack but could the same copy of a single licence version theoretically do it?
Any thoughts, theoretical of course, welcome!
You can install it on as many Macs as you want to 🙂
Something else – I have burnt a copy DVD as well and have used that for installating. Don’t want to damage the only copy that I have.
Theoretically very interesting to hear 😉
Theoretically yes, moraly no. It’s not a right thing to do.
[quote comment=”15791″]Technically no difference between family and individual as far as I am aware – I think it is just a matter of ‘conscience’.[/quote]
@Mac – you are right of course, as I pointed out earlier in the thread in a response to Wayne. Wouldn’t want anyone thinking I endorse multiple installations (and that from a guy that posted that he had ripped all his DVD’s and was going to sell them :-))
I just wouldn’t want you to get into any trouble, that’s all 🙂
I think that ‘Spaces’ is overrated. I’ve heard so many podcasters say how good it is, especially for those with small screens, but why? I have a 12″ powerbook, and there is room for one window, it is therefore not relevant whether or not there are other hidden windows. I use Expose to navigate, it is far more useful.
By the way, I’ve been so annoyed by the Leopard related comments by podcasters, many of whom queued to get their copy, yet tell us how daring they were to install it! Who are they kidding? It is just an O.S.! Anyone would think it was self performed open heart surgery they were speaking of. I understand why some would hold back on account of software compatibility, but why buy it only to shelve it until version .1? I thought that Mac users were ‘out there’. This conservatism has wound me up.
I enjoyed your chat with Tim V about it Chris
Thanks 🙂 Yesterday I pre recorded a segment with Tim as I will be away next week and we discussed spaces and dual screen in more depth!
I know what you mean about the Mac community – I sometimes wonder how many of them actually read the instructions and sit down and really look at the application? The comments come out so quickly after a new product that I can’t believe that there is any real depth to the analysis!!!
I’m curious to know if anyone else had problems installing Leopard. I’ve two Macs, a g4 powerbook and a g5 iMac, in both cases iI wanted to do a clean install, yet when clicking on the install options button I had an error message saying that the computer couldn’t open the package ( or something similar ). This was on both machines. I wonder if that feature works only on intel macs. I had eventually to run Disk Utility from the install disc to erase the drive before doing a fresh install.
Can anyone explain?
Have just stopped using spaces as I can’t get my head around it for general day to day use. Can see I would use it if I was working on a project and wanted to keep email/communication stuff open on another space but for day to day more hassle than it’s worth.