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New Version of Mac OS X Leopard Leaked
the linux geek writes "InfoWorld has an article informing us that an early beta of Mac OS X 10.5 has been leaked. This appears to be the same build Steve Jobs previewed at WWDC, and contains most of the new features, including Time Machine and Spaces." From the article: "Attendees at last week's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) received copies of the beta ware and had to sign legally binding agreements not to let Leopard stray onto file-sharing networks. Perhaps someone didn't read the not-so-fine print? MacUser reports that this version of Leopard is indeed legit, unlike a fake one that was reportedly making its rounds last week. The version of Leopard available on BitTorrent is 4.3GB, containing 93 files."
Well, if they gave it out... how could they possibly think that it won't leak? Software, music, movies leak without giving them out. And now, there's the release of an expensive operating system and they give it out...
I mean, how could they be sure that just signing the document would stop anyone? Sharing music, movies, etc. is illegal, but look at ftp servers, emule, torrents, etc.
It the Internet, apple, think different!
I'm a big Mac fan -- *love* my iMac. But I'm not sure about Leopard. That is, Time Machine and Spaces looks neat. But not neat enough for me to shell out $150 for an upgrade.
Tiger is awesome, those new feature all-in-all are pretty minor improvements.
Now, if Jobs' TOP SECRET stuff is impressive, that may make a difference. But so far, I'm not seeing enough in Leopard for me to open my wallet.
boxlight
...but my desire to be surprised got the better of me. I watched the WWDC keynote, and thought that some of the new features looked really nice, and to be honest, I am prepared to wait. I want my experience of Leopard to be without prejudice.
BTW, I installed Windows Vista Beta Preview a couple of weeks ago, just for fun and it confirmed what I had anticipated - I will not be buying an upgrade to Windows Vista, nor will I purchase any machine with it pre-installed.
OS X is a dream to use on the desktop, with various GNU/Linux installations running on all my servers. The machine with Vista on it? Going to install the latest Ubuntu.
Hasta la vista, Vista...
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
That's the *big* feature. Screw the user interface tweakage, being able to forget about release pools and the rest of the manual storage management twaddle is going to be amazing.
I see on the Apple site that I can buy a single OS X license for $129 or a 5-pack family license for $199. The fine print says it is to be used on "Apple-labeled computers". Has anyone tested their willingness to sell to generic x86 owners? Also, dosen't it make M$ seem even greedier to not have something like this for XP and Office? Imagine how many pirated copies would disappear if they had a $199 family 5-pack of XP Home.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Other then developers who are going to use the brand new features and see if their code will break, who will need or even want an early beta. Having an early Beta of OS X is like having a Production version of Windows, and you know how buggy and anoying that is. Heck Steve Himself wouldn't demo many of the feature wich were labeled "Top Secret" which probably is a code word for too buggy for a SteveNote. As well OS X interface is relitivly small changes for the interface over time, it is not like Windows Beta users who use the Beta version so they can have say 7 years of XP Experience and probably next year say they have 2 years of Vista Experience, because every version moves everything around forcing you to relearn the OS again and again. While I am interested in Leopard when it is released but not now in early beta where is is just slightly less then a Year away from production. Companies don't like Beta Releases because non-Beta Wize users get a hold of it Judge the quality when it is Beta and talk down to it even when all the problems are fixed. It is like a person who used Linux last in 1994 and today are still saying I used Linux and its interface is horible, having to go to a config file to configure your windows manager is so out of date.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is absolutely garbage journalism, and there's a lot I take concern with, first off, with how they refer to BitTorrent like it's some sort of unified network. I'm sure I could have gotten Leopard off of Efnet at some point over the past two weeks, does that mean I got Leopard off of IRC? They're just feeding the fire as to why ISPs and *AA's take concern when it comes to BitTorrent the protocol.
Secondly, after the Bono releases a record and it shows up on P2P, does that make it worthy of a new story? Look, people, file sharing is going to happen, as soon as something is digitally encoded, it's chances of being pirated approach 100%. Leopard finding it's way onto a BitTorrent tracker isn't news worthy, it's not even unexpected!
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Seriously. Resolution independence, a versioning filesystem and (finally) a unified UI (I'm basing this off the non-brushed-metal look of iChat Leopard) aren't worth ~$150 to most people. So deal until Lion/Ocelot/Pallas/Kodkod/Neko/whatever, and maybe that will help coax Apple to stop making incremental upgrades that are so...er, incremental. :)
OMG! Wau!
I'm still running Windows 2000 and have no plans to downgrade* to XP, let alone Vista, until I absolutely have to. As the neighborhood "nice guy who knows about computers" I've found people running Windows 98 and Me. Why on earth do you think typical Apple users are any different than typical Windows users?
Sure, the obsessives and the hardcore gamers (but I repeat myself) track the latest version of the OS, but most people won't even understand your question.
(* Windows XP - Windows 2000 with a few more drivers and better game support, plus gigabytes of ugly eye-candy. Why risk a false positive from the Windows Genuine Advantage inquisition for that? About the only thing that's ever been a problem for me with Windows 2000 is Bluetooth support.)
no- they definitely wouldn't.. the iPods are generating more revenue than their computers and many people would still buy mac hardware- especially since anything in it would be inherently supported.
Their os userbase would expand greatly, their hardware userbase would probably stay very close in size, iPods would be unaffected or perhaps grow in sales...
They don't want to deal with all of the calls coming in that joe schmoe cant get it to work on his cyrix cpu or schmo joe can't get his el-cheapo scsi controller working or his $2 video card. Apple wants to keep the perceived quality (and actual quality) of their products high- rather than having reports published about how incompatible it is with some guys random mobo configuration. People currently understand that the machines and OS only works with authorized apple hardware (and from partners), but as soon as you open the floodgates, joe schmoe idiot will go out and buy a copy thinking itll just work on the computer his son set up and it wont. Apple doesn't want to do it half assed.
I honestly don't think it has anything to do with their market share.
What are you talking about? Jobs probably leaked it himself. Not only does it generate free press for Apple, but it would help ramp up the buzz machine. Jobs can then take that general feedback ("oh, this feature sucks" or "that feature is wonderful!") and redirect it back into the product without having to provide tech support for a beta product!
Just about the right time for it, too. Apple has already revealed the features in this copy, and is obviously at the later stages of development. Which means that they are ready to start polishing, but still have time to yank and replace components if necessary.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I personally don't upgrade all my software every release, and OS X is similar. I've skipped releases with Logic, Photoshop, and others because I couldn't justify the cost for the new features. That being said, a new version of OS X comes out about every 18 months. A lot of people buy new computers every 3-4 years, so you're probably only buying 1 or 2 upgrades then you get the newest OS when you buy a new computer. Those who don't are probably happily running 10.3 right now, like my parents.
For that matter, my Mac at work is running 10.3 even though I could get the help desk (hinder desk) to upgrade it to 10.4 at no cost to me. It's an older computer and I just don't need any features that 10.4 offers for my work.
One of the exciting things for me about new releases of OS X isn't always the features that Apple adds for the users, but for the developers. Some really interesting programs will probably come out that only work on 10.5 because they take advantage of new API's. I think Aperture is a perfect example - 10.4 only and it is really nice.
Why do people insist on making things more complicated than they need to be. There are droves of hardcore mac fans who salivate over things like OSX updates. Demand. A bunch of copies were distributed to a bunch of developers following WWDC. Supply.
Wherever there is a supply and a demand, people will get a hold of those things. Apple didn't have to have some super secret plan to leak a version onto the internet. They know full well as soon as they let a copy out of their "labs" that they've basically lost control of it.
Do they mind the publicity? Probably not. Did they expect this to happen? Definitely. Was this leak the clumination of some behind the scenes planning? Nope. Why would Apple waste their time with something like that when there's an approximately 100% chance that one of the developers will leak a copy?
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Are you bloody retarded? There is absolutely no indication whatsoever that this release (or the final release) will run on generic PCs (in-fact, from what I've heard, Apple is going to make it even more difficult this time around). The bloody paragraphed size summary right at the top of this page says that there was an agreement not to release it onto p2p networks, and the linked article (not sure why I'm mentioning this, if you can't handle reading a paragraph long summary, I somehow doubt you bothered reading the article) goes into more details on this agreement. I have yet to see Steve Jobs blow up over a leak...that is generally done by Apple's legal department, and if you even had a tiny sliver of legal sense, you would know that they would actually need to find out who leaked it before they sue anyone, so again, there is no indication this was planned....
I always thought reading was more enjoyable than writing personally...I don't understand how everyone on Slashdot finds the former so difficult to do but can blather on for paragraphs when commenting, often making themselves look like total morons.
Which tells you exactly what kind of market share their desktop machines have at the moment. Anything which reduces this further risks making their desktop market share so small it's effectively negligible.
Nah, not for shit IMO. Aside from elitist Charles geeks people buy Macs now because of Mac OS/X's user interface and the fact that It Just Works. If Mac OS/X was available for commodity PC hardware nobody (again: normal people, not geeks) would spring the extra $$$ for Mac hardware too ("What's the point?", they'd chuckle - "I can be clever and safe a few hundred bucks!") and the Mac hardware platform would die (or at least, be taken very ill).
Of course, penny-pinching consumers would also find that on third-party commodity hardware It Just doesn't Work as well, so Apple (through no direct fault of their own) would also find their IJW reputation going down the tubes.
Their OSX userbase would expand moderately - it's incompatible with Windows, so it's not going to expand "greatly" at any time while 90%+ of all PCs are still Windows, regardless of how great it is.
Their hardware userbase would shrink rapidly - normal users just won't pay over the odds for something they don't perceive as any better. We know OSX has been designed to run on the hardware and vice-versa. Your old maiden aunt buying her first Mac (assuming she isn't tempted away by de-facto standard Windows) will get a choice between OSX-and-Mac, or OSX-and-PC for a few hundred bucks less. In the absence of any real understood difference between them, and bearing in mind they both look and feel the same (OSX), which do you think she's going to choose?
iPod userbase wouldn't change - it's already Mac and PC compatible, so if Apple stopped making Macs tomorrow the iPod sales would hardly change.
That's one reason, yes. The other is that OSX not being Windows-compatible hurts Apple when it comes to attracting new consumers to it. Making the hardware and software one package at least forces users to view Macs as a seamlessly-working package, which they don't mind paying a little extra for. Breaking the package open stops any part of it being perceived as seamless, and virtually ensures penny-pinching consumers will just nickle-and-dime them to death.
No. "People" understand that you buy "a PC with Windows", or you buy "a Mac". Macs are a package, indivisible.
"Most people" don't even understand there is a distinction between the hardware spec and the operating system. Hell, remember "most people" still can't program their video recorder clocks right.
As such, as soon as they realise the package is customisable and there's a choice, they'll plump for the cheapest option every time, and Apple much-vaunted reputation for solid engineering (apart from style, their only advantage over MS) flies right out of the window. And once people are used to OSX running on beige boxes and crashing because of dodgy third-party drivers, watch how long their reputation for coolness lasts, too.
You're half right in what you say - the third-party driver issue is a big reason to keep OSX Mac-only. However, there are several other just-as-good reasons as well, like preserving what little share of the desktop hardware market they currently have.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Macs have a reputation for being very stable, and working very seamlessly. Just watch the new Apple ad's to see how they re-inforce this image. It's one of their key selling points.
Throw it on generic x86 hardware and that's gone. Apple isn't going to do that willingly.
It wasn't when Microsoft did it. Apple lost its opportunity. They tried to license the OS again in the mid 90's and it almost killed them. Steve Jobs came in, bought back all the licenses, and established a reign of Apple-only Macs. In order for him to reneg on that decision there will have to be a very compelling reason, such as the not losing all the hardware sales, tight control of licensing restrictions so that clone-makers are guaranteed to make computers that work seamlessly with OS X, and rigorous driver support so that their OS's reputation doesn't get slammed by poor performance and poor hardware compatibility.
Those are big difficulties, so Apple is not going to forfeit their control over the platform that easily. It may happen when they are heading up into double-digit desktop market share, but I doubt it, strongly. For every gain in OS market share, remember, Apple makes billions of dollars in hardware sales. There has to be a promise that their hardware sales will immediately be replaced by licensing sales - not that they would drop their hardware development if they licensed, just that it would be hard to compete with companies like Dell offering computers at several lower price points than Apple. Apple might start having to cheapen its own hardware quality in order to keep up in sales volume, and that might be bad news for the platform.
I'm willing to bet it's not. The release is still ~7 months away and any hype that comes out of this leak will have died down by then. Also, I don't see Apple splitting it over 93 files rather than a single disk image (unless that's 92 technotes and 1 disk image, and I'd seriously doubt that).
As opposed to the still-$250 Windows XP Professional.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Yeah I'm sure. It was "leaked." As in, Apple wants more press so they do what they do with every other release and accidentally get a beta out the door.
Right, because there is no chance in hell that any one of four thousand WWDC attendees could have possibly uploaded a copy on their own. No chance in hell. It must be a secret corporate conspiracy to get buggy, incomplete software in the hands of end users, because that's good for business.
Here's a simpler explanation: anything that can end up on BitTorrent, will end up on BitTorrent.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
If Windows updates were rolling out as rapidly as OS X at its price, ISVs would more quickly require newer versions. That said, 10.2 came out in 2002. That's four years ago, which sounds like a reasonable length of time to abandon support.
Heck, Halo 2 for PCs will require Vista for absolutely no reason other than to force upgrades.
"Sufferin' succotash."