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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."
One thing I couldn't tell from the article was whether this was a Mac-hardware-only copy, or if it works on intel-hardware... Any help, guys?
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Crazy idea here... maybe the reason Apple doesn't really put any meaningful controls in place for a while other than a piece of paper is that they want a handful of geeks to get ahold of bootleg copies, test them on non-Apple hardware and talk about the results? That accomplishes two things: gets them data and doesn't tip their hand. I wouldn't put such a sneaky way of using people past Steve Jobs.
It depends what you want it for, I suppose.
Personally I was blown away by iChat, in particular the iChat Theater mode in conjunction with Keynote. I know that I have a use for that right now, but to be honest, it was not something that I was looking for until I saw it. It surprised me, but there you go.
I doubt I will upgrade all my machines to Leopard - as you say Tiger is more than adequate for the work I do - but I will more than likely buy a new Mac Pro and a Mac Book Pro when Leopard is released.
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
I'd love to see the sales statistics on the Family Pack. I mean it is entirely voluntary purchase as there is nothing preventing someone from buying a single copy and using it on all their computers at home.
Spaces: Virtual desktop with Exposé eye-candy.
Time Machine: Incremental backups with Exposé eye-candy. The hooks for applications to use Time Machine are a pretty cool idea, I don't think I've seen that kind of capability before.
What Apple needs to add:
Let's call it "Testbed": They could use FreeBSD jails and overlays to give you the ability to run a testbed environment that would looks almost like a virtualised system (like Parallels or VMware) which even "root" couldn't see out of, but without the overhead of virtualization. Plus Exposé eye-candy!
Plus, extend fast user switching to allow you to log in multiple times *as the same user*, giving OS X full virtual console capability.
Combine these with Time Machine, you could actually log into a version of your whole system as it existed a week ago, or two weeks ago... and (pause) with Exposé eye-candy.
Hey I'd missed that feature. That's certainly going to be a boon to developers. But it's also going to improve the user experience for users. With 512MB of memory every other day Tiger slows to a crawl because it's filled up RAM, presumably with memory leaks. Safari is a bad offender in this regard. Auto garbage collection should clear most of those leaks.
to the developers at Adobe and the MAC BU at Microsoft. Maybe if they can get a beta version of Leopard soon enough they will be able to release compatible software less than a year after it gets released. This while Mac OS X on Intel seems to have really caught them by surprise.
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.
Can we stop pretending to be gullible and just call it what it is?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Don't count on it. My company's first commercial Java project had a memory leak that didn't show up until you ran several million rows through it (you know, like a real customer would do, not like we did during testing...). GC didn't save us[1], it probably won't save you.
[1] Half a day spent with JProbe enabled me to find the leak, as well as a solid dozen or so optimizations that improved our execution performance by a solid 15%. Moral: a good tool can pay for itself very quickly. If you need one, get it.
Just junk food for thought...
I think you'd be surprised.
I hold my hand up - I've used my fair share of software that fell off the back of the internet. Let's leave the generic legal/moral arguments for another day. But there are two major things which convinced me to do the Right Thing when Tiger came out:
* Fair pricing. If you're fair with me, I'm fair with you. If you charge me the full extortionate price 5 times for being a loyal and legal customer and legally upgrading all 5 of my family PCs, let's just say I'll be a little miffed...
* Trust. It's a two-way process. It's like, if someone puts out a cookie jar for someone else and says "I know you want to steal one of those cookies, but I'll make you suffer the consequences, and I'll be watching so DON'T DO IT" - the first thing a lot of people will do is try to think of a way to steal a cookie. It's the human instinct to push boundaries and see what you can get away with, and chances are because they were so snotty with you and treated you like dirt, you lost all respect for them. On the other hand, if they said "I'd like you give you one of these, but I can't. I kindly ask that you do not take any" - as an adult at least, I'm much more willing to comply. Yes I know, at the end of the day an illegal act is an illegal act, end of.... but people *will* do wrong. And I think if you treat them like an adult and not like a criminal or a child or both, then you're more likely to combat piracy than any digital protection.
Are you nuts? Have you seen the resale value for Macs on Ebay? Assuming your Mac is a G4, you could have probably got ~$175 or 200 for it on eBay, and there are people willing to pay that much for them. For a G3, around $75 for it.
Only for the Slashdotters using Safari or Camino, though, because unfortunately Firefox doesn't support Services. : (
Interestingly enough, another of the new features is the ability to embed cocoa features in carbon code, thus it may be much easier for Firefox to add support for services. Firefox's lack of support for services (something I use heavily) is the main reason why it is not my everyday browser on OS X.
No. $129 is the full price. The upgrade price is $69, and you can get it from any Apple resaler (just not Apple itself). The upgrade does require the previous version to be installed. I have a copy of the Tiger upgrade (which requires Panther, will *not* install on a Jaguar machine) in my desk drawer right this very second.
You can have legally-binding documents lining the walls, but anytime you release software out of your immediate, physical control, it's going to leak, either intentionally or unintentionally.
The only sure-fire way to keep anything from leaking is physical separation from the rest of the world.
Anybody want to speculate that this was really a "controlled" leak to drum up interest and anticipation for Leopard, or am I all wet?
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
I think that Apple gave the developers a very old build especially designed for WWDC. The Top Secret features point to unreleased features, UI, and potentially hardware. So, all functionality and low-level information which point to these products must be missing. As we saw from the iPhone references discovered in the last iPod update, Apple is aware that people will be sniffing around for clues. Also, Apple knew this was going to happen. It's inevitable. Sure, they will sue and write nasty letters to protect their IP, but it's still inevitable. So, what is out in the wild is probably--and hopefully given the keynote--and a very limited preview of Leopard. The preview seed gives developers just enough to test their application and get cracking on some of the new API's--SpotLight, Time Machine, etc.
Did I say anything to suggest I did?
Now I may not be the sharpest stick out there, but methinks you're trying to imply that I'm using this as an excuse to make myself feel better about running a pirated copy.
*checks iBook*
Phew! Looks like I'm still running my 100% legal version of OS X 10.4 that I purchased (as in, paid cash for) from Amazon to upgrade my aging 10.2 install.
Wait. I just noticed something. You don't think I could get in trouble for downloading these OS patches from Apple do you? I mean, I didn't pay money for them. Could they be... *gasp* unlicensed? I swear, I didn't know anything about them! I mean, the Mac did it by itself! It downloaded the software and asked me if I agreed to the license! Oh God! I didn't know, I didn't KNOW!
[...]
Yeah.
One doesn't need to be engaged in illegal activities to speculate on why someone in authority might want those activities to be occurring. Let's not forget that Windows 3.1 became popular because of rampant pirating. Speculating that a company is harnessing such activities for their benefit is not outside the realm of reason.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
People will expect support if there is any hint from Apple that OS X will work on a beige box PC. Doesn't matter if there is some fine print somehere that says "only supported on offical Mac hardware."
As long as Apple maintains the offical line that OS X doesn't run on non-Apple hardware, they will not be forced to do anything. Let the hackers and enthusiast's run OS X on beige boxes if they want. They are not the kind of people to expect support when none is offered and they are unlikely to generate bad press complaining about broken divers or whatever.
It might be nice, however, if Apple allowed OS X to run in VMware so that people could get a "taste" of OS X before switching. A cheap, downloadable VMware Player image would be interesting. I know lots of people who would give that a try.... Linux AND Windows users. The nice thing about that idea is that it is practically guaranteed to "Just Work" like OS X is supposed to. No problems with drivers and whatnot. VMWare would benefit as well.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death