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Apple Delays Leopard to October
SuperMog2002 writes "Apple Insider has the sad news that Mac OS X Leopard has been delayed until October. Apparantly software engineers and QA had to be reassigned to the iPhone in order to get it out on time, costing Leopard its release at WWDC. For now the original press release from Apple can be found on the 'Hot News' part of their site, though Apple did not provide a permanent link to the story. 'While Leopard's features will be complete by June, the Cupertino-based company said it cannot deliver the quality release expected by its customers within that time. Apple now plans to show its developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship the software in October.'"
Sorry, I'm new to mac .... what is so crummy about the Finder in Tiger? I've had some difficulties using it, but always penned it as user error. What was good about previous implementations?
It has terrible usability design, with two "modes" (a Windows-esque 'browser' mode, and a Mac Classic 'spatial' mode), neither of which work correctly. The Spotlight UI, in particular, is almost criminally complex and quirky... a Linux/Windows user might not notice it, but to a Mac Classic user it's like fingernails on a chalkboard. People used to Classic are driven spare by the Command-N keyboard shortcut that used to create a new folder, but now creates a new window-- even in Spatial mode (which makes no sense.)
If you have make the horrible error of trying to open a network drive when the network it's on is no longer available (you know, like the huge number of people who use wifi on their laptops), Finder will freeze for minutes at a time. Finder will also freeze for several minutes if you have the audacity to drag-and-drop files to the desktop from some applications. DotMac will also freeze Finder for several minutes if it attempts to sync itself while on an un-reliable network. There's no multi-threading whatsoever.
Opening a window with a large number of images will frequently crash Finder as it creates thumbnails. And no, it's not a corrupt image file, because if I do the same view in Windows, Windows will create the thumbnails in seconds with no errors. When Finder's image previews do work, generating them is super-slow.
It's still missing features that were in Mac Classic, like tabbed folders. (Although to be fair, they have added Labels back in and Pop-Open drag&drop.) Text clippings are nearly useless, as you can no longer drag them directly into a word processor/edit field (like in OS 9), nor can you select and Copy text from them. Oh, and Finder will silently delete the contents of old Mac Classic text clippings, so I hope you didn't have a bunch of important passwords in one or anything... oops!
If you create a new file on the CLI, it still won't show up right away in Finder. You frequently have to 'prod' Finder into showing it, by closing and re-opening the window, or creating a new folder and then deleting it.
It's just bad. Given, a bad Macintosh file browser is still as good as the average Linux or Windows file browser, but that's not much of an excuse, especially for us old-school Mac users. I'd be happy if they fixed some of the more blatant bugs and added tabbed folders, even if it's not a total re-write.
Comment of the year
Quoting the above post:
> > The operating system named after pussies that runs on computers used prodominately by men who love cock.
> Well, I have to admit, my cock has grown on me over time.
Seriously, who the hell modded that informative?!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I realize this has already been modded flamebait, but I just had to point out that Apple dumped IBM, not the other way around. I challenge anyone to cite a credible source that says otherwise. IBM wouldn't deliver the kind of chips Apple wanted (G5 chips usable in mobile applications) without Apple forking over a substantial amount of money to help IBM finish the development cycle. That's assuming IBM ever made much headway on that effort to begin with.
(In fairness to IBM, they couldn't justify making the G5 a high priority and soak up all the R&D costs to make it low-power and fit within a laptop-appropriate thermal envelope. They couldn't justify that because the volume of systems that Apple ships is simply not large enough for IBM.)
Also, while it's true that Apple shopped around to both AMD and Intel, they never sourced processors from AMD, so it's a bit misleading to say that they ran "to [...] AMD, and then finally Intel."
As for delaying the OS because of the iPhone, I don't see that as a major problem. OS X 10.4 is still competitive with Windows, even Vista. There's no reason to rush Leopard (10.5) to market, and the users wouldn't stand for a rushed OS product since, you know, they tend to rely on the stability of their Macs for productivity and so forth. The company has finite engineering and QA resources, and since they pre-announced the iPhone, the clock is ticking on that product. They don't dare slip the iPhone schedule or the competition will eat their lunch, and the iPhone will be stillborn. The consequences of this logic should be obvious.
As a general rule, the buying public is more tolerant of software delays than hardware delays.
Informative gives you karma. Funny doesn't. :/
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
I'll agree with most of that, but the cmd-N = new window, not new folder is just the Finder fitting in with the rest of the OS, where it almost universally performs this action. I admit that it doesn't make much sense in the pseudo-spatial mode, but then, what does?
(Hint: Open Apple Menu > System Preferences...; Click Keyboard & Mouse; Switch to the Keyboard Shortcuts tab; click the + button below the list; choose Finder for the application, type 'New Folder' in the Menu Title box, and press cmd-N in Keyboard Shortcut. Lather, rinse and repeat for 'New Window' (note lack of the word 'Finder', the only difficult thing about this) and shift-cmd-N.
I don't want to defend the Finder in 10.4, but the Finder included in 10.0 sucked so much harder than the current version. On a G4, when resizing a "column-view" window, it would only refresh every couple of seconds or so. IIRC, this wasn't fixed until 10.2. There are still large complaints with the Finder (especially the networking one you mentioned) but it is unfair to say there haven't been improvements.
:hint: Get a free developer account from Apple at http://developer.apple.com/
You need it to report OS X/Apple Software bugs anyway.
It is a preview release btw. Don't forget to send the reports and respect Apple NDA.
So, it has some networking issues, and it really shouldn't default to opening new windows in browser mode. Otherwise, it's just fine. Despite the whining, it has made a lot of progress since 10.0.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
To be more explicit: you can download Java 6 preview for Mac OS X releases with a free developer account.
Not to diss the PMG4, since I've owned several and enjoyed them all, but there are a lot of things you're missing.
1) The first two PMG4 models (Yikes! and Sawtooth) didn't have Gigabit Ethernet. They also had rather weak power supplies that didn't comfortably accomodate significant expansion (upgraded CPU, upgraded video, four drives, etc.)
2) Only the 100MHz-bus AGP PMG4s (Sawtooth and GigE) supported 2GB of RAM, and only 1.5 of it was accessible under OS9. Every other AGP PMG4 capped out at 1.5GB.
3) Only the very last revision or two of the PMG4 had FW800 built-in.
4) I'm pretty sure no PMG4 shipped with USB2.0. Who cares if you have multiple busses if they're all 1.1?
5) In practical terms, the ATV CPU is probably about as fast as a dual-cpu 867MHz PMG4, due to the abysmal FSB of the latter.
6) The later-model PMG4s are still commanding $700-$1K+ with largely stock equipment.
7) The ATV has a decent GPU that is significantly better than anything that shipped with any PMG4. It also has BlueTooth and 802.11a/b/g/n.
8) Based on the above, to match the ATV, you'd need a PMG4 with dual 867s or single 1.4 CPU and a host of upgrades that would probably put you well over $1K (Although you would have much better RAM and HDD capacity as well as an optical drive. The PCI slots would be filled with the upgrades.).
9) Your resultant uber-PMG4 would still be enormous, loud, and energy-hungry compared to the ATV.
Now, of course this isn't quite a valid comparison, because the two systems aren't really designed for the same purposes. But, if you have a need for a very small, very quiet, very energy-efficient computer, that doesn't need a lot of RAM or CPU power, the ATV looks like a winner. Put its capabilities in perspective: you would have sold an organ for it 10 years ago, or willingly paid $1K-$2K five years ago. It's a pretty neat piece of equipment for only $300.