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Apple's OS X Leopard In Depth
jcatcw writes "Computerworld begins its Week of Leopard with an in-depth review and image gallery covering Apple's newest version of OS X. Is it worth the wait? Well, Yes. It trumps Vista, of course; the Finder, Quick Look and Cover Flow provide better functionality and eye candy; Time Machine is the biggest undelete ever and the restore function is one of the coolest things we've ever seen; it has iChat; and has lots of updates under the hood. The answer might be no if you're lacking in the hardware department - an FAQ on how to get ready for the new version will help."
Does anyone know what holds MS back from adding the Multiple Desktop feature? I know it can be had with 3rd party software, however last time I used one it really slowed down my machine and caused some crashes.
The lack of such a feature that has been around for eons in the Unix/Linux world drives me crazy!
What ever happened to those "extra features" Steve promised way back when Leopard was announced?
Can they please please please rewrite the Finder and the associated Open/Save controls from scratch? Managing files on OS X feels so awkward compared to every other OS out there. Hopefully the leopard finder will at the very least be properly multithreaded.
That said, I wasn't terribly excited for Leopard, as I had no real interest in Time Machine or the other "blockbuster" features. However, looking over the official feature list reveals some tantalizing treats. There are some especially nice developer/unix features -- DTrace, extensive support for Ruby, and 'bridges' to allow Ruby and Python apps to enjoy Cocoa and the OSX scripting interfaces. The Cocoa bridges should be immediately drool-inducing to Ruby and Python developers.
It's not in the list, but perhaps the biggest technological advance (in my opinion) is that Leopard will supposedly be completely resolution-independent, paving the way for very-high-resolution displays.
Looking to the future, Apple's next big move *needs* to be the implementation of a true metadata filesystem (preferably using ZFS). They can't let Microsoft beat them to it, and ZFS is simply too cool to pass up.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
--Dude - Windows Two KAY trumps -Vista-! :P
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== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Sure, Vista is great - if you hated the actually useful features that were promised for Longhorn that were stipped out, having your OS use fifteen frikkin gigabytes of space, a big performance downgrade, and DRM hooks all over the operating system as Microsoft puts the MPAA over you.
Haha, fisher price PC, that's a good one.
Btw, my FisherPriceBook Pro has a UNIX core, I ssh into my CS university account from home to do my work, do my programming in what is IMO the best IDE I have had the pleasure to use.
What "more power" do you have that I don't?
This is a feature that should be high on anyone's list: the ability to direct someone else to change system settings without having to give them a long GUI script along the lines of "Open this, click here, click there, this should say X, type Y". I just love being able to package up these types of changes into a command-line like that.
If you argument for pro Vista is that it has a more mature desktop then Linux,in a Mac post, then things are truly sad for Vista.
I would also argue on you use of the word mature. I don't think it's desktop is old enough to be mature.
Good software mature, bad software ages. MS OS ages.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A quick question for those of you who have been running the Leopard betas... will I need to dedicate an entire drive (or partition) for Time Machine's exclusive use, or is it possible/okay to tell Time Machine to put its data into a subdirectory inside a drive/partition that is also used for storing other data?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
ALl of this done with what IMHO is the GREATEST window manager out there and it seems like apple agrees ....they once again "borrowed" most of their "new" features from it.
Which window manager? And which features did they borrow?
How is this possible? Unfortunately, I haven't been able to google for exactly how MANY developers Microsoft has versus how many apple has....but Microsoft had at least 5000 developers that worked on Windows Vista. While they must have lowered their standards in the last few years, originally microsoft was only hiring top graduates from top schools like MIT and CMU.
They have a gigantic number of some of the best people they can buy.
So why does their stuff suck so much by comparison to a small corporation? Apple cannot afford nearly the resources Microsoft has...I wouldn't be surprised if their OS X team had 1/5 the people.
I know that skill matters...but surely the top of the class people at Microsoft are no worse than the hippies at apple?
They are ProTools, Cubase SX3, FL Studio, SoundForge8, Reason 3, Rebirth 2, Flash MX, Illustrator, Vegas, and more.
... but they are well on par (if not superior) in terms of functions. They are all miles ahead in terms of expandability compared to the existing big name applications.
.. but its very much worth getting your hands dirty with. I reckon you might really enjoy the experience too.
.. but then again that suits me fine. Same comment applies - its about taking a different approach rather than trying to be better.
:)
Agree with you there. At least for sound apps things have been evolving quite rapidly lately :
Ardour, Rosegarden, LMMS (with VST and LADSPA), Hydrogen, AMS, Mixxx
Are not in the same ballpark as far as polish, consistency, printed manuals and a general sense of finishedness goes
For the brave, especially if you set yourself up with Qt4 and use SVN versions of all of the above, its quite a revelation to see where OpenSource 'pro audio' is actually up to today. And yet, its still in its infancy.
The important thing though is that these Open Source audio apps growing and getting better at a MUCH faster rate than the commercial offerings. Not saying that is a reason for you to go throw your existing stuff in the bin just yet
One minor area where Open Source audio apps absolutely kills the big name commercial apps is the online community - the users, experienced musos, and the developers are all one and the same people. They are not just composing music, they are reversing engineering hardware like the new Vestax mixing deck, they are doing spectrum analysis on Pioneer's deck to work out the freq cooefficients for the low/mid/hi filters, they are writing OpenGL visualisations and refactoring and redocumenting messy old C++. Its a different sort of user community, and it makes simply using the software an absolute blast. I think you would love it given your existing depth of knowledge with music tools.
Some of the audio tools are actually good enough and stable enough RIGHT NOW for live performance in front of real paying audiences. I use LMMS and Mixxx for live performances in nightclubs already, but Im still trying to get my head around Ardour at the moment for multi track recording. LearningCurve++.
Open source audio is not better or worse than commercial audio apps - but it is different enough in a worthwhile way.
For graphics work, blender + gimp has always been good enough for me, but Im not a graphics pro. I dont see that there is a problem with the vector graphics tools under linux though. There are scriptiong things I can do in python with both gimp and blender that dont have equivalents with the commercial side. Again, its not about being better or worse - its a different way of doing things that makes it worthwhile to get into.
For web stuff, Ive never seen the big need to use the full Macromedia tools to do any really flash stuff. The open source ways of achieving the same effects are all left brain tools (as opposed to the more right brain tools like MX)
And look at everything that Google has been able to do on the web by using purely open methods, which is worth pondering.
Wow - and you write Java code, AND you do FPGA design as well as working on music. I would LURVE to spend a couple of days in the same office as you, and/or drink at the same places as you. Anytime you are in my town, please drop by and spend a couple of days with us here, its a very long journey by air, but it would be right up your alley Im sure.
PS: LOL over being modded Troll -1. There are some real losers on slashdot these days. Used to be good when my user ID made me stand out as a n00b
I was thinking about picking this up tomorrow evening, but I was first curious to know if it had any new anti-piracy features like Vista? Is there any activation/mandatory phoning home of any kind? Is there anything preventing me from installing it on more than one computer (I do not intend to, but anything that does this is likely to prevent some fraction of people from using it legally). Are there any new MPAA/RIAA-oriented features in it similar to Vista's protected video path?
I only want to buy this thing if it's a step forward from 10.4.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
Acronis isn't a good example...
When you see Time Machine think Vista 'Previous Versions' with a prettier UI, and no ability to track or keep file changes on the volume.
Vista does both on volume backup copies of changes and external backups automatically, and presents them in the same 'previuos versions' UI timeline list.
Just like Time Machine, in Vista you can view folders or documents at any previous time whether they are a recent change that is still stored on the volume or a backup from six months ago on an external hard drive.
Vista also does this more transparently, without the need for application integration because of its simplicity in accessing the previous version via a simple open/save dialog box.
Time Machine's UI is much prettier, but since it has less functionality than Vista, and adds overhead by backuping up files every hour, the pretty UI doesn't make up for the lack of features.
Does anyone else find it strange that Vista's backup and previous version system is more advanced than OS X's Time Machine, and yet you hardly ever see it mentioned on a review or when people are talking about Vista. Apple adds a generic version of the same thing, and the press and fans go wild...
And I'm not even saying this to discount OS X's Time Machine, as it is a good feature and a great feature for OS X and Mac users, but strange how something gets accolades when Apple does it, and is dismissed when Microsoft does it and even technically does it better.
Another major issue with the shared menu bar is that half the time, the app I want to do something with isn't on "top" -- something which is non-obvious when the windows are spread out and not overlapping, but I've already gone up to the menu bar, and then have to go back down and foreground the app (or alt-tab), and then return to the menu bar. This notion of the "on top" application defeats the purpose of multiple and/or large monitors. With enough screen space, everything seems to be "on top".
Secondly, I don't have this problem of missing the menu bar at all. All of the forwarded X apps I use have the menu bar in the window and my experience is that they are easier to use because of that fact, not harder. As for why they're easier for me, I tend to look first, then travel. When I'm looking at something way off to the right -- easily two feet away from my physical focus -- I have to turn my head to look at the upper left corner after which I'll go there with the mouse. This is harder than simply continuing to look at the application already under my eyes' focus.
If you'll notice, I said Apple should offer window-bound menu bars as a choice. That way, people who don't work like I do can have things the old way, and I can have things organized conveniently for me. Offering a choice is certainly better than the one-size-fits-all, there-is-only-one-true-way system we have now.
Finally, after years of complaining, Apple has finally (re)introduced multiple desktops for those who want them. Apparently, choice is good. On that note, only middle-click-paste and window bound menus to go. Perhaps by 10.7.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Vista does both on volume backup copies of changes and external backups automatically, and presents them in the same 'previuos versions' UI timeline list.
Just like Time Machine, in Vista you can view folders or documents at any previous time whether they are a recent change that is still stored on the volume or a backup from six months ago on an external hard drive.
Vista also does this more transparently, without the need for application integration because of its simplicity in accessing the previous version via a simple open/save dialog box.
may I ask which version of Vista does this or where the settings are for it? I'm looking around my basic version (which BTW costs more than Leopard) and I can't seem to find those settings and features.
I know, don't feed the trolls. I can't resist this one.
Let's see those "couple of tweaks." Give us the details -- scripts, source code, whatever you like -- for how in "a couple of tweaks" you'll make Linux act like Leopard. Make sure to include Time Machine, Core Graphics, and Back to my Mac.
These will be impressive tweaks! I can't wait.
Since the NDA expired at 6PM, I can tell you that Leopard can and will have a major impact on how people use their systems. Hell, the usability enhancements to the Finder alone are worth the money.
And in my book the additions to iChat have the potential to be a game-changer.
Don't tell Steve, but I might have even paid Vista Ultimate prices for OS X Leopard...
(Sorry for the dup, forgot to preview.)
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
This is one thing that many of my PC-using friends complain about with respect to OS X: it's too hard to tweak/hack. Apple tends to make it very hard for a person without at least cursory knowledge of the internals of OS X and Unix, as well as familiarity with a CLI, to modify the OS. While I'm sure most of my friends would be able to figure out OS X's guts pretty quickly, the fact that they don't see the options for deeper tweaking right in, say, System Preferences, leads them to conclude that it's not possible.
Personally, I think that this is a good thing - it creates sort of a minimum competency barrier for tooling around with the OS. If you're knowledgeable enough to know how to change things, you're probably knowledgeable enough to know how to fix it if something goes wrong. Meanwhile, the average user never has to see any of these things if they don't want to, and are much less likely to accidently screw something up by mucking about in preference panes.
You are trying to give Apple a pass on an issue they really don't deserve one. They could have used even a nominal virtualization system if they were not going to create a subsystem capable OS structure like MS did with NT to ensure support for non main OS level APIs.
And it's a bloody good thing they didn't. OS 9 was not even up to the level of Windows 3.1. It wasn't up to the level of Win16 or Win32s. The classic Mac OS API was so bloody horrible that it should have been dragged screaming down to hell along with Yrkoon of Melnibone's black soul on Strombringer's burning blade. Steve Jobs did the whole computer industry when he shoved a stake in its curdled and stinking heart. It was so bad that when I read "Inside Mac" in 1985 I was convinced that the Mac was doomed and got an Amiga... it was like reading an orchestral score for the kazoo and 32 sackbutts in 17/23 time. The shenanigans you had to go through to safely use pointers. The complete lack of scheduling. God damn you to Moorcock's hell for making me remember this stuff... writing classic Mac applications was like writing device drivers for a pre-thread operating system... you had to put bloody sequence points in and guarantee that they got hit every N milliseconds or the whole grand multitasking illusion would come tumbling down. It was so bad that an early G3 running classic Mac OS was less responsive than a 68030 running NeXTSTeP... I had the two of them running next to each other and the contrast was appalling.
Apple's real crime was waiting as long as they did before killing it. And now it's dead I'm glad, I tell you, glad!
If that is your solution, I can rest my case.
Actually, this is exactly my job; I think it's even what my card says, minus the personal insults :-)
You only find this surprising because you're not used to it because not a lot of people who are responsible for UI on Windows and Linux actually take care of their responsibility. It's always easier to go with preferences, or with what the majority likes best. This is a cop-out, and UI designers should be ashamed of themselves if they don't have the cojones to stand up for their applications and implement the best solution.
Also, "the best solution" has got nothing to do with what I think. This is science; the best UI solution for any given issue can be found using proper application of theory (see Fitt's law), usability tests and UI iterations.
Give it a try today with iGianTunes:
(Fire up terminal and write)
defaults write com.apple.iTunes AppleDisplayScaleFactor 10
or perhaps smallishTunes:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes AppleDisplayScaleFactor 0.20
Also works fine for the whole OS:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleDisplayScaleFactor 0.20