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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."
Yes. It trumps Vista, of course
Is that really a big accomplishment? I mean, really? XP trumps Vista.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Doesn't look like they got the GM. Their dock is on the side and isn't sporting the revised look.
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!
Of all of the new features of Leopard, I really cannot appreciate the addition of translucency to the menu bar. As a long time Mac user this really seems like one of those "because we can" features rather than it making any sense.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9043838 all on one page print link
Like the Lisa, the Newton, OS9, those ipods with the super scratcable screen, the puck mouse?
Apple has pulled its share of boners. Having a string of good products doesn't mean they are automatically super fantastic. They just happen to be super fantastic.
It's pretty damn easy to use as an app launcher now - hit apple-space to open it up, type the first few letters of the app's name in, then hit apple-return to open the top hit. Out of interest, how would you suggest it be made better?
Someone has got to take the time machine visualizer and change the background image to Goatse :D
You wouldn't understand...
"Time is nothing; timing is everything."
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?
The 2D dock can be enabled using the following:
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock
$2B OR NOT $2B = $FF
Tech-Recipes got a copy. Here are their first 20 tutorials about the new features of Leopard.
If you prefer the old dock style, Mac OS X Hints has that tutorial now as well.
Anybody going for a T-shirt tomorrow?
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.
1. I did not know that apple-return selects the top of the list! Thanks. 2. Spotlight is fast, but not as fast as a dedicated application launcher (Namely is the one I use). When I type something into Spotlight, it searches the index of the entire drive. With Namely, though, it's searching a list composed solely of applications, which means it is very fast - Spotlight gives a second delay. Also, because it's a more limited list, I can type just a few characters and narrow it down to just a few items in Namely, whereas Spotlight brings up everything that might have to do with that letter combination - no clutter. I know, I know, these are extremely petty complaints - Spotlight provides the same functionality that an application launcher does (and more!). It's just not streamlined for that, I guess.
What ever happened to those "extra features" Steve promised way back when Leopard was announced?
Which features are those?
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?
Just because it's a point release doesn't mean it's minor. The "point point" releases (i.e., 10.4.10) are free and contain bug fixes and the occasional new feature--more akin to the a MS SP. The point release are major releases and always include goodies worth paying for.
It makes a directory for itself on the root of the drive, no partitioning needed. :)
Actually, I think the biggest development treat in Leopard is Objective C 2.0, which supports garbage collection. I've done a bit of Obj-C development, and a fair bit of C# as well, and I think that the majority of the productivity gains some developers experience when going to languages such as C# and e.g. Python from C is from no longer having to worry about memory management. This is huge news, and I'm wondering why I haven't seen more about it out and around.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac trolling fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while you attempt to rephrase a old troll from kottke.org. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be trolled more often, I'm rarely trolled once a year. If that.
In addition, during this trolling attempt, I can not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even my assistant is straining to keep awake as you type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while waiting for your various trolls, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Wintel troll that has been posted faster than its Mac counterpart, despite Wintel users generally having less of a life, and more time to hang out on Slashdot. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs circles around you, and a small Perl script could out troll you most times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh troll is a superior troll.
Mac troll addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to troll a Mac user over other faster, cheaper, more stable people.
Linux Users: Because the apps I use most frequently don't exist under Linux and have no true equivalents, therefore I buy Windows.
They are ProTools, Cubase SX3, FL Studio, SoundForge8, Reason 3, Rebirth 2, Flash MX, Illustrator, Vegas, and more.
The apps I use infrequently, has linux equivalents or exists natively like Eclipse, NetBeans, and assorted FPGA dev apps. I keep both Win32 and Linux machines at home.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Because Apple's point releases are called 10.x.y, not 10.x. For instance, Tiger, which is 10.4, was released in April 2005, swiftly followed by 10.4.1, 10.4.2, etc, all the way up to 10.4.10 (the current version) and 10.4.11 (probably the last version, due probably tomorrow). These 'point point' releases provide the 'bug fixes and a few little extras thrown in' that you describe, and are free, automatic downloads through Software Update. It's these 'point point' releases that are equivalent to Microsoft's Service Packs. Leopard, 10.5, isn't a 'point release' at all in anything other than name. The only reason it's called 10.5 and not OS XV is because Apple like having the X/Ten play on words. Y'know, it's after OS 9, but it's also UNIX, ho ho ho. A quick run through http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html will show you that Leopard consists of much more than 'bug fixes and a few little extras thrown in', such as a completely new backup system, redesigned and simplified system preferences, a completely rewritten scheduler, full 64-bit architecture, and a whole lot more.
Bear in mind that numbering schemes are simply marketing and entirely arbitrary.
Current models allow a configuration (via System Preferences) wherein a click is a right-click when two fingers are on the trackpad. And two fingers are used to scroll, as well. I find this solution very satisfactory.
Circumcision is child abuse.
At WWDC 2006, he mentioned that a few big features of Leopard were still under wraps to avoid being ripped off by Microsoft, or (more likely) because they weren't complete, and wouldn't be announced until the product ships...
My guess at this point is that it was just hype, but who knows?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
What the guy above me said, plus I have to ask just what comparable features did Windows XP SR1 and SR2 provide? Integrated backup solutions?New collaborative messaging environments? Major file manager and desktop redesigns? Redesigned mail, notes, and calendaring systems? New graphics and developer subsystems (Core Animation)? Improved performance on existing hardware?
How about major security upgrades and multicore enhancements? Oh, wait. SR2 did add a firewall, didn't it? In addition to rolling up a couple of hundred security patches.
My bad.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Free? Yes. Deos less than 1% of the population even know what BSD is? Answer: Yes. Does less than 1% of the population want to learn BSD? No.
You mean I can pay $129 and have a great OS? I spent more in time reading the first 20 pages of "Teach youself UNIX" than the cost of that OS. You are a breed that is far from the norm. Realize this, please.
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?
I don't consider Lisa to be a boner. A strong argument can be made that without the work done on Lisa we wouldn't have the Mac, OR Windows for matter. At least in their present forms and on the same timeline.
Yes, $10,000 per system was probably a bit strong... but consider that a good computer at the time would still set you back $5,000, that hard drives were so expensive they were considered only for workgroup solutions, and that Xerox expected people to pony up one HUNDRED thousand dollars for a Star system.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Funny, I can say the same thing about Vista...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
"If your computer doesn't meet those specs, it's time to upgrade your hardware or stick with Tiger for now. And if you're still running Mac "Classic" OS apps, forget it. Leopard drops support for what was once Mac OS 9."
So when Vista needs beefier hardware and some Windows 98 apps are broken on it, the reason is because Microsoft sucks and it's their fault for requiring a current computer to run their current OS. But when Leopard needs beefier specs, it's the user's fault they haven't upgraded by now and it's all taken in stride.
I get it. Makes total sense.
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
Unlike my general experience with OS X, I've been having to reboot my dual G4 desktop every other day for the past week. I've repaired the disk via the install disk, but the lock up are still happening. Since Leopard is coming out this week, I've bought a new HD to install on and will try the migration assistant.
Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"
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)
I've seen it run on a 1Ghz G4. Some of the new features are a little chuggy (spaces, stationary in mail, etc), but it works fine overall. I'm planning to install it on an 800Mhz G4 iBook, I think it'll run fine.
Both of those machines have maxed out ram. I'd recommend at least 1GB of ram for average usage patterns, more if you're into multi-tasking.
As for features that existed on both Tiger and Leopard? Many of them are much faster on leopard than tiger. Spotlight absolutely screams on leopard. Results start appearing as you lift your finger from the key, even on the 1Ghz G4. I've uninstalled quicksilver, since spotlight is just as fast now.
Let these videos show you what the parent mean, they kind of explains the difference of Steve Jobs vs Ballmer quite good:
:D
:)
Jobs and mac: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSiQA6KKyJo
Ballmer and Win 1.0: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk
Pick your flavour
Regarding small vs large teams, a good example of this may be the development of DragonFlyBSDs Hammer filesystem vs Suns ZFS, we'll see how fast Hammer gets done thought
It amuses me that 90% of the comments here that are above my minimum-score filter are intelligent retorts to completely unfounded or inaccurate Apple slams.
This is like a testament to a new phenomenon- battered-user syndrome. You won't get a divorce because you've already invested so much...
Ther is a bit of a double standard, yes, but dropping support for OS 9 isn't like droping support for Windows 98. The Win32 API in Vista is basically and ancestor of the Win32 API in Vista. OS 9 apps, on the other hand, are a whole different kettle of fish.
OS 9 wasn't a modern operating system. As an OS it was, in many ways, decades behind Windows 98. The OS 9 API was based on a model where memory management and scheduling by the OS simply didn't happen... the application got a chunk of REAL memory and until it voluntarily gave up the CPU noting could touch it. To work around this, they created a really gimpy partition model. Multitasking in classic Mac OS was handled conceptually through the window system... there really wasn't an OS underneath it at all, not even as much as there was in Windows 3.1.
Jobs wanted to get rid of the ghastly classic Mac OS API in 1997, but Adobe and a few other big manufacturers dug their heels in and told him they'd abandon the Mac if he didn't come up with a way forward.
So first of all he came up with a bridge API called "Carbon". Carbon applications got an API that couldn't do all the fugly old classic stuff, but were ready to at least run on Rhapsody (what OS X was originally going to be called) once it was revamped to support it. Carbon was introduced for OS 8 and became a standard part of OS 9. After OS X came out people really pushed developers to switch to Carbon... but there were still a bunch of die-hards that insisted on running some software from 1994 that had no Carbon version.
Several times in the early 2000s Jobs pulled the last G4 Powermac capable of booting OS 9 and running classic apps native, rather than under the "classic" emulation environment. Each time there was an outcry... until 2005, when it vanished and nobody complained. Six months later he announced the Intel macs that would not ever be able to run pre-carbon "classic" apps from the dark ages.
MOST apps released *for* OS 9 are not "classic", they're carbon-based, and run under Rosetta.
Most apps released before OS 9 have been carbonised.
NO intel macs have ever been able to run pre-carbon apps.
Don't think of this like Microsoft abandoning Windows 98 apps. Think of it like Microsoft abandoning apps that needed direct access to hardware registers and video memory. The kind of stuff you have to run under Bochs even on Windows XP. It just sounds worse because Apple left it SO late to get rid of that old "application-centric" environment and actually ship an operating system that was actually an operating system.
The real double standard is the resistance of Apple fanboys to admit just how bloody awful OS 9 was.
On the other hand, it seems that so many things in OSX have to be tweaked in this manner. I wouldn't expect the typical user to be able to figure that one out, or how to undo it should they decide they want the 3D dock back for that matter. Atleast if you direct the user to some panel, there is some hope that they might remember how to get there in the futere.
http://www.hiram.nl/ipsedixit/artikel/793/boolean-search-in-spotlight
Undocumented, and the syntax is very picky and non-obvious.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Is this sarcasm that went over everyone's head? It's always the first complaint about Linux systems. "I don't want to use a command line!" (I'm a long-time user and prefer the command line for many things,though)
Put identity in the browser.
The buy cinema tickets widget!! I'm amazed that found its place in Steves 10 features list at WWDC07, kind of prove there wasn't much intresting ;D
I guess ZFS may had been one of those top secret features. Or under the hood changes. Or stuff they haven't had time to finalize yet.
hello. i'm just wondering what the minimum install size is for leopard? without ilife, iphoto etc. because i'm after a compact flash card for my macbook, i already have a compact flash to sata adaptor and was hoping to fit leopard on on a fast 8gb card as i can't afford a fast 16gb card and don't want a slow card. in my normal install i only use safari, itunes, ichat and the terminal. iphoto, photobooth etc. isn't installed. i also have a few small third-party programs, that probably don't even amount to 50 mb additional. so, anyone any ideas if i could manage to squeeze that all on an 8gb card? i'd use an external 2.5-inch drive for my itunes library, films, and either that or a networked drive for time machine.
Leopard is no more resolution independent than Tiger was. If you enable it via Quartz Debug you'll see that it's horribly buggy and unusable even with Apple's own applications. Or at least it was as of 9a559, I haven't checked with the GA version.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
But it does backup your computer. You can examine the disk from other Macs, and the first backup it makes is of your entire system so it can do a complete system restore if need be.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
I know this is slashdot, but could you please at least read about a feature before commenting on it?
Time Machine most certainly will allow a user to recover files and "will help me recover my files if my computer dies, is stolen, or is unexpectedly repossessed by nature". Indeed, you can recover a totally cratered computer - 10.5 setup will let you restore from a time machine backup as part of the OS install process.
I was also pleased to find out that Apple does indeed do incremental backups of data using a differential methodology (i.e. not making a whole copy of a changed file, but only recording the new information in the file as part of the backup). They do it using a variant of system links. This saves a ton of space and might actually let you have a decent version history to restore from.
Time Machine is like VSS, except it's actually useful to an end user - and unlike VSS, it backs up to a physically different hard drive so you are protected from hardware failure for just the scenario's you outline.
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.
That's what Time Machine does. If you put the Leopard install DVD into a new Mac, one of your options is to plug in a Time Machine disk and restore your whole old system to the new computer. That's as backed up as any backup system I've ever used (and a hell of a lot easier).
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
noidentity: OK, open up the terminal
user: What? Is that in my Dock?
noidentity:..erm ok, then go to HD > Applications > Utilities > Terminal
user:OK
noidentity:Now type defaults write com...
user:Where do i write 'com', on my note pad?
noidentity:no, no I mean type write
user:I don't have a type writer
noidentity:sigh. No, the word write, type the word write
user:I think i typed it right, w r i g h t thats right, right?
--- Time Passes ---
noidentity:OK, now, using the keyboard on your computer, type the following words -boolean YES;
user:Whats a hyphen?
--- sound of gunshot ---
user:Hello?
* Game Over * High Score: 264,846,927 -- Your Score: 14
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 was wondering the same. What about the discussion I've seen so many times:
Slashdotter1: Check out the source code with svn
Slashdotter2: What if I don't have svn installed?
Slashdotter1: #aptitude install subversion
Slashdotter2: What the heck is supposed to be that? I don't wanna type some obscure command line!!!!!1
We should say every time: click the "K" in the bottom left corner of your screen, or the "Applications" label at the top left of your screen or...
10.5 doesn't do this. The Finder didn't change much at all (IMHO) between 10.1 and 10.4, but it's been totally rebuilt in 10.5. If the Finder has annoyed you in the past for any other reasons, chances are you'll like 10.5 much, much better (it has it's own quirks, but they're not the kind that make you want to kill the programmers).
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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.
OK, maybe it wasn't a failure of marketing after all, since "Previous Versions/Volume Shadow Copy" pales in comparison to the usability of Apple's Time Machine.
Actually I agree with you on the marketing department failures of Microsoft. Microsoft's marketing has always sucked, and especially in comparison to Apple. Microsoft can market a nugget of gold and people will see it as a rock, Apple can market a rock and people will see it as gold.
As for the usability, I did say time machine was prettier, but I wouldn't say easier or more usable. Like I mentioned before, MS's version of the technology works seamlessly as it is available from a right click from any folder or dialog box, even in applications that are as old as Win3.1 days. And even though it isn't as pretty, right clicking on a folder or file is pretty easy to do.
Apple's Time Machine is pretty but it 'needs' the applications to be time machine aware to take full advantage of the features.
MS technology just happens transparently at the FS level which OS X can't do and it also extends to backups like OS X's Time Machine. If Apple could have gotten ZFS working as the default FS, they could have used the feature that ZFS and NTFS share to make the on volume realtime backups like Vista does.
But I completely agree on the marketing issue, it is something Microsoft just doesn't get, and even when they have something of value, it never seems to either make news or even gets to the people reviewing Micrsoft products that 'should' know about it as they are technology journalists.
Going back to the Win98 days, it was the first time I can remember thinking, why doesn't anyone talk about the important features that make such a difference between Win98 and Win95. Things like realtime sound mixing at the OS level, GUI scripting & automation, etc.
And to this day, most people can't even list a lot of these distinctions between Win98 and Win98 or other OSes of the time, that were very much revolutionary or worth noticing.
Strangly, it is kind of sad, as some 'bright' developers at Microsoft put good work into something and even Microsoft doesn't publically show off the features, and the rest of the world never seems to see them either.
Heck I wouldn't even know many things about MS products if it weren't for the strange areas of work I'm involved with that bridge UI and OS studies and also being exposed to things at a development level.
One really strange thing is during the Alpha and Beta phases of products like Vista, or Win98, you learn more about the architecture and features of the OS than is ever revealed to the majority of the public and tech community. Maybe MS needs to have their developers step in and write part of their marketing, because a lot is lost between them and what the sales and marketing put out.
Sorry for the long post, ended up venting about MS instead of just responding. Take Care
Actually, in Leopard you can just do the search, then hit Return to open the top hit. This is because the top hit is selected by default, rather than "Show All" as in Tiger.
But that's the point: Normal users aren't really supposed to figure this out. As a software developer and UI designer, it's part of my job to make sure every UI decision doesn't result in a new preference. 90% of the time, preferences are cop-outs: If the design team can't decide on what solution is best, they make it a checkbox. Don't do that. It's your job to figure out the best solution, don't burden the user with it.
What Apple does is the right thing: Make what they think is best default. Don't make preference for it. But if somebody absolutely needs to have his Dock look different, give him a way that does not involve changing the actual application resources.
"Go to your Apple Menu, select System Preferences. Now click on "Sharing" and on "Remote Access." Click "Start." Tell me the number it says at the bottom of your window. Okay, now wait 10 minutes." :-)
I've just written about this: Don't make preferences until you absolutely have to. Furthermore, it wouldn't work: Many Mac applications have no windows. Why would, say, an unzip application need a Window? Unless you unzip an actual file, there's no need to show a window; so where would you put the menu bar? What about applications that have small windows, but wide menus?
It just makes no sense.
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.
When I think of "backups", I tend to think "this will help me recover my files if my computer dies, is stolen, or is unexpectedly repossessed by nature".
That's why Apple goes on about making the backup to an external drive. Using the same drive is foolishness.
The Time Machine feature is more of an archive than a backup.
A real backup system needs to provide both mirroring and archiving facilities. Most "backup" software I've seen only does mirroring. Time Machine adds archiving to that.
This article should clear up your confusion about Time Machine.
From the article (page 3):
The Time Machine settings in System Preferences show the time scheduled for the next backup. When that time arrives, it displays a progress thermometer during the backup, which typically only takes a few seconds, unless you've generated a huge amount of new content in the last hour. Again, that's because Time Machine doesn't scan through your entire drive looking for changes, but rather only consults FSEvents for a listing of what has changed recently.
and more from page 4...
Time Machine has been frequently compared to Microsoft's Shadow Copy (or Volume Snapshot Service), because both systems involve file backup. In reality, they are not really very similar at all. Microsoft uses the background Shadow Copy service to duplicate files on the same disk. Those shadow copies record a "snapshot" of the file at a given moment in time, and can be accessed by the user using Previous Versions (which shows up in the file properties viewer), or tapped into by an external network backup system. Backing up these "shadow copies" simply prevents the external backup system from running into problems trying to back up live files that may be locked by the user working on them.
The data backup features related to Shadow Copy are only useful if a Windows machine is running in an environment with a server backing them up. Shadow Copy is not in itself a backup system, although it can present a listing of duplicated files that were captured by the shadow copy service. Without a dedicated backup system, Previous Versions only shows local shadows of a file. It does not copy files to an external disk for safekeeping, and its shadow copies can't be browsed through by the user in the file system by date or by query. Shadow Copy is certainly not an easy to use consumer backup solution (nor is intended to be), which is what Time Machine expressly is.
In Windows Vista, Microsoft also tied Shadow Copy into System Restore, which allows users to roll back their entire PC software install to a previous point in time. This is not a backup system either; it's a system wide undo. System Restore is oriented around undoing the problems caused by installing a software title, a Windows software update, an unsigned hardware driver, or some other event that causes problems that need to be rolled back. It doesn't go back and find something lost from the past; it reverts the clock to a previous checkpoint and throws away the future from that point forward. System Restore is not even loosely related to Time Machine in what it does, how it does it, or why it exists.
Actually, their whole series on Leopard called The Road to Mac OS X Leopard is rather good. Lots of facts and history.
MS technology just happens transparently at the FS level which OS X can't do and it also extends to backups like OS X's Time Machine. If Apple could have gotten ZFS working as the default FS, they could have used the feature that ZFS and NTFS share to make the on volume realtime backups like Vista does. This is wrong. See my previous anonymous post.
Time Machine doesn't require any special changes to applications although it offers some cool stuff that way. It's main purpose is to be a complete backup system that actually gets used because it's helpful and doesn't get in the way. Vista's Shadow Copy doesn't backup to a second hard drive. Shadow Copy also doesn't restore files that have been deleted. Those are the two main purposes of Time Machine. From what I can tell Vista's Shadow Copy appears to be no lower to the file system than Time Machine and FSEvents.
Leopard was launched here at 6pm in stores too - so nyah-ya!
One thing I am noticing having installed it is that a) Spotlight reindexes all your stuff and b) if you enable Time Machine it also does a heavy-duty initial copy. These two processes happening simultaneously hit the disk pretty hard and doubtless cause it to zap all over the place. The upshot is a lot of disk thrashing and rather stuttery performance on things like the dock animation for the first two or three hours. YMMV (MacBook 13" 2GHz here). I expect it to settle down after this - but still in that initial period as I write this.
Also, the initial run of the Set-up Assistant failed to recognise my existing wireless network, and got thoroughly confused when I tried to enter the information manually as it requested. In the end I simply quit it to find that by default Leopard had turned off Airport. Turning it on again found my network and connected without any problems, so if you run into this, just tell Setup Assistant to get lost and enable it yourself.
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
Yeah i know where you are coming from with the non bootable thing, but you don't have to install leopard then restore time machine. As part of the installation leopard will ask you if you have a time machine folder with data you want to restore.
Don't even have to go that far anymore..
Launch iChat, Share screen..
voila
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
...what Windows machines look like in Coverflow.