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Apple to Unveil New Leopard OS in August
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Jul 06, 2006 06:51 AM
from the new-kitty dept.
from the new-kitty dept.
Max Fomitchev writes "Looks like Apple is going to reveal its new cool and fast Mac OS code-named 'Leopard' in the upcoming World Developer's Conference in August. Good news for Apple! And terrible news for Microsoft. If 'Leopard' is really what it claims to be, i.e. fast and efficient, in sharp contrast to slow and resource hungry Windows Vista, we certainly would see Apple's remarkable market share gain next year."
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Leopard Fake Screenshot Contest Winners Announced 163 comments
Austin Sarner writes "Phill Ryu's Fake Leopard Screenshot contest which has been attracting a quite a bit of buzz has just ended and the winners have been announced! While there is a bunch of expected stuff in these screenshots, the entrants did not hold back when it came to trying out crazy stuff — and surprisingly, a good amount of them work great. Ranging from new window styles to a complete rethink of a window based work environment, these are sure to make any UI geek excited. The winners received over $1,000 each in prizes, and were obviously motivated to put out some great stuff. The judges included Wil Shipley, the creator of Delicious Library, David Watanabe, who makes NewsFire and Acquisition, as well as numerous other smaller devs."
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Apple to Unveil New Leopard OS in August
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More Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/~eldavojohn/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 16, @03:26PM)
Way back in the day, Apple code named their boxes by color. From the aforementioned article: So we can speculate that Leopard might not only be fast but also encourage a partitioned Windows installation using boot camp so that it can reference everything within Windows and run Windows apps flawlessly without having to reboot or (more importantly) reverse engineer Windows.
Again, this is just speculation, I've been expecting them to put 'red box' functionality in a release of OS X soon.
Re:More Speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
I've had with these editors. I'm assuming they get paid for their work, yet they can't even check articles like this for substance, or spot that the sumitter and blog owner are the same person and probabably looking to get some quick ad revenue.
And even if the editors work for free, you'd at least expect they had enough pride in their work to do a decent job.
Re:More Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://theravensnest.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday October 07, @07:05AM)
Re:More Speculation (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.none.com/)
Slashdot stories are almost always links to blogs which links to reprints of stories. Half of them are uninterestingly written or contain nearly no information. BUT
Even if there was no link, if it was just a headline: Apple to soon release OSX Leopard!...without even an article..it wouldnt matter because slashdot is about the discussion. I want to see what people think about leopard..i want to see people uncovering cool features that arent mentioned in most stories..i want beta testers to come forward and tell about their experiances...THIS is why slashdot is great. Much more interesting than sites with many stories, but no usable forum to speak of. (digg,etc)
That beeing said, I have no idea why anyone would subscribe. I just block ads and get the stories ad-free anyways. And as for seeing them early...who to discuss with..yourself?
Re:More Speculation (Score:4, Informative)
That's probably also why Apple didn't reverse engineer MAPI so Mail.app could talk to Exchange, choosing instead to screen-scrape Outlook Web Access.
Re:More Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Sunday November 05 2006, @05:31AM)
Actually, I'd say that implementing Win32 on Mac OS X would be a way that Apple could screw Microsoft, but good. A second implementation would freeze it: "Why aren't you using the normal win32? I want to use your app on my Mac!"
It would create considerable pressure on developers to ensure that their apps needed nothing more than whatever snapshot of the Win32 API Apple had decided to implement. WINE is trying to track MS's changes, but if Apple turns Win32 into another penalty-box environment like Classic or X11.
That being said, I don't see it happening.
-jcr
IBM tried this already with OS/2, it failed (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
This was already tried with IBM OS/2 and it failed, and IBM was even requiring that users have a real copy of Windows. The future is vitualization and being able to run any version or patch of Windows. BootCamp is cool but it is temporary.
Re:More Speculation (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:More Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to post anonymously on this one...
But speaking to a well known Oh-Ess Ecks programmer, I asked him about the possibility of Wine noting that he would be the one to ask. He is very collegial with Microsoft and I've hung with him and one of M$'s top programmers as they have both bitched and moaned about the other's OSs (and the Microsoft guy actually made a few points I never thought about before that were on the money...I program Windows for a living but own a niche Mac support company that grew out of a mailing list I use to moderate...I can almost give up the Windows programming these days as my organization is starting to look like it needs centralized day to day leadership, but beyond that, I could care less what OS anyone else uses. I know how to use both and my Vaio is as much a part of me as my new Intelbook).
Getting to the point, talking to the guy and asking him about the possibility of using my Windows skills to port applications using WINE but with a translated front end on the Mac side. Pretty much, simply run the APIs of the apps I have created or have access to, and create new native front ends. Best of both worlds I thought (sorta like when I would create C++ backends and use VB to build the front end on the PC and Hypercard for the Mac -- I got pretty proficient at making certain DLLs could be recompiled as a XCMD simply by dropping it in the right compiler and letting the headers decide what to do with it).
His response was one of the most direct responses I've ever gotten about future plans without him saying anything. Claimed to have looked into WINE, had it running internally (this was a year back, when I was still planning on having to use an X86 emulator to do most of the work as I didn't think the Intel switchover was going to happen so quickly) and he said that while it was a good product, they weren't going to use 'compromised' APIs to do this. When asked if they had any plans to license or develop any of their own non-compromised APIs, he responded that there was no plans to license anything. It was a pretty strongly worded statement, especially when looking into the point by point claims and what was missing from my original query. And considering the last statement I received in this manner was positively prophetic looking back upon the email.
With Bootcamp and the new emphasis on Parallels and my knowledge of their staff, my best bet is that Apple is planning on leveraging Windows to their own needs, making it usable but a pain. Sort of like how their Bluetooth products refuse to work with the Windows side of the Intelbook and simple features that could have been added were ignored to ensure that you only got exactly what you needed to run Windows solidly in Bootcamp, but not with the trademark Apple Ease of Use.
Re:More Speculation (Score:5, Funny)
No, but it's Leopard Meat! They go mad for it!
Stock Tip (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.frogsporn.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 26 2006, @05:30PM)
Re:Stock Tip (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft could seriously limit and control the hardware on which Windows would run, they could probably do a lot better with drivers, too.
These days, now that Apple is using more standardized Intel chipsets, they are able to pick a few configurations that are identical to perfectly good PCs out there and develop for those machines. As technology advances, they'll still have a limited group of configurations to develop for. (And yes, they aren't putting out high powered gaming configurations right now, but they will have high powered graphics workstations when the high end desktops come out.) If they had to start supporting everything, they would be opening a Pandora's Box of compatability issues. Dealing with the required driver variants would eat up the same resources they're using to innovate.
Besides, the reason Apple sells OS updates for $99 is that they know that everyone buying a copy has already bought a machine they produced.
-JMP
Re:Stock Tip (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Stock Tip (Score:4, Funny)
Who writes this junk? (Score:5, Insightful)
If "Leopard" is really what it claims to be, i.e. fast and efficient in sharp contrast to slow and resource hungry Windows Vista, we certainly would see Apple's remarkable market share gain next year."
Maybe the reason fewer people are taking Slashdot seriously is because Slashdot doesn't seem to take itself seriously.
Hire a f-ing editor to check out and rewrite the most egregious but still post-worthy submissions. No, a real editor, not one of your friends.
Re:Who writes this junk? (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed. It's not even like you'd need to edit a whole article - you're editing the summary of an article.
(emphasis mine)I found that pretty amusing. Since when is a 10% (plus or minus; feel free to correct me with solid info) marketshare remarkable?
Also, from the actual article itself:
Is this actually a new OS like the article suggests, or just a new revision of OSX (10.5 or what have you)? If it's not supposed to be completely brand new, I find this article somewhat questionable.
Re:Who writes this junk? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.unsanity.org/)
By week, I think you mean year. The fact leopard would be announced at WWDC was pre-announced at last year's WWDC. I'm not sure how this is news.
Re:Who writes this junk? (Score:4, Insightful)
Since when have Microsoft OSs not been slow and resource-hungry? And when did Apple ever not prioritize elegance and performance?
Careful - your fanboyism's showing.
Erm, a long time. Apple needs to differentiate itself from Microsoft to retain its market share. Moving to an Intel architecture was a risky step, as it deprived them of one of their major differentiating factors, PPC architecture.
The minute Apple runs on commodity PC hardware no-one has any reason to buy expensive Mac hardware, so they won't. This takes Apple out of the hardware game, and makes them entirely reliant on software and iPods. Mac OS/X will then compete directly with Windows, and though it's faster, more stable and more secure, Windows has that whole 90%+ market share thing going for it. Apple would be squished in short order.
Sorry? If Apple wants to make OS/X run on commodity PC hardware it's going to have exactly the same problems. Sure, it could arbitrarily draw a line in the sand and refuse to support hardware older than X years, but that's not going to impress anyone used to Windows' (at least passable) support for legacy PC peripherals.
And even if the problems weren't as severe as MS's in the short term, by giving up control over the hardware OS/X runs on, Apple will be ensuring it only gets worse in the future, until within a few years they'll be just as stuffed as MS.
Riiiiight, because Ballmer et al are reknowned industry-wide as cuddly, fluffy-wuffy teddy-bears.
Certainly MS is looking shakier than it has for a long time, but I doubt the paranoia level's decreased much since Bill left.
Very poetic.
Except, of course, the dinosaurs actually kept the "mice" down for millions of years, and it was only once the dinosaurs had already naturally gone extinct on their own that the mice even had a chance. There's nothing like a bad analogy to really demonstrate you don't know what you're talking about...
This is probably the only mildly sensible thing in the entire article.
What, you mean the guys who failed to put a dent in it for the last twenty years? Sorry Mac guys and girls, but when a cash-poor FOSS operating system written by a bunch of hobbyists frightens MS more than a long-term competitor, you obviously aren't competing quite as hard as you think.
A better candidate than Apple?
Linux (free, doesn't have to worry about profits or budgets, has been eating MS's lunch for years on the server-side
This is just NOT news. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.apptree.net/)
This has been news on June 26 (Score:5, Informative)
Yet another Apple commercial (Score:4, Insightful)
Year of the Mac? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems a bit out of character..
Big Cat Names (Score:3, Funny)
Yeeeeeeeeeeee.
Wake me when.... (Score:5, Funny)
Remarkable Market Share? (Score:4, Insightful)
who said vista was slow? (Score:3, Interesting)
2.2% is remarkable? (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://jargon-file.org/)
In calendar year 2005, total PC unit sales were 208.6 million.
Apple's selling plenty to survive as a profitable niche product, sure. But they are competition for Microsoft in the same sense mainframes are.
Wow, Slashdot is really falling apart. (Score:4, Insightful)
If "Leopard" is really what it claims to be, i.e. fast and efficient in sharp contrast to slow and resource hungry Windows Vista, we certainly would see Apple's remarkable market share gain next year."
WTF is that? First off, it's wrong. It's very very wrong. Tiger is better than XP now, but did we see 'Apple's remarkable market share gain this year'? No. There is nothing certain about Apple and 'market share gain' no matter how superior their products. Forget 'remarkable'. Second off, it's written so badly I had to go over it three times to make sure it really said what it said.
Re:Apple's next Mac OS X, Leopard (Score:5, Informative)
One should note that it's not Carbon that makes the Finder suck. Any decent, full-featured OS X application can be written in Carbon if the developer takes care to implement things correctly. And even more importantly, some things in OS X can still only be done in Carbon, hence the Framework's inclusion in many Cocoa applications as well. Unfortunately, most users associate Carbon with all those ported ("carbonized") OS 9 C++ applications written on top of Metrowerks' PowerPlant, so it makes sense Carbon has a bad rap, but the fact is: Carbon is not the issue here. Carbon's fine.
Re:Apple's next Mac OS X, Leopard (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.apptree.net/)
Carbon's fine, until you actually bother to learn Cocoa. The fact is, religion about this aside, Cocoa is just better. As in 10,000% more productive better. The fact that apps also tend to look better is not a reflection of Carbon per se, but it is a reflection of just how much work you have to do in Carbon to makes things come out right. I'd rather spend time on making the app functional rather than endlessly tweaking the widgets. I came from the Toolbox, then Carbon, and now Cocoa, so I know of what I speak.
However, I disagree that PowerPlant is the cause of a lot of problems, because in many ways PP was the Cocoa of its day, Mac-wise (ignoring the fact that Cocoa has existed in some form since 1987, just not on the Mac). Using a framework on top of Carbon is the only sensible way to program with Carbon - anything other than a small app is unmanageable in Carbon if you don't have a framework there. What may be a source of this perception is that between System 8.0 and 10.0, Apple changed a lot about the organisation of the Toolbox/Carbon and PP may have struggled to keep up with that. It was a tough period all round.
I'd like to see the Finder written in Cocoa, because it would likely be a lot more functional since getting functionality together in a Cocoa app just takes much less effort than the same functionality in Carbon. Given that Apple seems to want to throw a Finder together I'm sure it would be a lot more polished in the same timeframe if constructed in Cocoa.
Microsoft way ahead (Score:5, Funny)
Empty Article (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://ragnarok.dyndns.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday May 17 2003, @10:09PM)
The article had NO MEANING. It was one of those things you say to your buddies while hanging around. "You know, if Leopard is as fast as Apple says so, MS could be in deep [insert colorful adjective here]." Then you're promptly shot down by your friends, reminding you that the masses have a "Crapple" frame of mind because their last experience with Mac OS was with the pizza-box LC IIs running System 7 from back when they were in high school, and they don't care any more.
Not only does this bode poorly for Slashdot's credibility as having important and accurate information, but what does this say about journalism in general, when this passes for a good article. Oh, wait, it's not even an article! It's a blog posting! Do we even know who this Max Fomitchev is? I've never heard of him. This place is slowly becoming a rumor mill full of dupes.
Come back when you've got an article from a credible source, no less than 500 words, with some real analysis, facts to back it up, and maybe a cool graphic or charts or something. Until then, stop wasting my time.
Bloody naming! (Score:3, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
With Windows, I know that the step from 2000 to XP is significant because the names are way different. Similar with XP and Vista. But seriously, how can I expect something significant going from Tiger to Leopard?
BTW, I guess I can blame my ignorance, because as a long-time Linux user, I only view Windows and MacOS/X from afar.
I Suspect... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.kickthebobo.com/erotech/index.html | Last Journal: Friday October 26, @11:51AM)
List of OS X Code Names (Score:3, Informative)
(http://joelsanda.blogspot.com/)
Here's the list of OS X code names:
Re:List of OS X Code Names (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday May 08 2007, @05:37PM)
Not sure Vista is the slow resource hungry one (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.xmilk.com/)
The Windows machine is more than twice the clock speed of the economy mac mini, but even with this in mind I can't help but get the impression the MacOS is abnormally sluggish.
I am not traditionally a mac user (or a windows user for that matter) and people who are more familiar with Apples history tell me that the lack of a 'snappy' feeling in the GUI is just something you get used to, and not representative of the efficiency of the O/S... but i'm not sure that I buy into that.
Anyway, Let me go ahead and make my points very clear:
1) Vista is really not sluggish in the sense we are talking about here. Especially if you get the new RTM (post beta2) builds from MSDN. In fact it is much snappier than any Mac/Gnome/KDE desktop I have worked in on similar hardware. (Perhaps this is becuase the windows GUI is so ugly
2) Current MacOS IS sluggish, maybe its becuase of all that silly anti-aliasing and frequent x86 emulation, I really don't know, but if they make a new O/S which solves this problem there would be ALOT of people more willing to use it, especially if they can get some damn native applications available for x86.
Re:I think there is that possiblily - (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.apptree.net/)
So, basically you choose your computer on the basis of its marketing image, rather than any serious look at what it can actually do, or how it works. You realise how lame that is? Still, it is certainly this sort of attitude that has handed Microsoft its 90%+ market share, so you're not alone.
Re:No, We Won't. (Score:3, Informative)
Thousands of casual computer users are switching. I switched. I know at least 10 people in my age group (20-30) who have swtiched. 10 more who are thinking about it. People looking to buy a new comptuer when they go off to college are looking at Macs more seriously than ever. They do the same things that any casual user is looking for in a Windows computer (email, web, chat, word processing), they look better doing it, and they work flawlessly (and better) with that iPod they got for Christmas.
You're right when it comes to Gamers not switching to Macs, but how many gamers don't have a PS2 or Xbox? You're right when it comes to businesses not switching to Macs, but the home computer market is certainly not worth overlooking.
Mac's marketshare may not be stellar yet, but compare it to their marketshare 5 years ago.
Re:Huh? Wanna say that again? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well one could go with history and note the fact that EVERY new version of Windows has been a lot slower than the predecessor. Meanwhile every version of OS X has been faster than the predecessor.
If you look at the unit sales of Macs from Apple quarterly reports, you'll see that they is usually significantly larger growth YoY that in the overall PC market. That means growing market share.
Of confirm it by looking at sites browser stats. This one shows Mac userbase doubling in 3 years.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.
I can see why you selected your username. But you'd do better if you didn't overreach yourself with your FUD.
Re:Huh? Wanna say that again? (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that has something to do with the fact that, with Apple, you constantly have to upgrade your hardware as well as your software. It's not like you can go back and install OS X on your 1998 PowerPC 740 and expect it to run faster than the OS it originally came with.
-Eric
Re:Huh? Wanna say that again? (Score:3, Informative)
(http://datafrog.org/)
Really? Not according to this article: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/busine
Apple may have lost market share in the late 90's / early 2000's but they are recovering. I believe this a lot of this is due to OS X.
I generally don't trust statistics but I have more faith in these numbers than someone who calls himself MSFanBoi2.
Re:My feelings on OS X (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.gregbarendt.com/)