Apple Delays Leopard to October 545
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.'"
New Finder... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:New Finder... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:New Finder... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Mod Me down, but I have something to say: (Score:4, Informative)
> > 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?!
Re:Will this run on AMD? (Score:1, Informative)
Apple has *no* desire to make OS X available on generic machines. Aside from the resulting stability issues due to trying to support 10,000,000 different hardware combinations, it would just cannibalize their existing hardware sales.
Yes, there are hacks out there to let people run OS X on Intel/AMD hardware. No, it's not legal.
Re:Damn (Score:3, Informative)
Re:distributed computing (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Welcome To The New Apple (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:It is nice to see... (Score:2, Informative)
I'm a little concerned that you feel that you are going to be charged $300 (where did you get this price from?) for the OS. Apple has never charged that for an OS (apart from their server software). Besides, you, as a student, are eligble for student discount on all of Apple's products.
The US education price for Single User OSX is $69, for a Family Pack (5), it is $199. Go to the Apple website and check the store.
"You've got a chart filling a whole wall with interlocking pathways
and reactions to shock and the researcher says "If I can just control
this one molecule/enzyme/compound I'll stop the whole negative
physiologic cascade of post haemorrhagic shock." Yeah, right."
Re:Mod Me down, but I have something to say: (Score:5, Informative)
Informative gives you karma. Funny doesn't. :/
--Rob
Re:New Finder... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:No surprise, really... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You know what this means... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:New Finder... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Damn (Score:3, Informative)
Ideally you'd want a paddle either way you go, but at least floating down stream is possible, although somewhat dangerous.
Also sounds like you've never gone tubing. float on a tube with a cooler floating with you and you don't have to paddle or push yourself off rocks or nothing. just drink beer.
obviously you pick a flowing body of water that isn't full of whirlpools and torrents crashing against rocks. pretty much any sort of river that a sane person doesn't feel like they need to wear a helmet and vest for.
Re:It is nice to see... (Score:3, Informative)
Usually about a month to a month and a half out, Apple announces a specific release date for the new OS. Their practice has been to announce, that same day, that anyone who buys a Mac after that day gets the OS upgrade for nominal cost (like $10). You just need to wait for that announcement, which may very well be before or in September for Leopard.
I bought a PowerBook in April 2005, about three weeks before Tiger came out. A five-minute phone call to Apple got me the new OS for ~$10. Being a cheap bastard I then also installed it on the Power Mac G5 I bought two months earlier (which was not eligible for the upgrade).
When Leopard comes out I will mend my felonious ways and buy a family pack...
Re:You know what this means... (Score:4, Informative)
You say lies. (Score:3, Informative)
What killed the Mac in enterprise is interoperability. Mac Office only "sucked" in that respect because it followed MacOS developer guidelines - filetype and creator code in the resource fork, no
Office suite interoperability was hindered more by adherence to platform APIs than anything else - it wasn't until OS X that Apple said "f*ck it, let's ADAPT" and went to great lengths to make interoperating with Windows as much of a non-issue as possible.
The OMFGOFFICE "problem" (which is really one of user education - yourself emphatically included) aside, I'm tickled pink that TextEdit (the Mac equivalent of notepad) can read every
Re:32 legs good, 64 legs - get slip-on shoes (Score:3, Informative)
You're not understanding that wild_berry meant "EM64T", err, sorry, "Intel 64" rather than "AMD64", or meant "x86-64" rather than either of them. :-)
Speaking of 64-bit x86, has anybody tested any real-world applications to see whether the extra space taken by 64-bit pointers (and longs) ever outweighs the extra registers you get in 64-bit mode?
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re: 32 legs good, 64 legs - get slip-on shoes (Score:3, Informative)
It's usually not the register width that gives you the boost, but the register count. AMD doubled both the width and the number of general purpose registers when they designed x86_64 (aka AMD64, aka IA32e). Arstechnica has a detailed overview [arstechnica.com] (jump to page 3 for relevant slide and it's accompanying explanation). You are right about the larger pointers being a liability when it comes to memory bandwidth, but the size of your basic C99 "int" remains unchanged. If you want a 64-bit integer, you'll have to ask for a "long int" on x86_64, or a "long long int" on modern i386, or better yet, an "int64_t" on any architecture that supports it.
Re:October? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:This must be fake (Score:2, Informative)