Long Awaited: Mac Os X Leopard

[Guest Reimar]

On October 26. 2007 Apple will lauch Mac OS-X Leoprd in the USA!

Now the price, beside of the OS itself, is very interesting compared to MS OS Vista!!

Read the News from Reuters:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc said on Tuesday the newest version of its Macintosh operating system would go on sale on October 26, hitting the market after a four-month delay due to the company's work on the iPhone. The new version of Apple's OS X software, called Leopard, will cost $129 for a single user and $199 for a family pack that can be installed on up to five computers in one household. New features include a file back-up feature called "Time Machine," improvements to e-mail and instant messaging, the ability to preview documents or files without launching a separate program, and quick access to other computers on a home or office network.

[absolutelyBangkok]

excellent, looks like a bargain.

anyone with mac-experience, how long it takes until we get those DVDs here in thailand?

[cdnvic]

Try contacting a local Mac user group. They would know for sure.

http://www.thaimacclub.net/

[Mahout Angrit]

how long it takes until we get those DVDs here in thailand?

They are advertising it at this retailer. There seems to be more English language on the Phuket mac users site (should you need it!)

[A_Traveller]

As an aside, see that Steve Jobs has also announced an SDK for the iPhone, due in Feb 2008.

Regards

LINK

[nikster]

As an aside, see that Steve Jobs has also announced an SDK for the iPhone, due in Feb 2008.

Regards

LINK

And the wait for that seemed much longer than the one for Leopard... I guess you can't fault them, really, no one else is running their desktop OS on handhelds, and the features that the 1.0 iPhone OS X has are unrivaled by other phone OSs that have been around much longer. Nokia has since woken Symbian development from its slumber and is frantically working to make it more iPhone-OS-like. And Microsoft is patenting what looks to be an iPhone user interface. Great to see things going forward in the mobile space!

BTW - the iPhone is running OS X Leopard, only with all the bits and pieces not needed for a phone removed, and some new ones needed for a phone added on. It's a major technical feat which I think explains Apple's slowness in releasing an SDK.

[A_Traveller]

Allowing for careful use of the caveat 'desktop' the use of *nix as the OS for phones is more widespread than you may think. The Nokia/Symbian point has to a degree obscured this though that SDK has been available for some while, as has the Motorola one {*nix based}.

It should be noted that 'multi-touch' has been in existence for far longer than either Apples's or MS's patent claims. I do, once again, see a prior art issue here in a few years if we move to a gesture interface.

Regards

[absolutelyBangkok]

I bet we gonna have it in the shops by Oct. 26th.

On another note: Warnings of Rev. A products of Apple have mostly disappeared.

Apple's new products by now ship in pretty solid conditions.

Anyone of you waiting for half a year or so before upgrading to Leopard? To first let teething issues be ironed out?

[nikster]

Allowing for careful use of the caveat 'desktop' the use of *nix as the OS for phones is more widespread than you may think. The Nokia/Symbian point has to a degree obscured this though that SDK has been available for some while, as has the Motorola one {*nix based}.

It should be noted that 'multi-touch' has been in existence for far longer than either Apples's or MS's patent claims. I do, once again, see a prior art issue here in a few years if we move to a gesture interface.

With the patent law as broken as it is, prior art doesn't count for much. You can patent any sort of BS - I was involved in a software patent process previously and the first thing the lawyers tell you is to avoid looking for prior art. Apparently it's bad to knowingly patent something where prior art may exist, but fine if you didn't know, so knowing less is better.

As for multi-touch - I don't know of any devices that used that before the iPhone, except Apple trackpads. The Mac trackpads have had multi-touch for a while - two fingers + click for right click and two finger-scrolling have been around for years now.

The touch input on the iphone borders on the ridiculous though, people are just amazed when I show them how it works. Zooming in and out of pictures and positioning them has never been that easy, slide shows where you flick pictures left-right never been that exciting.

In large parts that's because it was done in an intuitive way which creates the illusion of physical movement. Pictures don't just plain slide left-right when I move the finger on them - they also slide as fast as the finger is moving, and you can "throw" them, e.g. they have some momentum. The last image kind of bounces but then snaps back as if held by a rubber band, letting you know that you have reached the end in a very pleasant way. There are nice little touches like this everywhere - and that makes the difference between good and great.

There have been research projects similar to Microsoft Surface for ages - I remember seeing something like MS surface in the Apple R&D labs 10 years ago. Complete with a rather un-wieldy projector mounted at the base of the table There's lots of other, more recent research in this area too.

But I can't think of any actual gadgets in production that used multiple simultaneous touches for input, e.g. not just one at a time. Can the Nintendo DS's touch screen do that? Anything else that's out there?

[nikster]

I bet we gonna have it in the shops by Oct. 26th.

On another note: Warnings of Rev. A products of Apple have mostly disappeared.

Apple's new products by now ship in pretty solid conditions.

Anyone of you waiting for half a year or so before upgrading to Leopard? To first let teething issues be ironed out?

I would wait at least 1 or 2 months - by then all the major bugs should have manifested and been taken care of.

I use my computer for work so I can't really afford to beta-test a completely new OS release. And I certainly don't trust new software from Apple. There's always a balance between shiny new features and stability and Apple always ends up tilting towards the shiny new features side of things. The good news is that OS X is a very solid core and so the bugs that inevitably are in new products get fixed quickly.

I have a recent (latest rev) MacBook Pro and an iPhone. The MBP has been flawless. The iPhone has a two minor kinks but overall works pretty well. One is that I can't get that "Call forwarding active" dialog to not pop up when I make a call even though I have disabled call forwarding via ##002# code and I have turned off the option on the phone. Secondly, it sometimes won't hang up the call when I push "end call". The latter is infrequent, and putting it in sleep mode hangs up the call reliably. I'd say it's on par for a 1.0 revision. Can't upgrade to 1.1.1 b/c there is no free unlock for that yet.

[cdnvic]

There's a video walk through of Leopard on Apple.com now. Looks like they found a presenter that looks kinda like Steve Jobs, but friendlier.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/guidedtour/

[tjo o tjim]

Leopard is going to be interesting... especially for Servers. Looking forward to next week!