Apple to roll out Mac OS X 10.5 next week
Def' Leopard
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Apple has named the day it will release Leopard, the next major version of Mac OS X. It'll go sale in the UK on Friday, 26 October at 6pm.
Apple's pricing the product at £85 over here and $129 in the States - fractionally cheaper than the previous release, Mac OS X 10.4, Tiger, which retailed £89 in the UK.
Perhaps that generous discount is recognition for the longer than anticipated wait Mac fans have had to put up with since Apple switched many of its coders' focus away from Leopard and onto the iPhone version of the operating system.
When it arrives, Leopard will bring the usual array of graphical tweaks and extra features that have become a standard for major Mac OS X roll-outs.
Leopard's Dock, for example, now has a look that mirrors the one in the OS X-based iPod Touch, and Finder borrows a file browsing metaphor derives from iTunes' Cover Flow album art presentation system. The new Dock stacking view is essentially a new way of presenting the menu that current pops up when you click on an icon.
Alongside such graphical tweaks, we are looking forward to trying the new version of Mail with the addition of workgroup collaboration features not since Apple's PowerTalk from way back in the Mac OS 7 days. The Time Machine back-up system looks worthy of exploration - and with so much music, movies and content stored on Macs these days, comes not a moment too soon.
We're also keen to try Quick Look, a way to view file contents without opening applications and an extension of the preview features Mac OS X already offers. And Leopard will come with the final version of Boot Camp, Apple's Windows-on-Mac technology.
Apple has Leopard screenshots and details aplenty here.
COMMENTS
Thanks For Telling Me About The Discount
My macbook's bluetooth died on me last week i took it in to the store in Solihul and they replaced it for another macbook which makes me eligible for the discounted upgrade. £5.99 isn't a bad price at all for the new cat ;)
Pros and Cons
Goods:
1)iCal and iCal DAV for sharing family calendars and assigning appointments and tasks to family members
2)Updated parental controls (the current ones are ok, but leave a bit to be desired)
3)Proper syncing of To Dos and Calendar appts. via mail to my iPhone
4)Time Machine to eliminate my manual monthly backups of every family member's machine
5)iChat for screen sharing
Bads:
1) Eye candy. Who cares? We are Mac users not Vista users.
2) Upped processor and RAM requirements. Um, while they added some new features doesn't it seem like most of the OS is the same, therefore shouldn't require new hardware??? The old computer 400MHz G4 I just handed down to my 1 year old isn't supported. Hmmpf
Unknowns:
1) Will iSync finally work with a damn Motorola Razr V3???
Re: this is why designers loathe programmers
True Josh it probably won't, but you've missed the point entirely. If spotlight is a tool to search for your files, why is it so unreasonable to expect it to be able to tell you where they are at a glance?
@Evil Graham
Yeah and god forbid she's not sure which dfsc_00001.jpg file it is, but knows she's saved it in a folder called Benidorm. It's all well and good making tools that are simple to use until they sacrifice features that might be useful to anyone above 'granny' level, especially when one does not detract from the other. Simplicity and power do not have to be mutually exclusive.
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