Leopard

[Arcygenical]

So... Um... Anyone else unimpressed by leopard?


What am I honestly missing? The preview website has a tab for "Time machine". An entire tab devoted to a small application that backs files up for you? Sure it lets you view data that may have been lost/rolling backups/restore functions, but I don't think that's "tabworthy!" It should be under "Security" with a bevy of newer apps to make our lives easier on the platform... Not all alone.

I know this is only a preview, but this time around I see nothing to get excited over... No Expose, improved webcam support, killer apps... etc.

 

[NightyNight]

Hmm..make your way to Apple's site and watch the WWDC video, skip to about 1/3rd of the way through till they start talking about Leopard. I watched it earlier today and was very impressed with Time Machine, you call it simple. I call it amazing. The idea, IMO is genius. Apple made backing up automatic and easy, and the demo they show is quite impressive. "Spaces" had me impressed too, man, Virtual space for each type of application? I'd use that all the time. Core Animation was cool looking too, I have no idea how I'd use it, but it's a cool idea as well. As far as the webcam situation, the video it shows what they did to iChat which includes accepting more types of webcams. I don't know, I think Spaces and Time Machine is a killer advancement from Tiger, it addresses a lot of issues. They improved Spotlight, Quicktime, Mail (by a lot) and others.

They also have some secret things they don't want to release for fear of imitation from Microsoft, and to keep their new product some sort of mystery.

I disagree with you, but to each his own.

 

[Tomahawk]

What they showed off Monday wasn't everything, but was enough to prime the pump and get the devs excited and hopefully some will make good use of stuff like Core Animation in their apps by the time Leopard is released.

Look for more features to be revealed at MWSF in january, maybe sooner.

 

[Mistrblank]

Agreed, I doubt this is everything. Most of what they showed are the things they want to push on developers to get involved with, after all it was a developer conference. Time machine is important to show since developers can tie it in with their apps, and the same goes for core animation, full 64-bit environment and dashboard.

The rest of the enchancements are things that have been around already for awhile and they wanted to show them off like the text to speach improvements and improvements with ichat. And you can't say spaces is anything revolutionary, the linux and unix crowd have had multiple desktops for awhile now with the ability to manuever between them, however again it was showing off core animation discretely and showing another small improvement to increase user productivity.

It was a developer show that gave us a hint of what we'll see. We have a macworld expo coming in January, I suspect we'll see a more feature rich preview if they plan to ship in spring.

 

[Jozone]

I'm curious as to how much space making use of timemachine will take up...

Honestly I was fairly underwhelmed by the entire keynote (watched QT yesterday).. Mac Pro is pretty 'meh, and I have a hard time getting excited about better text to voice and spotlight with network support.

 

[NewBlackDak]

Agreed, I doubt this is everything. Most of what they showed are the things they want to push on developers to get involved with, after all it was a developer conference. Time machine is important to show since developers can tie it in with their apps, and the same goes for core animation, full 64-bit environment and dashboard.

The rest of the enchancements are things that have been around already for awhile and they wanted to show them off like the text to speach improvements and improvements with ichat. And you can't say spaces is anything revolutionary, the linux and unix crowd have had multiple desktops for awhile now with the ability to manuever between them, however again it was showing off core animation discretely and showing another small improvement to increase user productivity.

It was a developer show that gave us a hint of what we'll see. We have a macworld expo coming in January, I suspect we'll see a more feature rich preview if they plan to ship in spring.

WWDC has turned to an event that has much more than devs. We sent 20 throughout the corporation, and none is an actual developers. There were a couple QA testers, but most were IT folks. There are probably 2 IT folks to every developer at WWDC.

 

[r00k]

I watched the keynote last night (e.g. 1am this morning) with another forum member. I was continually amazed by the capabilities i saw, the imagination or creative use of existing ideas, and several of the apps.

However, the interface i am definitely not keen about. On the other hand, as a result of watching the keynote I now owe it to myself to start learning how to use one of them thur apply machines for both myself and my clients.

I could definitely see what they meant "Redmond, start your photocopiers".

 

[Tutelary]

I will admit the 'make your own widget' thing is pretty damn awesome. I can imagine any number of personal uses for it.

 

[Biest]

Time Machine in my opinion, is very important since as you might have noticed the whole keynote was very Pro focused (Core Animations, Network Spotlight, the widget builder). It makes expensive back up programs used by firms redundant and shows how they could save money as well as the possibility to review changes in your work and compare them to the older version if they have increased the usability, etc. of the software.

 

[NewBlackDak]

… It makes expensive back up programs used by firms redundant …

Unless it has the ability to backup to a tape drive then this isn't the case.

 

[Biest]

Unless it has the ability to backup to a tape drive then this isn't the case.

that we will see in the spring '07

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

I'm trying to watch the keynote, but it won't load... Oh well. I just checked out the sneak preview at Apple.com. Here are my thoughts:

Time Machine isn't just a back-up application. It's a really slick back-up application. Why does this matter? Simple: It matters because nobody does back-ups. Well, some do, but most don't. By making backing up really easy and smooth, they will make a lot more people do back-ups. This is a BIG THING, if works right.

New features in iChat are really cool.

Spaces... Well, what can I say? Good bye, Desktop Manager and Virtue!

Fully 64-bit is a welcome new feature.




Other than that, what did you expect? With Tiger, Mac OS X reached maturity. New features in Mac OS X are going to be more evolutionary and less revolutionary, at least when it comes to the technicalities. Don't expect as much new core OS tech in the future, as you saw with 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4.

 

[Rocketpig]

Unless it has the ability to backup to a tape drive then this isn't the case.

Who backs up to a tape drive from their workstation? I'm sure some people might, but in my experience it's far more common to back up to tape from a server, not a workstation.

With Time Machine, you have the files automatically sent to the server and then the server backs up the files with a tape drive.

Triple redundancy. Yay!

 

[Least]

I fail to see where you people are finding anything particularly great about this. Certainly nothing worth buying the upgrade for... It'd be nice if it were free maybe.

 

[Tutelary]

I fail to see where you people are finding anything particularly great about this. Certainly nothing worth buying the upgrade for... It'd be nice if it were free maybe.

I dont think steve jobs will get on stage and promise some *really cool* secret stuff then not deliver it before launch. As a pc user looking to switch, OSX already has enough goodness to make my mouth water.

 

[NewBlackDak]

Who backs up to a tape drive from their workstation? I'm sure some people might, but in my experience it's far more common to back up to tape from a server, not a workstation.

With Time Machine, you have the files automatically sent to the server and then the server backs up the files with a tape drive.

Triple redundancy. Yay!

… It makes expensive back up programs used by firms redundant …

My point was you generally only buy expensive backup programs if you're on a server. There are tons of effective ways to do backups from a workstation using nothing more than the built-in command-line tools.

 

[Least]

I dont think steve jobs will get on stage and promise some *really cool* secret stuff then not deliver it before launch. As a pc user looking to switch, OSX already has enough goodness to make my mouth water.

true, i am getting a macbook tomorrow... but until that huge big must-have things comes along, leopard is a waste of money I think.

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

I fail to see where you people are finding anything particularly great about this. Certainly nothing worth buying the upgrade for... It'd be nice if it were free maybe.

Why would it not be worth the upgrade? I'm buying it for the performance enhancements and 64-bittiness, if nothing else.

 

[Arcygenical]

No, I agree with the evolutionary vs revolutionary comment.

Sure, time machine is a great concept, one I welcome full heartedly, but I just don't think it's that good enough to be the "killer app" of the new revision.

The Dock, Expose, Spotlight, fully integrated dev support were all major revisions... but I rarely, if ever, "accidentally" delete a file that I need. I keep multiple copies across lots of volumes, especially if it's an important work project.

It's a great concept, but it just won't be as useful to me as other things Apple has introduced in the past... I use expose at least 20x daily, this I can see using... once a month?

See, I guess where the problem lies for me... isn't the features that are being delivered, but the price point. I can save myself 99$ if Im careful with my files, or write a small applescript that backs my main partition up (hell, I can buy a RAID card and stop worrying about it + have alot of extra space).

Core animation and "spaces" have potential, but I just can't personally see myself using them all that often.

 

[Rocketpig]

There are tons of effective ways to do backups from a workstation using nothing more than the built-in command-line tools.

True. But since 99% of the general public doesn't know what a command line or terminal is, Time Machine is handy.

I already spend enough time on my computer learning CSS, Flash, PHP, etc. I don't want to mess with Terminal unless it's absolutely necessary.

 

[Rocketpig]

but I rarely, if ever, "accidentally" delete a file that I need. I keep multiple copies across lots of volumes, especially if it's an important work project.

While I dont do it often, I have done it in the past.

And in my profession, keeping multiple copies of 100 MB Photoshop files around is not really an option.

Time Machine, while not blowing my socks off, looks like a nice program. It will save me quite a bit of time over my current method of manual back-ups.

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

It's a great concept, but it just won't be as useful to me as other things Apple has introduced in the past... I use expose at least 20x daily, this I can see using... once a month?

I probably use Exposé 20 times per hour! Biggest. Workflow enhancer. Ever.

 

[Archer75]

I wonder how much harddrive space timeline will require to keep a timeline of every file on your computer. And even keeping files you delete. Hard drives are going to fill up fast.

 

[gigglebyte]

here is my take on Time Machine...I deal with Apple employees every day....you have NO idea how many of them don't have backups and bitch whine and moan when something gets lost, deleted or their HD goes belly up...just had one last week where they had made several tem revs to a document and did a save and not save as....this would have taken care of that for them...oh well...looking forward to loading it up on my backup comp

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

The hard drive in my iBook went belly-up just a short while ago. I did have backups, but backing up was a lot more work than it should have been. I'm looking forward to Time Machine.

 

[Cowcaster88]

I'm looking forward to the improvements to Dashboard and iChat. I just like the idea of making your own simple widgets for whatever your need is. Then the updates to iChat might make me go out and upgrade to an Intel iMac so I can get the camera with chat and play ability.

 

[osalcido]

i agree with the non-brainwashed posters...

a backup utlity? 64-bit support? a widget thingy?

These things should come with (or at least as free downloads) to an operating system

 

[NightyNight]

yeah, because Microsoft made x64, (no widget program to speak of), and no backup program to speak of a free download.

 

[osalcido]

who said anything about microsoft?? and anyway since when does doing things the microsoft way make it ok?

 

[BinarySynapse]

yeah, because Microsoft made x64, (no widget program to speak of), and no backup program to speak of a free download.

Well they did have a program to trade your copy of XP Professional to XP Professional x64 for a few months when it was released.

Back on topic, I also really don't see this as a full blown update. yet. I'll wait to see what other features are going to be revealed before making my final opinion though.

 

[svet-am]

Unless it has the ability to backup to a tape drive then this isn't the case.

steve specifically mentioned connecting a firewire or other removeable hard disk to use as your backup medium for Time Machine. Given the way that MacOS interfaces with removeable media in a generic fashion, I would assume (possibly naively) that tape would not be outside the realm of possibilities.

 

[Savior1]

http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback137.html

This was posted on the HardOCP news site, and I buy it. It makes sense. They'll save their fourth quarter by preventing one of those laws (forget the name) that states people hold off buying new stuff if the upgrade is on the horizon, which is a no brainer. Also this was the WWDC - WW "Developer" C so you can get an idea of their market there. They are showing core animation, 64-bit full support time machine and others, (there actually is more on the leopard preview disk, but its all dev stuff) so the developers can work with it for launch, like making quad binaries, or making time machine ignore extrenuous system files instead of saving everything, or using core animation to make things snappier. That's the next point, the Leopard preview is said to be much faster on the new Intel systems, with only about 60% of Leopard on the preview, and about 30-40% optimized, so there is still room for even bettter speed increases, but thats what some of the rumor sites stated. They usually aren't that far off either.
I dunno, in keeping with Apple's idea that the customer is last to know, I'll reserve judgement till spring, I'm still putting my money on one or two more wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am items on the new Leopard, we just haven't seen yet.
My .02$