Leopard Countdown thread

[At Home 0]

I can't wait to pirate this shit.

[AndrewTS 0]

Spaces=Virtual Desktops, and Time Machine=Windows Restore.

 

My comment earlier in this thread was indeed a bite on Mole's (incredibly ignorant and uninformed) opinion/comment in the Vista thread, however it's not that far off from the truth. It really isn't that much to get excited about. Still just some crappy, underpowered, simplified, overpriced OS with a hella good video editing program.

 

Overpriced, yeah, but compared to Vista it's nothing.

 

With Time Machine, I guess now Apple is going to have to rely on tricking gullible people into signing up for .Mac rather than selling it to people who genuinely need a backup program.

[Guest Vitamin X]

This is true, but I'm not going to bother upgrading to Vista for a very, very long time. And by then, I think the price will come down some and it might be worth it. Or M$ will have a new OS that'll be better anyways.

[Mik 0]

FWIW, the retail of this OS is only $129 w/ no varied editions and $60 on college campuses. So it's not exactly pricey.

[Guest Vitamin X]

I should specify that the proprietary hardware necessary to run said OS is overpriced, and not the OS itself. Also, as it had been mentioned earlier in the thread, it's not exactly like Leopard is an entirely new OS or anything- this is just a kind of glorified update. So essentially for what new features it has, it doesn't seem like it's really a tremendous value or anything, though $60 for college is pretty decent.

[Craig Th 0]

Spaces=Virtual Desktops, and Time Machine=Windows Restore.

 

My comment earlier in this thread was indeed a bite on Mole's (incredibly ignorant and uninformed) opinion/comment in the Vista thread, however it's not that far off from the truth. It really isn't that much to get excited about. Still just some crappy, underpowered, simplified, overpriced OS with a hella good video editing program.

What, cause I said this:

 

I tried it at Staples and it's like half of OSX and half of XP mixed together.

 

Basically, it's still a fuckin PC and it sucks.

 

Well it is half of OSX and XP mixed. And it does suck.

 

http://lifehacker.com/software/windows-vis...os-x-179909.php

 

 

 

 

[Guest Vitamin X]

You could make the same argument that both Apple and Microsoft originally ripped off the widget idea from Konfabulator and Google, I have XP and I have a calendar, calculator, etc. just like that silly lifehacker article. And regardless of how bad Vista is, at least it's not a Mac, and I didn't overpay for the overall cost of my computer. Plus, it'll still probably run well in a year, whereas you'll have to just keep spending.. and spending.. and spending.. with Apple.

 

But hey, that's your choice.

[Craig Th 0]

What do I have to keep spending money on? Because mine has been going strong for over a year and didn't have to spend any money.

[AndrewTS 0]

Not sure what he means, but the Mac that most people buy--the iMac--starts at 1200 when you can get a decent PC for half that, or hell, a *fantastic* PC for that same price. If you build your PC, GTFO--the cost difference is huge.

 

I'm browsing around HP's site now, and I can get a HP preinstalled with Vista, 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GBs memory, a 512 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT with HDMI support (an extra 80 bucks), a 400GB HDD--all for less than one grand (before taxes, etc). Everything except for the video card I mentioned is stock config.

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping...do#anchor-m_c_2

 

Now, for an iMac that's comparable (Mac Minis currently top out at 2GHz processors), a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo starts at 1800 bucks. 1GB memory, 320GB HDD, video card is ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory and you can't upgrade it without buying the higher config. If we upgrade the memory to 2GB, don't get anything else extra, get only the wired keyboard and mouse--we're already at 2K for a machine that still has a slower processor and a poorer video card (They don't have an iMac with a 2.66GHz processor available, it's 2.4 or 2.8).

 

You can CTO a Mac Pro to be almost identical to that HP I mentioned...but you'll be paying 3000 dollars for it. Oh, and if you want to actually game on it, that doesn't include the cost of buying (or pirating...) a retail copy of windows to install on it with Boot Camp or something. For that price, you could jack up the CTO options on that HP computer to the max and then some.

 

When you buy an Apple computer, you're paying for the privilege of using Mac OS X. And you pay far out the ass for it.

 

The privilege of getting a machine that is actually upgradable beyond the memory goes to people willing to invest in Power Macs and Mac Pros, too.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Yes Andrew, that was my point.

 

And furthermore, try upgrading an iMac compared to upgrading a Windows-based computer (saying PC as opposed to Mac is stupid considering a Mac is also a PC aka Personal Computer). It's a total pain in the ass, if you can even figure it out, plus Apple's proprietary hardware is not really that great. Before the Intel upgrade, it was much worse, but for now Macs seem to get much slower after a year or two of continued use. I know this because I work at a university where we have this silly budget to get brand new Macs every time one comes out (and yes, we'll have Leopard right away as well) and from our experiences, the Macs seem to get very slow after continued use for a while.

[AndrewTS 0]

There's likely a software reason for that. The speed goes to crap whenever it's running old PPC programs through Rosetta. It should be fine running most native stuff.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I don't get what I'd have to keep spending money on either. My two-year-old Powerbook still works great and I haven't had to do a thing with it.

 

And yeah, I paid extra to get a system that ran OSX, and I'm completely happy with that. I've never had a serious crash or any sort of spyware, and I like the current interface much more than any Windows OS. It's a luxury that, for me, has been well worth its cost.

[Guest Vitamin X]

And with the way you put it Edwin, that's perfectly fine. I respect people perfectly fine who have a Mac out of personal preference and not because they feel like they have some kind of foolish notion of superiority over those who run Windows OSes, when in fact the two systems' main difference is in the interface.

 

I also have never had a serious crash or any kind of spyware, really. The one complaint I have with the way my XP setup is going right now is that its boot time is substantially slower than most iMacs I work with, but that's because I've been lazy and haven't cleaned it up for a while.

[foleyfanforever88 0]

I have a 60GB Macbook, but I don't really use anything on it besides Safari/Firefox, Adium, iTunes, Microsoft Office, and VLC/Quicktime. Should I bother getting Leopard? Apparently there's a family plan for 5 people that will only cost $200, so just $40 for me.

[AndrewTS 0]

There's tons of improvements to the OS, lots of neat touches that are difficult to go into. Time Machine, a more stable Finder, a more stable and effective Mail, etc., but nothing earth-shaking. If you have a MacBook w/ Boot camp beta the final Boot Camp version may be an enticement, but otherwise I'd suggest seeing it in an Apple Store first.

 

If Leopard is like Tiger (and from what I've seen, the installation process more or less is the same), the "Family pack" is exactly the same as the "Single user" pack, and there is *no* registration code to enter to install it or update a system.

 

The "family pack" purchases you 5 "licenses" so you can then "legally" put it on multiple machines, but who cares about that when there is no real reason to do so?

 

So, I wouldn't waste your money on it.

[foleyfanforever88 0]

So..anybody pick it up tonight?

[Darthtiki 0]

I did, the event was neat. Still haven't installed it yet.

[AndrewTS 0]

I'd say you don't need to rush to get this. As expected, it's riddled with bugs and it's best to wait until maybe 10.5.3 or something to get it. Among the problems I've seen is that the touted finder help search doesn't seem to work very well (or could be that they just don't have kbase articles for 10.5 up online yet), the Mail auto-setup sometimes will sit and spin for eternity if it's an unrecognized mail server and you type anything into Description during setup, Time Machine can see external SATA drives but doesn't know what the heck to do with them and do not support them for back up purposes. Contrary to what Jobs said in his presentation, Airport Disks do not work with Time Machine, either. The redesigned folder icons are hideous. I don't know what the hell is up with Disk Utility's Permissions Repair; it doesn't show details even with that option checked, and it ran for 10 minutes until I stopped it.

 

Spaces is worthless from what I've seen, since Expose did basically everything it did anyway. Oh, Classic is not supported. As in, if you already have it on your system, Leopard will *kill it*. It shouldn't be too much of an issue because few use it anymore, but Tiger didn't affect it so it's kind of weird. I guess Apple wants to cut costs by eliminating their older desktop support soon.

 

However, anyone who recently bought a Mac since Oct 1 can get Leopard for 10 bucks s&h. Go here and follow the instructions:

 

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

 

EDIT: the link is being kind of auto-converted into half-broken html codes. Well, copy and paste if it doesn't work.

[Mik 0]

I'm not too surprised. They pretty much never manage to get anything right on the first pass.

 

With that said, I'm getting it Monday as my campus store is having a big Leopard event. The only thing I'm hoping is that it won't sabotage Fusion on me, somehow.

[bobobrazil1984 0]

I never understand really rushing out to buy an OS.. i mean, maybe if its a quantam leap but rarely are any OS' that big of a leap. What, OSX 10 and Windows 95? are the only two i can think of where it was actually MAJOR difference. In any case, PC or Mac, i jus wait until i buy my next computer and it should come pre-loaded.

[Craig Th 0]

And with the way you put it Edwin, that's perfectly fine. I respect people perfectly fine who have a Mac out of personal preference and not because they feel like they have some kind of foolish notion of superiority over those who run Windows OSes, when in fact the two systems' main difference is in the interface.

 

I also have never had a serious crash or any kind of spyware, really. The one complaint I have with the way my XP setup is going right now is that its boot time is substantially slower than most iMacs I work with, but that's because I've been lazy and haven't cleaned it up for a while.

I feel the same way Edwin does, but I think OSX is superior to XP or Vista.

 

But we'll just agree to disagree on that.

[Mik 0]

Well, I'm on this now.

 

It's a lot slicker to look at.

 

But I don't really feel like I gained any performance. I need a chance to play with it, but yeah... it's nice to look at. For free I'm not complaining.

 

I will say that the full version of Safari is much better than the beta available on 10.4.

[Guest RyechnaiaSobaka]

I don't know what the hell is up with Disk Utility's Permissions Repair; it doesn't show details even with that option checked, and it ran for 10 minutes until I stopped it.

 

This line just reminded me of Disk Utility, which I always found to be quite funny. For some reason many OS X users feel the need to scoff at Windows users because the latter need to defragment their hard drive, and yet OS X requires you to repair permissions because sometimes things will just suddenly stop working. Awesome.

 

As an addendum, some friends & colleagues who use Macs full time have upgraded to Leopard. Those that are total hacks/fanboys say it is awesome, as if they would say anything else. The people who are reasonable say that it's alright, but has a lot of bugs. Mail is messed up in particular, or so I hear. I forget what the other complaints were.

 

I use Tiger still on an iBook that I bought in June 2005. It's alright. I just like it because it's comparatively invulnerable to spyware/malware and viruses if I'm visiting rather untrustworthy websites. I use Windows XP Pro on my work computer, however, and would not buy a new Mac.