Mac OS X Leopard is out. Do you care?

[Dylan Walters]

I'm surprised that there haven't been any dedicated posts on Leopard yet with all of the Mac heads hanging around. I've looked at all of the new features, which look nice, but I've yet to see anything compelling to make me want to upgrade. OTOH, I felt the same way when Vista came out, but now that I've been using it for a while I am really enjoying it. Any experiences, thoughts, etc on Leopard oke:?

[Gus Lozada]

I do care because many users have started to complain that their interfaces do not work on Leopard.

WTF with the urgency on switching this fast to the new system?


And I am not switching to Leopard (and Vista) until strictly necessary.
That should mean about at least another 6 months.

[Ed A.]

Yes, I care because I have Apple stock.
Apple sold 2 million copies of Leopard the first weekend it was released. Ka-ching!!

I installed Leopard on my MacBook Pro on Saturday and so far, everything seems to work fine with the exception of some minor bugs in Parallels Desktop running Windows XP and a minor bug in AAS Tassman. Logic Studio and Final Cut Express work great with Leopard, and also Adobe CS3.

[EnemyofSilence]

WTF with the urgency on switching this fast to the new system?

Ya mean the one that's been announced for months?

I'm on it. Needed to upgrade due to bootcamp expiring. I backed up my system and installed to an external drive from my MBP - I'll be installing that hd to replace my internal this weekend.

My results so far -

Logic Studio 8 works great - but there's a problem with Melodyne's ReWire component that screws up Logic on launch. Once removed, L8's fine.

Melodyne's fine in standalone mode - rewire hosed, but they know it and they're working on it.

KLC's working fine
Amplitube 2 seems to be fine
Stylus RMX, check.

Ableton Live 6 is working fine from what I can tell.

Motu 828MkII working fine.
AMT-8's and Unitor-8 working fine.

I also upgraded my MDD G4. So far, even my Layla24 seems to be working. Haven't had to update my driver on that since what, panther?

[Ed A.]

I backed up my system and installed to an external drive from my MBP - I'll be installing that hd to replace my internal this weekend.

Just make sure that your new drive is partitioned for: Partition Map Scheme : GUID Partition Table (for Intel Macs) in Disk Utility, and not the standard default Apple partition (for G5 Macs), or else you won't be able to boot Leopard from the drive.

This might help with the installation:

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac/MacBook-Pro/Hard-Drive/85/5/

[blue2blue]

I do care because many users have started to complain that their interfaces do not work on Leopard. WTF with the urgency on switching this fast to the new system? And I am not switching to Leopard (and Vista) until strictly necessary. That should mean about at least another 6 months.

I've been using computers on a pretty much daily basis for work and pleasure sine 1985. I started using a computer (a PC to my utter surprise) for MIDI sequencing in 1990 and moved my 2 ADAT project studio to an 8 channel DAW in 1996, after Windows 95 added dedicated multichannel audio and vastly improved MIDI layers.

And if there's one thing I've learned from my own experience and that of others on both sides of the OS line -- if it works, think twice before trying to fix it.


Smart corporate information managers typically set up small test farms where they can carefully maintain observation of upgrades to applications and especially OS's being considered for enterprise adoption.

Both major OS providers have fundamentally different philosophies that both have obvious downsides.

Apple tends to push forward in frequent spurts and cut support for previously used components. That can occasionally wreak havoc for users and particularly for third party soft and hardware vendors. But it does mean there are less potential loose ends for their development teams to trip over.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has a nearly pathological obsession with maintaining backwards compatibility. When I say pathological -- I mean it. Current example: MS built backwards compatibility into IE 7 for bug workarounds developers had used to try to bring previous IE versions into something approaching compatibility with web standards -- but they subverted the current goal of full standards compatibility to do it!


These differing philosophies work out in different ways. Apple is clearly the best and most innovative application developer working for the Mac. Their apps, at times, help set the standards for what we expect in usability. MS, on the other hand, is better at fostering third party developers (hence the obsession with backwards compatibility) and making dev tools readily available to a wide variety of those developers -- while Apple treats their third party developers more as half-trusted acolytes (to understandable effect in the commercial Mac dev community).

Unfortunately for Windows users, the current leadership at MS has a serious case of Mac envy.

They manifestly don't know what Windows users want or what they need -- and the general dread of Vista among Windows users -- particularly those who depend on their computers for real work -- has manifested into huge resistance to that OS.

XP, when it was introduced, veritably flew off the shelves (esp. compared to Vista). But today, those buying new computers have gone to great lengths to avoid Vista -- buying refurbished machines, or from the mom and pop vendors who have an extended window of XP sales. Enormous user demand even forced Dell to reverse policy and reintroduce XP on many of their machines.

Of course -- business/corporate users were still able to buy XP machines even before that because corporate info services managers had set flat out: No way. We're not moving working operations onto an OS that our own testing labs say is quirky and poorly supported and is a huge drain on modest computer resources.


People do not buy Windows for flash and fun. They may buy Windows applications for flash and fun -- or more likely to get work done -- both aspects are clearly well covered in Windows land... there is an enormous universe of available software.

In the Mac, it's all about the Mac and the putatively groovy UI. In Windows, it's about the application.


Both approaches have pluses. Both have negatives.

But Apple understands their role.

Microsoft -- clearly -- does not.

[Rabid]

Mac OS X Leopard is out. Do you care?

We care that our Mac's continue to make music without problems with hardware or software. Let someone else find and fix the problems while we play music. [COLOR="Purple"](Insert image of Nero playing fiddle with a flaming Rome in the background.)

[lowendnyc]

****************, my main music machine is still on 10.3.9. I've always dreaded the upgrade and all the potential problems that could come up with my g5 tower. And since I was getting things done just fine, I skipped 10.4. I'll probably go for 10.5, but will certainly wait sometime before my main machine goes that way.

[Gus Lozada]

Amen

unfortunately, I do work for a company which has to find and fix such problems ... but as a user, I agree with you.


And yes, it has been announced for months. But Apple does not release the final version for testing purposes until it is released publicly; that means, there are no "final testings" with more than 4 days at this moment and to "certify" a driver for an operating system takes way more than that.

Fortunately some devices keep working in the new system... but many others doesn't.

[Jeff da Weasel]

My music Mac is on 10.3.9 (and working great). My business Mac is on 10.4.1 (and working great). I'm interested in Leopard, but I'll let other folks do the extended beta test (i.e. initial public release of any OS) and then think about moving up.

Seems neat... I just don't want to break what doesn't need fixin'.

[EnemyofSilence]

Wow, I didn't realize they made such significant changes with such short notice. It must be frustrating to have revised drivers along the way, only to have final version break them.

As for 'why' Leopard is compelling...Spaces combined with Screen Sharing. And then combine that midi-over-lan that they've had for awhile, and it's very powerful stuff.

For instance, I'm sitting here in my kitchen using my MBP. I have 4 spaces set up at the moment...
1: Safari - I'm posting from that
2: Logic Pro 8
3: vnc accessing my studio's G4, complete with dual displays, running Live 6 on 1 screen, and AMS on the other
4: AMS on my MBP.

Pretty friggin slick.


Ed A - yeah, I'm already booting from it. My MBP's internal was an 80GB. I have a 160G 7200 RPM SATA in a firewire enclosure - that's what I'm booting from, is running Leopard, and will be swapping into the MBP.

[daklander]

Mac OS X Leopard is out. Do you care?

Not at all, though this looks like an OS I'll keep an eye on.

[Geoff Grace]

My setup is far too complex for me to want to take the risks of early adoption. It's stable and I'm getting work done, so that's good enough for now.

I do care about Leopard, but I'll probably wait to install it until I'm ready to upgrade all of my software synths, effects, DAWs, and non-music applications. With all of that hassle ahead, I may just wait until I'm ready to migrate from my G5 to an Intel Mac.

Best,

Geoff

[Gus Lozada]

My setup is far too complex for me to want to take the risks of early adoption. It's stable and I'm getting work done, so that's good enough for now. I do care about Leopard, but I'll probably wait to install it until I'm ready to upgrade all of my software synths, effects, DAWs, and non-music applications. With all of that hassle ahead, I may just wait until I'm ready to migrate from my G5 to an Intel Mac. Best, Geoff

+ a million.

[Trick Fall]

I'm definitely excited for it, but I'm trying to figure out a way to purcahse a new mac and probably will not upgrade my current box.