Every now and then Apple releases a major upgrade to their operating system. The last major release was 10.4, code named “Tiger.” Last Friday Apple released 10.5, code named “Leopard”
Apple releases major operating systems for several reasons:
Money - Operating system updates make money and sell Macintoshes. Each major OS release pushes the envelope of what the hardware can do and for some people, these features are the tipping point to upgrading their machines.
Software Advancement - It is with the major releases that Apple can make large, sweeping changes to the internals, which may break compatibility with some hardware and software, but it is done infrequently enough that it is not as much of a pain as a “dot” release, such as 10.4.11.
Keeping a lead on Microsoft - Apple jumped over Microsoft with OS X and has been slowly gaining market share. This is good for Apple - See Money
Apple’s latest cat is a very nice upgrade. Not only are there very visible features, such as Coverflow and QuickLook, but there are nice updates to Spotlight, the Finder is nicer, and there are many new low level upgrades that users will never see but will surely benefit from.
Applications written for Leopard can take advantage of garbage collection, which simply means it is easier to write applications that have few if none common memory bugs.
Apple has connected syncing with their built in database, Core Data, which means that we should see more applications using Core Data and gaining benefits of backup via Time Machine.
Speaking of Time Machine, Apple has made it so incredibly easy to back up your Mac that you’ll wonder why this wasn’t done before. The answer is simple - In order to have something so simple and integrated as Time Machine, Apple needed to add features to the core operating system, such as FSEvents, which lets the operating system track when files are updated.
On top of that, QuickLook, which is the technology that lets you peek at documents without launching the document’s application, had to be invented so you could look at very old documents that might not have their application installed anymore.
Apple changed the dock, taking away the ability to put simple folders on the Dock and folders now become “Stacks,” which let you peek into a folder, such as your recent downloads folder.
Another thing that changed under the hood is networking. Leopard will fine tune itself for the network you are currently on, which is a boon for those of us fortunate enough to have Verizon’s fiber optic network, FIOS. No longer do we need to run tuners - Leopard does it for us. Nice.
For security, Leopard supports signed applications. While there are reports this functionality is wreaking havoc for some applications, which Apple will fix, this is great news for us Mac users. We’ve been blessed to not have any viruses nor trojan horses for our platform, but that could change. Apple is trying to head hackers off at the pass by allowing developers to put a “seal” on their applications. If a hacker edits any part of the application, the “seal” is broken and the operating system can alert the user.
Apple tweaked the UI by making the menu bar translucent, which some like, some hate. They changed the default folders look, such as Movies and Music, and most hate them.
Spotlight is much faster and even supports boolean searches, as long as you use AND, NOR or OR. Capitalization is required. You can even use parenthesis to group search expressions. For example, you can search for:
dog AND (cat OR bird)
to find any document that contains the word dog AND at least cat or bird. Simple, eh?
If you’re a scriptor, Automator has received a large overhaul and makes it much easier to write some very sophisticated scripts with just some dragging and dropping.
The new Help system has search right from the menu and can find menu items matching your search. This is great for finding hidden menus that deal with “size” or “image” in large applications. The only thing I hate is that the help system uses a floating palette which sits on top of all windows. Who thought this was a good idea?
Launching application is faster and the general feel of Leopard is faster than Tiger was.
iChat received a lot of updates - New visual effects, tabbed chatting and integrated file sharing is fantastic. Toss in screen sharing with audio and I can now support my mom’s computer from hundreds of miles away.
Some users are having awful upgrading experiences, but since Apple sold 2 million copies in a few days, I don’t think the overall experience has been poor. My install went fine and I even restored from Time Machine.
If you plan to upgrade to Leopard, be sure to see my Moving to Leopard article for tips that might make your migration to this new cat smoother.
[isfym](http://www.isfym.com/site/blog/Entries/2007/10/27Don’tgoBacktoMyMac.html] has an article alarming about a security risk in .Mac’s “back to my mac” feature, which allows your Mac on the road to connect to your Mac at home.
The gist is this: If you have enabled “Back to my Mac” and someone knows your .Mac password, your machine at home is wide open to them.
This is not much different than if they knew the password to your machine. Their one concern is somewhat weak to me
Most people use weaker .Mac passwords. They do.
I don’t. My data is backed up on iDisk, I have email there, I don’t want anyone having an easy time at getting to that data, so I chose a password with various types of characters.
If you have an online service, use a strong password.
Now having said that, I think they are right that logging into .Mac should be different than logging into your Mac. Let the road Mac remember the .Mac password and when you connect at home, enter your machine password as a second line of defense.
While at MacCamp this weekend, I was trying a spotlight restore (open Time Machine, use spotlight to search for an application, restore) and it did something very odd: It restored into the same time machine folder the application was in.
This created a very broken partial application and now time machine fails to backup. Also, one of the broken apps contains a circular reference of symlinks, so something got broken very badly.
Caveat: This time machine was started on a beta of Leopard, so it is possible that had something to do with this failure. I’ll report more later.
Leopard represents a major leap in OS X. As such, there are some major changes under the hood that you should respect when considering moving to Leopard. If you rely on your Mac for day to day business needs, you are best off waiting for a couple of weeks and following news reports, while the rest of us geeks figure just what does and what does not work. You might also be wise to wait for 10.5.1. Apple has a history of releasing a .1 release within a month or so, quick fixing any major issues that are found by the general public.
When you do decide to move to Leopard, here are some tips to consider:
Make a complete archival backup of your system
Use a cloning backup program such as Super Duper to archive your computer to an external drive. I use the term archive because I suggest putting this drive away and not touching it for several months while you decide how well Leopard is working for you. Should you ever need to move back to Tiger, you can clone back this older backup, after saving off any data you added or changed while using Leopard.
Erase and Install
If you have several good backups of your system you might be best off erasing your system and installing Leopard clean, vs. upgrading or archive and installing. You can then use the migration assistant to copy your users and data from the archive backup you made in the first step above. (There is a method to my madness)
Time Machine vs. Super Duper
Time Machine promises to be a wonderful archival backup system, however it is new and has no track record for reliability. If you plan on using Time Machine, I suggest using a separate, large hard disk (because time machine will keep old data as long as it can!) for time machine, and a separate drive for your clone backup using Super Duper.
Three disks?!
Yes. Your data is very important. So now you have one drive with your tiger archive, one for a super duper clone backup and one for your Time Machine. Should Leopard prove great for you, you can eventually repurpose your original Tiger archive drive for Time Machine or a second Super Duper backup. Keep one offsite. You’ll thank yourself later. Drives are cheap these days.
Install Applications
After installing Leopard, install any apps that need reinstalling and keep a log, so if your machine does start acting oddly, you can contact the appropriate developer.
Beware plugins!
Quicktime Codecs, such as XIPH, iTunes Plugins, haxies, Little Snitch 1.x and other applications that hook in or extend the operating system can and probably will cause some issues on Leopard. The underpinnings have changed and thus the rules for these extensions have also. If you are having odd behavior, check the following locations for installed software. If you have an uninstaller, use that to remove the software, over uninstalling by hand:
Home Folder Locations
/Users/YOUR_HOME/Library/InputManagers/
/Users/YOUR_HOME/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins/
/Users/YOUR_HOME/Library/QuickTime/
Top Level System Locations
/Library/InputManagers/
/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins/
/Library/QuickTime/
Beware StartupItems
Some applications install startup unix scripts. You won’t want to remove these by hand, but rather use the application’s uninstaller. To see what you might have installed that runs when you boot your machine, look in the folder:
/Library/StartupItems/
You might see Retrospect, or some Final Cut Pro, mySQL, Parallels, etc startup items in here. If so, contact the developer to make sure you have Leopard compatible versions.
Clear the caches
If you are experiencing any oddities, it is known that cache data from your Tiger system may cause problems. Caches are files to help speed up operations and I don’t know why the installer does not nuke them for you. You can find these cache folders to delete at:
/Library/Caches/
/Users/YOUR_HOME/Library/Caches/
Enjoy!
With these simple precautions you are well on your way to enjoying Leopard and its many new, wonderful features!
For those of you considering Leopard and using iPhoto 7 (iLife ‘08), BetterHTMLExport 2.3 has been tested and qualified for the new cat.
For older versions of BetterHTMLExport, that require older versions of iPhoto, I would suggest upgrading to iPhoto 7 because it is designed to work with Leopard and Time Machine, not to mention the other niceties the upgrade offers.
This is great news. What I especially respected was the fact that Apple is taking the time to try their best to ensure a safe computing platform, vs just letting any yoho write an application for the iPhone, which the current “jailbreak” nonsense does.
Do you really want to download some random application and expose all of your contact information to the application developer, or to some virus? I doubt it.
Thus, I am hoping that Apple requires digital signatures. I think the way this would work is that a developer would file paperwork with Apple which would grant them a key. That key would go into XCode somewhere and sign the application.
This would at least have communication between developers and Apple. Whether it would be one key per developer, or one key per application, I do not know.
Apparently, Leopard has digitally signed applications from Apple already and developers can sign their own applications.
This is nice, because if an application is modified, the OS can at least warn you about it (although I have no idea if Leopard does yet).
I feel it is a great sign to see Apple taking security seriously and not resting on their laurels.
What’s new in TextExpander 2.0:
- Snippet groups
- Add snippet groups from external files
- Add snippet groups from URLs (including password-protected URLs with Keychain support)
- Synchronize snippet groups using .Mac Synchronization
- Print snippets
- Hotkeys to enable / disable and to create snippets from selection or clipboard
- Enable or disable groups on a per-application basis
- Sort snippets by date last used to identify unused snippets for possible deletion
- AppleScript snippets, which expand to the result of the script
- More options for sounds
- Sound settings on a per-group basis
- Update snippet groups from URLs and external files at regular intervals
- Improved performance with large numbers of snippets
a very useful guide on how to use OpenGL Profiler to launch games, like World of Warcraft, with older video drivers (if you crash with the current drivers)
Elizabeth and I ran around shopping. I’ve been in ‘organize the house’ mode this summer, trying to make sure we have places for stuff so that when we move, we already know where things should go.
If you didn’t know, Bed Bath and Beyond has turned into “As Seen on TV.” I got the toilet cleaner thing a couple weeks ago, but today netted us:
Ok for $15 I got 10 hooks and a cheap LED leveler, which actually works very well.
The hooks are amazing. They work exactly as advertised. I used them to hang my old bathroom shelves, which with normal huge drywall plugs and screws took 20+ minutes. These took under 2, including the leveling.
The hooks do not have good strength when being pulled away the wall, so we’ll see how they work for shelves, as if you pull outward on the shelve, the shelve tilts forward a little.
However, the hooks have great vertical strength. The more you push down, the more the back end digs into the back of the wall.
The leveler came with plastic tack to hold it on the wall, and two tacks. I just made my first hole, then used the hook to hold the leveler to the wall on the right end, then use the plastic tack to hold it level. A second hook gets inserted, remove the first, insert and hang.
This block of 10 cloths (6 jumbo, 4 large) absorb a ton of liquid. I picked them up for cleaning the windshields, etc when using RainX. I have yet to try that out, but they worked great at drying off stainless with zero spotting.
Picture this: You’re walking down the street. Or you’re in a room with a bunch of friends. Or at a concert. Or at the airport. Or on the bus (you get the picture) and then you whip out your Zune and see all these other Zune devices around that you can choose from.
I think the copy writer did a cut and paste incorrectly. Didn’t they mean:
“Picture this: You’re walking down the street. Or you’re in a room with a bunch of friends. Or at a concert. Or at the airport. Or on the bus (you get the picture) and then you whip out your Zune and see all these iPods. You decide to beat yourself with a stick for having this rebellious ‘fuck Apple’ attitude, because it is not about being ‘one of the crowd,’ but about owning the best device for playing music and video.
You take your Zune back to the store, buy an iPod Nano, go to Amazon.com, purchase some DRM-free mp3 tracks, sync them in iTunes and go about your life”
You can also fly under the radar when you want to as well. All you need to do is turn wireless on and off, or adjust the privacy settings to control whether people can see if you are online or to show your friends what you’re listening to. And if you want to keep your Zune private while studying in the library or reading the newspaper at the coffee shop, you can also block Zune devices, in wireless range, from sending you a song. But don’t worry, you can always allow them back.
Here I think they meant:
“Yeah so now you can spend your day trying to remember if you are in ‘be accosted’ mode or not. Shoot, you actually had a life talking to that cute girl and forgot to turn off the wifi mode, since your Zune was hidden in your coat pocket. Oh but hmm, this hasn’t been a problem, you breath a sigh of deep relief, because there are no Zune users to bug you. You are alone. Oh yeah, the girl is back at the coffee shop talking to that dude with the iPod Touch.”
The party is just getting started
Oh the party started long ago, my friends.
P.S. They still use web page URIs that have a ‘.htm’ extension. When will they drop the 8.3 crap?
