Apple released Mac OS X 10.5 on October 26, 2007. Chris sent me a link to ars technica's extensive in depth review of the new OS. While I was reading it I wrote up the following thoughts. My thoughts in some cases won't make any sense without the context of the original article so before reading my comments you may want to at least skim the original. Also what follows is almost stream of conscious, with a little editing. If anyone can answer the questions I pose please do.
The graphical changes highlighted to seem to be strange choices. The menu one is similar to Vista Aero Glass, but even Vista didn't make the start bar itself transparent. The folders seem to be the worst I think, losing contrast and identifying parts will make it hard for lots of users. The dock I understand from a marketing standpoint, I have seen people gush over it already equally the way this review bashes it.
Dtrace is cool, especially being built in. It is like ProcMon (combo of RegMon and FileMon) being built into OS (which it may be in the future). Troubleshooting at a very low level and where (almost) nothing is hidden. It is interesting to see the differences in the problems both OS X and Windows are going through getting to 64-bit. Windows still has two versions but everything essentially runs on both. OS X has one version but 64-bit and 32-bit apps have problems chatting. Hopefully the next version of both we can just say toodles to the 32-bit waste. They both share the issue of drivers in a mixed world. At least there can be 64 bit drivers in windows, in OS X still stuck with 32-bit drivers, I wonder how that transition to 64 bit drivers will be handled.
I still admire Apple's ability to just toss out huge chunks of backwards compatibility. I can only imagine the windows landscape if Vista had no support for 16 bit, dropped anything older than Windows XP GUI and was built atop .Net 3.0 fully.
Wow this is long.
It is amazing that both Apple and Microsoft seem to be making little progress on high ppi screens. Vista was supposed to fix it, sure except all the applications break. Now I see even Apple's own apps can't handle DPI changes. Why is this so freaking hard?
I remember playing with icon spacing in windows 3.1, don't think I have cared since then. I just so rarely use icon/thumbnail views. I am almost always in details list view. The dock seems to have gone very far toward graphical flash over functional usage.
Time machine is "Complete PC Backup" combined with Previous Versions in a pretty package. Also it isn't quite as elegant of a technical solution due to file system issues. However it is a great feature. It is too bad they killed the ability to go to airport USB disk since that would be the easiest for a household. That is a feature in Windows Home Server. WHS pulls incremental backups from desktops to a central location and can be restored via a boot disk. Also Time machine is there for everyone, Complete PC Backup is only in Vista Ultimate, Business and Enterprise for some stupid reason.
No mention of Bootcamp and how it works under leopard. Does leopard generate driver disk, download updates for hardware?
Great article.
It will be interesting to see how 10.5 matures alongside Vista maturing. I would bet that 10.6 will be out before Windows 7, however I think Windows 7 will bet 10.7 out the door.
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