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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > tiger to leopard compared to xp to vista

tiger to leopard compared to xp to vista
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vtboyarc
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Aug 16, 2007, 03:33 PM
 
how big of an upgrade is tiger to leopard? as big a change as xp to vista? I've only spent about 5 hours total on a mac, so looking at the "new" features in leopard doesn't really tell me much about how big of an upgrade it will be. I plan on buying a macbook once leopard is released.
     
0157988944
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Aug 16, 2007, 03:48 PM
 
I'm not so sure about XP to Vista, but I would say that Leopard is smaller. Leopard is more like Windows XP SP2, but a little bigger. See, Leopard is essentially an update to Mac OS 10. Leopard is version 10.5. Apple is just very good at making people pay for upgrades. Heck, they've hyped it up to a whole new operating system.
     
vtboyarc  (op)
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Aug 16, 2007, 04:23 PM
 
so will it actually even be all that much better? "the biggest mac os x upgrade ever"
     
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Aug 16, 2007, 04:31 PM
 
XP to Vista was 5 years of development. Tiger to Leopard is 2½ years of development. It's the longest development time for an OS X revision ever, so it might well be "the biggest Mac OS X upgrade ever", but it's still not as much as Vista took.
     
0157988944
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Aug 16, 2007, 04:36 PM
 
I don't see how it matters if Leopard compared to Tiger is better than XP compared to Vista. Leopard is better than Vista, and so is Tiger, IMO. That's what really matters when switching.
     
Big Mac
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Aug 16, 2007, 08:18 PM
 
Originally Posted by adamfishercox View Post
I'm not so sure about XP to Vista, but I would say that Leopard is smaller. Leopard is more like Windows XP SP2, but a little bigger. See, Leopard is essentially an update to Mac OS 10. Leopard is version 10.5. Apple is just very good at making people pay for upgrades. Heck, they've hyped it up to a whole new operating system.
So too is Vista an update to XP. Each 10.x milestone upgrade of OS X is substantial. They are not equivalent to service packs but are fully paid upgrades that have new features and often fundamental changes in them. OS X is pretty mature at this point, so the amount of change in each major release will be smaller - but the major releases will still be substantial. It's safe to say that 10.5 won't be as different from 10.4 as Vista is from XP, but then again opinions differ on the Windows side: Some people think Vista is a big change from XP, while others view it as mostly a face lift; rating OSs in this fashion can be highly subjective.

It's hard to decide how important a new major release will be compared to those that preceded it simply by comparing features on a piece of paper. In my mind, here are the most important major releases of OS X (in terms of changes from the previous version) thus far (from greatest to least): 10.2, 10.1, 10.3, 10.4. Where 10.5 will fit in that ranking I won't really know until I get to evaluate it myself.

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SkaGoat
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Aug 16, 2007, 08:37 PM
 
Vista is about as close to a complete rewrite as MS will ever attempt on Windows...

Leopard is minor compared to Vista. Leopard is more like a service pack in the Windows world...

Here's the difference, going from Window 5.0 to Windows 6.0.
Leopard is 10.4 to 10.5.

Just because it has new features, or Apple makes you pay for it, doesn't mean it's not just a service pack
     
Kadarin
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Aug 16, 2007, 08:39 PM
 
An OS change is an "upgrade" IMO if the new version is a genuine improvement, meaning that it makes life easier for you, or gives you new capabilities you didn't have before, or simplifies previously complex tasks. It's questionable whether Vista accomplishes much of that over XP. Change, for its own sake, isn't necessarily good, and change that makes life harder for you is most definitely bad.

That said, I haven't looked much yet into what Leopard will do for me or what changes there are as compared to Tiger, so I can't really comment. However, I'm hoping that the changes in Leopard will be genuine improvements. If so, then perhaps you could regard Leopard as a bigger (better?) "upgrade" than Vista, regardless of how much code is different or how much time/effort was spent on its development.
     
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Aug 16, 2007, 08:50 PM
 
Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
Here's the difference, going from Window 5.0 to Windows 6.0.
Leopard is 10.4 to 10.5.
That's not a reasonable way to make a comparison. Apple themselves, in the early days of Mac OS X, made it quite clear that there is no intention of producing anything called Mac OS Eleven/XI/11, and that version numbers will always start with "10.". Therefore 10.4 -> 10.5 is the same as Windows 5.0 -> 6.0, just based on version numbers alone. Ie, It is changing the most significant digit (that will ever be changed). These upgrades bring all major new OS features, not just bug fixes.

Apple may one day change their mind on this, but that was their public stance.

In the Mac OS X world, the equivalent of Windows "service packs" is the next significant digit (ie, after the second "."), eg, 10.4.9 -> 10.4.10. These are lesser upgrades that are usually just fixes, with little or nothing in the way of new features. They are free.

Having said all that, Leopard looks like the smallest of the major Mac OS X upgrades to me. Can't see much in it that I'll take advantage of it. Time machine looks nice, but I already to good incremental backups.
     
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Aug 17, 2007, 02:52 AM
 
Spaces is enough on the UI side for me to call 10.5 a major upgrade over 10.4.
     
analogika
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Aug 17, 2007, 03:55 AM
 
Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
Here's the difference, going from Window 5.0 to Windows 6.0.
Leopard is 10.4 to 10.5.
So when Windows went from NT 4 to Windows 2000, that was, like ONE THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED NINETY-SIX difference OMG!

Don't get confused by upgrade naming schemes and actual functionality/rewrites.

The one doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the other.

Windows 2000 was NT 5. XP was mostly NT 5.1 with a Fisher-Price window dressing to make it seem like a HUGE upgrade.

Leopard may not seem like so much on the surface, but that primarily has to do with the fact that the interface has been subtly refined over the past seven years, and that Apple has a large interest in consistency and continuity.

Underneath, quite a lot has been done to the system foundations.
     
OreoCookie
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Aug 17, 2007, 07:49 AM
 
Tiger to Leopard will be smaller for several reasons: first of all, Apple has introduced most of Vista's revolutionary feature before it was even released, most notably a sound security concept, a state-of-the-art graphics foundation and all the Core technologies. Apple is doing a lot more fine-tuning now (e. g. interface improvements, architectural improvements) whereas Microsoft was trying to catch up and `make Windows safer'.

Vista had to catch up, and even though in some respects, it may look more powerful on paper, features are only important if you can make good use of them. Keep in mind that Vista hasn't been very successful. Microsoft doesn't release details on its sales, but the industry expects that the number of genuine Vista sales to be very bad (i.e. the number of copies of Vista that weren't bundled to a new computer). Dell has even reintroduced the option to get your favorite computer with a copy of XP instead of Vista. Companies are waiting as well until they adopt Vista on a grand scale. Leopard has created a big stir already and even though we obviously cannot say whether it'll sell well, Tiger has done very well and most Macs run 10.4 these days.

I wouldn't worry that Apple's offerings are outdated.
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Kevin
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Aug 17, 2007, 08:25 AM
 
Vista = 10.0 For the Mac

It's their answer to OS X. 5 years too late.

Now OS X has refined those additions and is waaaay ahead of MS.

Vista is being poo poo'd. Sure people will say "So was XP at first" and it was.

But not like this. Vista, like 10.0 did, has a lot of work and refinements to be really usable.

XP is to a new OS as OS 9 was Copland. Meaning XP was supposed to be MUCH more significant than it was, but it didn't make it in time, and MS wanted to put out something modern looking quick to distract from OS X till they got "longhorn" aka Vista out. OS 8/9 was pretty much the same thing from Apple till they got OS X out. It attempted to grab a lot of what Copland was supposed to be, but didn't. Same with XP. Mostly hype.

Though I LOVE platinum to this day.

MS at one point was ahead of the game. IMHO. Protected mem and other modern OS advantages over OS 7/8/9. I was seriously considering NT or BeOS and dumping the Mac one time in the 90s.

OS X really blasted Apple ahead of that game. And switched a lot of people that did go to windows in the 90s, back to the Mac.

What I basically said basically pretty much is in tune with what Oreo said. And when that happens. It's gotta be true.

It's in the Constitution. I swear.
( Last edited by Kevin; Aug 17, 2007 at 08:31 AM. )
     
JKT
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Aug 17, 2007, 01:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by Kevin View Post
Vista = 10.0 For the Mac
Not really. The only drastically new thing that Vista brought to Windows is a better graphics display, otherwise it is the same deeply flawed system architecture underneath, the same filing system, etc. All the features that would have made Vista the 10.0 of Windows, were abandoned/postponed long before its release. If anything the degree of change that the transition from XP to Vista brought to Windows is much more akin to that of Tiger to Leopard than it is OS 9 to OS X.
     
Big Mac
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Aug 17, 2007, 03:17 PM
 
Kevin, you rightly acknowledge that Windows had a more advanced application architecture than the classic Mac OS, but after experiencing the true nature of XP a month ago, I can say with certainty that the classic Mac OS is still superior in many respects. In fact, if there were no OS X, I'd prefer to use OS 9 over Windows because of the inherent frailty of Windows. I will never trust Windows.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
CatOne
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Aug 17, 2007, 05:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
Vista is about as close to a complete rewrite as MS will ever attempt on Windows...
Uhhh... no. NT was a much larger rewrite... it was a totally new code base compared to 3.1/95/98/ME.

Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
Leopard is minor compared to Vista. Leopard is more like a service pack in the Windows world...
Not true. Leopard has some very substantial changes under the hood, which will improve a lot of things. It has huge numbers of new APIs, SDKs, etc. as well. It's not like a "service pack" at all.

Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
Here's the difference, going from Window 5.0 to Windows 6.0.
Leopard is 10.4 to 10.5.
LOL. So the main part of your assertion is based on how they are numbered?

Note 10.5 is Darwin 9. 10.4 was Darwin 8. So QED it's a *whole* number change, the upgrade from 10.4 to 10.5!!!!

Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
Just because it has new features, or Apple makes you pay for it, doesn't mean it's not just a service pack
Uhhh... so what was the 2.5 years of development for, then?
     
CatOne
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Aug 17, 2007, 05:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by Kevin View Post
Vista = 10.0 For the Mac

It's their answer to OS X. 5 years too late.

Now OS X has refined those additions and is waaaay ahead of MS.

Vista is being poo poo'd. Sure people will say "So was XP at first" and it was.

But not like this. Vista, like 10.0 did, has a lot of work and refinements to be really usable.

XP is to a new OS as OS 9 was Copland. Meaning XP was supposed to be MUCH more significant than it was, but it didn't make it in time, and MS wanted to put out something modern looking quick to distract from OS X till they got "longhorn" aka Vista out. OS 8/9 was pretty much the same thing from Apple till they got OS X out. It attempted to grab a lot of what Copland was supposed to be, but didn't. Same with XP. Mostly hype.

Though I LOVE platinum to this day.

MS at one point was ahead of the game. IMHO. Protected mem and other modern OS advantages over OS 7/8/9. I was seriously considering NT or BeOS and dumping the Mac one time in the 90s.

OS X really blasted Apple ahead of that game. And switched a lot of people that did go to windows in the 90s, back to the Mac.

What I basically said basically pretty much is in tune with what Oreo said. And when that happens. It's gotta be true.

It's in the Constitution. I swear.
This I'm going to disagree with... NT, when it was released, was the most advanced PC OS in existence. It was *way* ahead of Mac OS at the time... 4 or 5 YEARS ahead of it. Windows 2000 and XP were both largely refinements of it -- with significant enhancements in useability (actually, the big thing XP brought were the games... for a while the forked 95/98/ME versus NT thing was a pain, because games targeted the former which was a mess, and NT/2000, while stable, often didn't offer anything for gamers).

There were a large number of security holes in NT basically because of its design for "usability" and ease of networking (e.g. NETBIOS), and it has a huge user base so is a big hacker target, but XP with the NT kernel is a modern OS and is quite good at a number of things. I think comparing it to Pre-OS X is unfair, given anything on the Mac side pre-OS X is absolutely archaic (and ceased to be used by anyone save die-hard-creative-lifelong-apple-customers).

Vista was a big, ambitious project... and had the goal of fixing things that grew a bit creaky maturation of machines from 1995 to 2007 (basically NT 3.51 to now)... many of which were scoped out, and many of which got killed by Microsoft's inability to get their arms around how big a project this was... and how big a company they've become.
     
CatOne
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Aug 17, 2007, 05:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by Big Mac View Post
Kevin, you rightly acknowledge that Windows had a more advanced application architecture than the classic Mac OS, but after experiencing the true nature of XP a month ago, I can say with certainty that the classic Mac OS is still superior in many respects. In fact, if there were no OS X, I'd prefer to use OS 9 over Windows because of the inherent frailty of Windows. I will never trust Windows.
OS 9 had some good things with usability, but XP's stability is *far* better than classic Mac OS stability. If, for no other reason than ONE bug in ONE application required you to reboot the OS, if you wanted to ensure data integrity. And lots of applications have bugs... in this day of betas you would be absolutely HOSED to run them on Classic Mac OS.

I had about 10 BSODs in 5 years of Windows 2000/NT use, and 8 of them were from some firewire issue (probably a problem with the Dell)... when I plugged it in the machine went down for the count with a hardware trap.
     
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Aug 17, 2007, 06:12 PM
 
Regarding NT 3.51, MS big, big mistake was to develop it side-by-side with the DOS-based Windows, otherwise, Windows users would have had all the goodies (preemptive multitasking, memory protection, SMP, etc.) far earlier than Mac users. Only with Win XP, they have merged the two lines.
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Brien
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Aug 17, 2007, 06:42 PM
 
Man, I loved classic, but no multi-threading or anything of the sort really did give Windows the edge back then.

My how times change.
     
sushiism
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Aug 17, 2007, 08:01 PM
 
Best things about windows vista are the hardware compositing (We've had since 10.2) and hardware shader support for the blurs and stuff (We've had that since 10.4)
     
Big Mac
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Aug 17, 2007, 08:04 PM
 
Originally Posted by CatOne View Post
OS 9 had some good things with usability, but XP's stability is *far* better than classic Mac OS stability. If, for no other reason than ONE bug in ONE application required you to reboot the OS, if you wanted to ensure data integrity. And lots of applications have bugs... in this day of betas you would be absolutely HOSED to run them on Classic Mac OS.
I'm not arguing that the classic Mac OS lacked memory protection. The thing I'm arguing is that there are so many ways to wreck a Windows installation, and if you do you are required to reformat your drive, reinstall, reinstall drivers, reinstall programs just to get back up and running - which isn't true of the classic Mac OS. Windows 98 may have looked more stable than OS 9, but in truth Windows was and remains more fragile and far harder to repair in the event of a problem than the classic Mac OS. Windows is and will remain a complete joke of an OS, and anyone who relies on it is a glutton for punishment.

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SkaGoat
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Aug 17, 2007, 08:37 PM
 
There is more to Vista than just Aero, uninformed people think that Vista is just XP with Aero tacked on... it's not


to name a few

Shadow Copy (Apple ripped it off from MS, so it must be good)
Improved Shell
Performance Console
ReadyBoost
SuperFetch
Improved Memory handling
new IP Stack
New Driver Model
New Display Driver model
Individual control over sound from applications
UAC
Instant Search

also you have to remember they started over half way into their development process, so it really took them 3 years to do Vista, not 5.

Uhhh... so what was the 2.5 years of development for, then?
I don't know, I was wondering that myself. 2.5 years seems a long time just to slap in a couple SDKs

I'm not saying Windows is better than OSX, I'm just saying Vista is a bigger step forward than Leopard is.
     
OliverTwist
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Aug 17, 2007, 10:09 PM
 
Thank you very much for bringing some facts into this debate, SkaGoat. No offense to some of the other posters, but it's just too easy to try comparing these two transitions by looking at numbering conventions, windowing graphics, or development time (which actually wasn't much longer than Leopard's).

If you want to accurately compare them, you really need to look at the changes that were actually made. For starters, check out the lists of features compiled by Wikipedia:

Windows Vista - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mac OS X v10.5 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Both are large-scale releases of consumer features and developer technologies, as opposed to service packs which are mainly bug fixes and security improvements. That said, Vista certainly is a larger jump, and that may have more to do with the relative nimbleness of Apple in being able to release smaller incremental updates.
     
0157988944
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Aug 17, 2007, 10:12 PM
 
While you're right, the question asked here WAS more about numbering schemes. The question was whether Tiger to Leopard was a bigger transition than XP to Vista, and I'd say it is not for the user, regardless of how many "under the hood" things go down.

Vista is marketed as a new OS while Leopard is a [large] upgrade.
     
Chuckit
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Aug 17, 2007, 10:31 PM
 
Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
Shadow Copy (Apple ripped it off from MS, so it must be good)
Yes, that was very clever of Microsoft to invent the idea of backing up (which is all the two implementations share, as far as I can tell).

Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
I don't know, I was wondering that myself. 2.5 years seems a long time just to slap in a couple SDKs
Given how half of your Vista list is crap like "New Driver Model," I find it strange that you'd characterize Leopard as a couple of SDKs. For the most part, Leopard's changes are not particularly smaller that the things you named, though I confess that Apple doesn't feel a need to give it a catchy name every time they improve the VM system.
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OliverTwist
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Aug 17, 2007, 10:37 PM
 
Originally Posted by adamfishercox
While you're right, the question asked here WAS more about numbering schemes. The question was whether Tiger to Leopard was a bigger transition than XP to Vista, and I'd say it is not for the user, regardless of how many "under the hood" things go down.
I judge changes both qualitatively (to what degree) and quantitatively (how many). Regarding the former, most of Leopard's consumer features are improvements to existing things (iLife, iChat, iCal, Safari 3, new Dashboard widgets, etc). Vista's consumer features are often completely new (Aero, instant search, sidebar, Mail, Calendar, Photo Gallery, etc). So even on the consumer end, it's clear to me which one is a bigger change.

I should mention again, though, that this goes to Apple's credit. They are nimble enough to release features at very high iterations that allow their technologies to mature and be digested. Anyone who says it's a greedy approach can simply skip an OS X release and buy the next one, which has all the previous improvements included.
( Last edited by OliverTwist; Aug 17, 2007 at 10:38 PM. Reason: added quote)
     
Biest
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Aug 17, 2007, 10:44 PM
 
Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
also you have to remember they started over half way into their development process, so it really took them 3 years to do Vista, not 5.
Please do be reminded that MS has a much larger group of programmers then Apple has. 3 years for such an upgrade is still considerable
     
JKT
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Aug 18, 2007, 04:09 AM
 
Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
There is more to Vista than just Aero, uninformed people think that Vista is just XP with Aero tacked on... it's not
Fwiw, I wasn't saying that the only thing that changed between Vista and XP was Aero, just that it was the most dramatic change. However, Vista is not the same dramatic architectural change that 9 to 10.0 was. Ergo to consider Vista as the "10.0" of the Windows world is wrong - it is more an evolution of XP than a radical re-working. The things that would have made it radical were (mostly) all dropped.
     
sushiism
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Aug 18, 2007, 07:48 AM
 
Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
There is more to Vista than just Aero, uninformed people think that Vista is just XP with Aero tacked on... it's not
.
I never said that, I said it was the best bit.
The place XP was really lacking wasn't in stability it was in the graphical quality, you would drag things about and get jerky dragging/lots of flicker and redraw. Made XP feel much more inferior than it really was.
So that is the BEST feature of vista but not the only one
     
CatOne
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Aug 18, 2007, 05:30 PM
 
Why are you using Windows 98 as a basis for comparison when Windows NT 4.0 had been out for 2 years by that point?

NT/2000/XP have some issues, and in the past ~4 years really have been pounded by virus/spyware/etc., but in general if you know what you're doing and exercise a modicum of caution they are pretty solid. Yes, the registry is a piece of crap and the fact that it's binary and it makes it colossally difficult to do something like a quick system migration, but that doesn't change the fact that it certainly *is* possible to have a very stable installation of Windows.

I know -- I've done it. I definitely prefer my Macs, but I didn't have problems keeping a stable PC when I used it. Of course, I never bought an HP system at retail with 75 crapware apps on it, either. I saw my father-in-law's PC... it was getting daily nags from Norton (the 30-day trial had expired, and he had purchased/installed a full version and it didn't clean up the trial copy... lol).
     
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Aug 19, 2007, 07:00 PM
 
As one who has actually used Leopard for an extended amount of time, and was like you, underwhelmed by the feature-set on paper, I can honestly say that this is the biggest Mac OS X upgrade yet.

There is just no way of describing what an upgrade it is in terms of usability. It just has to be experienced in a work environment. Finder is actually a dream to work in now, especially if you are doing anything visual - like browse for images or videos.

Do not underestimate Leopard in terms of upgrades - all the minor things and polish really add up to a solid upgrade: CoverFlow-browsing (being a million times better than my first reaction: gimmick), a fast Finder which won't beachball on you when networking, Spaces and Stacks. Not to mention the first time Time Machine saves your butt from when you otherwise would have been to lazy or busy to back up you will want to pay for it all over again.
( Last edited by - - e r i k - -; Aug 19, 2007 at 10:31 PM. )

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CatOne
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Aug 19, 2007, 08:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - View Post
As one who has actually used Leopard for an extended amount of time, and was like you, underwhelmed by the feature-set on paper, I can honestly say that this is the biggest Mac OS X upgrade yet.
     
Kevin
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Aug 20, 2007, 09:27 AM
 
Originally Posted by JKT View Post
Not really. The only drastically new thing that Vista brought to Windows is a better graphics display, otherwise it is the same deeply flawed system architecture underneath, the same filing system, etc. All the features that would have made Vista the 10.0 of Windows, were abandoned/postponed long before its release. If anything the degree of change that the transition from XP to Vista brought to Windows is much more akin to that of Tiger to Leopard than it is OS 9 to OS X.
Call me corrected then. I thought Vista had more changes than that.
I see MS is still playing bait and switch.

Vista is more like Copland then. It's just MS had more money to throw at it than Apple did.
     
Kevin
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Aug 20, 2007, 09:35 AM
 
Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
Shadow Copy (Apple ripped it off from MS, so it must be good)
If this is true, which I am having my doubts. (MS didn't invent backup)
Apple deserves to be able to copy something. After all the copying MS has been doing from day one when it comes to Apple.

MS used to call Apple "R&D South" for a reason.
     
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Aug 22, 2007, 01:18 PM
 
Another godless, boring thread. Same old stuff. Apple vs. Microsoft bashing, all coming from people who seem to have no idea what they are talking about.

Oh MacNN, what is happening with you...

I will eat my comments if you have all been privy to the developer site and are using a copy of Leopard. But if you haven't, then you are just a load of armchair critics.

Leopard is a significant step forward. It is the biggest upgrade yet. There are several things about it that justify this comment. Just search around and research what it is going to bring.
     
SkaGoat
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Aug 22, 2007, 01:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by Kevin View Post
If this is true, which I am having my doubts. (MS didn't invent backup)
Apple deserves to be able to copy something. After all the copying MS has been doing from day one when it comes to Apple.

MS used to call Apple "R&D South" for a reason.
You don't believe me? Shadow Copy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shadow copy first appeared in Windows 2003. Long before Leopard.. long before Tiger even. And MS didn't invent backup, but they did invent making multiple backups, and using a little space as possible while doing it by only saving the differences (what Time Machine does) MS never called Apple R&D Sound.... Apple fanboys like to think that Apple is the only company in the hole tech industry that invents things that are cool or useful.

Microsoft may borrows ideas, but so does Apple, and so does every company, they are just building on ideas thought of by other people.
     
TETENAL
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Aug 22, 2007, 02:11 PM
 
The principle was invented before Microsoft was founded even.

Versioning file system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
     
SkaGoat
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Aug 22, 2007, 02:25 PM
 
Originally Posted by TETENAL View Post
The principle was invented before Microsoft was founded even.

Versioning file system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If you read the article you'll see:

Shadow Copy - This isn't actually versioning file system. This is just a backup system.
Like I said, they're the first major OS to come with a backup system that seamlessly in the background saves the Deltas to a different spindle.
     
Brass
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Aug 22, 2007, 05:43 PM
 
Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
MS didn't invent backup, but they did invent making multiple backups, and using a little space as possible while doing it by only saving the differences
Surely you don't believe that? Versioning file system, and file system snapshots (even in UFS) have been doing exactly this for decades, as have non-file-system-based tools! Even rsync (good old unix tool) only copies across the changed portions of a file and has a useful backup mode for keeping multiple copies of files. Even I have written a backup tool (that uses rsync) that does this!!!
( Last edited by Brass; Aug 22, 2007 at 05:53 PM. )
     
Brass
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Aug 22, 2007, 05:51 PM
 
Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
If you read the article you'll see:



Like I said, they're the first major OS to come with a backup system that seamlessly in the background saves the Deltas to a different spindle.
Sheesh... not much of break through, when you have to make it's difference to anything else so specific. And they're not the first to do even that. Unix has been able to do this for yonks, using only the built in tools. Just a matter of placing a single rsync command in the crontab file. Nothing to install, just a matter of configuration.

From the article, it seems to me like Shadow copy is a bit like a versioning file system, only that it is lacking some of the better features.
     
Chuckit
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Aug 22, 2007, 09:14 PM
 
Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
And MS didn't invent backup, but they did invent making multiple backups, and using a little space as possible while doing it by only saving the differences (what Time Machine does)
You're saying Microsoft invented incremental backups? Really?

Also, Time Machine does not appear to be a particularly great incremental backup tool, though it's passable. The interesting part of Time Machine is its integration with applications — for instance, being able to use Time Machine inside your Address Book to bring back contacts that you've deleted.
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OreoCookie
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Aug 23, 2007, 03:20 AM
 
Originally Posted by SkaGoat View Post
but they did invent making multiple backups, and using a little space as possible while doing it by only saving the differences (what Time Machine does)
No, incremental and differential backups have been around for decades. The idea has been around for quite some time -- and I dare say, it's not even a backup feature (since the Shadow Clones are saved onto the same harddrive, i. e. you don't have data redundancy in case of failure, it is used for versioning and rolling back faulty software updates). Microsoft can, however, be credited for bringing it into the mainstream market (which is a good thing™).

The problem is not the feature, but the availability of the feature: initially it has been available only in Win2k3 (Server) and even now, in a Microsoft-specific way, it is available only in certain version of Windows (Business, Enterprise and Ultimate). Even then, average users and even many power users don't know it exists and can be used properly. There is no easy interface that allows an average user to schedule versions of his favorite data in regular intervals.

Lastly, it's not a competitor to Time Machine: Time Machine saves your data onto another harddrive while ShadowCopy and the analogous snapshot feature in ZFS save them onto the same harddrive. However, from the perspective of versioning, you are right, we can expect such a feature with 10.6 (whatever it will be called) when ZFS is probably replacing HFS+ as the main filesystem for the Mac.
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gperks
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Aug 23, 2007, 07:59 PM
 
Don't forget that since Tiger, Apple has released two other releases of OS X before Leopard. Those are the Intel version - not a trivial effort and forgotten because they did such a good job; and the ARM port with a whole new UI for the iPhone. That's a lot for any OS group.
     
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Aug 24, 2007, 06:59 AM
 
MS reset the development of the kernel in mid 2004. The kernel is just part of the OS, though, not all of it, and it was reset to Win 2003 status, not the Win XP status Longhorn began on.

Compared to OS X, I'd say that XP->Vista is like 10.1->10.4 in one go. Big changes, lots of work put into the kernel but no changes that really break compability with outdated technologies or put them in a sandbox (like OS 9-> OS X). I very much doubt that 10.4->10.5 is going to be as big. The only OS X-like switch was from DOS codebase (including Win95 and 98) to the NT one, but MS kept the old one alive for almost a decade to ease transition, so it didn't seem like such a big deal.

Of the changes in Vista, the graphics system (Avalon) and associated driver model is the only big one. It's like adding Quartz, QE and Core Image in one go. Other than that, they added some malware tripwires and some optimizations and tried to de-**** the authorization system without really daring to go all the way and really fix it.
     
   
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