Is the Leopard finally roaring?
23 June 2007

"Roll on to January and the biggest Mac event of the year: Macworld. Steve Jobs took to the stage and we waited to be amazed by new OS X features with an earlier than promised release alongside new Mac hardware and perhaps a cure for cancer "

Before I get to the subject of my latest ramblings I must thank Mo McRoberts for an e-mail regarding Digital Rights Management sent to me following my last blog. Mo points out that Apple not licensing their DRM to third parties is an excuse rolled out by the broadcasters in the UK and that Microsoft are just as much to blame by not porting their DRM code to OS X.

I can't reprint the whole of Mo's e-mail but I think this part of it sums it up rather nicely:

"The only reason for the hurdle involved in porting iPlayer to a non-Microsoft platform is that Microsoft's normal DRM license (they'll license the DRM to anybody, after all) is built on using the Windows Media libraries that ship as part of Windows/Windows Media Player—they don't actually license the specifications of the DRM scheme itself. To date (to my knowledge), nobody has ported Microsoft's DRM system to a non-Windows platform, and that includes Microsoft themselves.

The BBC's “Apple won't license its DRM” line is a bluff, all in, just to deflect people from the fact that they made an extremely poor choice in selecting Microsoft as their partner for the iPlayer—and worse, people told them it was a poor choice at the time."

This month's Macworld falls into the same trap I did in apportioning blame, but whoever is stopping this from happening needs to get their house in order sooner rather than later. Perhaps the BBC will lead the way in this respect?

Thanks to Mo for the feedback - it's always welcome.

Leopard
Time to move on to the latest subject to be chewed over in my geeky head and spat out to make way for more real ale.

Last week Apple announced the hitherto secret features of their forthcoming operating system release "Leopard" (OS X version 10.5). This event was, originally, to have been the launch of the OS, but due to delays being blamed on iPhone development this has been put off a la Microsoft to October. But unlike Redmond, that's October THIS year. I guess 4 months isn't too bad if it means a more stable product.

For those who spend their life helping the poor, going out places and being generally a good deal more sociable than us geeks let me take you on a whistle-stop tour of Leopard's progress so far. At the Apple Mac World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in 2006 10 Vista-busting features of the next version of Mac OS X were announced. I won't bang on about them now, but Time Machine looks to be a backup system that will actually take the hassle out of not losing stuff (even if it does have a naff interface), Spaces (although far from a new idea) will be a good organisational tool (alongside Expose) to have built in to the OS and the underlying improvements such as Core Animation, 64-bit, Multicore (etc. etc.) can only be a good thing. This sounded great, so we all moaned about there being no new Finder. We're just so fickle! 

Roll on to January 2007 and the biggest Mac event of the year: Macworld in San Francisco. Steve Jobs took to the stage and we waited to be amazed by new OS X features with an earlier than promised release alongside new Mac hardware and perhaps a cure for Cancer. We were disappointed on all fronts. Just something about a phone and what looked to be a rubbish VCR in a nice case. I was waiting to upgrade from a Mac Mini at the time so was particularly annoyed at no hardware news. That's all history now (I'm typing this on a Mac Pro - I gave in by April).

Looking back it's pretty obvious now that at the time of Macworld Apple were probably starting to realise that having Leopard out in time for WWDC wasn't going to happen. They were probably busy trying to work out what to do about it and I guess saying nothing in January was probably the safer option. You can't "unsay" what's already been said so for goodness sake don't make it any worse by annoucing anything else. Outside of Cuppertino we saw Apple Computer Inc become Apple Inc and started to see a future where we'd all have to go back to Windows via the nearest jump from a cliff top.

Inevitably the annoucement came that Leopard was being delayed until October. This gave Steve Jobs a dilemma for last week's WWDC. This was to have been the big launch - trumpets, dancing girls, ceremonious burnings of copies of Vista - that kind of thing. In the end (as with last year) 10 features were announced instead. Except we already knew about most of them so what we got was the new Finder we all so desperately wanted and a Dock moved slightly down and given a glossy finish. Yawn. Is it just me or is this a bit of an anticlimax?

To be fair, Apple couldn't win here. If they'd be launching Leopard and announcing the new Finder and Dock at the same time it would've been great, but with the launch still 4 months away there wasn't much of a story to tell. But before you think I'm disappointed with Leopard and the future let me put you straight! I think Leopard looks simply fantastic. The look and feel IS great (much improved on Panther and just polishing off Tiger nicely meaning we can all uninstall UNO). The underlying systems are very well designed. If you want 64 bit Windows you need to buy a special version. Leopard is 64-bit and also 32-bit at the same time. One version for all. That's pure class, I can't say just how cool that really is.

So, when do I plan on upgrading? Well, I left it until Tiger had got to version 10.4.3 before I moved from Panther, but I have a feeling that Leopard will be on my Mac Pro much earlier. I think Mac OS X is a class act, the feature set is great and I look forward to installing it on my Mac Pro before the clocks go back.

Live the dream :-)