Leopard roars at last!
17 October 2007

"What an obsessive such as myself should clearly do right now is go into an insane level of detail about how we got to where we are now. So here goes."

I'm very aware that this technology blog spends somewhere in the region of 100% of it's time talking about Apple Macs. In actual fact to be more specific Mac OS X. This could be deemed as some kind of obsession, but I consider that I'm performing a valuable service to the National Insomniacs Society. Go figure.

The main reason for my seemingly endless harping on about Apple Mac OS X and in particular the latest version (10.5 aka Leopard) is that if things had gone to plan the OS would have been old news by now and I'd have moved on to some other topic. But I'm getting ahead of myself. What an obsessive such as myself should clearly do right now is go into an insane level of detail about how we got to where we are now. So here goes...

The first version of Apple Mac OS X (10.0) came out in March 2001. Code named Cheetah internally by the developers the OS was such a big change from Mac OS 9 that it wasn't widely adopted but clearly showed the way things were going. It was quickly followed in September 2001 by version 10.1 codenamed internally as Puma. This was a much more stable effort and was given as a free upgrade to those users who had adopted Cheetah.

Somewhat controversially, Apple announced in January 2002 that Puma would be the default OS on all its new computers. There was much condemnation of this move (mainly by people who relied on OS 9 and didn't like change). However it wasn't until the next version (10.2 'Jaguar' now actually called it's codename outside of Apple as well as internally) that OS X came into the mainstream. This shipped in August 2002.

The next two versions of OS X inroduced the bulk of the features that we now accept as the 'norm' today. Version 10.3 Panther came out in October 2003 and 10.4 Tiger in April 2005. Arguably some of the features added as this point went some way to introducing inconsistencies in the look and feel of Mac OS X although it was still streets ahead of Windows that had in the same timeframe received only security updates and service packs with no notable additions in functionality

The sixth version of OS X was announced in June 2005 at the World Wide Developers Conference. It was to be called Leopard and would ship "in late 2006 or early 2007". No features were announced until the following year when in August 2006 Apple CEO Steve Jobs listed 10 features of the new OS including Spaces and Time Machine (more on those in a moment) and said it would ship in the "Spring of 2007".

It came as no surprise (as readers of this blog will well know) that this was delayed until "October 2007" due to resources required for the iPhone project. The lack of developer seeds in March and April made it a foregone conclusion that all was not well. As October came and the days rolled by, many gloom and doom merchants said that they felt another delay was in the offing. However, on October 16 Apple finally announced that Leopard will ship on Friday 26 October 2007 from 6pm (worldwide).

Thank goodness for that! Perhaps I can start talking about something else now? OK: High Def TVs - useless until we get more High Def broadcasts. Cut price Sony PS3 - about time too, perhaps people will think twice about buying an X-Box 360 now. OK? All done, now back to Leopard:-

I waited until version 10.4.3 before upgrading from Panther to Tiger, but crazily I'm going to install version 10.5.0 of Leopard on my Mac Pro. Idiot! I have a back up plan in place and intend to do an erase and install rather than an archive and install but I feel this can all be discussed in another blog entry. First off, I'll talk about my ordering dilemma for Leopard. Originally I'd planned to buy it from my local Apple Authorised Reseller but when I phoned them they said that they can't guarantee that they'll have it on launch day. Almost unbelievably when I called my nearest Apple Retail Store (a 50 mile round trip if I went there) they also said that they can't take pre-orders. What?! So I've ordered from the Apple Store on-line.

I notice that US customers who order on-line from Apple get a guaranteed delivery from UPS on Friday 26 October - launch day. Here in the UK the Apple Store cryptically says "shipment BY October 26th". Hmmmmm. Sounds like we're getting second best here, but I'll reserve judgement until the parcel arrives.

Some commentators (the ones who haven't got a clue what they're banging on about, mostly) have said that like the move from Windows XP to Windows Vista, the move from Mac OS X Tiger to Mac OS X Leopard will give you eye candy and little else. I beg to differ. Apple lists over 300 new features in 10.5 on their web site and scrolling through them there are plenty of things there to make the upgrade worthwhile. These are very real improvements and not just useless wizzy effects. My personal favourites are Spaces (a really good implementation of a multiple desktop manager) and Time Machine, a quite revolutionary backup system that enables you to retrieve not just past backups but also individual files you may have deleted. Finding them is ridiculously easy too. But there's more than that. Adding items from e-mails straight to To Do lists at the click of a mouse will be very useful as will the improved networking, multi-core aware kernel and improved development tools. I could go on and on. And don't forget the consistent look and feel (goodbye brushed metal at last) and the opportunities for developers to use system level tools like core image in their apps.

There will be plenty of people who sensibly will wait until a couple of Leopard upgrades have been made available and won't install the new OS until 10.5.1 or 10.5.2. If you're one of those people, keep an eye on this web site as I intend to have a "real world" insight into this Vista-busting Mac upgrade in early November.

Speaking as an obsessive, I'm chuffed that Leopard is on its way and I'll have lots more to bore you with in the coming weeks. Bring it on!