Gizmodo
We talked to Brian Croll, senior director, Mac OS X Product Marketing at Apple this morning about, yep, Leopard. We had quite a few questions, and Brian had answers for many of them. Here's the information we managed to eke out, including Leopard's demands on MacBook Pro battery life, the possibility of Widgets on iPhone, and whether or not that cool R2D2 iChat hologram effect survived. (Care to place bets?) Oh, one more thing: Apple was also quick to reiterate that "Everyone gets the Ultimate version" in a not so subtle dig at Microsoft's confusing Vista variants.
Giz: Can you override Time Machine to seriously delete stuff you never want to see again?
Apple: In the "starfield" view you have an option: "Delete all backup versions of this file." If you do that, you will never see it again. Also, you can select things you don't want to be picked up by Time Machine. You can affect the scope, and specify areas you don't want to cover.
Giz: Will I want to leave Time Machine running when I'm in the field, or will I have to turn it off to preserve battery life?
Apple: No, it is really low over head.
Giz: Will I be able to get as long battery life on MacBook Pro?
Apple: No specific measurement, but don't expect to see a huge difference.
Giz: Are Mail To Do and iCal To Do the same?
Apple: There is one list of To Dos that can be expressed in both iCal and Mail. To Dos are also synced to your mail server, so you can see them from multiple machines.
Giz: What do Mail To Dos look like when viewed from 3rd party mail apps or from an iPhone?
Apple: To Dos show up as normal mail in 3rd Party and non-Leopard mail programs, including iPhones and Blackberrys.
Giz: Are Widgets from Leopard going to be made to work across all Apple platforms (i.e. iPhone)?
Apple: Widgets will work in Dashboard and will continue to work in Dashboard.
Giz: What's new with the Dictionary tool?
Apple: There's a lot of pretty cool stuff. We've added Wikipedia support and a Japanese dictionary as well.
Giz: What are the system requirements?
Apple: Intel Processor, PPC G5, PPC G4, 867MHz or better; 512 MB of memory; DVD drive for installation.
Giz: Will Leopard come with iLife '08?
Apple: No. If you buy a new CPU with Leopard, you get the new verison of iLife. If you have an older system with Tiger, you have to buy both the iLife upgrade and Leopard upgrade.
Giz: Does iChat still have the Star Wars hologram effect? We've added a whole lot of different effects. I am not sure if the hologram one is in there. We included the most effective ones, the ones that work the best. I think [the hologram effect] is not in there.
Giz: What's the name of the next OS update cat?
We don't talk about future products.
Though they couldn't answer all of our questions, they did recommend visiting the updated Mac OS X page, particularly the section on 300+ New Features.
Comments
Im already excited about OS X Saber
the next version should be called "Thunder Cat"
They already have the big metal "X".
Why not go all geek and call it "Sabretooth"?
Hairball?
"867MHz or better"!!!??? my MacBook Pro has 667MHz. is this bad? how do i bring it up?
@mattw6789: you can most likely get around that problem. Ive done it before but I cant remember how....
funny that apple names there software after cats. probably the closest most fanboys ever get to pussy!
@mattw6789 I'm pretty sure your MB pro has a processor speed higher than that.
""867MHz or better"!!!??? my MacBook Pro has 667MHz. is this bad? how do i bring it up?"
I think your RAM is 667 MHz. They don't and never have make MPB's with a processor speed any slower than like 1.83 GHz.
DUDE YOU SHOULD HAVE ASKED IF DASHBOARD WILL WORK ON THE IPHONE!?
wtf is everyone talking about. his bus speed is 667mhz.
kid, you will be fine.
thanks guys. i think i might have read my info wrong. my processor is 2.4 GHz on an Intel Mac and memory is 2GB 667 MHz. i guess that is enough, i get a little confused with which is which haha
@RONNSPROCKET
my bus speed is 800 MHz
OS Team Ramrod
I'd buy iLife if not for the fact that I only use iPhoto.
Here is a question that I'm not sure has been answered. Will there only be one version of the Leopard software, or will there be seperate Intel and PPC versions? I want to get the family pack to save some cash, but will it work for both PPC and Intel, or would I have to buy a seperate version for the 2 processors? I'm wondering because all of the 10.4.X updates have been seperated into PPC and Intel versions.
was it confirmed that leopard would have resolution independence?
@mattw6789:
You can buy extra megahurtz in the form of NOS stickers at your local auto parts store.
@Jeff_Mcawesome:
This isn't Microsoft. They are the same.
Snip from store.apple.com:
Minimum System Requirements
* • Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor
* • 512MB of physical RAM
* • DVD drive for installation
Mrwaow.
OSX.6... "kitten"
Maybe "Liger"
Please don't take me too seriously
The most important questions is how will Time Machine work with any laptop? I'm going to be using it while not connected to an external HDD, so will Time Machine cache changes until I reconnect it again? How long will it cache changes until it starts dumping stuff?
OS X (6.0) "Pussy" as in sexy
On the website, it says that ichat will work with AIM and .Mac. So i guess I'll still be using adium...
The one thing I really want to know: will it suck on a lower end machine? Or will it play nice. There are still a fair number of gen 1 Mac Mini's, PowerBooks, etc who meet the specs. Is it even worth it?
I believe 10.6 is supposed to be Lion, but that was 2 years ago. Apple's supposed to go in a new direction after 10.6, but calling OS 10, OS X is so popular I don't know what else they would call it.
I maybe speaking crazy talk but somewhere along the line I heard that you could install Leopard on a regular PC. I happen to think that such a choice would be a very smart move for apple. But, looking at the 'system requirements' for Leopard, it says 'Mac computer..." Oh well.
@digitalgimpus
As with any old Mac I've upgraded, performance goes down about 25% with a new OS version. It works and can be used, but 25% is a pretty big performance hit. Maxxing out the RAM is all you can do.
@wsder: Well, AIM, .mac and Jabber. I don't know why Jabber isn't in there, but its been supported since Tiger. In fact, Tiger server has a Jabber Server built in. But yeah, if you use MSN or Yahoo or ICQ, Adium it is!
@Johnny Chimpo: Judging by your photo, im surprised you know what pussy is.
@iHeartApple: Judging by your name and your comment it appears my joke hit a little too close to home.
Relax big boy. I'm sure you'll get your's before you're 30.
@iHeartApple: @Johnny Chimpo:
Smells like sex in here.
You didn't ask them about HD support? Aw Giz!
OS X Ocelot would be fine with me.
Or if they come out with a tablet and an new OS
OS X GODMODE
@MOO083
Fear not... Trillian is coming to Mac!!!
@INFINITELOOP
I doubt that ol' Stevie would allow OSX on non-apple hardware. I think that he's got the right idea at the current market share... but if things keep going this way they are going to have to look at this option in the future. The fine line between "niche" product manufacturer and monopoly is market share.
@Kaiser-Machead: HA!
OS 10.6, Code name: Snagglepuss
New shut down sound: "Exit, stage left, even."
I'd buy it.
@bdkennedy1: I've experienced the opposite effect, every new version of OS X I've installed on my old mac has been faster than the previous one. This time they decided to drop the support for it (too slow CPU) so I guess I won't be experiencing the same again.
@ottermann: That would be awesome!
Boring... I want a review to show off maybe the top 10 biggest changes...
The next version of OS X is always "OS X Pussy", It's like "Generation Next"...
In 2003 Apple trademarked a bunch of cat names, the unused ones are now left to Lynx and Cougar.
I've also seen performance go up on older computers - I have one old Powermac 400MHz I help maintain, that has Tiger and is faster than with previous versions of OS X.
For the question about laptops and Time Machine - I don't know specifically how it will work in practice, but since underneath Time Machine works based on file modification times, in theory when you connect back to your Time Machine external drive at home it could update all the various timed backups as if it had been active all along. I was also thinking about creating a partition just for Time Machine and doing local backups to that until I returned home, but I don't know if you can tell Time Machine to synchronize a smaller repository with a larger master one.
OS X "ThunderCat"
@bdkennedy1: I always thought that Lion would be 10.9 due to the whole "king of the jungle) thing...
With a lot of the internet fads these days, I had a diffrent "cat" for Apple.
Mac OS X "Longcat".
Because Longcat is looooooooooooooooong.
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