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Mac OS X Leopard

Llama

Llama

Captain
Captain
I'm thinking of getting a MacBook Pro with the latest OSX.

is anyone here using it (I know it only came out a couple of days ago)? what are the pros and cons of the new operating system?

the last computer I bought was a G4 MacBook that ran OSX Panther (its currently dying a slow and painful death), and I was very happy with it. Should I continue with the Mac or swap over to a PC?
 
While this isn't entirely helpful and can't be taken as gospel in any way, it is my understanding that new computers purchased at the moment come with Tiger pre-installed and Leopard on a disc (as they can't exactly match production to OS release).

That would mean you'd get a proven excellent OS in 10.4 and the option to upgrade to 10.5 if you so choose.

I don't know when Leopard will go entirely pre-installed so it's a "risk".

I'm afraid I've not followed reviews of Leopard this past few days though so I can't comment much on latest opinion. A copy should be turning up at my house Monday!
 
I've heard Leopard finally does away with Classic support, which isn't surprising considering that Classic wouldn't work on Intel systems anyway.
 
I upgraded to Leopard Saturday morning so I've had about two days with it. No issues so far. Very fast, very stable. A lot of great new features and tweaks of some long-standing annoyances (network hangs, spotlight deficiencies). It does do away with classic support (which if you are buying a new Mac wouldn't have worked anyway).

The 'new' dock and menu bar that everyone was complaining about are actually quite nice. Time Machine works exactly as it was supposed to, but be prepared for a possible lengthy first backup (it can take hours). It does the incremental ones in seconds.

All in all a solid upgrade to an already great OS.

My $0.02 anyway.

P.S. Check here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=375029

for issues or problems from other users. It may help.
 
StolenThunder said:
While this isn't entirely helpful and can't be taken as gospel in any way, it is my understanding that new computers purchased at the moment come with Tiger pre-installed and Leopard on a disc (as they can't exactly match production to OS release).

That would mean you'd get a proven excellent OS in 10.4 and the option to upgrade to 10.5 if you so choose.

I don't know when Leopard will go entirely pre-installed so it's a "risk".

I'm afraid I've not followed reviews of Leopard this past few days though so I can't comment much on latest opinion. A copy should be turning up at my house Monday!
Click to expand...

well I'm not planning to get it until the new year, when I can salary-sacrifice it. hopefully Leopard will be pre-installed by then.

another question. I really like PowerPoint and create most of my class notes using it (I love making the animations etc). Office for Mac is around $250 (here in Australia) while iWork is only $99. Should I convert to the Mac product, is it easy to use? (PowerPoint does tend to crash on Mac, but I know it inside and out)
 
pc magazine reviews leopard and calls it the best operating system ever written (or something like that) here

If you like powerpoint so much and it crashes on the mac, perhaps you could use leopard's boot camp to book vista or xp and run powerpoint with the windows version...personally I'd just switch to iWork...I have bootcamp on my mac book and find I honestly never need windows for anything.
 
I've never had difficulty with Powerpoint on Macs, but it's been a while since I tried it. These days I mostly just use OpenOffice.....

Oh, and I hear Intel Macs can't use Classic.
 
Llama said:
I'm thinking of getting a MacBook Pro with the latest OSX...

...Should I continue with the Mac or swap over to a PC?
Click to expand...

Why bother picking one when you can have both?

Intel Macs CAN run Windows - which stops you from needing to buy another brand machine to run it.


Just pick up a copy of either XP or Vista, and either use Boot Camp (included with Leopard) to dual-boot the Mac and have a ready-made set of drivers needed to tell Windows what all of those funny Mac bits of hardware are, and/or use Parallels Desktop to run Windows as a virtual environment in Mac OS itself.

(I'd go with Boot Camp for running games, and Parallels for office-based stuff.)


If you are thinking of a new machine eventually, you can do a 2-in-1 with a new Mac - and run Linux too, if you like - but you'll be losing Mac OS altogether if you switch to another hardware brand.

And it might just be my own personal opinion, but it wouldn't be as stylish or elegant as the MBP, either.
 
Llama said:
I really like PowerPoint and create most of my class notes using it (I love making the animations etc). Office for Mac is around $250 (here in Australia) while iWork is only $99. Should I convert to the Mac product, is it easy to use? (PowerPoint does tend to crash on Mac, but I know it inside and out)
Click to expand...
Well, Keynote makes good looking presentations. Much nicer than PowerPoint in my opinion.. but then relatively few systems have Keynote so you'll end up having to output to PP unless you take your laptop with you (don't forget your DVI to VGA with a MacBook Pro! ;)).

As an office suite iWork is more limited. Fewer formulas in Excel, fewer options in Pages.. but it really depends if you think you'll use them. Certainly it is cheaper.

You're a PhD/Lecturer/researcher something like that? (If not I apologise for my swiss cheese memory). You can get the Student/Teacher version of Office '08 which will save you some money and bring it much closer to iWork in terms of cost.
 
Llama said:
StolenThunder said:
While this isn't entirely helpful and can't be taken as gospel in any way, it is my understanding that new computers purchased at the moment come with Tiger pre-installed and Leopard on a disc (as they can't exactly match production to OS release).

That would mean you'd get a proven excellent OS in 10.4 and the option to upgrade to 10.5 if you so choose.

I don't know when Leopard will go entirely pre-installed so it's a "risk".

I'm afraid I've not followed reviews of Leopard this past few days though so I can't comment much on latest opinion. A copy should be turning up at my house Monday!
Click to expand...

well I'm not planning to get it until the new year, when I can salary-sacrifice it. hopefully Leopard will be pre-installed by then.

another question. I really like PowerPoint and create most of my class notes using it (I love making the animations etc). Office for Mac is around $250 (here in Australia) while iWork is only $99. Should I convert to the Mac product, is it easy to use? (PowerPoint does tend to crash on Mac, but I know it inside and out)
Click to expand...

As for iWork, Numbers is definitely better for basic to mid-level (read: typical) spreadsheet creation than Excel. It can actually be a lot of fun when you start to play with the new formatting abilities it has. You can seriously make some professional looking stuff very quickly.

With Pages now having two distinct modes and with me finally having gotten around to learning the page layout mode, I was able to delete my Windows XP Virtual Machine that was hanging around just to run Publisher. Pages' two modes neatly capture the abilities of Word* and Publisher - with some improvements but also some limitations, but nothing I don't think isn't dealable. I don't use Keynote very often, and I never once used Powerpoint, but I assume it's the same story on that end.

For everything I have to do with productivity software, I found iWork to be a competent and more pleasing (and cheaper!) replacement for Microsoft's Mac Office. And since it can import and export pretty much all Office docs (including the new '07 versions, not sure of Powerpoint though) it's usable even if you interact with a lot of other people using Microsoft Office.

*(Btw, Microsoft's new Mac Office '08 reportedly works the same way with Word having page layout and word processing modes.)
 
I'm running it now but really haven't had a chance to get down and dirty with it just yet. Initial impressions are that Leopard is faster than Tiger and that TimeMachine really is as cool as everyone makes it sound. The Finder is far less schizophrenic now that it's adopted the iTunes style and the unified interface is a lot nicer than the hodge-podge of Aqua and brushed metal that you saw in Tiger.

On the down side I don't like the new dock and the new folder icons are really, really bad.

So it's a plus on the features side and a mixed bag on the looks side, at least from where I'm standing.
 
StolenThunder said:
Llama said:
I really like PowerPoint and create most of my class notes using it (I love making the animations etc). Office for Mac is around $250 (here in Australia) while iWork is only $99. Should I convert to the Mac product, is it easy to use? (PowerPoint does tend to crash on Mac, but I know it inside and out)
Click to expand...
Well, Keynote makes good looking presentations. Much nicer than PowerPoint in my opinion.. but then relatively few systems have Keynote so you'll end up having to output to PP unless you take your laptop with you (don't forget your DVI to VGA with a MacBook Pro! ;)).

As an office suite iWork is more limited. Fewer formulas in Excel, fewer options in Pages.. but it really depends if you think you'll use them. Certainly it is cheaper.

You're a PhD/Lecturer/researcher something like that? (If not I apologise for my swiss cheese memory). You can get the Student/Teacher version of Office '08 which will save you some money and bring it much closer to iWork in terms of cost.
Click to expand...

pretty good memory actually! I just had my PhD thesis accepted, and as of next year I'll be starting as a High School science teacher. I plan to do most of my classes on PowerPoint (or Keynote). I didn't know about the student/teacher version of Office '08, I'll definately look into it. I'm so excited because as a teacher I can salary sacrifice a notebook, plus i get a cheap price for a Mac!

Seeing how things go, I might just bootcamp XP and run powerpoint from that.

thanks everyone for the reviews, I better start reading them :)
 
Put me down as another who's running but not really noticing anything that different.

Yeah the desktop is differnt (I guess you can call it the Vista effect) and I don't think it's the hideous mess that others claim (if anyone read the Ars Technica review, the author was so not impressed).

Speedwise I haven't noticed much difference at this pont (on a Mac Mini 1.83Ghz).

Don't have an external drive so have tried The Time Machine.
 
I have a question about Boot Camp.

I did some checking at Best Buy, and the most basic versions of Windows XP and Vista appear to cost the same (roughly $200). Has anyone here used them with Boot Camp, and if so, which one should I get? I know Boot Camp supports both XP and Vista, I'm just not sure which would be the best one.
 
I have no direct experience with Vista. However, the general vibe is that it's a bit of a dud. I'd say stick with XP for now.
 
I'd second that - XP's a known commodity when it comes to dual booting on a Mac (and I wouldn't touch Vista at the moment, no matter which platform you try to run it on).

GM
 
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