This post was written by Mary Joseff
It is hard to view Apple Mac OS X v 10.5 Leopard as much of an advance on Tiger. The interface improvements are a mixture of ‘great’ and ‘meh’, while the new features don’t add much beyond tweaks to your daily workflow. The feature with the ability to really blow you away – Spaces – is switched off by default. Whilst Leopard will undoubtedly sell tonnes of copies, it’s hard not to feel that, given the system’s delay and hype, Apple has delivered too little too late – with too many bugs, to boot.
Apple has released the client and server versions of the OS X 10.5.6 update, which includes a range of bug fixes and security patches. OS X 10.5.6 shores up the performance of Airport WLAN connections and specifically addresses issues that Intel based Mac users were having while roaming in large wireless networks. The update also addresses issues with Apple’s MobileMe, and ensures that contacts, calendars and bookmarks on a Mac automatically synchronize within a minute of the change being made on PCs, devices, or online at me.com, according to the release notes.
Apple will demonstrate the latest version of its OS in January and will take the opportunity to wrongfoot Microsoft. Apple and its partners have been privately dropping hints to developers that its upcoming release of its Mac OS X operating system, dubbed Snow Leopard, will ship earlier than expected – and it will debut two new technologies that promise to speed up software without demanding any changes to the hardware. The first technology, Grand Central, is designed to make better use of the Intel processors that sit inside the current range of Macs.
