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Mac OS X Leopard

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Revision as of 01:11, 31 October 2007 by Warren (talk | contribs) (Mugunth Kumar, go read the talk page, and DO NOT re-add this text. This is not criticism of OS X in and of itself. this has nothing to do with "fanboys".)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) Operating system
Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard”
File:OSXLeopard.png
Screenshot of Mac OS X Leopard with the new Finder
DeveloperApple Inc.
OS familyMac OS X
Working stateSupported
Source modelClosed source (with open source components)
Latest release10.5.0 / October 26 2007
Kernel typeHybrid kernel
LicenseAPSL and Apple EULA
Official websitewww.apple.com/macosx/

Mac OS X version 10.5 “Leopard”, is the name of the sixth major release of the Mac OS X operating system for Apple’s Mac line of personal computers, the successor to Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger". Leopard was shown to developers for the first time at the 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Leopard was released on October 26 2007, and is being sold for US$129, GB£85, AU$158 and NZ$199. Apple also sells a US$199 "Family Pack" that includes five licenses, and the single user version for students at US$116 (both prices plus tax). Apple offers a US$9.95 (plus tax) upgrade to people that purchase new Apple computers between October 1, 2007 and December 29, 2007 that do not already have Mac OS X v10.5 pre-installed or a Leopard upgrade DVD included starting October 26, 2007.

According to Apple, Leopard contains over 300 changes and enhancements, covering core operating system components as well as included applications and developer tools. Leopard introduces a significantly revised desktop, with a redesigned Dock, Stacks, a semitransparent menu bar, and an updated Finder that incorporates the Cover Flow visual navigation interface first seen in iTunes. Other notable features include support for writing 64-bit graphical user interface applications, an automated backup utility called Time Machine, support for Spotlight searches across multiple machines, and the inclusion of Front Row and Photo Booth, which were previously only included with some Mac models.

Apple missed Mac OS X v10.5’s release time frame as originally announced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. When first discussed in June 2005, Jobs had stated that Apple intended to release Leopard at the end of 2006 or early 2007. A year later, this was amended to "Spring 2007", however on April 12 2007, Apple issued a statement that its release would be delayed until October 2007 because of the development of the iPhone.

New and changed features

End-user features

  • Back to My Mac, a feature for .Mac users that allows users to access files on their home computer while away from home via the internet.
  • Boot Camp is included. It is a software assistant which has been available as a beta release download for Mac OS X v10.4 from Apple’s website since April 5 2006. It assists in the installation of Windows XP or Windows Vista to a separate partition (or separate internal drive) on Intel-based Macs.
  • Dashboard enhancements, including Webclip, a feature that allows users to turn a part of any web page into a live Dashboard widget, and Dashcode to help developers code widgets.
  • New Desktop, comprised of a redesigned 3-D dock with a new grouping feature called Stacks.
File:Leopard-stacks-fan-grid.png
The new Dock, showing a Stack viewed as a "Fan" (left) and a "Grid" (right).
  • Dictionary can now search Misplaced Pages, and a dictionary of Apple terminology as well. Also included is a 200,000-word dictionary and 25,000-word thesaurus for the Japanese language, provided by the Japanese publisher Shogakukan.
  • A redesigned Finder, with features similar to those seen in iTunes 7, including Cover Flow and a Source list-like sidebar.
  • Front Row and Photo Booth are available with the purchase of a new Mac, and are included with Leopard. Front Row has been reworked to closely resemble the interface used by the Apple TV, and Photo Booth includes video recording with real-time filters.
  • iCal calendar sharing and group scheduling as well as syncing event invitations from Mail. The icon also reflects the current date even when the application is not running. In previous versions, the icon would remain at July 17th until the application was run.
  • iChat enhancements, including multiple logins, invisibility, animated icons, and tabbed chats, similar to features present in Pidgin, Adium and the iChat plugin Chax; iChat Theater, allowing users to incorporate images from iPhoto, presentations from Keynote, videos from QuickTime, and other Quick Look features into video chats; and Backdrops, which are similar to chroma keys, but use a real-time difference matte technique which does not require a green or blue screen. iChat also implements desktop sharing, a feature previously available with Apple Remote Desktop.
  • Mail enhancements including the additions of RSS feeds, Stationery, Notes, and to-dos. To-dos use a system-wide service that is available to all applications.
  • Network file sharing improvements include more granular control over permissions, consolidation of AFP, FTP and SMB sharing into one control panel, and the ability to share individual folders, a feature that had not been available since Mac OS 9.
  • Parental controls now include the ability to place restrictions on use of the Internet and to set parental controls from anywhere using remote setup.
  • Podcast Capture, an application allowing users to record and distribute podcasts. It requires access to a computer running Mac OS X Server with Podcast Producer.
  • Preview adds support for annotation, graphics, extraction, search, markup, and size adjustment tools.
  • Quick Look, a framework allowing documents to be viewed without opening them in an external application.
  • Safari 3 is included.
  • Sherlock, a search software included in Mac OS since OS 8.5, is no longer included.
  • Spaces, an implementation of "virtual desktops" (individually called "spaces"), allows multiple desktops per user, with certain applications and windows in each desktop. Users can organize certain Spaces for certain applications (e.g., one for work-related tasks and one for entertainment) and switch between them. Exposé works inside Spaces, allowing the user to see at a glance all desktops on one screen.) Users can create and control up to 16 spaces, and applications can be switched between each one, creating a very large workspace.
  • Spotlight incorporates additional search capabilities such as Boolean operators, as well as the ability to search other computers (with permissions).
  • Time Machine, an automated backup utility which allows the user to restore files that have been deleted or replaced by another version of a file.
  • Universal Access enhancements: significant improvements to applications including VoiceOver, along with increased support for Braille, closed captioning and a new high‐quality Speech synthesis voice.

Developer technologies

  • Native support by many libraries and frameworks for 64-bit applications, allowing 64-bit Cocoa applications. Existing 32-bit applications using those libraries and frameworks should continue to run without the need for emulation or translation.
  • Leopard offers the Objective-C 2.0 runtime, which includes new features such as garbage collection. Xcode 3.0 supports the updated language and was itself rewritten with it.
  • A new framework, Core Animation, allows a developer to create complex animations while specifying only a "start" and a "goal" space. The main goal of Core Animation is to enable the creation of complex animations with small amounts of program code.
  • Apple integrates DTrace from Sun’s OpenSolaris and adds a graphical interface called Instruments (previously Xray). DTrace provides tools that users, administrators and developers can use to tune the performance of the operating system and the applications that run on it.
  • The new Scripting Bridge allows programmers to use Python and Ruby to interface with the Cocoa frameworks.
  • Ruby on Rails is included in the default install.
  • Leopard’s OpenGL stack has been updated to version 2.1, and uses LLVM to increase its vertex processing speed. Apple has been working to get LLVM integrated into GCC; LLVM's use within other operating system facilities has not been announced.
  • Leopard’s security frameworks support Mandatory Access Control, sandboxes and code signing.
  • The Graphics and Media State of the Union address confirmed many other features are possible because of Core Animation, such as live desktops, improvements to Quartz Composer with custom patches, a new PDF Kit for developers, and improvements to QuickTime APIs.
  • Leopard includes a read-only implementation of the ZFS file system.
  • Leopard includes a framework implementing latent semantic mapping (LSM) for classifying (e.g. textual) data.

In mid-December 2006 a pre-release version of Leopard appeared to include support for Sun’s ZFS. Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and President of Sun Microsystems, stated on June 6 2007 that ZFS has become "the file system" for Leopard. However, the senior project marketing director for Mac OS X stated on June 11, 2007 that the existing HFS+, not ZFS, will be used in Leopard. Apple has since clarified that a read-only version of ZFS would be included. The fully functional (beta quality) zfs.kext is available for download to anyone with a free account at http://developer.apple.com

Security enhancements

Leopard attempts to improve the security of Mac OS X in a number of ways. New security features intend to provide better internal resiliency to successful attacks, in addition to preventing attacks from being successful in the first place. Some Leopard security features, like Library Randomization and Sandboxing, are inspired by other operating systems like Windows Vista and OpenBSD. Others, like Secure Guest Accounts, are novel to Leopard.

Library Randomization
Leopard implements address space layout randomization, which randomizes the locations of libraries in memory. Vulnerabilities that corrupt program memory often rely on known addresses for these library routines, which allow injected code to launch processes or change files.
Application Layer Firewall
The built-in Leopard firewall is "application-aware", and can be configured on a per-application basis. The increased flexibility may allow the firewall to be deployed more widely and configured more restrictively.
Sandboxes
Leopard includes kernel-level support for role-based access control (RBAC). In theory, RBAC prevents an application like Mail.app from editing the password database. In practice, Leopard Sandboxes are far less flexible than the RBAC features of other operating systems, and are used primarily in low-level OS components.
Application Signing
Leopard provides a framework to use public key signatures for code signing to verify that code has not been tampered with.
Secure Guest Account
Guests can be given access to a Leopard system with an account that erases and resets itself at logout.

Compatibility

Like Mac OS X v10.4, Leopard supports both PowerPC and Intel Macintosh computers. However, Leopard was not released in separate versions, but instead consists of one universal release that runs on either processor. Leopard supports any Mac with a PowerPC G4 processor running at 867 MHz or higher, any G5 processor, and any Intel processor, dropping support for slower G4 and all G3 processors. In the past, each new major release of Mac OS X has dropped support for at least some older Macs; v10.3 dropped support for Macs without built-in USB ports, and v10.4 dropped support for computers without FireWire ports.

Documentation contained with the Developer Preview DVD states that a PowerPC G4 or G5, or Intel processor is a minimum requirement. Despite this, some users have managed to install Leopard's developer preview version on Macs with G3 processors by editing a particular file and then creating a new installation DVD with this edited file. However, even though these hacked Leopard installations can be installed on G3-based Macs, some applications (for example Safari and iChat) will not function. It is not known whether this is possible with Leopard's final shipping version.

Leopard is certified as fully UNIX compliant. Certification means that software following the Single UNIX Specification can be compiled and run on Leopard without the need for any code modification. The certification only applies to Leopard when run on Intel processors. Leopard also removes support for Classic applications.

System requirements

Apple states the following basic Leopard system requirements, although, for some specific applications and actions (such as iChat backdrops) an Intel processor is required:

  • Processor must be any Intel, PowerPC G5 or G4 (at 867 MHz or faster)
  • DVD drive (for installation of the operating system)
  • Built-in FireWire
  • At least 512 MB of RAM (additional RAM is recommended for development purposes)
  • A built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card
  • At least 9 GB of disk space available

Packaging

File:OSXBoxes.png
The box of Mac OS X 10.5.

The retail packaging for Leopard is significantly smaller than that of previous versions of Mac OS X. It also sports a hologram on the front, making the 'X' appear to float above a purple swirl, somewhat resembling the default Leopard desktop picture.

Version history

Mac OS X
version 		build release date notes
10.5.0 9A581 October 26, 2007 retail

Criticisms

  • The user interface changes in Leopard met mixed reviews. The Think Mac blog criticized the new icons as hard to distinguish from one another, and less usable. The Leopard menu bar, now slightly translucent, was widely criticized for being harder to read, and an uncharacteristic UI misstep for Apple. PC World called the interface for the Time Machine backup feature "quirky, slightly silly".
  • Security features in Leopard were criticized as weak or ineffective, with the revamped OS X firewall coming in for the most criticism, after claims from research group Heise Security that the Leopard installer downgraded firewall protection and exposed services to attack even when the firewall was re-enabled. Several researchers noted that the Library Randomization feature added to Leopard was ineffective compared to mature implementations on other platforms, and that the new "secure Guest account" couple be abused by Guests to retain access to the system even after the Leopard log out process erased their home directory.
  • The Time Machine feature of Leopard was criticized for not creating bootable copies of backed up volumes. Though the balance of published opinion on the Time Machine feature was that it was a valuable addition to the OS that would encourage users to back up more frequently, its inability to provide for a bootable backup led some to complain that OS X continued to require third-party backup software like Super Duper and Carbon Copy Cloner. Time Machine was also criticized for its inability to back up to Airport disks, a feature advertised at WWDC 2007.
  • The new Cover Flow-style computer browser in Leopard displays Windows machines as old CRT monitors with a "blue screen" crash on the display. Notable blogger Anil Dash criticized this usage in Leopard as "smug", "ugly", and "unbecoming"; John Gruber noted the "karmic" quality of Apple's own alleged "blue screen" problems with hanging Leopard boot sequences. Paul Thurrott has claimed that, Cover Flow looks cool, but is a performance dog.

See also

References

  1. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/10/16leopard.html
  2. ^ Ryan Block (August 7 2006). "Live from WWDC 2006: Steve Jobs keynote". Engadget. Retrieved 2006-08-07. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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  4. Apple Inc. (October 30 2007). "The Apple Store (New Zealand) - Mac OS X Leopard Retail". Apple Inc. Retrieved 2007-10-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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  6. http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/
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  53. http://daringfireball.net/linked/2007/october#fri-26-time_machine
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  56. http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/macosx_leopard.asp

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