Leopard - OSX upgrade. Anybody waiting?

[Kieron]

I've a fair bit of Mac hardware, but I imagine that with the creation of this new forum there will be a lot of potential new users.

Is the upcoming Leopard upgrade to OSX enough to make people wait until it's released, or are potential new users ready to jump in with the current OSX and then upgrade in future?

Personally, I love Tiger (the current OS). Very easy to use, everything is where it should be and my system always feels "light" - i.e. no slowdowns.

I'm due a new laptop to replace my PowerPC 17", I may well wait on the software upgrade before purchasing that though...

[SeedyR]

I was originally waiting till Leopard came out and the Macs were updated. However my laptop was pretty much dying on me everyday in new and wonderful ways (one day some of my keys stopped working, so couldn't even enter my password to log on into windows) in the end I decided to bite the bullet and get one now. I would have loved to have waited, but just could wait any longer as my work was suffering.

I'll buy Leopard as soon as it comes out though. As with you, I'm very happy with Tiger, but Leopard does seem to pack some cool features.

[harrinp1]

I'm waiting for now and plan to get a Mac Mini and a MacPro after leopard is released. Hopefully they will also release dual quad core MacPro's and updated Displays by then.

[jenic]

I need a new laptop now so i'm going to buy the macbook next week when i get paid and then upgrade to leopard when it comes out, i might even wait a few months for it to settle in.

One of the only res=asons i want it is for spaces.

[BenchyUK]

I was going to wait for Leopard and ilife 07 as it is due soon but i am going to order my first ever mac next week:thumbsup:

I have done ALOT of research and it seems like it doesn't matter whether i wait or buy now.

The imacs are due for a revision soon but from what Intel has said, processor speeds are only going to be maginally better. Apparently topping 2.4GHZ. Front bUs speed is meant to be a bit faster but that's about it

The Graphics is said to be the part that gets a Major upgrade to compete with Directx10 but that means nothing to me as i won't be playing games on the mac. Xbox 360 will do that job for me
Apple are also said to be realsing the imac in various colours now including Black and Red, however i want a white one.

Then when it comes to Hardware, the mac i am getting should be more than enough for what i want

2.16GHZ Processor.(Maybe upgrade to the 2.33GHZ one though. Is it worth doing)
2GB Ram
256MB GPU
Wireless Keyboard and mouse

Seems pretty good to me and will apparently run Leopard with no problems what so ever

Plus i have heard that the current Intel Core 2 Duo processors were rushed out into the current imac resulting in them not being 100% issue Free with Tiger. Apparently the current Imac core 2 duo processors were made more with Tiger in mind

Sounds good to me :thumbsup:

What do you guys reckon? Will it be a decent enough Mac which i will get a good 4 year life out of it?

[italianninja]

there is no point waiting. the design wont be changing i am sure on the imacs. the only thing i am concerend about is the cost of the upgrade for the os itself!

[C225]

I need a new laptop but will be waiting for leopard(and i need to save up a bit) as i dont want to pay another 80 quid later on.

[phetttt]

i wouldnt worry about the price of Leopard. Compare Tiger to the price of vista upgrades, and be thankfull!!! :)

[Stuart Kirby]

Just buy it guys. If by some miracle 10.5 is released in the next few weeks, Apple usually give you the upgrade for free if you buy a Mac... I think it's 2-4 weeks you get. If it's any longer than that anyway, you might as well buy it now. :) I've got 4 Macs and 2 of them are still running 10.3 (!) and even they're still great.

Tiger is a great OS as I'm sure Leopard will be as well, but I wouldn't let its release put me off buying now. :) I just picked up th 24 inch iMac about 5 weeks ago or something, don't regret it at all.

[Stuart Kirby]

Then when it comes to Hardware, the mac i am getting should be more than enough for what i want

2.16GHZ Processor.(Maybe upgrade to the 2.33GHZ one though. Is it worth doing)
2GB Ram
256MB GPU
Wireless Keyboard and mouse

Seems pretty good to me and will apparently run Leopard with no problems what so ever

Sounds good to me :thumbsup:

What do you guys reckon? Will it be a decent enough Mac which i will get a good 4 year life out of it?


That spec will last you a very good while I'd say. I plumped for the 2.16Ghz C2D 24" iMac and 128MB GPU due to the store not having a 256 in stock... can't say I'm overly bothered really. 128MB is fine for me. As for the rest of it, the computer should last you ages. My 1.5GHz PowerBook G4 is still going strong after 3 years, although as it's PowerPC, it's kind of on the way out now. Still, works well and it looks great ;)

[flugger]

Just buy it guys. If by some miracle 10.5 is released in the next few weeks, Apple usually give you the upgrade for free if you buy a Mac... I think it's 2-4 weeks you get. If it's any longer than that anyway, you might as well buy it now. :) I've got 4 Macs and 2 of them are still running 10.3 (!) and even they're still great.

Tiger is a great OS as I'm sure Leopard will be as well, but I wouldn't let its release put me off buying now. :) I just picked up th 24 inch iMac about 5 weeks ago or something, don't regret it at all.
Completely agree, I'm not one for waiting for the next OS to come out.

1. Yes, hardware updates usually come with OS updates, but unless you are doing something hardcore there is no need to spend 2 months waiting for .154Hz of upgrade - take a look at http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/ to help you decide whether or not to wait. I spent a year and a bit waiting for a powerbook upgrade to come and it never came, silly.

2. the upgrade cost to the next OS is usually quite cheap (educational price is around £50).

3. In my experience and particularly my work's experience, if you buy a mac and a new operating system/machine comes out during the week of or the week after the delivery of your mac, ring them up, cry, and they have been known to send you out the update. (we've even had laptops changed like this!)

that's my 2p

[jjhellis]

I have just got a macbook last week and I knew about the upgrade and will buy it when it comes out.

I just wonder why I have waited so long to buy one because this is the computer I have ever owned.

[rude-dog]

im not too fussed about leopard.

due to half of the new features in 10.4 being a waste of time and i never use them. spotlight, the dashboard and automator for example. it seems to me alot of new features in all new operating systems these days just seem to be polished fancy versions of previous offerings

the dashboard for one good example, is a nice feature, but for me it don't really offer anything that i couldn't do before in previous os x and os 9 too. ok, it makes it a little easier and quicker but i still never use it

spotlight too, just seems to be another way of searching for things on your HD, once again a feature thats been around for ages, its just now been given a fancy name and a fancy icon..

newer versions of itunes just seem to be more cluttered and slower to use than previous offerings. quicktime seems to be more of a pain to use these days and VLC is now a much better offering IMO

where im going with this is that it seems that leopard will just be another more cluttered, highly polished version of cheetah, don't get me wrong, im a huge mac lover and long term user, but alot of thier development over the years, for me (now a home user, previously a proffesional user) has been a waste of time

[Stuart Kirby]

Cheetah was far from perfect in some ways and in no way is Tiger, even Panther, or even Jaguar (!) just a "more polished version". Spotlight is incredibly good and frankly searching on XP these days is a chore, it's even a bore on 10.3 which didn't have Spotlight.

I agree on the Dashboard, it's nice to have but not essential. But then, it was never meant to be, was it?

I'm surprised you say that re: iTunes. In my opinion that *does* improve with each new version. Only problem for me now is the cracking new metal look of the new iTunes but the OS is still using brushed steel. And Mail is completely inbetween the two! Bizarre considering Apple's designs are usually top notch...

Going to Leopard from Tiger won't be a super massive difference but I believe going from Jaguar, perhaps even Panther, will be. There's probably more difference though in going from Tiger to Leopard than going from XP to Vista, which is quite worrying. ;)

[BenchyUK]

From what i have heard Vista is style or substance ;)

[SeedyR]

im not too fussed about leopard.

due to half of the new features in 10.4 being a waste of time and i never use them. spotlight, the dashboard and automator for example. it seems to me alot of new features in all new operating systems these days just seem to be polished fancy versions of previous offerings


Spotlight is amazing! Going from searching on XP to using Spotlight on Mac OS is like going from black and white tv, to a high def lcd!

I know what you are saying about dashboard, but I spose it's how you set it up. I love films, so have a direct link to all the latest trailers, it updates daily, and gives me chance to see what films about. I also have a bbc news widget, plus one that tells me all kinds of info about my mac, which is always great to know. For me now, I would definitely miss not having dashboard. Remember Leopard will have a full version of dashcode in it, so you can make widgets out of whatever you want, cinema times, live video feeds, etc.

[BenchyUK]

Dshoard is a feature that i'm quite looking forward to when i get my mac.

I'd like to know the weather forcast for the day. Plus i see you can how have your xbox360 gamertag on the dash which sounds cool

Having all these small pieces of software accesable in one place makes things sound so easy

[SeedyR]

Yeah I have the weather on mine, so does my mate, most of the time they say totally different things, however I'd say mine is nearly always right, that's the bbc version, so get that one!

Postik notes awesome too, if you just need to jot something down, i also have a convertor, which updates all currencies as well as all other things, like inches etc. Got a calculator and dictionary too, plus a small itunes control player, and artwork grabber. All cool!

[flugger]

im not too fussed about leopard.

due to half of the new features in 10.4 being a waste of time and i never use them. spotlight, the dashboard and automator for example. it seems to me alot of new features in all new operating systems these days just seem to be polished fancy versions of previous offerings

the dashboard for one good example, is a nice feature, but for me it don't really offer anything that i couldn't do before in previous os x and os 9 too. ok, it makes it a little easier and quicker but i still never use it

spotlight too, just seems to be another way of searching for things on your HD, once again a feature thats been around for ages, its just now been given a fancy name and a fancy icon..

newer versions of itunes just seem to be more cluttered and slower to use than previous offerings. quicktime seems to be more of a pain to use these days and VLC is now a much better offering IMO

where im going with this is that it seems that leopard will just be another more cluttered, highly polished version of cheetah, don't get me wrong, im a huge mac lover and long term user, but alot of thier development over the years, for me (now a home user, previously a proffesional user) has been a waste of time
i completely understand where you are coming from, I was in the same situation as you when I first upgraded but over time these features have become a massive part of my workflow.

Applescript was great but took a bit of time, automator is so simple, I can whip up a script in seconds to convert my movies to ipod format, automatically adding them to my itunes as it goes and have it done for morning. Or I can batch convert a ton of photos a webpage, and upload them to my ftp.

Spotlight, is a fast search, but it's not just that blue icon in the corner, for example the big thing that has revolutionised my file organisation are smart folders, aka. folders with spolight searches embedded. I have one that shows all the work I done today, one for yesterday, one for all the work i've done with keynote, one for cinema 4d etc etc, so my files can be organised by project as normal but I can also see them by type/date or whatever without having to create tons and tons of aliases all around the place. Spotlight also has this great tagging feature that allows you to attach a few comments about a file (see: apple+i on the file) and then search by these descriptions. ...that reminds me... one more very useful advantage over Panther search, Spotlight searches inside documents, great when you have a collection of ebooks on e.g. PHP and you need to find something on the mail() function, within a second you have saved yourself searching each one individually. Spotlight is widely believed to be the groundings of future operating systems, can't wait to toy with the features Leopard brings.

Dashboard is useful, calculator, todos, notes, and currency exchange are my big uses, some RSS feeds etc...

Leopard is going to bring some very useful features, for starters I NEED Time Machine, hopefully with an option to change/turn off that interface!

[amardilo]

I am looking at getting a 15" MacBook Pro and a Mac Mini when OS X 10.5 comes outs before I buy my first ever Macs.

I wanted to swicth over to OS X for a few years now but my job requires me to use Windows. When I heard that the new OS X would come with boot camp and spaces I thought this is the best time to switch.

I have been waiting since November to buy one as I gave away my laptop to my sister. I hope the OS is released soon.