Vanquishing Vista

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is released to retail on Friday October 26th and Amazon.co.uk is offering 6% off the pre-order price for both client versions:

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (Single-user license)
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Family Pack (5-user license)

*Introduces over 300 new and enhanced features to OS X, including a new desktop and updated finder enabling easy browsing and sharing between multiple Macs
*Take advantage of the latest developments in processor hardware with full native 64-bit support, multi-core optimization, and new Core animation
*Preview files without opening an application using Quick Look
*Easily and automatically back up and restore lost files or a complete Mac with Time Machine
*Create groups of applications and instantly switch between them with Spaces

Will Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard be worth the wait? Of course it will! And pre-orders are more than double that of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger! Various online forums are positing that the increase is related to the advent of Boot Camp and native Microsoft Windows OS support! Certainly PC-based games, such as the stunning Half-Life 2: The Orange Box, can now be played with a copy of Windows Vista Home Premium installed! And, in fairness, I've experienced no problems with running Windows Vista on my Intel-based Mac!

I'll post my Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard review in short order!

Mac Users vote now!

Looks like Yahoo! hasn't completely forgotten about us Mac Users! The Yahoo! Messenger Blog is currently running a Poll for Mac users.

If you want Yahoo! Messenger sooner rather than later, and avoid further tardiness, be sure to drop by and vote for a Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger release only. Even the beleaguered beta knocks, pre-Leopard, spots off of the current Windows version. That being said, I'll be keeping tabs on the upcoming Windows Vista update, which promises "3D" eye candy.

That's it man, game over man, game over!

Avid gamers should read A gamer's look at Parallels 3 and its ability to play games for Windows when compared to Boot Camp's native OS support.

The conclusion is unsurprising given the inherent limitations of virtualization.

Dirty Pop

Tonight I noticed that the widely reported "speaker popping" issue, affecting Mac OS X 10.4.10, has blighted my Intel-based iMac too! Lets hope Apple quickly issues a patch!

Windows Experience

After installing Mac OS X 10.4.10 Combo Update (Intel), repairing permissions both before and after applying the iterative update. I rebooted into Windows Vista!

Last night I noticed the Windows Update icon had appeared on the taskbar! I double-clicked to see what updates were available, and it was an update for the Windows Live Messenger 8.5 beta.

The update was designed specifically to test Windows Live Messenger updates pushed through the Microsoft Update engine - which you can use within Windows Vista's Windows Update client off the Start Menu. Microsoft is putting great efforts to 'push' updates through Windows Update and Microsoft Update that add to the Windows user experience.

The update to Windows Live Messenger 8.5 offers no new functionality, or updates to the application itself, as it was designed simply to test the functionality of rolling out an update through Microsoft Update. I'd certainly love to see this functionality incorporated into Apple Software Update (part of Boot Camp), thereby eliminating the need to burn a CD replete with the latest drivers!

Time to download the Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (DX10 demo) and test Windows Explorer.

Das Boot

Have other Mac Users noticed any system sluggishness when booting back into Mac OS X 10.4 via Boot Camp? It takes repeated restarts to improve system responsiveness! This will doubtlessly be addressed in the final retail release (as part of Mac OS X 10.5).

Personally speaking, I prefer Boot Camp, to any existing third-party virtualization tools such as Parallels Desktop, despite lacking the option to run Windows Vista concurrently with Mac OS X! If SWsoft would like me to appraise Parallels Desktop, and post a review, please contact me.