Mac OS X Leopard 9A326 Seeded
This is a rumor as of now, and uncomfirmed. Apple seeded a new version of Leopard (build 9A326) to internal Apple employees yesterday. This latest build is reported to have fixed bugs from the last build (9A303) such as Quicktime crashing, printing problems and issues with .Mac such as iDisk synching. Apple continues to gloss over the interface, refining it even more and there is an overly presence of black gloss. This build is also completely stable on Appleās latest Core 2 Duo MacBook and MacBook Pro. Apple is trying to gear down development to get this build out to developers before the New Year.
New āinternalā features include improved Core technology, faster boot-up times and support for external flash memory as temporary system memory (similar to Microsoft Vistas tech). Boot Camp 1.2 is included in the build but no readme was accompanied and we cannot identify any new features, it appears the same as the current 1.1.2 beta to us. Spotlight has got new meta search abilities including the ability to search other Macs on a network. Safari 3 has improved RSS support, with ability to view videocasts and listen to podcasts in browser. iSync is not present in the build it has been replaced with a new Sync Manager. TextEdit also features support to export and open new Word 2007 documents.
Source: MacShrine
Spotlight (and Gmail, for that matter) have changed the way I compute anything. My inkling for the last 20 years has been to organize things neatly in as few folders as possible to get the job done. Mac OS X has somehow instilled in me “the more folders the better” in the last few years. First Gmail and now Spotlight have allowed me to be as messy with my hard drive as I am with my office, and yet it still manages to find everything I am looking for, regardless of how I may try to lose it.
My PowerBook G4 (1.33 GHz, 12″) runs Mac OS X 10.4.8 just fine with 1.25 GB of RAM and nothing but reliability otherwise.
On another level, I’d agree that I’d like to see more choices in our OS, but there’s a fine line between choices and too many choices. Unfortunately the line differs per person per subject, it seems.
RE: Wili
Spotlight- I use it all the time. It’s excellent. I launch apps from it, I find documents with it, all very quickly.
Expose – I use it all the time. It’s the best way to file quickly through a number of documents at a quick glance. I use it all the time.
I have a Powerbook with 2 GB of RAM and it works exceptionally well, even editing HDV. If you’re having problems, something must be up with your system and you shoudl get it checked out.
Disclaimer: I would be running Panther (10.3) on my PowerBook, simply because (I feel) it is the best OS X version to date, but sadly it isn’t compatable…
Although it’s good that Apple is including new features in Leopard, I feel left behind, and a little annoyed. I have a PowerBook G4, running Mac OS X 10.4.8, and I can’t have more than 1GB of RAM. If I do, my wireless will randomly disconnect and I cannot reconnect without rebooting. Not to beat Apple with their own OS, but I find Spotlight, Expose, and Dashboard to be completely useless. I dislike the way that these ‘features’ use up all the RAM that I’m limited to, which I would otherwise be using to make my Photoshop experience bearable. Just running Photoshop and Firefox (I have never liked Safari… for reasons that I won’t bore you with) makes the machine slower than molasses in the cold Canadian winter. Apple, if you have any prayer of getting me to shell out money for Leopard, you can make the following ‘improvements’ to your ‘features’.
1) Allow me to disable Dashboard from the System Preferences (not using Onyx)
2) Allow me to quit Finder when I’m playing a game to free up system resources
3) Include standard OpenGL, and stop using the 3D rendering capabilities of the video card to render text, OR, make it so I can easily disable those ‘features’
4) Have OS X recognize aftermarket batteries that have a larger capacity, and adjust the battery readings accordingly.
5) Allow me to have more than 1GB of RAM without the OS making a mess in it’s pants.