Apple's OSX 10.5 Leopard Release

[Synthetik]

Apple released the long awaited OSX 10.5 yesterday at 6:00 pm. Developers finally got the actual release version of Leopard yesterday afternoon as well for testing. While you can run tests on various alpha versions, it's all meaningless until you run some tests on the actual release version. We installed OSX10.5 on a macbook pro last night and ran some tests. Studio Artist 3.5 and MSG Evolver both appear to run fine in our tests here. The only issue i'm aware of is internal iSight cameras on intel macbooks not working in iSight source mode (firewire iSights or external cameras do work). Otherwise all of our tests to date have run fine on OSX 10.5. We'll be doing some more testing with the release version this weekend, but so far things look smooth for Studio Artist users and OSX 10.5 Leopard compatibility. As always, it's a good idea to back up your computer before you do an upgrade instal so that you have the option of reverting back to your old system in case of problems. And depending on what you run on your system, you might want to check various on-line bulletin boards or mac sites for any incompatibility issues with other software you use before you do a major update. For example, i believe there are some issues with Adobe Acrobat 8 professional and After Effects CS3 professional.

[Synthetik]

One thing you will need to do if you install OSX 10.5 and you use a Wacom tablet is to download and instal the very latest OSX tablet driver driver from the support page on their web site.

[Synthetik]

Here's a quick 10.5 question i'm trying to figure out. I have 10.5 installed on a powerbook pro and on a pro tower. On the powerbook, the dock shows a small white dot for each application icon that is actually running, and all apps running show up in the dock. On the pro tower, only the finder icon has this white dot, all other running application icons don't show any indication they are running, and any new apps i startup that were not in the dock to begin with do not end up with a new icon in the dock.

I looked for a preference to adjust the dock behavior for these 2 cases, but if it's there i missed it. The dock behavior on the power book is what i would like for all machines, since without the dot on running application icons it's hard to figure out what is already running and i'm very used to drag and dropping files on running application icons in the dock, so the new apps not showing up there as new icons is a big annoyance.


The default indentation in xcode 3.0 also behaves very differently from previous versions and there seems to be a bug associated with indentation support (i'm probably the only person on this forum who cares about this, but it is annoying to say the least).

[Synthetik]

One more quick OSX 10.5 question. Several reviews of leopard have mentioned a quicklook button in the new finder windows. It's not there on my machines. I can do cmnd Y to bring up quicklook, but the quicklook button is distinctly missing from my machines. Again, i looked for a preference to turn it on and off but i can't find it if it is there?

[Synthetik]

Not having all the running application icons in the dock on the pro tower is a big issue for me since i'm using drag and drop heavily with studio artist 4. For example, you can use cover-flow in a finder window to select and image and then drop it onto the studeio artist icon in the dock to open a new source image. But my running development builds are not showing up in the promac dock (but they do on the powerbook). it seems like a bug unless there is some trick to turning it on? The leopard review on arstechnica.com mentions some obscure command you can type in the terminal window to force configurations of the dock, so i'm wondering if there is some obscure incantation that you an use to turn on and off those features since i don't see a way to do it in dock preferences.

That review also brings up a number of visual issues that seem a step backwards from tiger to leopard, and i agree with their assessment on those issues. overall i agree with you it's probably an improvement in your daily mac os experience, but there are some things like the ability to scrub audio or video in the finder that they removed that seem like steps backwards to me (you can play the audio or the video but you had a scrub bar in tiger that made that feature much more useable).

I think it's odd that coverflow is in the finder, but not in the find file dialogs, since it would probably be most useful there. It forces you into the drag and drop way of working. Although i have to say, it's visually very eye candy appealing at first glance, but actually finding something in there when you have a lot of images is another story, so it's a lot less useable than you might initially think it would be. It seems like a feature more designed for a flashy demo than actual usability in your day to day work in many ways, or a feature that makes sense on a small iPhone but could probably be built in a much better way for people using a large monitor to take advantage of that space. If you are looking for an album cover you know the name of the group or the album, while when browsing for an image in a large set of images you need to rely on visual cues only.


Indentation is a feature in text editors for people who write code. It's basically auto tabbing of the beginning of a new line of text. The default behavior in the last version of xcode was that when you hit return the cursor positioned on the next line to match the beginning of the previous line:

In xcode 3.0 the default behavior is no indentation, even when the key preferences are setup the same way as old xcode to force indentation on a return. Which would be totally painful for programming, indentation is totally essential for code readability (but individual coders indent differently according to personal style). So you have to turn on auto-indentation preferences in xcode 3.0 and then turn off everything except indent on a return. However, when you do this brackets '{' also autoindent even though you have that turned off. If you don't write code this will make absolutely no sense, but it slowed me down to a craw when working on sunday in xcode 3.0. i tried to put some examples in this post but the way ning formats the text you lose all the indentation. if you have more questions you can email me directly.

[Synthetik]

You should be aware that apple dropped support for 64 bit carbon based apps in leopard at the last minute, even though they use it internally in their apps it's not available to developers. Once again long time apple developers are punished. I'm sure this will have some implications for Adobe pro apps. It certainly does for Studio Artist. It's pushed back Synthetik releasing a 64 bit version of Studio Artist by at least a year. At least on the mac, we don't have this problem on windows, which i find kind of ironic.

[Synthetik]

We're certainly not abandoning mac development. It's the platform everyone at Synthetik (including me) uses for their day to day work, and i don't expect that to ever change.

But the reality is that apple has indeed 'punished' long time developers with certain behind the scene decisions they have made over the last few years, at least from my vantage point. Rewriting applications with millions of lines of code is not something that is trivial, which is what you are talking about for applications like Studio Artist or any of the Adobe applications when decisions are made that force us to rewrite or modify millions of lines of code. At worldwide developer conference in 2006, apple said they would provide full 64 bit support for carbon based applications in leopard. many developers (including us) made long term decisions based on that statement, so when they changed their minds a year later it had major implications for anyone who has a code base with some history to it (ie. long time developers for the platform). i disagree with your friends assessment of why the decisions that were made, and the long and involved discussion on the carbon mailing list last summer supports my feelings on the matter. It's probably not an appropriate topic for this forum, i'd be happy to discuss it offline with you if you are interested.

So don't take my previous statement as implying that we are abandoning the mac platform because that is simply not true. but you should be aware that apple is the party to blame for why Studio Artist will not be available in a 64 bit build in the short term. i'm totally frustrated about that fact for a number of reasons. one, i'd love to be using a 64 bit build of studio artist for my daily work. two, people like yourself are going to make statements like you made above where there is an implication that we are abandoning the platform when in fact the opposite is true, apple has been abandoning their long time developers with some of the decisions they have been making behind the scenes. If apple had followed through with what they promised developers in 2006 i would be able to compile studio artist 4 64-bit build today.

it reminds me of the initial osx release, where the same code would actually run faster in classic than in osx since the initial osx builds had some serious slowness issues. Because Synthetik released both a classic build and an osx build for our users (as a service to our users i might add, most companies just released an osx build to avoid the comparison or because it was less work), we were taken to task because the osx build ran slower on the same machine than the classic build. that wasn't our fault, that was apple's fault. but we got blamed for it. i see the 64 bit issue as falling into the same category. we get blamed for not supporting the platform when in fact the opposite is true, the platform is going out of it's way to not support us.

Again, probably a topic to take offline from this forum for further discussion. But at least you get a straight story from us about what is really going on as opposed to some strange marketing smoke screen. So sorry if i'm a little hot under the collar about this whole issue, but that is the reality of the situation, and it has nothing to do with any lack of commitment to the mac platform, far from it.