MacOS X 10.5 “Leopard”
Apple released Mac OS X 10.5, code named “Leopard” this week. Leopard represents a noticeable but not compelling upgrade from Tiger; there are a few nice new user features, but the underlying operating system is not fundamentally changed. Most users won’t notice a huge difference in the way the system works.
Unfortunately, there are some compatibility issues with Leopard which could be fairly significant, at least at first. The most significant issue for the campus is that Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), the software which powers UC Backup, is incompatible with Leopard. IBM is planning to release an updated version in the first quarter of 2008–it looks like Leopard users will be without campus backup for several months at least.
FileMaker also has some problems with Leopard; FileMaker Inc. announced a free update to FileMaker 9 which fixes the problems, but has also said that it will not certify or update previous versions of FileMaker. Most campus FileMaker users are using versions earlier than 9, so this will likely be a problem if you can’t upgrade to FileMaker 9 right now. (See my post from July 27 on the need to migrate to a modern version of FileMaker).
Several Adobe applications, including Acrobat Professional which is in use by many departments, also have problems with Leopard. The MacOS Rumors site has a list of reported compatibility issues.
Because of these problems, especially the problem with TSM, at this time we are recommending that users not buy upgrades to Leopard. and if possible, buy new computers with Tiger installed instead of Leopard. If you have Leopard, contact your computing support team to see if we can work around the problems.
Leopard should be a good operating system, but it will take some time for all these applications to catch up with it.
Tivoli 5.5.0.0 is now listed for Mac OS 10.5.x at http://ucbackup.berkeley.edu:9180/software.html. I haven’t tried it yet, but will be trying it out soon.
Comment by Donald Mastronarde — December 7, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
Yeah I agree with you. Leopard has compability issues and also many strange bugs.
Comment by mactut — February 19, 2008 @ 8:31 pm
I was thinking about getting the Leopard, but after reading your post I don’t think I will.
I don’t understand why Apple would release such an inferior product?
Comment by Timothy — March 7, 2008 @ 7:51 am
I can see why some people are hesitant to upgrade.
For me, though there were several key technologies:
1) Time Machine - this has saved my butt several times already, the ability to restore a directory of a file instead of the whole OS is great. I recently had a problem with a Java Based SEO software I was using. With Time Machine I was able to roll back the one folder that had the bad settings, thereby saving a clients SEO data instead of losing the whole project and historical data.
2) The upgrade from Apache 1 to 2.x - nuff said.
3) Spaces - If you work with a lot of different applications, the ability to manage multiple spaces on your desktop is a major boon.
-Brian
Comment by Boise Apple Developer — July 9, 2008 @ 9:59 am