OpenGL is the industry-standard API for developing portable, interactive 2D and 3D applications. Mac OS X has supported OpenGL from the outset and in Leopard it supports the latest OpenGL 2.1 specification which adds pixel buffer objects, color managed texture images in the sRGB color space, and improvements in the shader programming API.
Leopard also provides a dramatic increase in OpenGL performance by offloading CPU-based processing onto another thread which can then run on a separate CPU core feeding the GPU. This can increase, or in some cases, even double the performance of OpenGL-based applications.
OS Foundations
The heart of Mac OS X, the Open Source Mach- and BSD-based UNIX layer known as Darwin, continues to see improvements in Leopard. The latest Mac hardware brings more processing power, more cores, and more memory than ever before. The kernel in Leopard has been updated to take advantage of this new hardware.
Leopard certainly won?t be UNIX in name only. Apple will submit Leopard and Leopard Server to The Open Group for certification against the UNIX ?03 product standard.
Security Enhancements
Leopard brings several new security enhancements to Mac OS X. The first of these is the adoption of the Mandatory Access Control (MAC) framework. This framework, original developed for TrustedBSD, provides a fine-grained security architecture for controlling the execution of processes at the kernel level. This enables sandboxing support in Leopard. By sandboxing an application, using a text profile, you can limit an application to being able to just access only the system features, such as disk or the network, that you permit.
Also new in Leopard is code signing. This means that Leopard will be able to identify applications by using digital signatures and then use that identification to base trust decisions on.
I can't wait for Leopard... but on the other hand I hope its not released before Spring or before it's ready like some people here (I'm saying it in general btw)
Man, I guess you really have to watch what you say here about Apple (if negative in any way) lest you want non-sensical posts slagging you off in an infantile manner.
It's O.K., there aren't that many people who want it to happen. As I said, I'm unsure about it, on balance it's probably better to leave the MacBook Pro keyboard as it is.
Have you actually used a MacBook keyboard for any length of time? It's not that bad.
Can't say I'e used them for an extended period of time but have tried them both out on several occasions in the Apple stores. They both are nice. I didn't think that I would like the MB keyboard but after trying it out I found that I did like it. But I like the MBP keyboard better. Better feel and backlit feature just better IMO.
Also of note is the Product pages on the store have changed. The new design puts the information in a rounded gradient box with a grey-blue over box, new font size and colors for specs, the select buttons from the new iPod nano pages have been extended, and now the product images are selected rather than displayed over the products info. I like the new look, and it is good news that apple is working on the website design and may give insight into the color choices and UI concepts that will be in Leopard.
I thought I was going to be able to come on this list and say finally the bellyaching is over about this machine. But it continues.
Even though in some cases higher spec components are available Apple made some smart compromises to preserve cost, size, weight, heat, battery life.
Quote:
I think the performance of the 160GB 5400RPM drive is going to be close enough to that of the 100GB 7200RPM drive to make it not noticeable, simply because of the drastically increased areal density. The 160GB drive is probably the current sweet spot for capacity and performance.
A great point. 7200 drives produce more heat and drain the battery faster. A larger 5400 is the better compromise.
Quote:
BTW, what the hell is up with 3 Gig of ram??? couldn't they have done an even 4 like every other computer manufacturer in the world?
Honestly who here is going to pay $2500 for 4GB of RAM in a laptop? You are not getting very much more for a much greater price.
Who is even going to pay $575 for 3GB? The price difference is enough to make 3GB the better value.
Don't know. Some prices went down. The 2.0 ghz with 512 RAM and 80 gb hd went to $1499. I think they were $1699. It's a no brainer to me. I ordered the 2.16 ghz C2D and upped the RAM to 2gb. Anxious for it's arrival.
While not as jealous of you as I thought I'd be when the upgrade to the MBP came (I've been preparing mentally for a while, like when they released the new iMac and my desktop wasn't top of the heap anymore) I hope it gets to you nice and quickly!
The 3gb ram issues tells me that this is possibly the same board as in the new iMacs. If so this will really help with supply chain issues. Also I am interested to see if Windows recognizes the same Broadcom wireless "N" wireless chipset as in the iMac. It will certainly be telling if it has it in it as well.
Also Resolution Independence:
Resolution Independence
The old assumption that displays are 72dpi has been rendered obsolete by advances in display technology. Macs now ship with displays that sport displays with native resolutions of 100dpi or better. Furthermore, the number of pixels per inch will continue to increase dramatically over the next few years. This will make displays crisper and smoother, but it also means that interfaces that are pixel-based will shrink to the point of being unusable. The solution is to remove the 72dpi assumption that has been the norm. In Leopard, the system, including the Carbon and Cocoa frameworks, will be able to draw user interface elements using a scale factor. This will let the user interface maintain the same physical size while gaining resolution and crispness from high dpi displays.
That looks like the new wireless mouse. I thought the old wireless mouse had a clear upper shell. If there is already a second package design for the wireless Mighty Mouse, then that's pretty quick.
The new Wireless Mighty Mouse box looks exactly like the Mighty Mouse box, with the text Wireless in the front center top in black with a black box. Both wireless models have opaque shells to hide the machinery and the battery pack from view.
I just thought it was interesting, why is an old Wireless Mouse box hanging around the cameras at Apple?
I wonder if the 6x superdrive is really an 8x that has been crippled with firmware, cuz 2.4x for dual layer burning is slow. It takes almost 45 minutes to burn a full DL DVD at that speed
A great point. 7200 drives produce more heat and drain the battery faster. A larger 5400 is the better compromise.
I wasn't arguing from that perspective, the difference in battery and heat isn't much, though it is a good consideration. The last test I saw showed the 7200 drive droping the battery life by three minutes in a standard notebook.
I did find a Barefeats test of 100/7200 vs. 160/5400 drives, the 100s were definitely faster but I still would argue that the 160GB drive is going to serve more people better.
I'm interested in knowing that as well. I will use my computer mostly for internet browsing, email, adobe photoshop editing of photos, spreadsheet and word use, and some desktop video with Final Cut. I may play games but very few and will use Parallels to run Windows. I hope to go with 128 but will go with 256 if necessary.
I'm interested in knowing that as well. I will use my computer mostly for internet browsing, email, adobe photoshop editing of photos, spreadsheet and word use, and some desktop video with Final Cut. I may play games but very few and will use Parallels to run Windows. I hope to go with 128 but will go with 256 if necessary.
How often does one change the hard drive in a laptop? Is it really that important that it might take 30 minutes instead of five? There are videos that show you exactly how to do it.
With all the moving around that they do, laptop HDs tend to fail much more quickly than desktop HDs. I've known several people who've had to replace the HDs in their Apple laptops, and it's always a really difficult operation, except in the 13.3" MacBook.
I wasn't arguing from that perspective, the difference in battery and heat isn't much, though it is a good consideration.
Considering all of the components in the laptop that produce heat and drain battery life and the amount of space those components have to work in cumulative small differences can equal a big difference.
It's O.K., there aren't that many people who want it to happen. As I said, I'm unsure about it, on balance it's probably better to leave the MacBook Pro keyboard as it is.
Have you actually used a MacBook keyboard for any length of time? It's not that bad.
Yes, I've used it quite a bit. You're right, it's not bad. Functionally, it's great. However, design-wise I think it would look better with beveled keys.
Comments
It will rock OS X and Windows on Parallel!
Leopard should be enough on its own, although since we're not getting to know much of what's in it, my interest is fading somewhat.
Apple just posted this new Leopard developers page http://developer.apple.com/leopard/overview/
Some pretty neat stuff there:
OpenGL Improvements
OpenGL is the industry-standard API for developing portable, interactive 2D and 3D applications. Mac OS X has supported OpenGL from the outset and in Leopard it supports the latest OpenGL 2.1 specification which adds pixel buffer objects, color managed texture images in the sRGB color space, and improvements in the shader programming API.
Leopard also provides a dramatic increase in OpenGL performance by offloading CPU-based processing onto another thread which can then run on a separate CPU core feeding the GPU. This can increase, or in some cases, even double the performance of OpenGL-based applications.
OS Foundations
The heart of Mac OS X, the Open Source Mach- and BSD-based UNIX layer known as Darwin, continues to see improvements in Leopard. The latest Mac hardware brings more processing power, more cores, and more memory than ever before. The kernel in Leopard has been updated to take advantage of this new hardware.
Leopard certainly won?t be UNIX in name only. Apple will submit Leopard and Leopard Server to The Open Group for certification against the UNIX ?03 product standard.
Security Enhancements
Leopard brings several new security enhancements to Mac OS X. The first of these is the adoption of the Mandatory Access Control (MAC) framework. This framework, original developed for TrustedBSD, provides a fine-grained security architecture for controlling the execution of processes at the kernel level. This enables sandboxing support in Leopard. By sandboxing an application, using a text profile, you can limit an application to being able to just access only the system features, such as disk or the network, that you permit.
Also new in Leopard is code signing. This means that Leopard will be able to identify applications by using digital signatures and then use that identification to base trust decisions on.
I can't wait for Leopard... but on the other hand I hope its not released before Spring or before it's ready like some people here
It's O.K., there aren't that many people who want it to happen. As I said, I'm unsure about it, on balance it's probably better to leave the MacBook Pro keyboard as it is.
Have you actually used a MacBook keyboard for any length of time? It's not that bad.
Can't say I'e used them for an extended period of time but have tried them both out on several occasions in the Apple stores. They both are nice. I didn't think that I would like the MB keyboard but after trying it out I found that I did like it. But I like the MBP keyboard better. Better feel and backlit feature just better IMO.
Thoughts?
Even though in some cases higher spec components are available Apple made some smart compromises to preserve cost, size, weight, heat, battery life.
I think the performance of the 160GB 5400RPM drive is going to be close enough to that of the 100GB 7200RPM drive to make it not noticeable, simply because of the drastically increased areal density. The 160GB drive is probably the current sweet spot for capacity and performance.
A great point. 7200 drives produce more heat and drain the battery faster. A larger 5400 is the better compromise.
BTW, what the hell is up with 3 Gig of ram??? couldn't they have done an even 4 like every other computer manufacturer in the world?
Honestly who here is going to pay $2500 for 4GB of RAM in a laptop? You are not getting very much more for a much greater price.
Who is even going to pay $575 for 3GB? The price difference is enough to make 3GB the better value.
Don't know. Some prices went down. The 2.0 ghz with 512 RAM and 80 gb hd went to $1499. I think they were $1699. It's a no brainer to me. I ordered the 2.16 ghz C2D and upped the RAM to 2gb. Anxious for it's arrival.
While not as jealous of you as I thought I'd be when the upgrade to the MBP came (I've been preparing mentally for a while, like when they released the new iMac and my desktop wasn't top of the heap anymore) I hope it gets to you nice and quickly!
Also Resolution Independence:
Resolution Independence
The old assumption that displays are 72dpi has been rendered obsolete by advances in display technology. Macs now ship with displays that sport displays with native resolutions of 100dpi or better. Furthermore, the number of pixels per inch will continue to increase dramatically over the next few years. This will make displays crisper and smoother, but it also means that interfaces that are pixel-based will shrink to the point of being unusable. The solution is to remove the 72dpi assumption that has been the norm. In Leopard, the system, including the Carbon and Cocoa frameworks, will be able to draw user interface elements using a scale factor. This will let the user interface maintain the same physical size while gaining resolution and crispness from high dpi displays.
That looks like the new wireless mouse. I thought the old wireless mouse had a clear upper shell. If there is already a second package design for the wireless Mighty Mouse, then that's pretty quick.
The new Wireless Mighty Mouse box looks exactly like the Mighty Mouse box, with the text Wireless in the front center top in black with a black box. Both wireless models have opaque shells to hide the machinery and the battery pack from view.
I just thought it was interesting, why is an old Wireless Mouse box hanging around the cameras at Apple?
A great point. 7200 drives produce more heat and drain the battery faster. A larger 5400 is the better compromise.
I wasn't arguing from that perspective, the difference in battery and heat isn't much, though it is a good consideration. The last test I saw showed the 7200 drive droping the battery life by three minutes in a standard notebook.
I did find a Barefeats test of 100/7200 vs. 160/5400 drives, the 100s were definitely faster but I still would argue that the 160GB drive is going to serve more people better.
You mean the XPS M2010? Feel it's levitating majesty!
After much searching, I found the deeply hidden weight of that thing. 18.5 lbs.
That's almost as much as a 20 inch iMac (22 lbs)!
I'm interested in knowing that as well. I will use my computer mostly for internet browsing, email, adobe photoshop editing of photos, spreadsheet and word use, and some desktop video with Final Cut. I may play games but very few and will use Parallels to run Windows. I hope to go with 128 but will go with 256 if necessary.
The 128 is definitely the one for you.
How often does one change the hard drive in a laptop? Is it really that important that it might take 30 minutes instead of five? There are videos that show you exactly how to do it.
With all the moving around that they do, laptop HDs tend to fail much more quickly than desktop HDs. I've known several people who've had to replace the HDs in their Apple laptops, and it's always a really difficult operation, except in the 13.3" MacBook.
I wasn't arguing from that perspective, the difference in battery and heat isn't much, though it is a good consideration.
Considering all of the components in the laptop that produce heat and drain battery life and the amount of space those components have to work in cumulative small differences can equal a big difference.
It's O.K., there aren't that many people who want it to happen. As I said, I'm unsure about it, on balance it's probably better to leave the MacBook Pro keyboard as it is.
Have you actually used a MacBook keyboard for any length of time? It's not that bad.
Yes, I've used it quite a bit. You're right, it's not bad. Functionally, it's great. However, design-wise I think it would look better with beveled keys.
What difference will I notice between the 128mb video and 256mb video in the two versions of the 15" macbook pro?
For most things, nothing.
Only if textures in certain games are stored, or massive polygon drawings are needed in CAD or 3D programs.
If you have a large virtual desktop that is stored in screen RAM, though that might not need too much either.
If Quartz Exreme uses the memory.