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You can't wait for a review for a month. It's just not practical. If you do so, just ask on forums in a month's time.

You mean it's not worthwhile doing a review for a month, when you need the Ad Revenue now whilst the hype is good.

A month long review is very practical. It'd take at least that long to adjust to the Mac platform as a new user if you were using it every day with intent.

Yep. Besides the large guided tour gives a quick impression about OSX.http://www.apple.com/macosx/guidedtour/
Not bad at all, i like the graphics a lot. Time machine is impressive.

I know a guy who won't trust a review unless the person has had the product for at least three months, and preferably a year. The reason is simple: a lot of people are in this "new toy" mentality when they have only had the product for a few hours/days/weeks. But what happens a few weeks down the line:

* Are they still backing up with Time Machine?
* Did you turn off Cover Flow because it uses too much screen space?
* Were you lynched for using templates in Mail?
* Are you only using one Space regularly?
* Did you revert to Firefox because Safari's new features didn't make up for the lack of extensions?

I mean, if I picked up the new cat, I would be using all of those things (except templates in Mail) for the first few days. But after that, probably not. Heck, I have only used Expose a handful of times after those first few weeks with 10.3.

Why would you not be backing up with Tiger when you don't need to actually do anything to keep it working, bar have the external disk plugged in; and that's hardly a chore

I am one of those systems administrators who waits for a period of time. There is the initial `wow` factor, sorry Microsoft, you did not come up with this phrase first, and the time for the system to mature across various deployments.

I am waiting to purchase a Leopard server disk.

I'd have to agree, this was more a quick run-through of user-visible things than a complete review.

But, it's much easier to spit out a "review" like this when you clearly don't even use a spellchecker: read the first paragraph carefully, and you'll see blatant evidence of that

Ars Technica will probably write the only review worth waiting for. Their review of Tiger was excellent and offered interesting technical insights into the inner workings of Mac OS X and its history contrary to superficial stuff like this blog entry.

While theirs will certainly be valuable, and without trying to sound like a "kiss-up", I'm certainly looking forward to comments on it from OSNews staff. Between arsTechnica's review + your viewpoints, I always feel like I have a better overall picture.

Apple Insider often post good articles too, despite them being an 'Apple website'.

I noticed they posted a mini-review here:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/26/an_introductory_mac_o...

That said, I too enjoy most of ArsTechnica's reviews.

And this linked-to review was a nice read too. Sure it is a little enthusiastic, but I was enthusiastic when OpenSUSE 10.3 came out as well; it has kind of grown on me.

I wish I had a Mac machine so I could compare windows/linux/osx , since operating systems interest me very much

Edited 2007-10-27 19:05

Agreed. If you want to see a real review of leopard then give a Mac to someone like me who has never used one and I'll give you a review in 2 - 4 weeks time.

Sounds like a novel 419 to me

The thing that none of you understands and only sees from the reader's point of view instead of our point of view, is that there is a time critical aspect to journalism. Most readers want information NOW and journalists must give it to them NOW. If they wait 1 month, then no one will care to read their site by that time. And then they can't even sustain that web site.

But noooo, you all have to go scrutinize everything and only see things from your own side.

Technical readers, yes. But regular folk probably have no idea Leopard has come out. They might discover that if they read the technology columns in the papers, or should they walk into an Apple store - but it really isn't imperative that my mum know that Leopard has just come out.

a large number of 'normal people' DO know its out!

For example it is currently on the BBC news home-page (and every other uk based news I have read today)

I read this 'review' as did everyone else who has posted (one hopes!)

Why did we read it? Because we are like excited little school-kids! There is a new toy out and we want to know if its worth the money

We read it despite knowing it only had one day of use, as such couldn't be of the technical depth OSNEWS readers would like. Hoping against hope that they have spotted some interesting detail other 24 hour reviewers have missed!

Reviewing software isn't journalism, it's advertising.

I couldn't disagree with you more here.

I have never owned a Mac, but I'm seriously considering it, and I basically read every Mac related review out there.

Frankly I couldn't care less if he's been using it for 20 minutes, if there's a chance I'll learn something new about the OS, it's worth a read.

Anyway, so a review like this won't tell you about important things like reliability, but I know that when I first loaded up Vista, I hated it. A few months later: I still hate it. That information might have been helpful to someone about to fork out $400+.

However, I think it's fair to ask the editorial board to read the reviews and share them with us if they're particularly novel or give a unique perspective over and above what we have already seen.

I was just being unbiased. I haven't used or owned a Mac. It'd be quite interesting reading it from a newbie mac perspective.

Incredible, so if the reviewer waits a month to give, then people will just whine and cry that Leopard is just being ignored.

These reviews should be just taken with a grain of salt. Do you really need the review to tell you how to think? At best most of these reviews just provide information on new features and how they worked for them.

I beg to differ. Readers expectation in journalists are actually much higher than the value of the usual 'first day review' (in most cases a recap of the marketing material found on the vendor's site).

However most journalist only deliver such reviews. Even if they got big amounts of page hits due to the "novelty-factor", their long-term impact is very limited - their "reviews" are forgotten soon and are hence irrelevant.

Journalist that don't just go for one day value "hype themes" but deliver real value to the reader will not be forgotten and can grow an audience. Best example: John Siracusas and his former Mac OS X reviews (e. g. http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10-4.ars) which are famous for being thorough and insightful. They never appeared the same day a new MacOS appeared but they are still remembered whereas a "review" such as the one linked will be forgotten tomorrow.

Which one would you prefer?

Which one would you prefer?

Why not both? They serve totally different purposes.

Timeliness is important, but I also think that timeliness is more often than not abused by many journalists (and I understand this because I worked with journalists prior to getting into IT), where it is more important to "get the story first" than it is to print something worth reading.

I cannot speak for anyone else but myself, but I would much rather wait 30 to 60 days and read what someone who has taken the time to actually use the OS/hardware/software and evaluate its features rather than write a piece that is nothing more than a blog entry or an extension of the "new features" sheet from the marketing department. The story will have value, it just won't have the immediacy that journalists and advertisers want, and I think in many cases that immediacy is overhyped.

How many stories have we read on this site (amongst others) that are light on the facts, obscure relevant details, or just ignore the truth just to get something "out the door", and later when the facts or the other side of the story comes out, the original story usually turns out to be a waste of time to read. Just as journalists are expected to report information in a timely fashion, it is also part of their responsibility to weigh the pros and cons of each piece they intend to publish. Not everything needs to be published immediately. Some of the material I read (long term studies and various research articles) take months or years to write, I think waiting 30 days for an OS or application review is reasonable.

If I ran a site like OSNews I would much rather be characterized as being "late out of the gate" but having insightful, serious content worthy of the limited time many people have to read than to be like everybody else and publish anything that comes across the desk because it meets the time frame and an expected interest level. I am sure that advertisers and some of the readers might not like waiting, but if the end result is worth the wait why not? I really don't think most of the readers would mind that much.

Err.. the point being that you do not have any information after one day. Maybe one month is also a bit of an exaggeration. Tempering with it for a week would have allowed you to have a better look at it than just boot it up and take a screen shot, merely for the sake of being first. Also, "journalists" get preview samples while bloggers don't. Those who do can be first with a proper review on day one, I've seen it happening. However, I don't know whether Apple graced any writers with a preview sample in this case. We are interested in the the meat, not the head-line alone.

You could have called it anything you wanted but it says "review". It is a first look at 10.5, a day's look. This is not the most terrible thing, but if you dilute your news items like that, I might not click your real reviews anymore if I don't expect there to be any. That is also not so good for your advertisers.

>>How can anybody claim that they can write a thorough review of an operating system in less than a day<<

People were reviewing Vista about two years before it was finally released.

It's been an oversight. Apple do it quite often with various things. Another "duh" thing in Leopard that should have been there in 10.1 is being able to drag things onto minimised windows. In open source you fix things like this yourself, on Mac OS X people write apps to fix these shortcomings. No doubt several "dock-fixing" apps will now appear out of the ether.

Oooops!!! No Classic in Leopard? Looks like I won't be upgrading after-all. What a shame.

Like it's really that big of a deal? That's like saying

"What? I can't run my Windows 95/98 apps in Vista!?!? Then screw Vista!"

Sure, maybe a few people still need to use 95/98, but that's a fairly niche market now and no reason to swear off Vista (granted there are plenty other reasons, but that's beside the point). Same deal with Mac Classic. That shouldn't be the axe to Leopard.

I remember a die-hard 3.11 user who refused to upgrade to 95 for the same reasons. Amazing how some people think.

I like my OS X and Linux. This forward progression of software is the nature of the game.

Forward does not necessarily equate to better.

Furthermore, a jump from 3.xx to Windows 95 in the early days of MS offerings was quite a different matter than a baby step from Tiger to Leopard.

It is a big deal because of the way Apple has chosen to handle backwards compatibility. Unlike Windows they've really seperated it all out of the base system while keeping it all really functional and now they can cut it right out. I think really this should go in to the history books on how backwards compatibility should be handled.

That is if you don't take z/OS (MVS) into consideration. Anybody who is talking about backwards compatibility should take a very close look at IBM.

Your answer has a hostile tone and your analogy irrelevant, therefore, I won't waist my time responding.

I don't want to sound rude but what the hell are you running which requires Classic? its 2007 mate, get with the programme. Time to move forward, onward and upwards.

Your question is not rude at all. I enjoy working with older apps to name a few: Acta, More, Clockwork, WordPerfect, my Epson printer, FullWrite, Loki, Netscape 4.8 (for sentimental reasons and boy is it fast) and Outlook Express (prefer it to Mail). Remember, just because an OS is newer does not mean it is better [in all areas]. Heck, I still use a 22" Diamond Pro CRT monitor because it is vastly superior to newer LCDs.

Edited 2007-10-29 00:30 UTC

THe reason I thought it might have sounded rude was the abrupt nature in which I asked the question.

I can understand about CRT vs. LCD; the issue of washed out colour still exists in LCD. The move to LCD's in the main wasn't the result of 'better technology' but because it made computers more ascetically pleasing. IIRC there was actually a company, I think it was Samsung, who put out a CRT but it was significantly slimmer than a standard CRT, almost that of LCD.

As for the rest, time to move on; there are replacements out there. Pages is a great alternative to Word, but then again, Office 2008 might prove my 'Microsoft scepticism' wrong. The issues you're having sound more like personal preference rather than hardcore reliance on something because there are no alternatives in that given area.

"Oooops!!! No Classic in Leopard? Looks like I won't be upgrading after-all. What a shame."

You could set your Mac up to dual boot in order to run classic.

What are you running that requires Classic anyway?

I cannot speak for the original poster, but I know that my mother won't be getting the new release because no Classic means no WordPerfect and no HyperCard.

Yes, that's true but dual booting is such a hassle. And it is not like its easy going back between apps. I think that I would get a separate machine to handle OS 9 before I did that.

Edited 2007-10-29 00:15 UTC

In reply to the fact that Leopard has dropped support for Classic mode:

Thanks for pointing this out.

Most people never touch Classic, but I do use it to play some old Mac games that simply won't run in OS X. I know, Sim Tower is a terrible game, but it's addictive.

I also have a copy of the Sims that is OS 9 only.

Edited 2007-10-27 11:08

Not so different to the document previews that appeared in NeXTSTEP's inspector panel...

Like a lot of OSX features its not original, but the first time it's been implemented in a good user-friendly way. That's the whole Apple strength : taking what you thought were half-baked ideas and turning them into cool applications.

Unlike Windows 95, Quicklook depends on plugins, so you can view any file there is a plugin for. This kind of reminds me of Amiga datatypes a little bit combined with AmigaOS's MultiView application.

What would you base the comparison on?

For me, Ubuntu is completely useless; I need Creative Suite, I need the ability (if I choose) to run Microsoft Office. want all my hardware to be supported without concerns.

Comparison based reviews are based on a personal set of circumstances. What might be requirements for me, for another person, completely irrelevant. Take the above situation with me, an other person might not need creative suite, they might not even own an iPod and their hardware is supported by virtue of it being pre-loaded onto the machine.

Like I keep saying, I don't want one to win, I want all to win; I want a marketplace where Linux, *BSD, Solaris, Windows, MacOS X and the likes all work in harmony with each other. Through diversity it will force the different operating systems to play nice with each other.

I want to be able to say, "I run MacOS X" and a variety of other voices pop up, and we can share out data with each other, not worrying about compatibility issues; That is the issue at hand. Hence the reason I keep raising the 'rage against the machine' - there is this idea that for one to succeed, something else must die. All can succeed - and it doesn't necessarily have to be at the expense of each other.