Your twice weekly roundup of all things OS X Leopard.
Two million copies of Leopard sold in first weekend
Apple today announced that, globally, it sold or delivered over two million copies of its latest operating system since it launched last Friday at 6pm (local time) around the world.
That makes it Apple's most successful OS release in history, a record previously held by Tiger.
“Early indications are that Leopard will be a huge hit with customers,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Leopard’s innovative features are getting great reviews and making more people than ever think about switching to the Mac.”
"Blue Screen of Death" installation problems
Apple has confirmed what a number of the Apple faithful have already discovered — some installations of Leopard have gone wrong, causing a blue screen to be displayed on startup, and nothing else.
The finger of blame has been pointed at some third-party applications, such as Unsanity's Application Enhancer, though that seems to be largely unsubstantiated at present.
More importantly, the solution involves either performing an "Archive and Install" installation, or forcing the command line to appear during boot up in order to remove problematic software.
Apple's official support document is here
Leopard on a PC
It's not at all surprising that, despite any protection Apple may have added to Leopard, the operating system has found its way onto non-Apple PCs.
Being a hack, it's not for the fainthearted, but it does seem possible. If the list of "things you will need", which includes "the 9a581 GM DVD image", scares you at all, then perhaps you're better off avoiding this hack.
It's available here (via Information Week)
Feature Request: Stacks could be so much more
Depending on how you use your Mac, the Finder, and the Dock, and whether you use Safari and Mail, or prefer your own non-Apple software, Stacks may or may not be a useful tool to you.
Personally, I like it, given that I've moved back to Safari for much of my browsing.
However, it could be made so much better, and I'm hoping that future updates to Leopard address the issues.
Even the complete functionality demoed, or talked about, at recent keynote speeches by Steve Jobs, haven't made it into the final build. I can only assume time constraints have forced this omission, rather than Apple suddenly thinking they're not a good idea.
Firstly, the demos suggested that you could drag any folder, smart folder, or group of files to the Dock, and it would create a Stack. In reality, you can only drag ordinary folders to the Dock to get them to behave this way.
What I'd love to see is the ability to drag Smart Folders to the Dock, and have them arch open. I'd also like to be able to drag a handful of files, on the fly, and do the same.
That would seem to be an easy upgrade, so let's hope it's in the .1 upgrade.
Secondly, there's no "right click" functionality in any of the arcs or grids which appear. It would be great to be able to "Quick Look" any file, or make it an email attachment, or have it be the source for an Automator action.
Thirdly, it'd be great if a Stack arc could display more items, either all at once, or perhaps in a "scrollable arc". Even on my fairly large monitor, I can only see about ten items in the arc. The icon sizes could easily be half the size, or smaller. That'd be great to have as a preference.
There's probably more, but those three items would probably make Stacks almost indispensable to me.
Entry-level requirements
A headline flashed up from MacFixIt claiming that it's perfectly possible to run Leopard on systems that don't meet Apple's official requirements. It may not run particularly fast, but it seems they've got 10.5 running on a 533MHz G4. We'll keep an eye on whether adverse effects show up down the line.
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