New Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
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Posted on October 26, 2007 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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| Mac OS X version 10.5 "Leopard" is the sixth major release of the Mac OS X operating system for Apple's Mac line of personal computers, and is the successor to Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger". Leopard was released on October 26, 2007, and is available in two variants: a desktop version suitable for personal computers, and a server version, Mac OS X Server. Apple offers a reduced-cost upgrade to people that purchase new Apple computers between October 1, 2007 and December 29, 2007 that do not already have Mac OS X v10.5 pre-installed or a Leopard upgrade DVD included. According to Apple, Leopard contains over 300 changes and enhancements,covering core operating system components as well as included applications and developer tools. Leopard introduces a significantly revised desktop, with a redesigned Dock, Stacks, a semitransparent menu bar, and an updated Finder that incorporates the Cover Flow visual navigation interface first seen in iTunes. Other notable features include support for writing 64-bit graphical user interface applications, an automated backup utility called Time Machine, support for Spotlight searches across multiple machines, and the inclusion of Front Row and Photo Booth, which were previously only included with some Mac models. Apple missed Mac OS X v10.5's release time frame as originally announced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. When first discussed in June 2005, Jobs had stated that Apple intended to release Leopard at the end of 2006 or early 2007.A year later, this was amended to "Spring 2007" however on April 12, 2007, Apple issued a statement that its release would be delayed until October 2007 because of the development of the iPhone. |
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| New and changed features End-user features Apple advertises that Mac OS v10.5 Leopard has 300+ features, including: Back to My Mac, a feature for Mac users that allows users to access files on their home computer while away from home via the internet. Boot Camp is included, It is a software assistant which has been available as a beta release download for Mac OS X v10.4 from Apple's website since April 5, 2006. It assists in the installation of Windows XP or Windows Vista to a separate partition (or separate internal drive) on Intel-based Macs.
Dashboard enhancements, including Web Clip, a feature that allows users to turn a part of any web page displayed in Safari into a live Dashboard widget, and Dashcode to help developers code widgets.
New Desktop, comprised of a redesigned 3-D dock with a new grouping feature called Stacks.
Dictionary can now search Wikipedia, and a dictionary of Apple terminology as well. Also included is the Japanese-language dictionary Daijisen, Progressive E-J and Progressive J-E dictionaries, and the 25000-word thesaurus "Tsukaikata no Wakaru Ruigo Reikai Jiten", all of which are provided by the Japanese publisher Shogakukan.
A redesigned Finder, with features similar to those seen in iTunes 7, including Cover Flow and a Source list-like sidebar. Front Row has been reworked to closely resemble the interface used by the Apple TV. iCal calendar , sharing and group scheduling as well as syncing event invitations from Mail. The icon also reflects the current date even when the application is not running. In previous versions of Mac OS X, the icon would remain at July 17th until the application was run.
iChat enhancements, including multiple logins, invisibility, animated icons, and tabbed chats, similar to features present in Pidgin, Adium and the iChat plugin Chax; iChat Theater, allowing users to incorporate images from iPhoto, presentations from Keynote, videos from QuickTime, and other Quick Look features into video chats; and Backdrops, which are similar to chroma keys, but use a real-time difference matte technique which does not require a green or blue screen. iChat alsoimplements desktop sharing, a feature previously available with Apple Remote Desktop.
Mail enhancements , including the additions of RSS feeds, Stationery, Notes, and to-dos. To-dos use a system-wide service that is available to all applications.
Network file sharing , improvements include more granular control over permissions, consolidation of AFP, FTP and SMB sharing into one control panel, and the ability to share individual folders, a feature that had not been available since Mac OS 9.
Parental controls, now include the ability to place restrictions on use of the Internet and to set parental controls from anywhere using remote setup.
Photo Booth enhancements, including video recording with real-time filters and blue-screen technology.
Podcast Capture, an application allowing users to record and distribute podcasts. It requires access to a computer running Mac OS X Server with Podcast Producer.
Preview, adds support for annotation, graphics, extraction, search, markup, and size adjustment tools.Quick Look, a framework allowing documents to be viewed without opening them in an external application.
Safari 3, which includes Web Clip, is included.Sherlock, a search software included in Mac OS since OS 8.5, is no longer included.
Spaces, an implementation of "virtual desktops" (individually called "spaces"), allows multiple desktops per user, with certain applications and windows in each desktop. Users can organize certain Spaces for certain applications (e.g., one for work-related tasks and one for entertainment) and switch between them. Exposé works inside Spaces, allowing the user to see at a glance all desktops on one screen.) Users can create and control up to 16 spaces, and applications can be switched between each one, creating a very large workspace.
Spotlight , incorporates additional search capabilities such as Boolean operators, as well as the ability to search other computers (with permissions).
Time Machine, an automated backup utility which allows the user to restore files that have been deleted or replaced by another version of a file. Universal Access enhancements: significant improvements to applications including VoiceOver, along with increased support for Braille, closed captioning and a new high‐quality Speech synthesis voice. |
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| Developer technologies |
1.Native support by many libraries and frameworks for 64-bit applications, allowing 64-bit Cocoa applications. Existing 32-bit applications using those libraries and frameworks should continue to run without the need for emulation or translation. 2.Leopard offers the Objective-C 2.0 runtime, which includes new features such as garbage collection. Xcode 3.0 supports the updated language and was itself rewritten with it.A new framework, Core Animation, allows a developer to create complex animations while specifying only a "start" and a "goal" space. The main goal of Core Animation is to enable the creation of complex animations with small amounts of program code. 3.Apple integrates DTrace from the OpenSolaris project and adds a graphical interface called Instruments (previously Xray). DTrace provides tools that users, administrators and developers can use to tune the performance of the operating system and the applications that run on it.The new Scripting Bridge allows programmers to use Python and Ruby to interface with the Cocoa frameworks.Ruby on Rails is included in the default install. 4.Leopard's OpenGL stack has been updated to version 2.1, and uses LLVM to increase its vertex processing speed.Apple has been working to get LLVM integrated into GCC;LLVM's use within other operating system facilities has not been announced. 5.The Graphics and Media State of the Union address confirmed many other features are possible because of Core Animation, such as live desktops, improvements to Quartz Composer with custom patches, a new PDF Kit for developers, and improvements to QuickTime APIs. 6.Leopard includes a read-only implementation of the ZFS file system. In mid-December 2006 a pre-release version of Leopard appeared to include support for Sun's ZFS.Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and President of Sun Microsystems, stated on June 6, 2007 that ZFS has become "the file system" for Leopard.However, the senior project marketing director for Mac OS X stated on June 11, 2007 that the existing HFS+, not ZFS, will be used in Leopard. Apple later clarified that a read-only version of ZFS would be included. 7.Leopard includes a framework implementing latent semantic mapping for classifying (e.g. textual) data. Leopard is certified as fully UNIX compliant. Certification means that software following the Single UNIX Specification can be compiled and run on Leopard without the need for any code modification.The certification only applies to Leopard when run on Intel processors. Leopard also removes support for Classic applications. |
| Security enhancements |
| Leopard attempts to improve the security of Mac OS X in a number of ways. New security features intend to provide better internal resiliency to successful attacks, in addition to preventing attacks from being successful in the first place. |
| Library Randomization |
| Leopard implements address space layout randomization, which randomizes the locations of libraries in memory. Vulnerabilities that corrupt program memory often rely on known addresses for these library routines, which allow injected code to launch processes or change files. |
| Application Layer Firewall |
| Leopard ships with two firewall engines: the original BSD IPFW, which was present in earlier releases of Mac OS X, and the new Leopard Application Layer Firewall. Unlike IPFW, which intercepts and filters IP datagrams before the kernel performs significant processing, the Application Layer Firewall operates at the socket layer, bound to individual processes. The Application Layer Firewall can therefore make filtering decisions on a per-application basis. Of the two firewall engines, only the Application Layer Firewall is fully exposed in the Leopard user interface. The new firewall offers less control over individual packet decisions (users can decide to allow or deny connections systemwide or to individual applications, but must use IPFW to set fine-grained TCP/IP header level policies). It also makes several policy exceptions for system processes: neither mDNSResponder nor programs running with superuser privileges are filtered. |
| Sandboxes |
| Leopard includes kernel-level support for role-based access control (RBAC). RBAC is intended to prevent an application like Mail from editing the password database. |
| Application Signing |
| Leopard provides a framework to use public key signatures for code signing to verify, in some circumstances, that code has not been tampered with. |
| Secure Guest Account |
| Guests can be given access to a Leopard system with an account that the system erases and resets at logout. |
| System requirements |
| Apple states the following basic Leopard system requirements, although, for some specific applications and actions (such as iChat backdrops) an Intel processor is required: |
| Leopard was not released in separate versions for each type of processor, but instead consists of one universal release that can run on both PowerPC and Intel processors. Leopard drops support for slower G4 and all G3 processors. |
| Packaging |
| The retail packaging for Leopard is significantly smaller than that of previous versions of Mac OS X. It also sports a lenticular cover, making the "X" appear to float above a purple galaxy, somewhat resembling the default Leopard desktop picture. |
| Version history |
| Mac OS X version Build number Date of release Notes
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