Tips From Tony Blog

On Oct 22, 2007, at 6:02 AM, Bob wrote:

You have sent several emails talking about leopard but you have not weighed in yet. Should we all be upgrading now or should we wait to see how the roll-out goes?

You caught me!

I can easily drum up enthusiasm for the CONCEPT of something new and zoomy, but I always wait a bit before I say “It actually works, and won’t blow up in your face!” You won’t hear anything like that until I’ve actually had time to test it out myself, and read a BUNCH of hands-on reviews. I would hate to say something rash and cause a bunch of unhappy folks to lose important work or something.

It might be a good idea to wait a few days before taking the plunge.

I promise - I’ll be very regular and informative in my writings, keeping everyone up to date. This is the biggest, most technologically-advanced operating system upgrade I can ever remember, and it holds great promise, but it also holds the possibility of messing with the ways that we’ve done things for a long time.

For instance:

If you are using a program that runs in “Classic” mode (such as the Clients & Profits ad agency business management software), it absolutely will NOT work with Leopard on your computer (without spending an additional $1600 for the newer version), since Leopard does not support OS 9 at all. However, I found a really cool way for older programs like that to continue onward without any problems - Just run Clients and Profits on an older Mac across the room, running an older operating system, and use a program such as Chicken of the VNC to remotely operate that computer as if you were sitting in front of it. At current network speeds, it’s downright pleasant to use… Just one click of an icon, and you’re staring at another computer’s desktop and programs!

As you might have noticed, Apple finally announced the shipping date for Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5): It’ll be available starting at 6PM on October 26th. Expect to see lines forming at the Apple Store!

It’ll be $129, unless you’ve purchased a new Mac or Xserve on or after October 1, 2007, you can get Leopard for $9.95.

If you buy a Mac AFTER October 26th, it’s free and pre-installed!

Be sure to check out the new features… They’ve done a lot of work to make your computing experience easier and more enjoyable. I’ve been up here in Silicon Valley for days now, learning how to support my clients that will be using Leopard, and it’s a BIG update. Much to learn, and all of it good. Microsoft Windows is miles further back than it was before, and it’s disappearing over the horizon. Apple’s stock value is going to go much higher, because the Mac is going to eat up a lot of market-share that was unavailable before.

I’m very excited about the Leopard Server software. They’ve changed it so that most small businesses will be able to own a powerful server computer that will do automatic backups (that are ridiculously easy to restore), handle all calendar and addresses for the whole company, share printers and provide centralized storage. The price-point has dropped to a tenth of what it would have been for the same storage, power and features a couple of years ago, and it’s Macintosh-easy to manage. 2008 is the Year of the Leopard Server, folks.

I was a faithful Apple fan ten years ago, when there was much doubt about Apple’s future. Life is much less stressfu, now that Apple is building one success upon another!