iMac upgrade to leopard question

windoze

i know there are a lot of mac-addicts who subscribe to this forum who can possibly guide me in the right direction. I luv that 24 inch imac :lust .
its getting close to the release of leopard and there's talk about new Macs. My question is do you think if i was to get a iMac 24 inch ( now) , when leopard comes out will I be able to upgrade to leopard or do u think the new operating system will require me to get a new mac with newer technologies?
im asking coz i dont understand all the new things to be released in leopard ( ex 64 bit / core animation ) and maybe those things will need newer or more advanced technologies that are offered in the current iMac ....

troy

DavidTO

A newer Mac will always be a better Mac, but any Mac you get now will be compatible with Leopard. They'd be foolish, otherwise.

CatOne

Generally all Macs can be upgraded to the latest versions of the OS for 6 or 7 YEARS. They may an OS version from 5 or 6 years after they were built slower than the latest and greatest (in some cases, WAY slower), but the OS supports running on that hardware.

You're talking about WEEKS here. You'll be fine

jdryan3

DavidTO wrote:

A newer Mac will always be a better Mac, but any Mac you get now will be compatible with Leopard. They'd be foolish, otherwise.

David - A Mac expert I dare not even pretend to be. But when my wife went to the Apple store to upgrade her PowerPC G4 to Tiger, the Genius Bar guy said that would probably be the last upgrade for her. Upgrading to Leopard probably wouldn' t be worth it for THAT processor.

So if Troy (or anyone else) is looking at a new iMac (Intel), yeah, Leopard will be fine, but those looking at picking up an older system may not be able to benefit from Leopard.

DavidTO

jdryan3 wrote:

David - A Mac expert I dare not even pretend to be. But when my wife went to the Apple store to upgrade her PowerPC G4 to Tiger, the Genius Bar guy said that would probably be the last upgrade for her. Upgrading to Leopard probably wouldn' t be worth it for THAT processor.

So if Troy (or anyone else) is looking at a new iMac (Intel), yeah, Leopard will be fine, but those looking at picking up an older system may not be able to benefit from Leopard.

I was talking about new macs only.

pathfinder

So - How soon are we to expect Leopard?

I have been holding off on a MacBook Pro thinking the Leopard is due in the next month or so. Is this probably accurate, or will it not debut until after June?

Photoshop CS3 will be available within the next month also?

wxwax

pathfinder wrote:

So - How soon are we to expect Leopard?

I have been holding off on a MacBook Pro thinking the Leopard is due in the next month or so. Is this probably accurate, or will it not debut until after June?

Photoshop CS3 will be available within the next month also?

Apple rumors are that a hardware announcement will come at NAB April 14-19, or WWDC June 11-14. Hardware shipping dates uncertain (old Apple hands might know their history ) Rumors that Leopard has gone through its final "seeding" (whatever that means) implies that it's ready for release. So I imagine it will be announced at NAB.

CS3 to be announced March 27th. Whether it ships immediately or not is unclear. Adobe made a point of saying that Creative Suite would not ship for a while. No word on whether the same holds true for Photoshop. Since it's been in beta, one wonders if it might be ready to be released. I sure hope so.

I too am a holdout, for both software and new hardware.

cabbey

wxwax wrote:

Apple rumors are that a hardware announcement will come at NAB April 14-19, or WWDC June 11-14. Hardware shipping dates uncertain (old Apple hands might know their history ) Rumors that Leopard has gone through its final "seeding" (whatever that means) implies that it's ready for release. So I imagine it will be announced at NAB.

It's unlikely a new OS version would be announced at a venue like NAB. New FCP, yeah. New Aperature, maybe. New quad core chips with dedicated H264 en/de-coders, would make sense. New OS... not likely as it doesn't directly impact the workflow of NAB attendees/press coverage. That kinda thing will wait for WWDC, if it's not going to get it's OWN special announcement treatment. We already have been told that iPhone launches somewhere this summer, so my suspicion remains that we'll see 10.5 in one of the lulls between other marketing opportunities for Apple, March I hope, or May possibly.

Seeding is the process of getting builds to developers and 3rd parties so we can build binaries that will ship on/with it, as well as test on top of what will in theory be the RTM (Release to Manufacturing) image. If Leopard has really gone to final seed, then that does bode well for release sometime in the next 2 to 5 months.

wxwax

Thanks Cabbey, makes sense.

DavidTO

Total pull it out of my butt guess...

May 15

wxwax

DavidTO wrote:

Total pull it out of my butt

Well hell, now I don't want it.

CatOne

wxwax wrote:

Well hell, now I don't want it.

Milan

wxwax wrote:

Rumors that Leopard has gone through its final "seeding" (whatever that means) implies that it's ready for release. So I imagine it will be announced at NAB.

From what I've read on rumor sites it doesn't look like final seeding:

"According to the InsanelyMac Forum, the long list of known bugs plus bugs encountered during testing indicate that the build is a far cry from being ready for prime time. This casts doubt upon recent reports that Leopard will be ready for a late-March release."

It looks to me that we will probably need to wait for the June to see Leopard release.

wxwax

Interesting speculation today about Leopard.

This week's update to 10.4.9 has apparently set historical wheels in motion.

Based on the 10.3 and 10.4 timelines, 10.4.9 means that 10.5 (Leopard) will be announced and released within the month.

DavidTO

wxwax wrote:

Interesting speculation today about Leopard.

This week's update to 10.4.9 has apparently set historical wheels in motion.

Based on the 10.3 and 10.4 timelines, 10.4.9 means that 10.5 (Leopard) will be announced and released within the month.

5/15.

Just sayin'.

cabbey

Milan wrote:

From what I've read on rumor sites it doesn't look like final seeding:

"According to the InsanelyMac Forum, the long list of known bugs plus bugs encountered during testing indicate that the build is a far cry from being ready for prime time. This casts doubt upon recent reports that Leopard will be ready for a late-March release."

It looks to me that it will probably need to wait for the June to see Leopard release.

Yeah, so a conversation with some folks that have the latest developer preview today involved the words "fetid" and "regression".

Milan

Well, it's official now, folks. No Leopard in May, not even in June. Now we need to wait till October.

However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October.

StevenV

ah, good. that means I've got a few extra months before I need to sell my PowerBook G4 (figuring once we get close, nobody'll buy it any longer).

David_S85

October?

Milan

David_S85 wrote:

October?

Yep! That's what Apple says (at least for now).