10 Feb 2008 1913H

Apple laptops & OS X Leopard

Went to the Apple Store this weekend after cutting my way through the snow and ice that had accumulated in the driveway while I had been away; the store seemed busier than ever before, and the weather seemed to be cooperating. I played around with an iMac, a Macbook, and a Macbook Pro, and came away with the sense that Leopard seems, mysteriously, a little sluggish, even with SATA drives, upgraded FSBs, much faster processors. I suppose I could wipe or archive the system and start over with Tiger. For what I need to do on a daily basis, I could do with a Macbook, smaller form factor and all, but I’ll miss the larger screen for the Macbook Pro. I don’t really need the goodies in the new OS, and it sounds like it’s going to take some time for people in the OS X teams and the 3rd-party software teams to figure out how to work together. But I hear that upgrades are coming somewhere between this week and the end of the month and so will wait just a little bit longer, since there is nothing really compelling me to upgrade so much. I also liked the experience of working with the iMac a lot more than I did with the portables, but I chalk that up to a large glossy screen and an ergonomically correct table height. And also mysteriously I am now gravitating towards carrying an iPod Shuffle with me on the commute, at work, and in the car. Small is the new black.

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4 responses to "Apple laptops & OS X Leopard"

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10 Feb 2008 2012H

Mark writes:

Incidentally, you cannot install/boot Tiger on a Mac that ships with Leopard. The firmware is not backwards compatible to support that.

10 Feb 2008 2024H

Gino writes:

Thanks; I’m not sure that is the case, since there are reports of people on forums Archiving & Installing Leopard and clearing their Open Firmware to do so.

11 Feb 2008 0825H

Robert Morrow writes:

Gino,

I think Mark is right. Yes, if you did all of this and still managed to have a solid performing machine, 95% of the user install base will not have the know-how to do this. To me, it really shows the, should I dare to say, attitude Apple is now showing its users. Apple like many other companies is forgetting about customer support and giving the end user more flexibility and usability. Can we all say, “Bloat ware”. Just to be fair to everyone, I have been working on, and servicing Macintosh computers for over 15 years so I do have a little history with them. Thanks for the article and good luck with your purchase decision.

11 Feb 2008 1852H

Gino writes:

Thanks for the feedback everyone. AFAIK, it is deliberately difficult to do, but Tiger on a MBP is possible even if it came Leopard pre-installed. I’ve been Googling on the keywords and all kinds of good stuff comes up. Here’s a link to a discussion forum topic from a ways back. I feel it is not obvious and not easy but it is within my reach. Problem is of course that the Intel format is different from the PowerPC G4 format, but all other things being equal, well, we’ll figure something out.

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