Please Mr Jobs

The old speckled cat. A look back ten years ago.

Get It Try It

APPLELAND (Rixstep) — Ten years ago, Apple's desktop OS X was in trouble. Is the situation any different from today?

The year was 2009. Apple's OS X 10.5 'Leopard' was upon us. Does anyone remember what that was like?

The Rixstep site has a few dozen articles chronicling the era. It's a bit off to the side, so not seen very often, even by the administrators.

Here are a few.

Please Mr Jobs
https://rixstep.com/2/4/20090411,00.shtml
A 17-point plea that of course never reached Steve and at any rate would have been completely ignored. Many of the points have to do with that great 'this file is locked' lie they wanted to perpetrate and are in fact perpetrating to this day. It's only recently they've changed the issued diagnostic to inform the user that there's nothing wrong with the file but instead with the directory. That took only eight years. The basic gaffe of course remains. Oh the humanity.

It also brings up the silly behaviour of the tableview, introduced about this time. And no, it's still not fixed as of the end of 2019.

Leo Takes a Leak
https://rixstep.com/2/4/20071210,00.shtml
Memory leaks were egregious under Leopard, and a major culprit was in the code for sheet management.

People to Meet (1)
https://rixstep.com/2/4/20071203,00.shtml
Obviously there are undercurrents here, and most of this is based on the writings of Oliver Rist at PC Mag who calls Leopard 'Leoptard'. Some of the turns of phrase are remarkable. Such as:

'Apple turned a stable os into a crash-happy glitz fest'
'It's not better than Vista. Leopard is Vista. and Tiger is better than both of them!'

That latter statement is a bit OTT. Also, Mr Rist seems to have missed all the glitches with Tiger (for they were indeed legion).

The people to meet? Dave Hyatt and some guy with a dog who may have been behind the mega-blooper in Mail.app.

People to Meet (2)
https://rixstep.com/2/4/20071204,00.shtml
This is from back in the day when Interface Builder was still a standalone application that was intelligent enough to use the entire screen as its palette, unlike today.

'You have not specified any recipients'
https://rixstep.com/2/4/20071211,00.shtml
More fun and games with the team that went wild on Mail.app.

launchctl Fun
https://rixstep.com/2/4/20071211,01.shtml
An incredible and incredibly dangerous bug in Leopard.

Reader Comments
https://rixstep.com/2/4/20071212,00.shtml
Some feedback we received from people who weren't exactly happy campers with 10.5 Leopard.

Leopard: YMMV
https://rixstep.com/2/4/20071214,00.shtml
Yes, Leopard was getting a lot of bad press today. As did Tiger before it. We know today what had been going on. We'd known since January of the year. But did that change anything? No.

Where's the Buttons?
https://rixstep.com/2/4/20071217,00.shtml
This is still lamentable. Decisions by the feeble-minded HIG still continue to condemn the system to rejection by the professional class who quite understandably cannot take it seriously.

Why Leopard is Better
https://rixstep.com/2/4/20071225,00.shtml
Yes, people bitch and whine, but few of them would consider switching to something else.

Apple's Cross-Platform Bait & Switch
https://rixstep.com/2/4/20071221,01.shtml
This was a shocking revelation, showing the cynical and manipulative mindset of Apple marketing. The 'fanboy' responsible for the revelation wasn't involved, he was duped like all the rest and kept drinking his Kool-Aid, but he dutifully published his notes. Subsequently a couple of pleasant gents - Brent Simmons and John Gruber - went apeshit, for the truth must obviously not get out.

Apple's Open Source Bait & Switch
https://rixstep.com/2/4/20071222,00.shtml
The Apple employee in charge of Open Darwin accused his company outright (his marketing department) of cynically using his efforts and the overall 'open source' movement at Apple as a 'marketing gimmick'. Those were very harsh words.

Leopard -Tmp-
https://rixstep.com/2/4/20080125,00.shtml
You think things are difficult today with /var/folders? Dude, you never had it so good. Look what they did back in 2007.

See Also
Industry Watch: RELEASE: SEAHAVEN IN LIGHTMAN FOR MAC

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