Seattlest: Ask a Mac Nerd: What's the Deal with Leopard?

8bitjake

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:19:29 -0800

Not just animals.. They are names after preditory cats. They are development codenames that stuck and are pretty cool. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OSX "Mac OS X versions are named after big cats. Prior to its release, version 10.0 was code named "Cheetah" internally at Apple, and "version 10.1 was code named internally as "Puma". After the immense buzz surrounding version 10.2, codenamed "Jaguar", Apple's product marketing began openly using the code name to promote the operating system. 10.3 was marketed as "Panther", and 10.4 as "Tiger". "Leopard" is the name for the current release version 10.5. "Panther", "Tiger" and "Leopard" are registered as trademarks of Apple, but "Cheetah", "Puma" and "Jaguar" have never been registered. Apple has also registered "Lynx" and "Cougar" as trademarks."

Katelyn

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:27:32 -0800

I never did update to Vista. Question: why are all the OSXs named after animals, and who chooses which animals are chosen? Will we ever see a Goat? or a Dog? They should have done the animals of the zodiac, that would have been very fashion-forward of Apple.

npdoty

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 12:03:22 -0800

Did anyone notice that the University Village Apple Store was closed this week? So instead of getting a free Leopard t-shirt at an awesome Leopard release party, Seattle Mac users were left dazed and confused standing in front of a black wall which cruelly announced renovations. It was devastating.

8bitjake

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:10:15 -0800

Actually Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger was meant to compete with Vista. Apple has a new OS version about every 18 months while Microsoft is averaging about six years or so between major releases (Filled with a hell of a lot of bug fixes) And I would say that the real reason for updates to the Mac OS is to sell more Macs and iPods. Not to compete with Windows directly but to sell more Apple stuff. I am running 10.4 on my G4 iBook and I will probably keep with this OS version until I replace it in a couple years or so. Time Machine is pretty spiffy. I've been doing all my backups with an external hard drive and DiskCopy. There is a bunch of under the hood changes to 10.5 and hopefully us PPC 10.4 users won't be put out to pasture to soon by newer software developers