My apologies for the lack of updates lately. I've been having more issues with my back and last week spent another 4 days at St. Joe's. I think most are aware that Leopard has already seen its "dot-one" release, quashing many early bugs but still leaving issues for some. However, I've found Leopard to be, for the most part, a very enjoyable and problem-free upgrade on all four of our machines here: a 1.25GHz eMac 1GB RAM, 12" PB DVI (1GHz, 1.25GB RAM), 17" PB 1.67GHz 1.5GB RAM, and a 15" 1G MBP 2.0GHz CD 2GB RAM. My machine got the Archive and Install treatment after creating a clone on an external drive of my Tiger install. I was very happy with this one as this is my machine for compiling Camino, and for the most part all I needed to do was install XCode 3 to recreate my build environment, much less messy than the myriad recursive symlink errors I saw after upgrading to Tiger. I believe the other three got the simple Upgrade treatment, and other than some minor printing and Airport issues, we got everything resolved painlessly and are all enjoying the benefits of 21st Century computing!

I've also been updating the iLife/iWork suites on all the machines. My MBP is the only one that meets the steep hardware requirements of iMovie '08. I'd love to find a hack to at least get it on the 17"PB, as we've got a HDD-based JVC Camcorder that's file format is now supported natively in '08, unlike '06 where a messy routine of downloading, exporting, and importing was needed to bring video from the camera into iMovie, at a high lose of quality.

Many 3rd-party apps found that some tweaks were needed to improve Leopard compatibility. Again, nothing too serious. With many of these programs now using the Sparkle framework for software updates, most of the time all it takes is launching the program to find and install the update. Gotta love those 3rd-party Mac developers!

I see tonight that Firefox 2.0.0.10 has been released. This is mainly a security update. If your interested in seeing the future of Firefox, version 3 is not in the Alpha stage (I've been building and testing Intel-optimized versions on about a weekly basis, on top of my nightly Camino builds). FF3 is already seeing some good press, as the devs seem refocused on user experience, with speed and ease of use being front and foremost. Test out a nightly build if you're interested, they're pretty stable at this point. If anyone is interested in testing any of my Intel-only builds, check out http://homepage.mac.com/joelcraig23/FileSharing2.html

Don't forget next Monday is the monthly Coffee at the Joliet Panera. We'll just meet in the general dining area somewhere, maybe in the cushy chairs over by the west windows? Both rooms are reserved, so we're on our own. I'm sure we'll have some Leopold machines should anyone want to play. Until then, Happy Shopping!

J