Wait a while on Leopard: A prediction and a short list

[David Penick]

I have many third-party plugs that probably won't be ready for Leopard for a while. So I'm going to wait. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes six months in some cases. Thoughts?

So far, I've checked:
Waves: not supported
Reaktor: not supported
Motu: ready to go
IK Multimeda: not sure, but probably not ready
Ivory: not ready, but they are working on it


Feel free to add to the list

[Phil Jeffers]

I've decided not to upgrade at all for my G5. I'm gonna wait till I purchase an Intel CPU down the track (or other third party manufacturer for Apple??). I've waited a year for Waves to release AU versions for DP 5.12 (Pro Tools is always sooner, same with Nuendo). This is still only a Beta version, so I could be waiting another 2-3 months. I'm over it. I think OS X 10.4.x is pretty damn good - I'm happy with it, I'm skipping the rest of OS X's. In a year or two it'll be OS XI 10.5.x with a whole new bunch of bells and whistles. I think Mac has a lot to contend with Microsoft's Vista now. So many companies I know (who in the past were all strictly Mac) have gone XP and Vista. I love Mac, but I'm over the hype. Tiger is great; version 10.4.10 is fantastic for FW audio. I'm staying put - along with all plug-in compatibility (East-West, Absynth, MOTU, Waves, Focusrite).

[David Penick]

Sounds good. I'm happy with 10.4 too. Plus, who knows, it's possible that certain Leopard features will have to be disabled in order to have a stable, happy experience with LE 7.4. I currently have Dashboard and Spotlight disabled and don't miss them a bit. Except for Spotlight, of course.

[Tarkovsky]

With your point on vista I just couldn't disagree more. Vista uptake has been slow as admitted by microsoft. It's complex HDCP built into the OS actually slows it down, in contrast to Leopard which speeds up the interface in hardware as old the G4. 10.4 is very stable, and though Leopard lacks that for the moment, Vista which has been coded mostly from the ground up will continue to produce problems, whilst Leopard's strong base of tried and tested coding will ensure cool runnings once the kinks have been ironed out. Time machine is exceptionally usefull to anyone whose livelihood depends upon their data. Many security firms have claimed Vista is LESS secure than XP. Oh sure some companies will make the switch because their IT departments will want to look proactive, but consumers are moving away from the wintel platform as microsoft have failed to deliver much except a graphical improvement. In fact as GNU-Linux gains popularity and products such as 'Ardour' (open source DAW software) will probably take over from Logic, PTLE, Cubase et all. It may sound impossible but open source software develops much faster than the proprietary because development because good code can be reapplied, and redeveloped at a rate that 'greenfield' software cannot. I'm not advocating you move right away and ditch you're most loved plug-ins but it's a ridiculous position to slate leopard as simply a feature based improvement when it provides full 64-bit compatibility (which is important if you're using more than 4 gigs of ram), resolution independence and other 'under-the-hood' changes that lay the foundation for important development on the platform.

[David Penick]

In terms of 64-bit compatiblilty, does that mean that LE will have to be 64-bit compatible in order to function at full capacity on Leopard?

[Yosemite]

Hi Tarkovsky,

It is true that Vista sales were not as quick as many analysts predicted, but I think this is a minor miscalculation in the scheme of things - not evidence consumers (as a group) are moving away from the Windows platform. Open source applications and operating systems are experiencing some excellent growth, but so is the PC market as a whole. In the first five weeks Vista sales surpassed the entire Mac OSX install base as well as the sales of WinXP during the corresponding post launch period, so I'd say the rumors of Vista's demise are greatly exaggerated...

Yosemite

[mudman]

I understand that you can copy over Tiger onto an external firewire hard drive and boot from it into Tiger. Has anyone tried this yet so it would allow you to load Leopard on your main drive and then just boot up into Tiger when you are going to use PT?

[tiscal]

Leopard and ProTools LE 7.3.1cs5 work fine for me on my PPC G5 at home.

However, I'm not running any type of MIDI gear and I know there has been some issue with PACE updates and Leopard. I'm also running the MBox original, and not many iLok required plug-ins, so I haven't had to deal with anything crazy yet. We are installing Leopard on one of our ProTools|HD systems currently, so I will update this when I know what does and doesn't work...i.e. Waves and other 3rd party plug-ins.

Best of luck to all

[David Penick]

Thanks for the info.