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Mac OS X Leopard Server 10.5 (we tested both 10.5 and 10.5.1) has a lot of the new and interesting eye candy Apple has become known for, but it is more about supporting incremental user productivity software advances than it is about large scale platform or functional advances.
Slideshow: Top 10 things we love and hate about Leopard Server
Newly added to this version are phased, wizard-like installation scripts that are designed to appeal to a less technical audience than say, one that typically installs a Linux back-end or Microsoft’s Small Business Server system. Leopard now points Mac OS X specifically towards smaller organizations and workgroups rather than the more open-ended prior releases.
Apple has paid attention to hardware performance improvements. Leopard supports 64-bit server platforms in identical fashion with the G4-based and Intel-based platforms.
And Apple has announced that it won’t mind if you virtualize Leopard (although there were no production virtualization schemes currently available for Leopard Server at the time of testing) as long as the virtual machine is also running on an Apple hardware platform. This tie-in between hardware and operating system reminds us of computing relationships of the 1980s, where operating systems were tied to hardware platforms in a very strict way. Apple’s competitors have all evolved away from these types of direct hardware/software binding ties. Some argue these ties make Apple’s platforms more stable. That’s laudable, but you pay for it in terms of device, communications and storage flexibility.
Our initial testing of Leopard’s Apple 10.5 turned up a long list of bugs ranging from authentication difficulties to searching issues to Windows networks linking problems, but there is no sense in going too deeply into those because most if not all are cured with the recommended (free) update, which was rolled out mid-November.
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Copyright 2008 Network World Inc.
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Why so harsh on Time Machine? By Anonymous on December 10, 2007, 3:06 pm Reply | Read entire comment You seem awfully harsh on Time Machine, at least if the perjorative results from the three complaints you mention. I'm not sure what usage model you expect,...
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