Psst. Wanna copy of Leopard? It's online mate

Andy Merrett Computers
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Another operating system, another developers conference, another software leak.

Are we surprised that there are rogue beta copies of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) floating around filesharing networks online. Nah, I don’t think so.

What makes me laugh is that (as reported by Tech World) ‘early responses from people claiming to use the software report that certain parts of it feel incomplete’. Well duh! It’s beta software for an OS that’s not due for release for at least 6 months, and which Steve specifically told us has some additional features still under wraps. What did they expect… a full working version?

I expect Apple won’t be happy, but not particularly surprised, that this has happened. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. Give a CD to a few hundred developers and expect them all to keep it under wraps? Don’t think so, despite the non-distribution agreements they have to sign at events like WWDC06.

Whether it will make any difference to people’s perception or interest in Apple’s next OS – I doubt it. We’ve already seen what Apple wants us to see – the rest is presumably still hidden and will remain that way for a good few months yet. There’ll be some comments on Apple sites and forums, but it’ll neither hurt nor boost Apple. Of course, the software online may not be a legitimate beta copy of the OS at all. More fool anyone who downloads and trusts it on a working Mac.

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Andy Merrett
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4 comments

  • You’re right “another anon coward”. I wondered if there might be some ID embedded – it wouldn’t be difficult.

    title’s = title has – At least your title has. 🙂

  • The beta being used at all the WWDC sessions was remarkably stable. I saw maybe 2 issues the entire week and none were related to the stability of the OS itself. People who have released their NDAd copies of Leopard should be sued and then banned from ADC and future WWDCs. I wouldn’t mind having a unique code embedded in the betas, so that Apple could find out who the leaker was.

    Rather than ‘working Mac’, you meant to say ‘production Mac’.

    ‘your title’s come out right’? Why the apostrophe? Was this supposed to be possesive or a contraction such as ‘all you base are belong to us’?

  • I know what an NDA is ‘dummy’ but it wasn’t necessarily an NDA. Just because what I chose to say has the same initials, it doesn’t mean that I don’t know what an NDA is. Logically, in layman’s terms (I’m not a lawyer – no really?) it would be a non-distribution agreement. Non-disclosure would be even stricter and yet I see plenty of developers talking about what’s in OS X.

    I’m sure the original beta does run beautifully – it’s Apple.

    “Is there a non-working Mac?” Well obviously, it’s a Mac that doesn’t work. It was meant to mean that anyone loading potentially tampered software onto a Mac in their working environment, rather than a test server.

    At least your title’s come out right. If you want to insult, at least have the guts to identify yourself. Moron to you too. Oh well, at least you can spell it (http://www.fool45.com/how/how-badly-can-you-misspell-moron/)

  • It’s “non-disclosure agreement”, dummy. As in NDA.

    A better pissed off you still cannot run it? It runs beautifully, don’t you worry.

    -a fool who downloaded and trusted it on a working Mac. (“working” Mac? Is there a non-working Mac? Moron)

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