Danny Gorog06 November 2007, 3:23 AM
Overall Leopard compatibility with existing Mac apps is good, but we've got the low-down on bootup blue-screens, and Microsoft, Adobe and BigPond compatibility.
With Leopard already a week old (for the general public, anyway) there has been plenty of time to study its compatibility with third party software.
Overall, the news is good, and most of your existing apps should just work.
The well-known showstopper is Unsanity's Application Enhancer, which is silently installed by Logitech's mouse and keyboard drivers. If this is not uninstalled before updating to Leopard , your machine may go into a Windows-esque bluescreen mode at startup.
However, in the last week there have been plenty of other updates to improve Leopard compatibility and the best place to check for them is
here.
So far, notable updates include Filemaker, EyeTV, BBEdit, Newsfire, Transmit, XTorrent, Parallels (Beta, Build 5540) and Audio Hijack Pro.
Other big developers like Microsoft and Adobe have also reiterated that existing software is ready for Leopard, however smaller patches may be released to improve compatibility.
Adobe specifically noted that most of its Creative Suite 3 suite is certified and fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, including Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS3, GoLive CS3, Dreamweaver CS3, Fireworks CS3, Flash CS3, InCopy/InDesign CS3, and Contribute CS3.
However other applications like Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional and its professional video applications, including Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, After Effects CS3 Professional, Encore CS3, and Soundbooth CS3 will need updates. Adobe have also just issued an update to Flash player 9 which now includes better Leopard compatibility.
As Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac still runs in the Rossetta its 'compatibility' is also assured. Over at the Mac Mojo blog Microsoft state that not only is Office 2004 compatible with Leopard but it's 'very compatible'.
They did, however, note that there were a few issues and plan to release an update shortly, and that Office 2008, the upcoming release should work well with 'new Apple technologies like Time Machine, Spaces, and WebKit 3.'
At a local level, we've had confirmation from Bigpond that your Internet connection should be OK if you are running over standard Ethernet (on ADSL or wired Cable) and they are currently beta testing the updated connection software for their Next G product line (it's actually working with Sierra products but they are still waiting on drivers from Maxon and Opticon). Telstra also noted that Cable for Wi-Fi remains unsupported on the Mac.