[mattw]

I'm just running through testing my games in 10.5 and Virtual Grand Prix 2 runs but something seems different - I have to click the mouse to get past the startup screens and to get back to the menus - I'm sure I used to press a key on the keyboard?

I also tried Nascar 2003 and this worked but there was a much longer delay loading the data after choosing a track.

Has anyone else noticed either of these symptoms?

[Lemon Lime]

Applications need to be optimized to run the way they should on a new OS. Welcome to the world of computing.

(Yeah, i know how sarcastic that sounded, but really, it's kind of an obvious question).

[Eric5h5]

Well...no...one of the things about 10.4 was there was supposed to be a kernel API freeze, so there would be less breakage in future OS versions (such as 10.5). Obviously there have been some exceptions to that, though I don't have the games mentioned so I can't comment on those. But I expect the vast majority of programs continue to work just fine as-is.

--Eric

[mattw]

Eric5h5, on October 28th 2007, 12:08 PM, said:

Well...no...one of the things about 10.4 was there was supposed to be a kernel API freeze, so there would be less breakage in future OS versions (such as 10.5). Obviously there have been some exceptions to that, though I don't have the games mentioned so I can't comment on those. But I expect the vast majority of programs continue to work just fine as-is.

--Eric

Unfortunately from my testing on my G5 many more games seem to be broken going from 10.4 to 10.5 then when I went from 10.3 to 10.4. From memory I can only recall the FAKK2 beta breaking moving to Tiger. I will post in the Mac OS section my results so far with Leopard and see if others can replicate the issues. I did an erase and install on a separate drive and moved games and user preferences/application support files across from my Tiger install.

[Lemon Lime]

Tiger->Leopard was generally a bigger move than Panther->Tiger, so more bugs/crashes in non-optimized apps are to be expected.

I'm sort of starting to regret putting Leopard on my production machine so early...

[Eric5h5]

Actually the even-numbered releases have been "technology" releases and the odd-numbered releases have been "features" releases (so are in a sense less different), at least so far, but last I heard the two OS teams might be integrated now? Anyway, unless something else is going on, seems like they managed to break more stuff anyway....

--Eric

[Tesseract]

Eric5h5, on October 28th 2007, 11:08 PM, said:

one of the things about 10.4 was there was supposed to be a kernel API freeze, so there would be less breakage in future OS versions (such as 10.5).

That was an internal API freeze, and thus actually only helps compatibility for kernel extensions. Also, most app breakage is probably due to changes in the behaviour of libraries, not syscalls. OS X apps don't generally do syscalls directly, they go through functions in dynamically linked libraries.

[edddeduck]

Eric5h5, on October 28th 2007, 11:30 AM, said:

Actually the even-numbered releases have been "technology" releases and the odd-numbered releases have been "features" releases

Interesting idea, I never really thought of it like that and I would think that is more through personal view point than any major push inside Apple. It also depends on what you call a feature v.s. technology. For example masses of technology are added into 10.5 for Time Machine to work, but this is also a feature.

Eric5h5, on October 28th 2007, 05:08 AM, said:

Well...no...one of the things about 10.4 was there was supposed to be a kernel API freeze,

The kernel is just the big "brain" that runs the computer and as mentioned above will only really effect things that use kernel extensions (like some USB broadband modems and other items like that), normal apps and games don't use or need the kernel API so are unaffected by the change or lack of change. Although Apple are freezing and maintaining some API's to allow for stability other areas of the OS have lots of new features added on top.

Games in particular are designed to try and use every last trick of the OS to get you speed and beauty and as such they are the first in line to hit problems when new and improved versions of things like OpenGL get integrated. This has improved a lot I remember a 10.2 update breaking all our games due to a change in Quicktime which has not happened again in recent OS's. However as a new OS release is brand new and does not have 11 patches released for it the stability and small issues have not all been found and fixed.

Once you have fixed all of the issues and have the OS almost "perfect" it is time for the new version to be tested and released on the world and the whole game starts in ernest again!

Edwin

(Some lack of detail/simplification in areas of this post as I am trying to explain to your average computer user not a university lecture. )