Red's Ramblings v.2

You may have noticed that on Friday I collected a copy of Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard. I arrived at the Trafford Centre with an hour to spare before the 6pm re-opening and by that time there was already a queue of around 60-70 people. Some free water, coffee and the efforts of the Apple Store staff to entertain the crowds saw the hour pass. At 6pm there must have been a few hundred people.

I was a bit jaded after trying the Leopard Beta but I was wholly to blame as Beta software is just that, unfinished, so I was a bit apprehensive as to how I was going to find the final release. I have to say that I’m loving it.

It is true to say that while improvements can always be made 10.4 Tiger was so good that you could have stopped there without complaint but Leopard has took its predecessor and given it a good bit of spit and polish. Overall the interface looks more unified and performance wise it feels very fast. Bear in mind that I’ve upgraded not done a clean install so I’m very happy with the performance. I’ve seem some comment that it felt a bit slow but what they may have failed to notice is spotlight doing a full re-index of the system.

There is plenty written already on the features of Leopard so I’ll not cover the same ground but I’ll give you a brief comment on some of the key features and my opinion of them.

Dock and menubar

When I tried the beta one of the things that I was unsure about was the 3D dock shelf. Ok, I was trying it out on my 15″ PowerBook rather than my 23″ HD display but even so it looked clumsy. It extended back into a screen where there was no depth to extend back into. I can’t tell you what’s changed, maybe its a combination of things but now it looks great.

There are mixed feelings on the transparent menu bar too. I can’t really comment as mine has stayed grey on the PowerMac and only very slightly transparent on the PowerBook. Looking in the discussion forums no-one really knows why but those one either side of the fence want what the other has.

Time Machine

I’ve set up my external disks and its done its stuff. I don’t make many mistakes so I can’t comment much beyond that. I’ll have to see how it is when I need it. I am disappointed that I couldn’t use the disk off the Airport Extreme Base Station

Mail

I’ll reserve judgement on the usefulness of tasks and notes in Mail. The same goes for RSS feeds. Stationary has been a bit of a novelty but most of the templates are a bit “girlie”
iChat

This is a big one for me. Its one that has had little mention beyond the effects which, incidentally, I can’t use as I’m not using an Intel box. The main one for me is screen sharing. I think that’s going to be a life saver for some of the support work I do and for helping out family and friends.

I did some testing with Pete Callaway in a video chat with some mixed results. Generally the quality of video was good and we shared some files and iPhoto slideshows. The disappointment came with trying a Keynote file which just displayed in a window that I had to manually move around. I intend to look closer into it as I’ve just installed the trial of iWork 08.

Back to my Mac

This worked great on the local network but tests from a remote connection were a problem. It sees that I have my PowerMac logged into .Mac but I got connection failed. I have an AEBS so I wasn’t expecting problems. I’ve seen an article saying that they are ironing out problems so I’ll wait and see.

Spaces

I’ve used You Control: Desktops before and have occasionally found them to be useful. It depends on the task so I expect to use this in the future.

Coverflow and quick view

I’m surprised and pleased at how well this performs. Everything is very smooth with the coverflow and it reads in the previews very quickly. Talking of speed I’m impressed on how fast quicklook opens documents. This is definately a feature that will save time. I’ve already found some documents and images that I’d forgot all about in my document folders using the new view.

Conclusion

A conclusion. That sounds all “school report” but a conclusion this is. Leopard isn’t a great leap forward. It never needed to be. Its one of those things that is greater than the sum of the parts, and there are a lot of parts, many of them very small. I think its one of those updates that is subtle but will make a notable difference. I’ve no doubt that in a few months I will get a chance to use a machine running Tiger and it will feel “old”. I think that sums it up.