Day one with Leopard.
I picked up my copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard from the Apple Store area of BestBuy (it must be a new thing, I didn’t question it) last night. I rushed in at 6:00pm sharp to beat the crowds (the Apple rep there told me there would be a lineup) only to find a lonely unmanned stall with a full compliment of Leopard boxes locked behind glass… not a single copy sold. I swear I am the only Mac user in Kitchener Ontario… Anyhow, I spent the evening downloading all the latest releases of all my apps (VersionTracker Pro.app is the bomb for that stuff), and backing up my drives, and backing those up on more drives, and so on. Then this morning I pulled out TechTool Pro and ran the full suite, to get me all optimized and what not (I would hate to copy over a mess of frags and discombobulations to the new setup). I also had a fresh new 500 Gb SATA drive ready to migrate to. Once I felt safe and secure, I popped in my Leopard DVD. No, I did not perform any sick, Apple product disrobing ceremony and no, I most certainly will not post pictures of how I opened the box.
So all went smoothly despite all the FUD I had read on MacFixit over the last few days. The install and migration took all of about two hours, including updating apps that didn’t make the cut so well and resetting keyboard shortcuts that got jumbled in transit. So here are a few thoughts;
Finder…
Cooler than before… but it still sucks. Path Finder still blows it out of the water from a productivity standpoint.
Coverflow
Coverflow is cool if you don’t keep anything in folders, but not so cool when you actually organize your life. You know where coverflow is cool? In iTunes! ‘Nuff said.
Quick Look…
Path Finder has had that built right in for quite some time and still does it better IMHO.
iChat…
I might have to open that app for the second time since it’s introduction way back when… I do think the desktop sharing is going to be cool though
Time Machine…
Now here is a great piece of software that is going to get in the wrong hands and generate all sorts of false security. For a guy like me this is cool because I will still do my regular cron backups, but I will have time machine going too. Why? Because time machine only keeps backups for as long as there is space n the disk to hold it. You can’t just keep shoveling crap into and figure it will be there for all time. I guess what I am saying is, don’t start arbitrarily cleaning off your main drive without a care in the world because you think Time Machine has got your back. I still recommend a daily regiment of backup, preferably automated.
The Dock…
There is a lot of extraneous visual information here that really impedes productivity. Until I get used to seeing reflections and transparencies and swoopty Web2.0-like lines and what not, I am going to struggle to see active versus inactive apps. This isn’t a huge deal for me though since I rarely use the dock but still, trying to spot those shining lights is a little tough, especially if you use the default star-scape desktop background.
Stacks…
Could be cool and I definitely plan to really play around with it. This is one of those new features, like expose, that might be a sleeper concept but something that everyone should use to make life faster. As of right now though I have the two default stacks. I have one for my Downloads folder (which I made myself and put in a special place, so how did it know where to find it?) and one for my Documents folder. And my documents folder is not one that should ever be sprung open without fair warning. It’s a big, scary, messy, unorganized place that should strike fear into all those who stumble upon it unsuspectingly.
Front Row???
Did I miss this in the press release somewhere? I have a Mac Pro… which has no IR capabilities… therefor Front Row is disabled… except now??? I did try to hack it a long time ago, but the hack never worked. Or did it?
Speed…
For all the griping that I may have had with all points above, that all pails by comparison to the fact that Leopard is FAST. Nothing add up to productivity like speed and Leopard has bags of it!
Was it all that bad to have made the switch? No, I am actually glad I did. The experience so far has been enjoyable… I just complain a lot. It was a quick and painless transition that could not have been any easier. WELL worth the $129 price tag… worth double if you ask me.
[tags]Mac, OS X, 10.5, Leopard[/tags]
November 30th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
[...] has ashamedly released in the last decade. I had suspected some of Time Machines downfalls in an earlier post postulating that Time Machine could in fact instill a very false sense of security. I have [...]