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Well, after spending the entire day (it arrived via FedEX around 9:30AM), first loading and then poking around apple’s highly anticipated new operating system, OS X Leopard, I am finally sure of what I want to say about it. No surprise the new hotness from apple is sleek, clean and drop dead gorgeous.What I like about the system overall is that it seems a bit faster and runs easier, and by that I mean it seems like some apps don’t require as much ram, as its predecessor, Tiger.
All the features have been well doumented on every tech blog, newspaper & media outlet, and, of course, the apple website… so there’s little reason for me to go there.All of the additions are great for the OS, however, quite a few are not what I would call “new” ideas.
Everyone’s been backing up their files for years, We’ve used FTPs to share files and Apple Remote Desktop and the like to remotely access other computers we owned. Cover flow has been around for awhile before apple bought it as likewise, multiple desktops is somewhat old hat. We’ve even had boot camp for, what, a year now.
What makes those and all the other features Leopard offers so dope, is how smooth and well integrated they are in the OS. All of those stand alone apps were such ram hogs, for me, they sometimes seemed unwieldy. Especially back in the day when I was working with a mac mini. On my 2 GHz / 2GB iMac, leopard’s got all my apps humming along. That is, the ones that still work.
All my main apps, which include stattoo, skitch, flock, think, sidenote & yojimbo are still doing their thing. However, I’m anxiously awaiting updates to some of my favorite haxies, like candybar, windowshade X, clear dock and shapeshifter because the current versions are kaput with Leopard. Like everybody else, I am so all about customization, so those can’t come soon enough. Some applications like last.FM and tinkertool are just behaving badly. But that aside, Leopard is damn hot. Stacks is very cool, I already deleted overflow. Time Machine is sick.
Spaces makes it so easy to organize and separate your work from play without the heavy ram burden of past applications. Adding cover Flow to finder was a masterstroke. The improvements to iCal mean I will probably be saying good bye to iGTD. I’m in love with the quick look feature in Finder. Ditto being able to access other macs on the home network through finder. The highly touted new data detection feature in Mail, where it automatically recognizes data like addresses and phone numbers didn’t always work. But that’s okay.
I haven’t tried iChat yet, but the new features look impressive enough for me to actually use it for the first time. Being able to collaborate on a project with another person through iChat’s new tools is awesome. One of the coolest things that has somewhat flown under the radar is the Back To My Mac feature added to .mac in system preferences. If you have multiple macs, you’ll love that when you’re traveling.With 300 new features I could go on a lot more than I care to.
Bottom line, Apple OS X Leopard thoroughly, completely and unequivocally lives up to its hype. Another home run in a year filled with long balls for a company that’s just annihilating their competition. It’s such a lopsided affair, you almost want to run in there and pull apple off of them. Seriously, it’s looking like a school yard fight between a first grader and a sixth grader.
It’s freakin’ borderline child abuse.
