The long wait for the latest version of Apple’ OSX operating system comes to an end today for millions of Mac fans worldwide. OSX Leopard goes on sale in retail stores at 6pm, so neadless to say I found myself among the eager Mac fans outside the apple store in West Quay, Southampton, UK at around 5:30pm to have a chance of getting my hands on the long awaited OS.
Installation
This is the first time I've ever had an upgrade for a Mac system. Like many people i'm a late Mac convert (Mac sales are currently running at about 50% first time Mac buyers at the moment), so I had no expectations as to how the process might be. The start is easy enough: insert the DVD and you get an icon pop up automatically. Click and off you go, complete with a computer restart.
Installation time after this took around 30-40 minutes. A bit like a Windows machine the estimated time to install figure was fluid, often increasing then decreasing rapidly. Another restart then Leopard appeared.
The Finder
Immediately changes are obvious. Image files on your desktop showthe actual image, not just a generic icon. The dock bar is different,complete with shadows, window reflections etc.., but I knew to expect this. The biggest surprise was just how radically different Finder is. With Finder, think iTunes complete with coverflow. Flicking through files has become abreeze, and the ability to page through pdfs or even play a movie from within Finder will be a time saving godsend for many.
For those in a network environment, one of the most positive aspectsis that Leopard auto-mounts network computers and drives, including Windows machines and Windows share devices. In my case it auto-mounted the shares on my Windows Home Server and I had immediate access to it.
Personally I don't like the blue folder icons in the Finder, they are quite boring looking and almost fade into the background. If you are like me I set the default colour of my window backgrounds to a light grey (I find it's much easier on the eye when you are using you computer at night), however this only excentuates the problem further.
Spaces Is Handy
The new Spaces feature provides virtual desktops that are ideal forusers who tend to have too many things open at any give time, or don't own multiple monitors. it's a feature that comes standard with Linux,but it's new to Mac and isn't available natively in Windows.
Dock and Stacks
The dock and stacks feature allows you to drag and display multiple itemsfrom the OSX dock. it's a good feature that provides far easier access to folders than via the previous requirement of having to visit Finder (or via short cut then displayed in a Finder window). It does however remind me of Windows, but this isn't a bad thing. OSX is a great package, if Apple steals a few ideas from Windows to make it better so be it, after all it's the user that matters at the end of the day.
Don't Click The Time Machine Button
The only negative I found is Leopard is Time Machine. The feature itself is great, and setup a sinch, presuming you've got an additional hard drive (external or internal) for the backups. However, if Time Machine hasn't made a backup yet to visit, clicking the Time Machine button completely borks OSX, hell at least it did for me. I took me a number of restarts and some serious banging of the keyboard (no CTRL+ALT+DELETE on a Mac) to fix it. I'm sure now it's making backups that it will be a great feature, but just be warned: don't hit that button on your first day.
One thing that was a dissapointment to me is that you cannot use Time Machine with a network drive. The drive has to be physically connected to your Mac via USB or Firewire. Apparently this feature was dropped from the last beta's before Leopard shipped so I am hoping that it won't be long until this facility is enabled via a software update.
Summary
Overall it's just brilliant. From the moment the installation had finished it felt quicker and better for me, although perhaps it's just more mouse sensitive. A lot of the deficiencies in previous versions of OSX have been addressed and the new ways of undertaking basic interactions make what was already a good operating system better. It may have been a little long in coming, but for those thinking about upgrading it is worth the wait and money.
posted in: Apple