I Can Has Leopard
Speaking of Leopard, I picked it up at the Apple store just a few minutes after it went up for sale. I’ve been playing with it over the weekend. So far, I’m very happy, though it’s difficult to “play with” an operating system. The real test comes from using it for your every day stuff.
What I can say is that I’m mostly happy with the visual changes. Many people have complained about the new look of the dock, and the folder icons. While I think the new dock is attractive, I find it to be not as usable as the simple one. Luckily, a much more usable, and equally attractive option is only a Google away. As for the folder icons, I like them. The special versions are not quite as easy to pick out since they’re lower contrast than the previous versions, but they’re more unified looking and make thing seem less cluttered.
I’ve actually been using the OS on my main personal machine full time since WWDC, so I’ve seen it go through some changes. In an earlier build, when you clicked on a folder inside of a stack, it showed that folder in the stack view. I liked that better than the retail version which opens the clicked folder in finder view.
Stacks, in general, I have mixed feelings about. I love their functionality, but I don’t like the way they’re displayed on the dock. Since they’re displayed as a stack of their contents, it’s difficult to tell them apart from each other at a glance or quickly differentiate them from minimized windows. Hopefully, Apple will provided a way for them to be displayed as plain ole folders or arbitrary icons in the future.
The last thing I’ve seen mentioned a lot is the removal of the backup via network drive feature that was present in earlier builds. I have some ideas about why this may have been removed, but my hope is that it was just not ready and we’ll see 10.5.1. Based on some apparent differences in the way things are implemented in the retail release, I’m thinking this might not be the case.
Overall, Leopard is a win for everybody. My recommendation for any new major OS release is to wait until after the first patch, which should be no more than a few weeks, but I would recommend upgrading to Leopard to anyone one that happens.