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Mac OS X Leopard First Impressions Any Mac user who is a technology enthusiast has no doubt been waiting anxiously for the release of Leopard since the announcement earlier this month of an October 26th release. At the time of writing this review i have already been running Mac OS X Leopard Version 10.5 for about 5 hours. This was made possible because I preordered the software, so it was overnighted (for free) and arrived around 9am today (Oct. 26th). It will not be available in Apple retail stores until 6pm, so I have a slight time advantage there. This is by no means a complete review of the new OS, but rather a quick look (no pun intended) and my first impressions. Packaging Installation New Features Time Machine: Time machine is one of those controversial new applications that I wasn't sure if I would like. My first instinct was not to use this feature, but I turned it on for the sake of review, and ended up keeping it on because it doesn't seem to impact performance at all, and therefore can't hurt. The point of time machine is to provide incremental backups to your system that you can "go back in time" to if you ever accidentally delete a file, or save a change to a file and then wish you had the previous version. This also means that you are making automatic backups every hour of your entire computer. Now, the ability to "go back in time" is fine if you're a person who accidentally deletes files often, but more importantly, this program is taking the chore out of backing up. Yes, everyone should backup regularly, but the truth is not many people do. In most cases it requires plugging in, then turning on your external hard drive, and then dragging over any new files which you want to back up. The problem with this method is you have to remember to backup in the first place, and even when you do, you may forgot to backup something. With Time Machine, the first time you plug in an external hard drive it asks if you would like to use it to backup. After choosing that hard drive as your backup device, the only other options are choosing certain files to exclude from the backup (if any) and then you're set. Just leave the hard drive on and connected and the computer will do the rest (see fig. 4). You wont have to worry about it until a problem arises. I applaud Apple for doing this because it will encourage people to backup, so that when (it's not a matter of if, but when) their hard drive fails, it's not as big of a headache. The only problem i see here is the interface, which isn't hard to use, but very obnoxious (see fig. 5), which doesn't seem like typical Apple fashion. Apple has been known for their simple, clean, professional interfaces, and this seems like a step in the wrong direction in my opinion. Spaces: Spaces is a multiple desktop management app. It lets you configure multiple desktops which you can switch to by holding down the shift button and pressing the corresponding number of the space, or an arrow key to get to the next space in that direction. The idea is to split up your different applications into different spaces for different types of work. For example, i can have my Mail.app and iChat running in one space, Photoshop and Dreamweaver in another, and iTunes running in yet another. This helps you stay organized and keep related app's together. You can even set specific applications to always open up in a specified space. Moving applications between spaces is simple and intuitive. You can either drag the application to the edge of the screen towards the space you want it in, which causes that space to load, or by using the birds eye view of all the spaces and dragging between them (see fig. 6). Stacks: In past versions of OS X, if you dragged a folder to the dock, it simply made a shortcut to that folder. In leopard it creates a stack, which opens when you click on the icon for that folder. This is basically a quick seamless way to quickly get at the contents of a folder that you access frequently. The contents can be displayed as a fan (see fig. 7) or as a grid (see fig. 8). I am big fan of this feature, especially for the infrequently, yet frequently accessed applications folder. Thumbs up in my book. Improvements A New Look: Immediately apparent is the new visual appearance of Leopard. The glossy white menu bar has been replaced with a semi-transparent matte white menu bar. This essentially allows some of the desktop wallpaper to show through at all times. The "scan lines" menus have also been replaced with clean white (also semi-transparent) ones.(see fig. 9). The dock has also been replaced with a what resembles a glass shelf (see fig. 10). Another minor change to the dock is that the traditional black triangle used to indicate active applications has been replaced with a small illuminated glass orb. With both the dock and the menu bar, basic functionality remains the same. The overall look of the OS has been unified as well. In Tiger, half the windows had the modern clean gray look that iTunes has had for a while, and all the new iLife 08' app's had. The other half had the legacy brushed aluminum interface, such as iChat and Safari. Now every window across the board has the clean gray interface. This does nothing to change functionality, but improves the overall feel of the OS as more of a finished product. Finder: Finder, while again not a major change, has been given an updated interface, which very closely resembles iTunes. This includes a new sidebar, and the new option of viewing your files in Cover Flow, which is another feature that iTunes has featured for some time. Cover Flow proves impractical in many cases, but in some is actually quite nice. The default icon view now also includes thumbnail images of the files, including documents. Quick Look: Hands down, my favorite feature in Leopard, and one of the biggest time savers and improvements to file browsing in recent years. Simply point to almost any common file type, tap the space bar, and the file opens up instantly. I know this doesn't sound very impressive at first, and when I first heard about it, I didn't understand how that saved any time over opening it in its default program. For example, a movie file in QuickTime, or a picture file in Preview. Well, it definitely does save time if all you want to do is view the file. Quick Look also provides quick access to common tasks in the form of buttons (that change with the file type) at the bottom of the Quick Look window (see fig. 11) . In that example you can see there's an option to view the picture full screen, and also a button which adds the photo to iPhoto. Final Thoughts Mac OS X Leopard is a definitely a worthwhile upgrade if you want to get as much out of your computer as possible. Although it has its quirks, like Time Machine, Leopard comes off as a much more polished, professional looking, and functioning OS. Of course, as many of these improvements and new features are just fit and finish, there is no real need to rush out and pick up Leopard the first day it's released. By this i mean that nothing is going to stop working if you don't upgrade to Leopard right away. There is of course one contradiction to my previous statement and that is Boot Camp. If you were running Boot Camp under Tiger it was the beta version. Unfortunately the beta expires with the release of Leopard (which includes the final version of Boot Camp), so this will be one area in which Apple will force you to upgrade. On the other hand, if you're like me and enjoy the latest and greatest, there is no reason not to upgrade. The upgrade goes smoothly, none of your previously installed software stops functioning (at least in my case), and the OS is completely compatible with all of your hardware.
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