If you’ve taken even so much as a passing glance at Apple during the last few weeks, you will undoubtedly have noticed - among stories about iPhone hacking & SDK’s - a growing degree of hoopla around some newfangled thing called “Leopard”.

Leopard is Apple’s brand new version 10.5 of the Mac OS X operating system - it continues the trend of naming their OS’s after jungle cats, and it’s their reply to Microsoft’s Windows Vista… It arrives this week. Will it have what it takes to out-”Wow” Vista ?

Developers and early testers have apparently found a lot to like with Leopard, both on the surface and under the hood. As IMG’s resident Mac guy, I’ll certainly be looking to get hold of a copy once it is released. I plan to keep a log of my experiences with Leopard, from the installation and first impressions, to detailed how-to’s. Stay tuned to Inspect My Gadget over the coming weeks as the saga unfolds.

In the meantime, Apple has posted a webpage which lists a grand total of
316 new features, tweaks and improvements that have gone into Leopard. For a small sample of my favourites, read on…

Obviously some features will appeal or detract more than others depending on what kind of user you are, but here are some of the ones from the list that I’m looking forward to, in no particular order:

• Time Machine - this one will be huge. It finally brings ’set-&-forget’ automated backups to the average user, and makes it dead easy. It’ll certainly make external hard drive manufacturers very happy.
• Spaces - Apple’s implementation of virtual desktops/workspaces. The concept has been around for some time, but it’s never come standard with a mainstream OS until now. I will be interested to see what kind of uses I can make from it.
• New Desktop & Screensavers - What can I say, I’m always a sucker for system software bling.
• Stacks - I’ve always been into reducing desktop clutter, this looks like it’ll be a great way to do it.
• DVD Player - now has a new interface, better handling of scratched discs, and improved video deinterlacing. Already a substantial improvement on the original - now all it needs is support for interactive content and I’ll be a happy camper.
• Instant Screen Sharing - FINALLY a way to view & control another Mac on a network without having to shell out money for Apple Remote Desktop. Microsoft has had free Remote Desktop connection built in to Windows for years. It’s about time, Apple! (<– I didn’t write that!, Ed)
• Folder Sharing - previously if you wanted to share content on a network, you had to do it from your Home “Public” folder (unless you had Mac OS X Server). Now any folder can be shared. Again, Windows has had this feature for some time - good to see it come to the Mac.
• Font Auto-Activation - As a graphic designer, I’m very happy about this one. If a program specifically requests a font that’s disabled, Leopard will activate that font for as long as that program is open, and disable it again when it quits. Previously, you needed a third party program like Suitcase to do this sort of thing.
• Core Animation & updated OpenGL - This is more for developers, but the possibilities for the end user are fantastic.
• Wireless Capture - Lets you import images from Wi-Fi & Bluetooth cameras & devices. Sounds like it’ll be a great way to get photos directly off my mobile phone without resorting to Bluetooth File Exchange.
• Network Scanning Support - The office I work in will benefit from this one.
• Mail - I couldn’t care less about the new HTML formatting templates and RSS feeds in Apple’s email program, but I can certainly see how the integrated Notes & To-Do’s can be handy.
• Preview - Apple’s basic image & PDF viewing app just got less basic! I’m blown away by almost every feature Apple has listed under this heading. Suffice to say that certain things you used to need Adobe Acrobat Professional for, you can now do with Preview.
• Printing - Again, I’m looking forward to just about every feature listed in this section. Location-aware printing will certainly be a godsend for laptop owners, and improved CUPS support will further open the Mac to third-party & open source printer driver development.
• Resizable Disk Partitions - Previously the only way to resize disk partitions was to reformat the drive. This is nothing short of amazing.
• Guest Login - FINALLY! I really don’t know why this didn’t come to the Mac sooner. While it is possible to create a user account with limited access privileges and call it “Guest”, it’s good to be able to set up a PROPER Guest account.
• TextEdit - Now it can handle MS Word 2007 and OpenDocument
  (OpenOffice) formats. Just how well it can maintain formatting & layout remains to be seen, but at least it can open them.

Obviously, there’s more I could choose from, but at the risk of regurgitating what’s already on Apple’s website, I invite you to click here to check out the full list for yourself. The list doesn’t even cover the features that Mac OS X Server will include!

I’ll be writing up on my experiences with Mac OS X Leopard once I manage to get hold of a copy, so keep an eye out here at Inspect My Gadget.