Just the other night, my wife, not really big on computers herself, came over to me by my computer and said to me “So what’s good about this Leopard thing?”. I managed to suppress an expression of mild indignation - the kind a hot-rod enthusiast might have made if their shiny beefed-up beast got called a “car thing” - and proceeded to show her just what was so good about “this Leopard thing” that her husband seemed to be so preoccupied with. After a week or so of using it as my main day-to-day Operating System, I can share with you too, in no particular order of preference, what I’ve enjoyed so far, and what has annoyed me so far, about Mac OS X Leopard…

I must say, first of all, that I’m enjoying Spaces - Apple’s version of virtual desktops - a lot. If you’re familiar at all with Exposé, the method of organising and switching among windows which was introduced in Mac OS X Panther, then you’ll find Spaces to be a natural complement to Exposé. Indeed, they both occupy the same spot in the System Preferences control panel - like they were made for each other. Exposé takes every window in every program and lays their thumbnails side-by-side so you can see them all at a glance and jump straight to the one you want.

Read on for more… 

Spaces takes Exposé to the next level - it effectively allows you to group these windows into their own individual panels, or ’spaces’, on a grid. Your screen shows only one Space at a time, but you can switch between them, removing one group of windows from the screen and replacing it with a different group. Right now, I’ve got a 2×2 grid of Spaces happening. I assigned all my Finder windows to open in one particular Space, iTunes into another Space, email & web browsing to another Space, and my Adobe programs to open into yet another Space. It really does help keep the clutter of windows down - if you’re using a laptop, you’ll especially appreciate Spaces.

I haven’t yet had a chance to try out Apple’s Time Machine backup program with my external drive, however upon connecting the drive to my computer, I was immediately given a message asking me if I wanted to use it for Time Machine. Clicking “Yes” would have started Time Machine, and it would have started backing up the entire contents of my hard drive right then & there. The preferences for Time Machine consist of a large ‘On/Off’ switch, and a panel where I can tell it what NOT to back up. It’s hard to see how Apple could have made backing up any simpler.

The Dock - that strip of icons down the bottom of the screen - seems to be the one area of Leopard that’s come under fire from long-time Mac users. It’s now become a 3-D glass shelf upon which your icons sit, each one giving off a subtle reflection. In fact, if you drag a window near enough to it, that window will reflect too. Opinions have varied so far, but I actually find the glassy look quite funky. My only beef is that the little black marker which told you which programs were running is now a little light-blue LED dot, which doesn’t contrast well against the glass sheen.

The Dock also happens to be where ‘Stacks’ - the other main complaint from users - reside. The initial idea behind Stacks was to help remove the clutter of icons from the average desktop and bundle them together into one place on the Dock, keeping them accessible while not taking up space. This it does do rather well - you drag a whole bunch of icons onto the Dock and they become a Stack. Click on the Stack and it will show you a grid of the icons it contains. In theory, it’s a great idea. Unfortunately, the problem comes when you put a folder on the Dock. Before Leopard, it was possible to navigate these folders through a hierarchical menu. But once a folder comes onto the Dock, it becomes a Stack, and you lose that hierarchical menu functionality. I do hope Apple bring it back for the next patch update.

Quick Look is proving to be quite handy. Basically, if you click once on a file, and press Space Bar, you can browse through the contents of a file without opening the application it belongs to. So far, it works for text documents, movies, pictures & PDFs. Apparently it’s extendible, so 3rd-party programmers can tap into it to handle other file formats. Cover Flow has now made its way from iTunes and into standard Leopard windows - I’ve been using it to browse through my past & present graphics files. Working together with Quick Look, it’s a pretty neat way of browsing content and seeing at a glance what they contain.

On a basic interface level, I find it interesting that Apple’s window appearance seems to be returning to the days of OS 9 - After seven years, it seems grey is making a comeback. The very first Mac OS X hit us in the face with completely white windows & blue gummy buttons, differentiating itself completely from the old Mac system it replaced. Then slowly but surely, with each new version of the system, subtle touches of grey have been worked in here & there. Apple seemingly experimenting & refining as they went, until finally we have the somewhat darkened grey that is now prevalent in Leopard. Just what you might think of grey is a matter of taste and practicality - I find Leopard’s grey interface is just a smidgen too dark for me, but not enough that I couldn’t live with it. After long periods at the screen, though, it’s not overbearing and it IS easier on the eyes…

Finally, I have a miscellaneous grab bag of thoughts, again in no particular order:

• Finally I can now send files to Bluetooth devices via contextual menu. Windows seems to have already had this feature, but good to see it finally come to the Mac. Now I don’t need to use Bluetooth File Exchange so much! 
• Built-in file-compressing via contextual menu is now helpfully named 
  “Compress…” instead of “Create Archive of…” (It uses ZIP, by the way)
• TextEdit, the Mac’s basic text editor & viewer, now has AutoSave. Yeah!
• I’m loving the new Screen Savers and new iTunes Visualisers. No doubt put there to show off Core Animation.
• The Currency Conversion dashboard widget now includes lots more currencies than before, with some money types you probably didn’t even know existed (at this time of writing, 1 Australian dollar gets you 3.373 Qatari Rial) - and “Australian Dollar” is no longer at the bottom of the list. I should THINK not, Apple! * You can now use Apple’s Dictionary program to look up Wikipedia articles.
• My favourite comic-viewing dashboard widget, Wimic, now doesn’t render properly under Leopard - the outside border is a bit mangled, but at least I can still read the comics intact, so I’m not complaining too much. A little annoyed though.
• I’m impressed with Leopard’s new Networking preferences - you can now tweak things even further in depth - but not sure what to make of Leopard’s new firewall though. The only options here are “Allow all”, “Block all” and “Allow/Deny by application” (in addition to ‘Stealth Mode’ and ‘Logging’). The staggering thing here is that “Allow all” is set by default. Apple really should fix this for the next patch update. Some extra control settings would be nice too.
• Spotlight searching, introduced in Tiger, now seems faster & more responsive. Plus it has a few more tricks: You can finally do Boolean AND/OR/NOT searches, you can search your web browser’s history cache, get dictionary definitions, and also answers to Maths sums too.
• The Help menu now has its own Spotlight search bar. Handy!
• I’m looking forward to getting Leopard installed on my work computer so I can see how well Screen Sharing works. As it is, the only thing keeping it from being deployed there is an incompatibility with FileMaker Pro, which we rely on for our database. As one of only two Mac IT guys in my workplace, I’d love the ability to fix someone else’s computer remotely without leaving my desk.
• While taking partial screenshots for this article, I noticed the crosshair now displays pixel co-ordinates. Neat! Yet another of those little “attention to detail” touches Apple are known for.

So with all that said, what’s my opinion on Leopard? Overall, I think there’s more to like than not. New features like Time Machine, Spaces and Quick Look make file browsing, managing screen clutter and backing up easy.

Compatibility is very good - a lot of programs I’ve run through it still hold up happily under Leopard. Major developer-friendly improvements under the hood means the potential for some great applications in the future from programmers.

The annoyances/bugs I’ve mentioned above are relatively minor ones and can easily be fixed via update patches from Apple or third-party utilities (As I speak, a new Leopard-compatible version of TinkerTool has just been released).

Particularly regarding things like the firewall defaults and Stacks/Dock functionality. Apple do have a history of listening to their customers in the end, so I have every confidence those shortcomings will be addressed soon.

In the meantime, for the obsessive-compulsive among you, a completely thorough review of Leopard from top to bottom & inside out can be found here.

For the more visual person, Engadget features a Leopard vs. Vista Chart Showdown.

And finally, some useful Leopard tips, tricks and hints can be found 
in the link.

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