Ok, so we happily raced out and picked up OS X Leopard. Yes, we know about the benfits of waiting for .1 releases on OS systems, but frankly, Time Machine is worth the headaches that come with .0 software. Not to mention the unified GUI. I can’t even launch programs on my wife’s G4 PowerBook without cringing now.
Anyhow, this post is not to extoll all the virtues of OS X Leopard. If you want a detailed, seriously in-depth review, see John Siracusa’s article at Ars Technica. This post is going to list out a few loves and a few hates at this point. Let’s go.
What I am not loving about OS X Leopard:
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iCal event notifications
If i copy and past an event from week to week, notifications get completely hosed up. The new version of the event will not recognize responses from attendees. -
iCal edit window for events
This is one of those love / hate UI elements. I hate it. The floating menu that comes up when you are editing an event in iCal is too small to work in comfortably. It floats around iCal and very quickly looses the association it had with the event item on the calendar. I’m really missing the tray as far as iCal event go. -
Spaces
Yes. I’m not in love with spaces. It is close to being really useful. IF Apple can figure out a way to allow application windows to move from space to space, then Spaces will be a killer feature in OS X. Until then ... I’m still an Expose guy. -
Notes / To-do items in Mail
To be honest, I played with them for about 3 minutes after installation and then haven’t touched them since. I know they are there. I just can’t fit it into my current to-do / notes system, which is Basecmap.
What I am loving about OS X Leopard:
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Unified GUI
I can’t tell you how jarring it is to load up any application on my wife’s G4 PowerBook now that I have been immersed in Leopard for a few weeks. The unified look is worth the upgrade alone if you are an interface snob like me. -
Time Machine
Yup. Time Machine is the killer feature of OS X Leopard in my opinion. Time Machine has taken the most mundane of tasks, backing up your data, and made it into a set it and forget it feature. Plug in an external drive, tell Time Machine to use it, rest easy. Time Machine even lets me find draft copies of emails if you hunt around hard enough. Everything is there. -
Spotlight
Spotlight in OS X 10.4 sucked. I used Quicksilver for 4 years because Spotlight just didn’t cut it. Spotlight in Leopard has clearly been influenced heavily by the great work of Quicksilver. Spotlight now finds apps, files, contacts and pretty much everything on your hard drive in seconds. Applications appear first (usually) and launching them is as fast as it was under Quicksilver. Spotlight works so well that in 2 weeks, I have yet to reinstall Quicksilver. -
Quick Look
Damn if I didn’t think cover-flow was just a gimmick to sell more copies of OS X. While it still might be, the ability to tap Sapcebar while in Finder, which then brings up the Quick Look window is indispensable. I can now instantly see web layout comps without launching a graphics program. I can read PDFs quickly. I can even pop open a text file and look at it if I want to. And with Numbers installed and setup to handle Excel files by default, taking quick looks at spread sheets is actually fun! -
Mail
The new data aware Mail under Leopard, which finds names, dates and contact information, then allows you to pick options from a menu when you hover over detected data, is fantastic. Adding contacts to Address Book, and sending events to iCal with just a click or two is HUGE time saver.
Those are my current few loves and hates for OS X Leopard. Do you have something you love about Leopard? Leave it in the comments and we will compare notes later.