MacOS X Leopard: Opinions?

[Buffy]

Has anyone bought Leopard yet?

 

Any opinions?

 

Tech question: did it ship with Safari 3.0? (which has been floating around very broken in beta for months....)

 

Enquiring minds want to know what Britney is ordering at Starbucks, :snow:

Buffy

[tmaromine]

Yes, and it's quite nice.

 

I have Safari 3.0.4, but I also had the 3 beta before I upgraded from Tiger, so I don't know what Leopard actually comes with.

 

I really like the UI, especially Finder and the look of windows in general. The 3D Dock is fine, but I also like the 2D Dock (there's two...), and I couldn't help but making my dock a reflective black. Transparent Menu Bar is fine with me also. Front Row now looks like that of the AppleTV, which is ok, but I think I prefer Tiger's. One almost wants to open Time Machine just to fly past windows in space (and TM works with more than just Finder – Address Book, iCal, Mail, iPhoto, and probably some others).

 

Some people have had freezes, and so have I had a few it seems. I had one just last night, and dumb me, I had an unsaved document open in TextEdit. I had completely forgotten about it until I opened TE again after the restart. Mostly, I remembered it because the unsaved document reopened ! That's one of Leopard's/OS X' beauties.

 

Also, there seems to be a screensaver problem where the screensaver process duplicates after a few minutes of running and you get two of the same screensavers fighting for the screen, creating a 'flicker'.

 

Overall, I like Leopard. I'd say it has a few more problems than Tiger had, but I'm sure Tiger had its own during it's first few months (10.5.1 is supposedly soon coming, which'll fix some things).

 

Any specific questions ?

[Tormod]

Leopard is excellent. The only thing that's majorly flawed is the upgrade process - after running the upgrade i was unable to log in, and my user had been deleted (but not my data, phew).

 

After doing an "archive and install", after which I still had to reinstall my apps due to the lost user thingy, I had a few initial problems. Some applications would not close when shut down, and I had some problems connecting to my AirPort disk.

 

After a few days somehow everything sorted itself! I have no problems whatsoever with my iMac now. But I have to say I didn't in Tiger either, so the upgrade feels slightly cosmetic. I don't notice "vast improvements" in speed as was promised, and since I've had none of the reported iMac hardware problems (freezing, bad screens), I can happily report that it's not gotten any worse, at least. :snow:

 

Safari is v 3.0.4 and it's finally a grown up browser! I code my XHTML/CSS pages for it and if it works in Safari 3 it will usually work in the other browsers. Brilliant.

 

Time Machine is great...it's backing up to my FireWire 800 disk. I have not had to get any data yet but I agree with tmaromine, it's a fantastic interface.

 

Mail I don't use but Yvonne uses it on her MacBook and it has improved, although I am not sure I fancy the new HTML templates with pictures etc, but I guess it's cool for those who use Mail for friends mostly. I use gmail for everything now so I have no need for Mail.

 

iChat still doesn't have a good MSN integration, I tried to set it up with Jabber but it didn't work for me. So Adium gets that role.

 

Stacks are cool but not something I'd call revolutionary... But it's the same as with most of Leopard's features - after you start using them you wonder how you did without. Like cover flow in folders with lots of images or PDF files...brilliant!

 

So I guess I'm a happy camper, but those initial installation problems scared me.

[tmaromine]

I have the new iMac also, and the screen ('tearing') problems. I haven't really thought about what to do with it... Perhaps my freezings are due to it and not Leopard, though I still think the screensaver problem is with Leopard, since Tiger was ok. I had no installation problems, but an internet acquaintance of mine did, though because he didn't format his HDD correctly.

 

I forgot to mention CoverFlow and QuickLook.

 

CoverFlow, to me, seems more of a show-off way of browsing stuff... It's quite intuitive on a small 3" (iPod) screen, but on 20" ? Maybe I'm just accustomed to yesterday's ways.

 

QuickLook is just great. I still have to remember that I don't have to double-click a text document to read it or a picture to see it fully – just spacebar it and voilà ! Especially without using CoverFlow, QL is nice in the vertically divided (sure there's a better name that I can't think of) Finder windows when everything is small.

 

 

@Tormod: If you do ever feel like stationarying with your GMail, you can create your GMail account in Mail as IMAP. I'd use Mail if it had support for one-email-in-2+-folders, as labels. I'm using the MailPlane beta for my GMail so that I don't have to venture to Safari for it.

[Tormod]

@Tormod: If you do ever feel like stationarying with your GMail, you can create your GMail account in Mail as IMAP. I'd use Mail if it had support for one-email-in-2+-folders, as labels. I'm using the MailPlane beta for my GMail so that I don't have to venture to Safari for it.

 

Thanks for the stationery tip. ;)

 

Could you possibly use Mail's Smart Folders for one email in 2+ folders?

[Zythryn]

I've tried it out and I love it.

Unfortunately I don't have need for, nor could I even rationalize a new computer right now.

Time Machine is truely awesome, backup for the lazy man (which I am one of:)). And the interface is top notch. At this point I am almost sure a Mac will be my next machine, unless Microsoft comes out with a home version of Surface;)

[alexander]

with tormod on the fundementally flawed upgrade process. Unfortunately i do not have a very stock Leopard system, why, i'm a geek and i tend to need tools that most people do not. So i couldn't even upgrade propperly, did it 3 times, and 3 times i came up to a blue blinking screen on reboot, so i had to use the option that archived my data and then imported back the user, data and apps, which worked well, except it broke all my cool fink and ports stuff, as well as somehow lost my bashrc file and all that fun stuff.

 

Also there is a problem with the Airport drivers again, the monitor mode is all screwed up, and people are reporting more and more problems with kismac. Apparently Apple did a neat thing and put out a wireless IO kit, apparently it's extremely undocumented, like most functions have ??? for description and ??? for input parameters and stuff... but we will see where this is going to go ;)

 

P.S. Z, surface, if it ever comes out, will be a 15-20k piece of hardware.... and its a frigging table...? You seriously need to watch the spoofed commercial on youtube, want a link?

[alexander]

Link for Zythryn: YouTube - Microsoft Surface Parody http://youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY

[Zythryn]

No, I've seen it. I have also seen the demos.

I have a place all set for it as my coffee table:)

Although I would expect the costs to come down by the time they make it available for retail as opposed to simply wholeselling it as they are now.

Should be in some hotels, casinos and resteraunts in December, New York and Las Vegas as I recall.

[Buffy]

...So i couldn't even upgrade propperly, did it 3 times, and 3 times i came up to a blue blinking screen on reboot...

 

I thought only Windows had the BSOD... :rolleyes:

 

Guess I'll wait to upgrade and go for just Safari 3.0 on Tiger: we got a slew of bug reports on Beta 2, so I'm hoping Beta 3--or at least Production, which is the only thing we'll have to *support* :evil:--is better....

 

Here's the eWeek/ExtremeTech review of the thing:

 

Mac OS X Leopard Review

 

Testing? Who needs testing? Our code is perfect when we write it! :evil:

Buffy

[tmaromine]

Thanks for the stationery tip. :)

 

Could you possibly use Mail's Smart Folders for one email in 2+ folders?

 

Maybe.. I think a friend told me basically the same thing some time ago. Haven't gotten to try it though, so I shall some time.

[alexander]

actually, i have a beef to strike with mail and google, why could apple not work on implementing the "Report as Spam" functionality in gmail, in the application. The connector can be written in a couple of hours if you know the API, so why the hell did they not do it? But that is my only peeve with mail, other then that, use it all the time, love it :)

[tmaromine]

actually, i have a beef to strike with mail and google, why could apple not work on implementing the "Report as Spam" functionality in gmail, in the application. The connector can be written in a couple of hours if you know the API, so why the hell did they not do it? But that is my only peeve with mail, other then that, use it all the time, love it :)

 

Do you use Smart Folders in lieu multilabelling ?

[alexander]

can you perhaps extrapolate? (remember i used to use mutt, so using a GUI mail client that just needs to work, i don't play with it much)

[tmaromine]

Tormod mentioned Smart Folders to put one email in more than one folder, similar to adding more than one label in the GMail interface, and a friend also mentioned Smart Folders for this task I think, but I really have no clue about them.

 

After venturing in Mail and finding nothing specific about Smart Folders, I decided to go to holy Google, and discovered this. Seems GMail's multilabelling is equivalent to Mail's copying-to-folders... So simple. B)

[alexander]

aaah... lol, i see what you mean... i would'nt call them "Smart" folders, that's all

[tmaromine]

I wouldn't either. I have no clue where they are, these Smart Folders ; I only found Smart Mailboxes. But whatever this is called, it's a solution !