Leopard Girl
Originally uploaded by Joe Shlabotnik.
So The end of October brought us Leopard and I preordered a Family Pack form Amazon. I've been using it long enough that I feel I can now write a decent review of it. Over all I very much enjoy it and certainly think its worth the money I paid for it. Here is why
1. The VNC client is FAST very fast. Easy to use and better thought out. That is not to say its not without its flaws, for example if a computer you log into is extending its desktop you cannot simply select one desktop over the other instead the VNC views it as one full desktop a little annoying but this might only be when connecting to a computer with Tiger. Nevertheless the speed and intergration into find makes it that much more enjoyable.
2. Quick Look before 10.5. I used column views this allowed me to preview the many sound fiels I might need to pull form my computer to thr show computer. However that prevented me from viewing them sorted by modification date. Also the space bar did not act as a play/pause button as it does in every single audio program I haveever used mac or PC. Quick look allows me to preview any file will sorting them by Imodification date and the hotkey for quick look is the space bar now I can do everything I wanted in a more effcient way since its the quick look box is MUCH bigger then the preview in the collumn view.
3. The new unified windows look is also wonderful. Every program now fits with every other one. It doesn't seem like a big deal but it becomes much easier to flow between programs now it jsut feels smoother.
4. Spaces. I like this idea a lot It allows me to set up a screen for the 5 major purposes I use this laptop for. However they could improve For example it would be to have a little more control over which program appears in which space. Right now I can have ichat in evey space or one of my 6. I rather make it possible to have it in 3 spaces not all or just one.
5. Mail and iCal both of these programs recived major upgrades. ToDos always existed in iCal but they never really were useful since you could only see them in Ical now that they are intergrated into Mail they have become my primary note taking method during tech and previews. Again they could improve by making it easier to share notes via email. Right now when you drag a ToDo inot an email or document you get this:
'Bring Daisy's Kitchen Gate’ [E96B84CC-AF3E-432E-AD71-32A6207D972C]
Is due on December 21, 2007.
Was completed on December 17, 2007.
Has high priority.
Is stored in the Fun-General calendar.
Has the following alarms:
Alarm 1
Is enabled.
Displays a message.
on December 19, 2007
at 12:00:00 AM EST
Alarm 2
Is enabled.
Displays a message.
on the same date the to do is due.
at (null)
Contains the URL mailitem:E96B84CC-AF3E-432E-AD71-32A6207D972C?type=todo&action=showparent
Has no note.
I know its hard to convey tat kind of information but there must be someway to make it more human readable.
ICal is also great. You can finally add more than 1 alarm to an event And has a much better UI however they have added a step to edit events which I guess protects them from changing accidently but can be confusing since you can move the event to a different day or up and down in the same day without clicking the event button.
6. The final upgrade I enjoy is spotlight. Its MUCH faster and supports calculations and Boolean logic. However when you click on show all the results change order and remove the Top Hit and just sorts everything below that to whatever you set your Finder to. That being said the Finder search is MUCH improved. For many reasons that are too numerous to got into here. Use google to search for Leopard Spotlight Tips and you'll see what I mean.
So yeah thats Leopard at least for me. Obviously its a new shift. Tiger was the final leg of the beginning of OS X 10.5 is Now the first step in a more mature and "top modern" Operating System. I don't think Vista can claim that.
