Newsletter 413 Preview: The Night Owl Special Report: The Leopard Review
October 28th, 2007Night Owl Rating: 
The first time you gaze at the Leopard upgrade kit, you wonder how something that does so much fits into such a small box. But Apple has taken its environmental pretensions to heart and reduced the extra stuffing in many of its latest software packages — except, of course, for the new Logic Studio, which is positively huge — and rather heavy to boot!
There’s even a tiny manual that contains something more than a short installation guide for once. In its 80 pages, you actually learn about many of the ultra-slick features that Apple has wrought in Leopard. But you’ll still need the Help menu if you want to explore matters further.
What you really want to know, though, is just how loudly this cat roars, and it’s deafening!
Indeed, the most telling comparison I can make between Mac OS X Leopard and Windows Vista is the fact that the former installs reliably, works as advertised and then some, and doesn’t possess any invasive online activation and forced upgrade schemes. In recent days, for example, it’s been reported that Windows OneCare, which is supposed to protect your PC, also happens to turn on automatic updating behind your back, without your permission.
In fact, there’s no major difference between the way Leopard installs on your Mac and previous versions of Mac OS X.
Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.
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I’ve already said I had a smooth upgrade (I did have APE Manager installed, but it was the latest version, the developer’s blog explains that only old versions cause the installation problem). In general, my take is about the same as Gene’s, although I’m a little less enthusiastic about Spaces than he is. To be truthful, I once used a third-party virtual desktop app., but when Expose came along I found basicalliy didn’t need it any more. I’m curious to see how quickly Time Machine eats up disk space, and to determine if its backward “reach” is going to be enough to satisfy me. If not, I’ll have to plunk down for a larger-capacity h. d. The one thing I hate is the new folder icons, especially because specially-designated ones (Applications, Documents, etc.) are very hard to identify in list view windows and even in the dock. The generic folder icon looks bad in full view, I’ll replace it and some other generic Finder icons as soon as the new Candy Bar gets released. Other than that, everything is either much better or at least a change I can comfortably live with (such as the reflecting dock). But I think I was correct in my original anticipation — the REAL improvement in Leopard is the behind-the-scenes stuff: Cocoa throughout, 64-bit throughout, more efficient multiprocessing, Core Animation, dumping some management tasks on the video processors, and so forth. So, particularly if you own a 4-core Mac Pro, the advertising claim that Leopard gives you “a new Mac in your Mac” is a reasonable description of the Leopard experience (I’ll be curious to see the 8-core re-reviewed as tested running Leopard). Now let’s see how fast third party programmers are in exploiting all the new advantages Apple is offering them.
I’ve alrealdy upgraded my Macbook to Leopard and so far it’s working very well. The upgrade went easily and the tools are pretty cool. The ones I liked most are the new Finder that imports the Cover Flow function from iTunes and the new iChat which allows the insertion of images and films. If you haven’t upgraded yet, there are some interesting videos I’ve found that show Leopard’s new tools and effects:
http://www.weshow.com/us/p/20050/mac_os_x_leopard_ichat
http://www.weshow.com/us/p/20048/mac_os_x_leopard_finder
http://www.weshow.com/us/p/20052/mac_os_x_leopard_mail
If all their Real improvement is behind the scenes, then lets hope that idiots who know nothing, don’t go out and buy leopard, then claim that “this is s—, nothings new” :p
btw… did you fix the quoter plugin gene? it seems to work fine… maybe it’s just browser conflicts
Quoter plugin? I have one problem with it, still, which is that it puts in the wrong attribution lines, so I’ve disabled that feature.
I posted a message about the problem at the plugin author’s site, but never got a response.
Peace,
Gene