Apple has it jusssstt right.

How do you like Leopard?

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[H]F Junkie
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Aug 27, 2004
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Got around to upgrading to Leopard finally. I gotta say, Apple got it just right this time. No stupid cocoa/carbon apps looking different, finally a unified GUI. Love the menu bar. The transparency looks awesome with backgrounds where its noticeable, but I use a background that makes it look solid, so thats perfect (as I'm sure the transparency would be annoying at some points.

Time machine rocks. I back up to my Mac Mini (running as a server)

The combination of Spaces and Exposé is awesome. In tiger I would often have to hide and/or minimize safari windows or the like in order to effectively work in finder or photoshop, now I just have safari in its own space :D and use the 4th (back) mouse button to activate spaces, and the 5th (forward) to activate Exposé all windows (I got in the habit of using delete/shift-delete to navigate back and forward in safari awhile ago.) This way I don't have to take my hand off the mouse to hit the Spaces or Exposé hot key.

I LOVE the new finder, specifically the sidebar, even more specifically the "shared" section. I don't have to hit apple-k/go to the network icon/use a shortcut to connect to my server, It's already listed there. Also, the different shares are all listed right there, and it automatically connects to each one when I select it. I don't have to do apple-k again to "reconnect" to connect to a second or third share. The new sidebar just seems much more organized, and the "search for" section is awesome too. The predefined searches are really useful.

Quick look is amazingly fast and useful, it opens and plays a 720p movie instantly on my Macbook Pro.

:edit:
almost forgot, the new AppleTV-like Front Row is awesome. I'm so glad they did this, the old one looked fine, but it had its bugs, and this one is 10 times better.

The only fear about leopard that I had was the dock. it always looked retarded to me in screenshots, but actually using it it looks damn good.

To all of you on the edge of upgrading: DO IT. Its worth it. I didn't think it was before, but it definitely is.

If this just seems like a shameless plug for OS X, well it kind of is, and trust me I've tried to find stuff I don't like. I haven't yet, but I know I will eventually.

Now my question to you is, how do YOU like it?
 
I despise the transparency in the menus and menu bar as it is far too transparent to be readable for me. I'm also rather disappointed that we never got the full resolution independence that was promised during development. Aside from that my issues are just with the new look - I don't like the inset text and darker grey. I hope a new version of UNO is developed for Leopard to bring back the lighter grey and maybe get rid of that inset text.
 
Panther to Tiger was a huge and great upgrade, Leopard is no where near it. There are a few things that apply to some people and cosmetic upgrades but no single "must buy it now" reason. It's a decent upgrade to make when everything is worked out but there's no hurry.
 
I have tried Leopard, and It's OK. No, I don't think it's as stable as OS X Tiger yet, but the GUI I admit is amazing. I love the menu bar and the dock is great. I don't think that it's very stable yet, I have had several little glitches. I am unable to open Startup Disk, I don't know why but it crashes and I have to Force Quit System Preferences. I like the dark apple at the top rather than having everything blue themed, I like the black much much better. Cover flow is nice for photos, but I don't think it would be great for much else, but with photos it is actually quite nice. So, yes I like it, no I don't regret getting it, yes I think Apple has a little ways to go before it's as good as Tiger, but all the apps I have that I use frequently work wonderfullly, and I have had no problems. Despite the small problems I have encountered, I would get it.
 
I have it on 2 computers and I love it. One copy on a new MBP (yay!), and the other is a special blend of PC plus EFI and Leopard (works great too)
 
I think its just "OK". There isn't any one feature that was a selling feature for me, but I figured I would give it a shot and so far I am happy with my decision to purchase it (bought the 5 pack with my roommates that use macs). I hated the "3d dock" and "transparent menu bar" so I got rid of those ASAP with some simple "work" in the terminal (read Copy&Paste).

The speed seems exactly the same to me as 10.4, and I do enjoy stacks. Other than that everything seems pretty much the same. I toyed around with spaces, but didn't find it to be as useful as VirtueDesktop.

Timemachine is a nice idea, but I think there are better solutions out there. I have it set up for now on a spare 80gb external drive, but I can't imagine ever actually needing to use it since I have current backups of anything important elsewhere.
 
I like it. Spaces is great. Luckily I haven't experienced problems people are reporting such as poor wifi reception and speed, keyboard freezes, etc.. Then again I'm on a 12" Powerbook and not one of the newer Intel Macs.

I do think there are some problems across the board (Mail refuses to work right for me, but I don't use it).

I've been waiting for an updated Mac Pro forever. I really think Apple has lost itself in consumer gadgetry and they need to re-focus their efforts on the computers and the operating system.
 
It's a worthy competitor to Windows Vista, but not as huge a jump as Panther to Tiger was. It's nice, fast, polished, looks good, and has some really nice features. Most of the "new" features, unfortunately, come to Apple's proprietary applications, and not the OS itself. Safari still sucks - Firefox is the first thing to go on when I install. Mail is nice, but is not as fast and simple as Thunderbird. iCal is overshadowed by the amazing web-based Google Calendar. Spaces, Expose, Stacks, etc. are gimmicks that slow down my computing. Time Machine is the only new real feature that I really like; the redesigned and unified Finder windows are very nice, and network browsing is a lot more natural than it was in Tiger.

Overall, it improves on Tiger, but honestly it should have been OS X 10.4.12, and shouldn't have had the amount of hype poured into it that it got.
 
InorganicMatter said:
It's a worthy competitor to Windows Vista, but not as huge a jump as Panther to Tiger was. It's nice, fast, polished, looks good, and has some really nice features. Most of the "new" features, unfortunately, come to Apple's proprietary applications, and not the OS itself. Safari still sucks - Firefox is the first thing to go on when I install. Mail is nice, but is not as fast and simple as Thunderbird. iCal is overshadowed by the amazing web-based Google Calendar. Spaces, Expose, Stacks, etc. are gimmicks that slow down my computing. Time Machine is the only new real feature that I really like; the redesigned and unified Finder windows are very nice, and network browsing is a lot more natural than it was in Tiger.

Overall, it improves on Tiger, but honestly it should have been OS X 10.4.12, and shouldn't have had the amount of hype poured into it that it got.
Click to expand...

I somewhat agree with you. I have to like the Spaces, Expose, Stacks etc...They increase productivity a lot actually. I don't have to go fishing for a file that I downloaded or that I wrote, it's simply right there in my dock. I just got Time Machine up and running and I have to say that it's the best backup utility in terms of intelligence and user friendliness.
 
I selected love it, but it is not a must upgrade really. I feel no real reason to try fooling with getting it running on my G4, but I like it on my new MBP.
 
I forgot to mention that it messed up my airport card as well, not as much signal, 2 bars instead of 5, but it still works OK to me.
 
For the most part, I'm happy with Leopard. However... Stacks suck out loud. Yuck. I'm not digging some UI elements either, notably the transparent toolbar. And installing Office 2004 yielded some creative and interesting errors during install (still works in the end though - just unsettling during install).

Safari still sucks (thankfully there's Camino). Cisco VPN v4.9.01.0080 (latest one, I think) likes to mysteriously error out on first launch, requiring a reinstall - happens about 33% of the time (didn't have this problem at all w/ Tiger).

Boot times are incredibly fast - Leopard boots almost twice as fast as Tiger did. Spaces is nice to finally have - since this has been in various X11 window systems for over a decade...:rolleyes:

So I'd say I'm mostly happy with Leopard overall, but it's not what the hype would have you believe. I absolutely love it by comparison to Vista. Then again, I think Tiger was better than Vista too, so there you go. ;) Now if only 100% of my games and apps (instead of about 85%) were available for OS X, I could ditch MS entirely... :mad:

-Brian
 
The screen sharing integration is extremely convenient, as is the device form of dealing with network computers.
Spaces with application defaulting is great.
The speed is excellent on my G4 Mini, Tiger was starting to make me cry.
Front Row is brilliantly fast, though I wasn't really supposed to use the old one anyway.

I don't know, it's not really revolutionary since it's really just apple getting around to integrating everything they should have. It is great to finally all have it, though, and integrated well.
 
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