Too Many Words

Oh, you knew it was coming.

Leopard. OS X 10.5. My favorite animal. All one and the same.

So, seeing as Apple’s latest operating system was released today at 6pm, and seeing as how I got my copy at 9am this morning, I was anxious to try out some of the new features. Everyone (and by everyone I mean anyone who owns a Mac) has been reading about all the features for months now, we knew what to expect. We’ve all read how they will affect the world (if you haven’t, start with John Gruber’s Daring Fireball and read whatever he suggests) - but how will they affect regular people? - and by regular people, I mean me.

1. Desktop - First thing I noticed after install was the new dock and menu bar. Everyone’s been whining about these but sue me, I think they look nice. The menu bar sufficiently diffuses the background and the text is still clear, and that would be a deal breaker for me because I use my menu bar extensively. Anyway, no foul here.
2. Spaces - I set up Spaces immediately. I’ve used virtual desktops before on *nix systems and once got it functioning on Windows - that was short-lived. Spaces actually makes it useful. Simple keystrokes allow you to change screens and know where you’re going and where you came from. The Exposé-like switching is also helpful. I use dual screens at work and it handled that like a pro as well.
3. Time Machine - Still setting this up because first I had to sort out my pre-existing backup situation. Before even turning it on, it has reiterated what a great program SuperDuper! is. I have an internal 120 GB hard drive, an external 160GB that I cannibalized from my old PC tower, and a 250GB free-standing external. I name my drives for Swiss cities, so the internal is Geneva, the media drive is Zurich, and then Lucerne on the 250GB. That’s partitioned to share space with a bootable clone of Geneva, and Lucerne is currently cloning Zurich because I had no other need for it. Each night it performs a smart clone, copying and deleting anything from the backups it needs to in order to perfectly recreate the source. This is much faster than simply doing a blind brute copy of each drive each night. Anyway, I’m switching Zurich to be the Time Machine backup, and Lucerne will be the main media drive, co-existing with a bootable Geneva Clone as it does now. Once a few days go by, I’ll have the data I need to evaluate Time Machine.
4. iChat - After my second day using a Mac, I never thought I’d go back to iChat. I was using Adium and it was awesome. Until iChat improved on everything. My only complaint now is its handling of buddy lists - it keeps my accounts separate and won’t let me organize people the way I want, but other than that, amazing. I was bored (relatively) today because no one else had Leopard yet so I couldn’t try out the screen sharing and video effects except on a local preview. (One thing I noticed, Rebecca was right, I wear too much khaki and blend in with the background.) Then when I started writing this up, an invitation to video chat popped up from Matt. Sure enough, the kid is sitting in a basement party with friends around on a Friday night, trying out video chat, same as me. Peas in a pod, I tell you. Awesome stuff here.
5. The rest - New DVD player, better Spotlight, Cover Flow, Quick Look, and the sharing. I’m using all of them. I like all of them. I don’t know what else there is to say.

My co-worker came over and asked if this was “the new Vista for Macs?”. He almost got ran out of the building. I love it so far, and it looks like everyone else using it does too. My parents ought to look out for a Mac Mini under their Christmas tree. No more phone calls of “How do I get this working?” Screen sharing fixes all that. The only opponent would be my brother (Exhibit A). Little did he know, life imitates art.

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