In Defense of Leopard
With the announcement of Leopard’s release date, there were plenty of comments that the Leopard upgrade is nothing but a few bells and whistles added to Tiger. Some think that there is no reason to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard. After all, Tiger is a very refined version of OS X. Why would you need to upgrade? There are bunch of features, which if worked as advertised, actually make Leopard worth the purchase price.
The Major Changes
First is the new Finder. I absolutely loathe Finder in Tiger (and in Panther when I used that). I have used numerous other file managers to avoid using Finder with a healthy supplement of Quicksilver. I haven’t gone so far as to replace Finder fully (like some have) - but I hardly use Finder considering it is so feature-poor. In many ways Finder is well behind Windows XP’s Explorer when it comes to features.
Cover Flow in Finder also is something I’m very excited for — switching to a paperless system for household files has led to an extraordinary amount of PDFs. Going through various documents using Cover Flow and Quick Look to look inside a document without opening the actual document seems like an incredibly useful application of these technologies. Cover Flow also is a nice addition to the Finder since I am hardly a fan of using iPhoto to manage any pictures. Cover Flow is Apple’s version of Windows Exporer’s Film Strip feature. To a large degree this feature is just eye candy in iTunes, but for files, it may be of great utility.
Sharing folders and documents over the network on a Mac has never really been a problem on OS X. The problem is Mac OS X hangs when a share disconnects from the network. This is a very real problem if you use your network at home and forget to disconnect the share. When you get to a new location, OS X hangs and sometimes you may have to restart if there are time constraints. Leopard’s Finder should have a new way of dealing with networking to avoid these system-wide hangs. If it works anything like iTunes, it will be a welcome change.
Spotlight searching over the network is another feature that is really helpful. I take advantage of Smart Folders with Spotlight comments all the time. However, you cannot create a Smart Folder based on the Spotlight comments of a remote computer in Tiger. Leopard has changed this as well. Spotlight searches can be conducted over the network; search includes metadata which should lead to network-based smart folders.
The Hardly Revolutionary Features
There is some validity to the argument that there are some needless features touted as groundbreaking and revolutionary. Spaces is just a fancy desktop manager; virtual desktop managers have been around on Windows (provided by Microsoft as a free PowerToy, no less), Linux and Mac for ages now. The new dock does not impress me. The 3D look adds very little (if any) utility to Dock.app. A transparent menu bar is hardly a feature that should have been mentioned at the original Keynote which described Tiger. A built-in auto hide would have been a nice addition to reclaim a little bit more of the desktop.
The In-Between Features
Leopard also has its share of items which are a mixed bag. Time machine is a good idea, but it does require an external hard drive. A better idea would be online storage through Google since Apple and Google are working together. I will never understand Steve Jobs’ fascination with image rich e-mails. The upgrade to Mail could just be a software update in some respects and not a major revision. Boot Camp also is no longer a beta with an expiration date, so install Windows to your heart’s content. The new version still does not support NTFS – you can only write to your Windows partition if it is FAT32. Preview is also now a more powerful application. Image manipulation is included in the lightweight PDF reader. Let’s hope it doesn’t become bloatware like Adobe Reader.
Cool Features You Might Have Missed
There are a bunch of little features that are not trumpeted but I find rather cool. The DVD player has been upgraded with an “Image Bar” which lets you have access to all the chapters and bookmarks. It pretty much copies the DVD scene selection menu without stopping the movie. This is actually one of the touted features of both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs, and Apple is giving us these features for regular DVDs. Plus there’s finally a time slider to get to certain parts of your DVDs.
Front Row now looks like Apple TV’s sophisticated interface. There is now a clock overlay on screen savers — that’s pretty useful Now we can all use our old Macs as giant clocks! System wide grammar check saves you from having to open full word processing software to check your writing. Bonjour-based scanning (if you get one of the few mac based scanners) is also supported. This should mean you will be able to scan over your network.
An intriguing addition has been made to iChat called “iChat Theater” that allows you show nearly any file including movies to your friends. Now, I know Apple has mentioned you could show presentations and home movies with this feature, but we all know what people will eventually do with it.
I have already have put money aside to pick up my copy of Leopard. I really hope these features work as advertised. Apple spent the extra time testing Leopard; hopefully, it will be time well spent.
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#1 Richard Lomas says:Were there ever any “secret features” or did that just get lost in the iPhone, Leopard Delay shuffle?
#2 Ganesan says:Talking about iChat Theater, Finder seems to have a similar feature as stated in the features list on Apple’s website.
#3 Matt J says:For the record, the Windows XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy is appallingly bad, and buggy.
#4 Seth says:Notes syncing with the iPhone is now explicitly supported. That’s new and welcome.
#5 seth says:new and welcomed if you have an iphone.
#6 Pablo says:Sorry, but that doesn’t seem like some additions that will make me more productive. At least that’s what I would expect of this kind of upgrade.
#7 Benji XI says:Were there ever any “secret features” or did that just get lost in the iPhone, Leopard Delay shuffle?
That’s what I want to know. Most unlike Apple to make such a major goof like pre-announcing something as incendiary as TOP SECRET FEATURES only to find out it basically referred to some eye-candy on the Desktop.
Most perplexing, surprised there’s not been more comment about it.
#8 Richard Lomas says:It seems like a VERY over-hyped, over-delayed release for what is included in it. What am I missing? Even the Finder didn’t really get addressed, as it’s basically just an iTunes skin on it now.
#9 Jean-Francois Roy says:@ Richard, Pablo
I have been using Leopard for many months now (from interning at Apple and being a member of the ADC). To sum it all up, I would never want to go back to Tiger.
In particular, the new Finder is far more than a new skin. It really works a whole hell of a lot better, in particular with respect to network shares. They actually work reliably now. The new sidebar is a better UI than the old one. Live icon previews (a service offered by the QuickLooks infrastructure) are incredibly useful.
There are a ton of other things as well. Spotlight is faster, has a much better UI, and as mentionned can search on networked computers as well. The UNIX underpinnings of the OS, if you make use of that, are a lot more complete because of Leoapard’s UNIX03 certification. Leopard also takes better advantage of multiple cores (that’s every Intel Mac out there save early Minis) and is more power efficient, giving you better battery life.
Leopard is a fantastic upgrade. If you’re not convinced by the marketing, do at least give it a try in a nearby Apple Store.
#10 Glenn Rempe says:You said regarding the dock:
“A built-in auto hide would have been a nice addition to reclaim a little bit more of the desktop.”
Not sure I follow since there is an auto-hide function for the dock in Tiger now which I would be pretty certain is not going away in Leopard.
System Preferences > Dock > Automatically Hide and Show Dock
Did you mean to say something else?
#11 Brandon Eley says:I think there are a lot of useful features, such as Time Machine, Mail (including Notes syncing), new Finder, Core Animation, and more.
I’ve already pre-ordered the family pack. We ordered it from Amazon the day it was available.
#12 I.A. says:I was actually talking about adding an auto-hide feature to the white Menu Bar on the top of the screen (the one with “File” “Edit” etc.) and not the Dock.
#13 Igor Malyarov says:Very poor article (I’m thinking of unsubscribing to the feed).
External drive is recomended, not required for Time machine. But it’s stupid to make backup to the same disk. You should learn the basics.
#14 Wayne says:Man, I’m seeing a lot of silly reviews of Leopard, including this one
For example, Spaces. The reviewer says that the virtual desktop concept has been around forever, even in Windows, so it’s no big deal. Well, the Windows implementation was a proof of concept that had all kinds of problems. Spaces, by contrast, works and it works in a smart way. The Dock knows what Space an application is in, Space switching and organization is intuitive, you can drag-n-drop between Spaces, you can bind apps to particular Spaces, etc, etc.
And you didn’t even mention that Spotlight now includes boolean logic out of the box. You didn’t mention the dramatic improvements to Preview or Mail. Did you mention screen sharing (including via .Mac)? What about the sandbox and other security features? Hard to find many improvements among your complaints and downplaying.
The title of the article is “in defense of”, but it would really help if you actually mentioned improvements instead of harping on your dislikes — it’s not clear you actually like the new Finder, considering your bellyaching about previous, “unusable” versions. One has to assume that you like it, based on its location in the article.
#15 terryshaw09 says:how long has it been since leopard was announced until its release?
#16 S.G. says:Re: Very poor article (I’m thinking of unsubscribing to the feed).
I think the reviewer has the basics down and beyond. He may have said an external drive was required for Time Machine, instead of “recommended”–however, you yourself note that any smart computer user would never back up to the same disk. So, given that no smart computer user would do such thing, an external or secondary drive does become a REQUIREMENT for proper back up using Time Machine
#17 Galley says:My sources tell me that the super secret feature has yet to be revealed.
#18 S.G. says:Re: Man, I’m seeing a lot of silly reviews of Leopard, including this one.
Reading your comment about silly reviews of Leopard, I must wonder–do you feel a review must cover every single new aspect of a piece of software or hardware for the review to be “not silly”? The reviewer may not have addressed some new features you found to be impressive, or was less impressed with a feature you liked, such as Spaces, but that doesn’t make the review silly. Even products rated highly by CNET or PCMAG, for example, have reviews that don’t necessarily cover EVERY feature, nor do they focus entirely on everything they love about the product. Any good review, even one titled “In defense of..”, would not be credible unless it provides a discussion of some negatives. I’d rather read an article that gives me the good with some bad rather than one that tries to make me feel all warm and fuzzy by telling me that every aspect of the product is “great” or “spectacular”.
#19 Benji XI says:Awesome.
#20 Igor Malyarov says:to S.G. (#16 and #18)R U going to comment all negative comments here by turning them upside-down? I’ve been playing this game long ago in school. May be you should grow up? Or you get some $$ for this?
#21 S.G. says:Responding to other comments, positive or negative ones, is something I’m free to do as a commenter to this post. I choose to respond to, or challenge, those negative comments that I find are illogical. You’ll find that is what I’ve done with my previous two posts. As far as “growing up”, I’ve been taught that challenging another’s arguments or thoughts is not childish. Such challenges are not only the basis for comment boards such as this one, but also a key force behind many of the advancements made in science, society, etc.
#22 Igor Malyarov says:I give up. I’t impossible to beat a professional writer who’s not reading other people words. Don’t waste time to answer - I quit and unsubscribe. You lose a reader. Have luck.
#23 Stretch says:Re #13 Igor,
Time Machine does require a second HD, whether it is external or internal doesn’t matter, but since the majority of Macs only hold 1 internal drive, its pointing to most people needing an external drive.
#24 Benji XI says:I strongly suspect a separate partition of the same drive could be used for TM backups, though that would defeat much of the purpose.
#25 Eytan says:Wow - what an awful review. It is amazing all you were looking for is eye candy, and what you see in the list of 300, some of them just explained as one bullet item “Core Animation” for example….
Just because it is not listed as having syrup and cherries does not mean that a LOT of effort has gone into adding AMAZING functionality “Under the hood” to enable a whole class of new applications and functionality. While you seem to be looking for application features, the core of an OS upgrade is just that - an OS upgrade - Frameworks, Toolbox, Core functionality. THis is the heaviest change to the OS since 10.0, and as part of that OS X gets full UNIX compliancy - which will see MANY more apps coming to the Mac.
#26 Wayne says:I consider the review silly because it begins with an entire paragraph knocking the Finder, though one would assume that the reviewer somehow actually likes Leopard’s Finder. (Based on the paragraph’s inclusion in the big-deal section of the article.)
Spend a paragraph talking about the improved iChat, but only talk about the slideshow feature? What about screen sharing? What about share-anywhere screen or files via .Mac?
Time Machine is “a good idea” and then on to criticize it, without mentioning any of it’s cool implementation or how it’s different from old-fashioned backups? Spaces is simply a rehashed virtual desktop, which Microsoft already did years ago?
Yes, I think “silly” is actually a kind way of putting it. It goes way beyond a different viewpoint, into something so idiosyncratic as to be, well, silly.
#27 ncus says:I am not going to pre-order leopard. And really not excited with the current features, which is mostly just a redesign and eyecandy.
I am still waiting for the holy secret features (if exsist). But sooner or later i will upgrade all my Macs at office.
What i really need is unexpired BOOTCAMP!
#28 Eytan says:ncus…
(emphasis mine)
actually, that is the least of it - that is just what you, as a user, see. Under the hood it is SIGNIFICANTLY changed. Believe me, it does not take 2.5 years to add eyecandy and redesign…
As I said before, the features that enable new classes of applications are phenomenal…
#29 James says:Iyaz Akhtar comments regarding Time Machine “Leopard also has its share of items which are a mixed bag. Time machine is a good idea, but it does require an external hard drive. A better idea would be online storage through Google since Apple and Google are working together.”
Online storage is okay for supplementing your existing back up strategy, but is not a good idea as a primary back up tool. first, many online backup alternatives are slow (like .Mac), have limited storage space, and require Internet access.
I’m not at a point yet where I want to trust my data to someone else at a nameless data center in who knows where.
#30 Jac Maloy says:I don’t really understand the whole fascination with network storage as a target for backups.
Yes, it’s nice and all, but is backing up your whole hard drive to a remote network volume even close to feasible for anyone with less than a T1?
Even the fastest consumer-level broadband solutions are still going to take hours and hours to back up and restore 100 GBs. Hell, 10 GB isn’t going to happen too quick either.
Time Machine not pointing to remote network locations is a positive, not a negative. Why? because it’s not going to be reliable in the real world except for a small percentage of users while the majority of users would see high failure rates and frustration.
Get a second drive, its cheaper than a T1 and faster. You want offsite storage, get a safe deposit box.
#31 Tim Houghton says:Faithful reader for several years now, but this has got to be one of the most ill-informed articles I’ve seen on TAB. Is Mr Akhtar a recent switcher?
#32 That Guy says:Leopard makes Tiger look like a lame cat. For example, not once in testing the last public build have I seen a beachball. All animation and GUI elements are smooth (and this is on a G5 iMac, not an intel).
I have waited for updates to come out before installing OS X on my production machine in the past. I will NOT be doing that in Leopard. Next friday that sucker is going to be in my hands and on my Mac Pro, and I will be happier and more productive for it! I used to loathe Jaguar after using Tiger. Now I loathe Tiger after using Leopard. It’s so… clumsy and inelegant. Clunky almost.
#33 Raf says:This time I will wait… (in case the price drops after 6 weeks)…
#34 Jay Z says:I find Stacks very compelling as a Finder helper. Right now I use MoofMenus to pull together similar apps and files into categories based on workflow for easy access, but it’s by no means a perfect solution. I’m hoping to replace MoofMenu with Stacks.
#35 buddhistMonkey says:For all of the “where are the secret features” folks: they were revealed at WWDC this summer. In case you forgot, they included Stacks, Cover Flow in the Finder, and Quick Look, none of which were mentioned during Leopard’s initial introduction.
But the biggest “secret” feature (which was never actually secret) is Core Animation. You’re going to see some spectacular new user interfaces coming down the pipe soon from Apple and others. Think Time Machine, Cover Flow and Front Row-style 3D motion throughout.
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