Alright, so you've had seven whole days (and a few minutes now on the East coast, but who's counting?) to wrap your loving / skeptical arms around Apple's latest operating system, toss it on your machine and test out "300+ new features" that Cupertino managed to include. During the past week, we -- along with quite a
few others -- looked this OS
up and down in order to determine if it really was worth the $129 asking price, and while we wouldn't deem Leopard unflawed, we've yet to find ourselves itching to
downgrade. 'Course, we're sure there's a plethora of you out there still perusing the
feature list and wondering if it'll work on your near-decade-old
machine, but this space is for the resolute souls who wiped their calendar clean last weekend to sit diligently behind a keyboard / mouse and put OS X 10.5 to the test.
For those of you who fit the aforementioned description to a T, we're beyond curious to know how
your experiences have been. Have you found that Leopard makes your life a little less hectic? Roiled senseless by countless bugs? Are there any features you wish Steve's drones would have programmed in at the eleventh hour? Considering that over
two million of you have already made the leap to Apple's latest feline, we know there's a flood of squawks just waiting to be unleashed -- so go on, we're all ears.
posted November 2nd 2007 6:18PM
- Remove the translucent menu bar
- Remove stacks or make them optional, I want folders as menus back to the dock
- Go back to the dock's Tiger look
I'd make it 100% free/open source.
I would change a few things:
First: Make the menus opaque.
Second: Make the Dock's style configurable from the get-go.
Third: Make the Dock's grid size configurable -- those icons are a bit big and if I could shrink 'em down they'll fit better.
Generally I'd suggest getting rid of most pointless changes to looks of it:
Aero glass menubar is uuuugly, blurry and exactly opposite of what was advertised: it doesn't fit all wallpapers well and on some it's a disaster!
Make it brigher. Gray window titlebars, gray toolbars, everything is now dark and depressing.
Keep fixing Finder. Merge Finder's column view with list view, like Browse mode in iTunes, but change Finder's skin so it's not easy to confuse with iTunes.
I saw that, but it doesn't work. Whenever I type something in there it disappears.
Fairly happy, but what'd I'd like to see in Leopard and will hopefully be in 10.6 "Fluffy Kitten" is:
Better folder icons: I hate the new blue folder icons. I'll be replacing them as soon as Candybar for Leopard is released.
Spaces: Drag a window to spaces and have different backgrounds for spaces.
Dock: Easy setting for 2D/3D dock.
Stacks: Yeah those could just go away. Or make the icon for them in the dock static.
Time machine: Network backups - you know, like we were promised. It was in the betas and worked fine.
iChat: A unified buddy list. I'll keep using Adium til then.
Finder: Yeah... haha... windows BSOD icon. You made your little joke. Now change it. I replaced mine with the My Computer icon from Vista and it looks nice. Also coverflow is lame eye candy and doesn't really fit. I'd also like to see an option for a tree folder view in the side pane. I still think Windows Explorer > Finder, but it's getting there. It would also be nice if Apple included a feature like AppZapper that cleans up an applications leftovers when it is deleted.
Aqua: Go away. iTunes theme would be nice all around, but thanks for no metal.
Safari: Don't care. Don't use it. Give me a reason to.
Other: Don't announce a release date and then push it back. I know it's the cool thing to do lately, but Apple should be better than that... or as I said when the release date was pushed back "Who's copying who now?!" :)
What do you mean by "drag a window to spaces?"
Oh, and let us run OS X in a VM. Its great that they are going to allow Leopard server to run in VMs, but some of us have client testing to do.
*mean
Seriously, since it's no longer "Apple Computer Inc.", Apple should fully support the beige-box initiative. Enough of this CPUID binary encryption. Make drivers the responsibility of the manufacturers, come up with a decent driver validation and signing program, and sell OSX to the non-maccies. In a very short period of time, some very talented people have worked at making this Mac-only OS run on damn near anything with an x86 processor with at least SSE2 on it.
"M4M (Made4Mac) Certified". (c)2007 Me.
Hum... are you telling Apple that they will make more money by dropping Mac hardware... "seriously" as you say?
Mac sales accounts for about 50% of Apple earnings and MacOS X certainly less than 5%.
You want OS X? Buy a Mac: sounds fair to me :)
It cannot be complained about enough.. Why the H*LL did they remove bluetooth from Address Book. Sending SMS texts from iChat sucks.. UNLESS they make it behave the same way it did in Address Book...
I was surprised to hear that Leopard had so many bugs, so I did some research...
Applications won't quit
System hangs when trying to either shut down or restart
The Airport printer that had been working properly was gone after Leopard got installed
Time Machine took 20 hours to backup 36GB
Graphical hiccups in Front Row, DVD Player, and iTunes
Airport Extreme connection on MacBook and MacBook Pro is "flaky"
Can't see Windows shares in the Finder sidebar
OS X Mail keeps asking for the POP password even after being told to "remember" it
Can't initiate Bonjour iChat on LAN
Java no longer works after an upgrade
Mail and Skype freezing
LEAP authentication no longer works
SystemUIServer crashes 100% of the time disconnecting an Apple USB modem and via WiFi at Starbucks
Disk Utility unable to repair permissions
Automator won't start
Leopard won't connect to a university WiFi network unless Tiger's Internet Connect application is used
Yahoo widgets don't work
Spaces randomly switches to Space 4
Odd display flashes, Safari using up to 85% of the CPU with nothing open
Finder crashes repeatedly
Can't login in after the upgrade
Blue Screen of Death
Wireless connectivity is "slow, flaky, or just plain non-existent"
Spell checker misses words and has other issues
External drives aren't mounting or fail to dismount when ejected
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/11/this-cat-has-fl.html
- A Quicktime timeline for movie previews in Finder column view.
- The nice transition from the Desktop that Front Row used to have.
- Quicktime movies to continue playing in the Dock when you minimize them.
- Airport Disk Support with Time Machine (I would actually buy an airport just for that)
- Allow user more options for Stacks, meaning that the fan view should let users pic the size of the icons, so that you could fit more icons in that view. Also, they should let the old folder view that was available in Leopard.
- Get rid of the idea of showing the top icon as the representation of stacks. I would rather have representational icons like in the finder's sidebar
TAKE OUT the damn Stacks. HORRID things they are! Put back in the drill down folders in the dock. wtf was Apple thinking?!??
Make the menu bar have an option to change the translucency! Hurts me eyes like it is now even on a plain background.
Make Quicktime run at least as fast as it did on Tiger. There is something seriously wrong with it in Leopard! Sloooowwww. No preview in the dock?? No preview in columnview??? It sucks.
MOST OF ALL. Did I say GET RID OF STACKS??????
Check out my new Dock graphics! Procedure to replace them is on my blog...
http://www.jamesnrhodes.com/James_Nicholas_Rhodes/Weblog/Entries/2007/11/4_New_Mac_OS_X_10.5_Leopard_Dock_graphics!.html
My Windows PC and my NAS (Network Attached Storage) doesn't work with Leopard, worked fine in Tiger. They appear in the sidebar, but I get 'cannot connect to this server' when trying to connect to my PC and I have to use 'smb://user@ipaddress' to connect to my NAS.
I'd say this is pretty serious - I'd imagine a lot of Mac users would have a connected Windows box, and quite a few a NAS device.
I bought my NAS for backup purposes, so would like (and expect) to be able to use Time Machine for that. I can't understand why Apple would not allow backups over WiFi - it's fast and reliable now.
On the plus side - love Spaces, use it all the time to reduce screen clutter. Front Row is now usable - it was too slow in Tiger and I never used it, but do so now.
Time Machine works - had to restore some stuff, so much easier than current backup products I've used (will we see this in the Enterprise?).
Add/Remove Programs... C'mon Windows has had it forever...
As was mentioned earlier, Add/Remove Programs doesn't need to happen on Macs. Apps are meant to be self-contained - no separate folders, just a single application, containing all the application data. Apple should make this a rule for it's OS. Microsoft and Adobe notably put their apps inside folders, and subfolders, and subfolders etc. Microsoft even stores the preferences for Office X in "Microsoft User Data" inside the Documents folder. Seriously, this shouldn't be allowed.
Add a preference to disable stacks and have the old Tiger-style pop-up menus. I used those lots, and really liked them. Sub-folders would expand, like the Windows Start Menu. Apple clobbered all that with Stacks. And can we _PLEASE_ get an iCal snooze time (or 6) between 2 hours and 1 day?
A friend of mine upgraded her MAC to Leopard and totally impressed with it. Check out her review here:-
http://www.knocksomesense.com/2007/11/04/dawn-of-a-new-era-%e2%80%93-story-of-a-leopard-and-its-spots/
I want to be able to hit 'enter' to open a file in the finder - one of the few things I think's better in Windows.
By the way JohnTitor, how exactly would you like it to be more compatible with Windows? I mean, it runs Windows through Bootcamp. Have you had any specific compatability problems you'd like to share, or am I right in thinking you're experience of Macs is limited to walking past an Apple Store?
There seems to be a few bugs with Leopard which disappointed me, especially with Speech, and iPhoto hangs a lot (it didn't for me under Panther). The Support pages confirm there's some annoying problems.
Other than that, I think Leopard is nice. Not a giant leap forward, but little touches like the Mosiac screensaver (if you haven't discovered it yet, it's definately got that wow factor) are nice, and bigger changes like Quick Look are fantastic.
Can't help feeling a little short changed though. How would I change Leopard - I just want more!
Wow. I can't believe that more people haven't reported bluetooth issues here. The Apple discussion threads sure have a lot of'm.
Basically, the built-in bluetooth on a lot of people's machines are not even showing up at all. Personally, I don't have the internal card.
I have two external bluetooth adapters. One doesn't work, while the other barely works (and only by running it through a powered hub, as bizarre as that is.. yeah, I tested it.. it's the only way that it barely works).
On an unrelated note, my internal USB 2.0 PCI card is no longer recognized.
Even with the bluetooth woes, I'm still not even thinking of downgrading. Although, I have had more system lock-ups and crashes in apps that I never had before. It seems random so far, but it's definitely worse than the months past using Tiger.
How would I change Leopard?
Safari supports http, https, ftp, file.... I'd add a type of p2p that would support the bittorent protocol. Click on a torrent on a web page, and the content is automatically downloaded, and shared as long as it happens to be in the cache of the browser.
there are only two things I would change, first I would let mail.app work more like gmail. There is a big difference between folders and labels and I really like all of my new, unread mail to show up in my inbox, then just hit archive to move everything.
the second thing I would change is that I would have dashboard work in spaces. I wish that i could have a separate set of widgets for each space rather than one dashboard that follows me everywhere. With the new web clipping I find myself making widgets of a lot of different things and would love to have the real estate to use them all.
How about for the Business world, GPO hooks to AD!!!! No one get's it but Microsoft may do a thing or two right and AD is one of them (replication and management). Linux, Tiger, Leopard. These are not serious business desktops unless you have the end users managing them. I guess you could manage to work with VMWare's ACE, but why not just support GPOs???
Did anyone notice that the built-in calendar widget had been updated? If you click it three times, it not only shows the whole month but also your upcoming iCal events. This it something I would NOT change, b/c I don't have to open up iCal every time I need to check for my next appt.
Just installed tonight:
DVD in, restart.
1 hour anticipation, restart.
Damn, a Blue Screen Of Death! Restart, damn you!
Again! Agggghh! Restart!!
Ok, ok, CALM. I have a Tiger external. Pop on t'internet... delete this, delete that, OK... restart!
Phew. Loads. Sloooowly.
Install upgrades... restart... *sigh*...
Looking through now... ok, It's pretty. I will explore more later, but I'm not blown away by the graphical AK.
I still guess I've lost 30 seconds of my life in that initial panic attack.
Battery says: 10 hours. Hmmm...
~d
Overall I just bought a 24" iMac with Leopard on Saturday and am very happy...
Coming from a heavy past almost all in Windows land, I have to say I am quite impressed, everything I would expect and more is built into this. The most notable improvement is the use of dual cores. Compared to my 64 bit version of Vista also running on my mac, LEOPARD IS FAST. Starting up and shutting down is almost unbelievable, especially compared to the slow and utterly almost useless Vista to me.
I'll admit stacks is pretty useless, I haven't had the time (nor the HD space) to try out Time Machine, but I have found myself using Spaces a lot.
The overall design is very appealing, I will agree Vista does look a little better and glossy, but Leopard still looks good, Apple had to do something to compete, and I think they did a fairly good job balancing good looks with the usability of OS X and the dock.
Overall I am very happy, its fast, its reliable (has yet to freeze up on me), looks good, and is a very stable upgrade to me.
But overall, I'm sorry Ubuntu with Beryl still kicks all other OS's asses....
Well, what I want (from OpenStep) is EOF (a database abstraction library) for Objective-C, and the Objective-C version of WebObjects (I'd like to keep using a compiled language, Apple!). And maybe Object Linking (as a user feature). And, possibly, at least some of the APIs being ported back to Windows and Solaris, and, as new ports, to GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (GNUstep is a bit buggy). What I was thinking was that they have a subset of the APIs ported (like Foundation and AppKit, but none of the "Core" frameworks), give away the user environment as freeware, and charge for the ported development tools. I've never been on business myself, so I don't know if it'd work, but it might.
Oh, and they should clean up TextEdit. It's been like this for 12 years, people. Time to fix it!
Sorry, I meant "I've never been IN business myself".
My Sony High Definition HDR HC3 which I paid close to $1,700 for no longer is seen by IMovie! Either the old 06, or the new one in iLife 08. It is not the camera as it connects easily to my Sony VAIO using the same IEEE connector. Junk!
Over all i love leopard. I think Stacks needs a change, it's a good idea but bad implemented.
But what i'm going to focus on is on the finder wich i'm loving, but i have an enhancement request to make it even better.
Now, Coverflow in the finder playing with quicklook is the biggest new thing in leopard. But what about when you have a folder full of folders? Coverflow dosn't make sense there. So what about showing a preview of some of the content inside of that folder as the current folder icon. At least when browsing in coverflow.
What do you think?
C'mon Man, it's LEOPARD! "I know you like it it's Leopard"
"Eres El Diablo" "Me voy"
does anybody know if front row is now enabled on all macs? I had front row enabler on my PB G4, and the new front row is now running after upgrading to 10.5, just wondering if that was because of enabler or if that is now the default?
i don't know if this has been said yet cause there are way to many comments to start reading at this point, but different backgrounds for different spaces would be great. also, options to configure jumping around. maybe a modifier key (ctrl+shift+click or something) to mean "open in this space" even if the default space for that application is a different space.
yeah.. that would be awesome.