Why is everybody speaking so highly about Leopard ?
Because it's GREAT.
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Same reason people speak highly or lowly of anything, really - they're expressing how they feel about a particular topic or item.
face it, what is this amazing thing you all speak of ? Spaces ? quicklook ? Those two are the only functions that is useable. Time Machine is silly. No way to configure it at all. The new dock is for child and chumps and don´t get me started on Stacks.
The features are great, but another great thing is that it all feels... well... new and powerful. I first got a Mac in September and used Tiger. It was good, but nothing really that awesome. It was awesome but not amazingly awesome. Leopard is the icing on the cake. It just feels GOOD, whereas tiger just doesn't anymore. I don't know if I'm the only one thinking this, but I just feel much happier using Leopard than I did with Tiger. It's more of a joy to use my iMac than before. I actually look forward to it again (After about a month of it just being standard).
The whole atmosphere of the OS is worth upgrading - and it's not something you can get from playing around with it in the stores. You have to adapt to it, and when you do it's phenomenal. People were all "MACS ARE AWESOME" before when they really were only "good" and Windows was terrible, thus making them feel more awesome than they were... but when you get Leopard, it really is awesome. It's indescribable.
It's all just "YAY!" and exciting, which is what Macs are all about - a thrill to use and a productive machine. There are a few bugs you come across but you work around them - most of which are 3rd party anyway. (with fixes in the making).
To tackle your views on the blatant new features, Spaces is GREAT. I upgraded to Leopard thinking "pfft what a stupid feature. I'm never going to use that" and here I am, living like I can't live without them. I currently have 6 spaces. I tried using them at first and didn't like it, then my friend encouraged me to try it again and it's just phenomenal. It's great stuff! My only gripe with spaces is that all your apps can disappear in a space occasionally, such as writing this I changed space to find that Safari had disappeared (I launched a Safari Link from Mail, dragged it into my Safari space and clicked Merge all Windows - they all came back but this isn't possible with every app). Other than that, they're fantastic. Each space feels almost like a different computer.
I read earlier this year that someone thought you should be able to have a different background per space. Personally, with the way it works, I don't think it's necessary.
I love spaces and it's almost purely made the switch worthwhile!
Quicklook is also excellent. I wasn't sure how to use it at first but now I do and it's very useful. It saves you opening that app just to see the file and it also helps you find more information out if you use the icon view in finder. Very useful and I think it's great!
I haven't used Time Machine yet but I'm dying to try it out as soon as I get an external Hard drive. It looks like a great and useful app and core animation just makes it sweeter. It's not targeted at the space saving pro (Maybe they can add more options later on) but the general user who doesn't want to configure settings to get a good back up of their stuff, and really, I think it does it well. Just press a few buttons and it works. Simple. Apple.
The new dock is really nice. I know it's opinion but there are also the options of changing it too (in Terminal) as well as the system icons - Candybar 3, which is only $30 (And lets you mod the dock, too). If you can afford a $1000 Mac and then $100 on Leopard, it's not gonna be too hard to save up and spend $30 on a program to change the colours if you're REALLY that disgusted, is it? You could argue that the OS should support it anyway but if you could, Apple would be putting apps like Candybar out of business, and the general consumer probably doesn't need it.
Stacks, well, I don't use them that much myself but they're a nice feature. It lets you have an interesting way to view files you need or download, or may need later. And the Application stack shows apps you may not want on your dock but may need from time to time. and it's not much more effort to just click "Show in Finder", is it? Or have we become so lazy that we can't move our hands a centimeter or two further than we have to?
And one you haven't mentioned; the transparent Menu bar is there to not only keep OS X better than Window, it makes it more subtle and lets it blend into the background without making you focus on it more than you need to. Yes, it didn't really before but the new menu bar is just an addition. A slight improvement. In my opinion, there is nothing "fugly" about it (Then again, it's just an opinion).
Ask yourself this, what could you NOT use with Tiger that you can with Leopard ? ( except for Spaces and Time Machine )
Core Animation, Quicklook, The Leopard only Apps coming soon, New Features in Mail and other apps, Web Clip Widget, Safari 3 that doesn't crash.
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Those things. And Spaces, but you said I couldn't include that
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With Tiger, everything worked and going from everything to something just because of Spaces and Time Machine is not making any sense at all.
Actually, I've only come across two upgrade problems so far and those have been my Mail accounts not transferring that well (I use my own server email addresses, not an email service like GMail so I don't get tech support or updates to software to make it Leopard compatible, so I had to sort it out myself... and not being a server or email expert, I wasn't too sure on what to do. But I worked it out in the end with help from some kind people) and Adium has a bug that stops some people from connecting to MSN with Leopard, so I downloaded Messenger for Mac while I wait for a patch. There's a terminal based patch to fix it that's been posted on various forums, but I'm not sure what I'm doing in Terminal and don't want to mess up my computer. No biggies. Everything else I use regularly has transfered perfectly and I don't see what the fuss is. You're not going to magically go back to the state you were probably in when you first switched (Spend all your cash on the computer, so no apps to use)
I may have missed out on some points, but for me, this is the case.
I think you're being too pessimistic about it all, haha. It's really not as bad as the good old internet echo tunnel is leading some of us to believe. It's a good buy. Honestly.
