Ok, so I played with Leopard at a friend of mine's (a developer) a couple nights ago, and I just watched the guided tour movie from the Apple site, and here are my opinions (let me preface this by saying that I'll likely end up with Leopard eventually, and that these are my opinions of the features themselves, NOT of how they look or work; if you like the features of the OS, I definitely recommend it from the time I've had with it, I just question how necessary it really is...):
The Finder really doesn't look that different, and I wouldn't even necessarily say better. The fourth view is just unnecessary, and the itunes-esque design isn't really that much of an improvement. And Stacking seemed cooler in theory; really, it's just a different looking version of a feature that Tiger has (drag a folder to your dock to try it). The download straight to stack is sorta cool, but ultimately not a huge selling point to me.
Spaces is a good idea, but not what I'd hoped it would be. I was hoping spaces would be similar to logging in/out users on the fly, so if you were running different apps that were RAM/resource hogs, everything would write to cache as you switched to the other user. That would have been grand for those of use who work 2-3 jobs on the same mac (music editing, video editing, and graphic design for me). Otherwise, it's very organized, but really it's sort of like a better featured Exposé (I did like that they worked drag and drop into the actual spaces menu, though).
Time Machine again seemed cooler in theory. It's a neat feature, but in my mind it just seems like you're trading system resources for a feature you're probably not going to get much use out of if you are a heavy computer user that has an archiving system. Being able to specifically go back to time and place is neat but not as necessary as it seems, and scheduled back-ups can already be done with loads of apps. Also, I worry about how it will handle available resources: will it slow other apps/firewire bandwith down (either splitting the total available resources or demanding control of them), or will it use only what is available? That would be a huge question mark for me. I will admit, however, that the time machine interface is impressive.
Mail notes is kinda cool. The rest not so much, but notes is a good idea (as I am one of those people who has 30 emails in my drafts folder with little notes to myself in them).
Most of the iChat features are stupid and pointless. And watching that bit on the video was painful; the guy was stiff enough, but that girl's faked smile through the whole thing made me cringe. The screen swapping is slightly cool, but also slightly creepy. I like the idea, but it does open up security questions (though, with Apple's track record, I wouldn't say concerns).
Wow. An hour or two to update?
So ultimately I feel like Leopard about the same as I did about Tiger: most of the big improvements are probably not going to see a lot of use, and some of them (like Spotlight in Tiger) are downright frustrating and annoying. However, also like Tiger, it is prettier than its predecessor and there are a few interesting new features. So for me, it is ultimately down to how big the performance improvements on PPC really are going to be (so any G5 users who are Leopard early adopters, please post what you find in that area). If I owned an Intel mac, I'd probably buy it early, as I've been told it's designed for the architecture, but I haven't heard from any PPC developers yet, so I'm curious to see how much of a boost it really is...
The Finder really doesn't look that different, and I wouldn't even necessarily say better. The fourth view is just unnecessary, and the itunes-esque design isn't really that much of an improvement. And Stacking seemed cooler in theory; really, it's just a different looking version of a feature that Tiger has (drag a folder to your dock to try it). The download straight to stack is sorta cool, but ultimately not a huge selling point to me.
Spaces is a good idea, but not what I'd hoped it would be. I was hoping spaces would be similar to logging in/out users on the fly, so if you were running different apps that were RAM/resource hogs, everything would write to cache as you switched to the other user. That would have been grand for those of use who work 2-3 jobs on the same mac (music editing, video editing, and graphic design for me). Otherwise, it's very organized, but really it's sort of like a better featured Exposé (I did like that they worked drag and drop into the actual spaces menu, though).
Time Machine again seemed cooler in theory. It's a neat feature, but in my mind it just seems like you're trading system resources for a feature you're probably not going to get much use out of if you are a heavy computer user that has an archiving system. Being able to specifically go back to time and place is neat but not as necessary as it seems, and scheduled back-ups can already be done with loads of apps. Also, I worry about how it will handle available resources: will it slow other apps/firewire bandwith down (either splitting the total available resources or demanding control of them), or will it use only what is available? That would be a huge question mark for me. I will admit, however, that the time machine interface is impressive.
Mail notes is kinda cool. The rest not so much, but notes is a good idea (as I am one of those people who has 30 emails in my drafts folder with little notes to myself in them).
Most of the iChat features are stupid and pointless. And watching that bit on the video was painful; the guy was stiff enough, but that girl's faked smile through the whole thing made me cringe. The screen swapping is slightly cool, but also slightly creepy. I like the idea, but it does open up security questions (though, with Apple's track record, I wouldn't say concerns).
Wow. An hour or two to update?
So ultimately I feel like Leopard about the same as I did about Tiger: most of the big improvements are probably not going to see a lot of use, and some of them (like Spotlight in Tiger) are downright frustrating and annoying. However, also like Tiger, it is prettier than its predecessor and there are a few interesting new features. So for me, it is ultimately down to how big the performance improvements on PPC really are going to be (so any G5 users who are Leopard early adopters, please post what you find in that area). If I owned an Intel mac, I'd probably buy it early, as I've been told it's designed for the architecture, but I haven't heard from any PPC developers yet, so I'm curious to see how much of a boost it really is...
