Leopard at six months: Does it live up to the early hype?

[deckeda]

I don't use the marquee features, at least not yet. You'll notice my list below is somewhat subtle but when you add these kinds of things up (not everything is positive however) it makes for a very positive experience.

I have Leopard at home and have had no issues. I also have it at work (which is unsupported, although I was permitted to use install it) and the experience has been mostly positive there as well.

At work the only thing that will cause a problem is that sometimes, such as when doing a Get Info on something, the Finder goes catatonic, although it'll permit me to launch items at the Dock. Ditto Activity Monitor. Both are probably related to something having gone wrong with Spotlight not able to see metadata, but I'm speculating.

I like the brighter blue and rounded corners in menu lists. There. I said it.

I like that if I forget to unmount a network drive, and disconnect from the network, the Finder doesn't go catatonic.

The built-in screen sharing is just dandy.

Spotlight DOES have a smarter brain finally.

Opt+Cmd+Eject seems to finally work reliably, although I find that Leopard takes longer to go to sleep than Tiger. Tiger's Opt+Cmd+Eject would require a restart to resume working after a few weeks.

The Network pref pane redesign was done well.

I like how, if you've got the login screen setup to only show user/password, the cursor is already at the username field. That's a nice help when logging in remotely, or anytime really. With Tiger, the cursor is I-don't-know-where and you have to move it first.

I don't like how the default button is now Cancel for certain Finder dialogs, because it penalizes people who know what they're doing by making them use the mouse to click OK. Cancel has the Esq key, OK now no longer has the Return key to activate it. Again, this is only in some instances.

And why does Safari no longer have Page Setup in its File menu? Isn't that like one of the non-negotiables for a Mac app? I had to check a Tiger machine to make sure it wasn't a Safari oversight.

[deckeda]

M A V I C, yes, Spaces "should" work with CS3. But for whatever reason it apparently doesn't. Given that you didn't have Spaces in Tiger, what's the REST of Leopard been like for you?

[thermarest]

It sure is way *snappier*

I feel thankful that I haven't run into the problems that many have. 10.5.2 was an important upgrade and now I am fully happy. My PS CS3 works fine and I don't use spaces.

[mattkime]

>>So you think that the fact CS3 doesn't work well with Leopard is an exaggeration? Which part, where pallets continually disappear, especially in Flash...?

I do regular work in Flash and I've never seen that problem. Might be your special configuration.

[Chupa Chupa]

[quote M A V I C]
[quote Chupa Chupa]No. Of the features I mentioned those are two that I really like (quick look and email to iCal) two (spaces and stacks) that I don't care for. I didn't intend for a few sentences to be an all inclusive feature review. As said, overall it's worth the $100 entry fee.
The "email to iCal" thing has been around for a long, long time.
All I can say is it's new to me. I've been using Mail since it first came out and I don't recall being able to click on an address or date and have it go to iCal or Address book in previous versions of OS X.

Apple also advertises it as a "new feature." From Apple's Leopard page:

Data, detected.
Say you get an email invitation to dinner. What if Mail recognized the address of the restaurant and let you map directions on the web? Or let you click once to add the date to your iCal calendar? With Leopard, it does. Mail even recognizes relative dates (“let’s meet next Tuesday”) and keywords (“dinner tomorrow”), so you can act on information rather than enter it.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/mail.html

[incognegro]

Glad you posted about Parallels. I was going to move to 10.5.2 this weekend, but I'll hold off for now. Not that I need Wind0ze often, but I want to have the option w/o Boot Camp.

[bazookaman]

[quote M A V I C][quote bazookaman]I use CS3 everyday (not so much Flash) and i haven't had any problems with it.
Do you use Spaces?
Negatory. No spaces here. Have not tried it.

[modelamac]

Screen sharing has certainly been very hard, if not downright impossible for some of my friends, but they took to it like a duck to water with Leopard's iChat sharing function. It has been very useful for most of us in our iChat group.

I have had very few problems with Leopard. I feel I got my $ worth. My network Macs in the sidebar, Spaces, screen sharing, Mail performs much better for me, iChat theater, among the most useful.

Even though you may not agree with me, my opinion is that Adobe is more to blame for the problems with their apps in Leopard than is Apple.

[Wild eep]

It's apparent that MAVIC dislikes leopard.

So for those of you that do like the new features, And that have no issues with them.

You must be wrong.

[M A V I C]

[quote bhaveshp]The Leopard VNC client is vastly superior and faster to CoVNC (or any other Mac vnc Client) even when connecting to Windows & Tiger macs. I love how it displays both screens when connecting to my Dual screen iMac.
Ok, I did not know it could be used to connect to other VNC servers. Since it's not in the app or utilities folder, I hadn't opened it on its own. So I just gave it a try. Its interface is a bit more clunky than CotVNC. No saved servers. Once logged into an XP MCE box, I found it less responsive and usable than CotVNC.

[quote deckeda]I like that if I forget to unmount a network drive, and disconnect from the network, the Finder doesn't go catatonic.
Very good point. Personally, I have a hard time giving a point to Leopard for this, however. It should have never been that way to begin with.

Spotlight DOES have a smarter brain finally.

I still find the Find feature in 8.5 worked better.

The Network pref pane redesign was done well.

Eh, it takes more clicks to get to the useful info. I don't really think it's a step up.

I like how, if you've got the login screen setup to only show user/password, the cursor is already at the username field. That's a nice help when logging in remotely, or anytime really. With Tiger, the cursor is I-don't-know-where and you have to move it first.

Or hit tab.

I don't like how the default button is now Cancel for certain Finder dialogs, because it penalizes people who know what they're doing by making them use the mouse to click OK. Cancel has the Esq key, OK now no longer has the Return key to activate it. Again, this is only in some instances.

It's dependent up on the app. That said, if you turn on universal keyboard access, the spacebar is usually cancel by default. Or hit command+c

[quote deckeda]M A V I C, yes, Spaces "should" work with CS3. But for whatever reason it apparently doesn't. Given that you didn't have Spaces in Tiger, what's the REST of Leopard been like for you?
Obviously, the pros outweigh the cons for me. Still, I think Apple not only shipped Leopard too soon but they have also failed to get it to deliver the advertised features, let alone live up to the hype.

[quote mattkime]>>So you think that the fact CS3 doesn't work well with Leopard is an exaggeration? Which part, where pallets continually disappear, especially in Flash...?

I do regular work in Flash and I've never seen that problem. Might be your special configuration.
Are you using Spaces, or have you configured Leopard to work more like Tiger?

[quote bazookaman][quote M A V I C][quote bazookaman]I use CS3 everyday (not so much Flash) and i haven't had any problems with it.
Do you use Spaces?
Negatory. No spaces here. Have not tried it.
There ya go. Spaces is one of the more touted features of Leopard.

[quote modelamac]Screen sharing has certainly been very hard, if not downright impossible for some of my friends, but they took to it like a duck to water with Leopard's iChat sharing function. It has been very useful for most of us in our iChat group.
Even though it's still tough in some cases, it has been made way easier than it used to be.

Even though you may not agree with me, my opinion is that Adobe is more to blame for the problems with their apps in Leopard than is Apple.

Other than many other apps have the same problems, and they all cite Apple acknowledging it's due to known issues on Apple's end.