Unsolicited Leopard Review

leopard1.jpgI keep reading reviews about how great OSX 10.5 is, and how much I should praise Steve that I have such an OS. Like in my pre-release review, I’m still less that excited. Here’s a list of 7 things that frustrate me about Leopard:

1) Time machine, it all it’s awesome splendor, is pointless for me. Sure, I could repartition my drive, and make a spot to mirror to — but would it really have been that hard to allow me to just point to a folder? Come on, it doesn’t do anything magical to the second drive (or partition), so why make me reserve a crapload of space? And don’t get me started on the inability to use my Airport-friggen-Extreme hard drive for Time Machine. Guess why I bought that overpriced access point? Yep, the upcoming “amazing” program. Ugh.

2) Mail got all crazy, what with it’s ToDo, Notes, etc. I’ve read that it’s so much faster now, but I haven’t noticed ANY speed increase on my IMAP connection. The one redeeming quality is that I can actually have it permanently accept my self-signed SSL certificate — I was never able to figure that one out in Tiger. But still, I’m not impressed with the redesign, and since I despise HTML mail anyway, Mail seems to be ALL fluff.

3) While I understand the need to ask about opening a new application, that “first run” acceptance window just stinks of Vista. Again, I know it’s a feature, but it just makes me throw up a little in my mouth every time I install a new app.

4) iCal doesn’t sync with my 10.4 machines. I haven’t actually tested this with the retail version, because it borked up my calendars so bad with the pre-release. Does it have to be so tied to the OS that a simple application update couldn’t bring them up to speed?

5) iSync in general is a bit odd. Do I really need my Dock to sync? What if I have different applications? What if I use some things at work, but don’t want to even see the icon at home? It just seems like a weird feature to me, but since this is my review, that’s what matters. 🙂

6) Spaces is a feature that I’ve always liked about Linux. I don’t use it very often, but I like that the idea has finally made it to OSX. It’s not easy to figure out how to move applications to other spaces, but it is possible, so I won’t complain too much. It just doesn’t seem as easy as with Gnome or KDE.

7) Here’s the real deal: I don’t see any reason at all to upgrade. I know, that’s harsh, but really — apart from a few more translucent menus and such, Leopard has been a really expensive upgrade that amounts to a new, “theme.” WTF? Why are all the reviewers so amazed and so happy?

8 thoughts on “Unsolicited Leopard Review”

  1. A friend of mine upgraded this weekend (I’m on a MBP as well) and allowed me to post his summary on my much-less-frequently updated techblog at http://ungeekit.com.

    I had such a PITA experience w/ my Parallels upgrade I’m holding off on the OS for a while – I’d like a month or two without tech stresses.

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  2. I didn’t even try upgrading to 3 from 2.5. I just did a fresh install of 3.0, and installed XP, etc. Now I’m glad I did it that way. 🙂

    I have noticed that Parallels doesn’t show the windows icon on the dock for running windows programs in Leopard. There is a “blank” icon with the tiny parallels symbol. It’s really annoying, because I like to have Internet Exploder on the dock for those sites that require it, but now I can’t tell what app is in the dock.

    Coherence mode rocks though. I love it much.

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  3. I wasn’t planning to upgrade anyway, but thanks for sharing. 😉 My general strategy is to pick a spot and stay there until I absolutely have to change because nothing is working anymore. It’s why I jumped from OS 9.1 to OSX.4 in the first place (although in theory if I’d wanted to spend the money, I could’ve gotten the old 8500 to run OSX). Now I’m hoping to get another good ten years out of what I’m using now before I have to move again.

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  4. Count me lucky, or unlucky, but since my job is to manage a ton of OSX machines, I end up with the lastest and greatest so that I know what the heck I”m doing when it’s time to implement.

    I still don’t love leopard…

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  5. Just one more somewhat unrelated note… a bit late. 🙂

    Have you ever tried Scrivener? It’s a Mac-only writing & organizational tool – I have been playing with it for a few weeks and think I’ll write my Nanowrimo book in it. It has some great features for organizing research and notecarding/organizing your book in scenes – then exporting & printing as a whole. (For when you submit to a publisher, of course. 😉 )

    http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html

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  6. I tried scrivener, and I’m not sure what I think about it. It’s one of those things that is “so cool” it distracts me from actually writing. 🙂

    I tried to set up a book, using the novel template, and an hour later I realized I had rearranged chapters, etc — but never written a single word. 🙂

    I’m trying to set up a “writing place” in my bedroom, that is strictly for writing. It’ll probably have Ubuntu on it, and I plan to use Abiword for the word processor. Hopefully I don’t change my mind 100 times and waste valuable November hours. 🙂

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