Strange title, I know. That’s pretty much the events that surround this weekend — first the big release of Apple’s new operating system, the “Leopard” brand of OS X; and secondly an update about our house.

Leopard

Along with a few other blokes, I picked up the new release of Leopard this past Friday and went through the mostly uneventful upgrade. Although the DVD verification step took forever — long enough to shave my head, take a shower, and do a few other things around the house [and yes, I really did do those things while waiting for the DVD to verify itself] — the process of upgrading wasn’t painful at all…at least at the start of things.

The features that Apple boasted about — Spaces, Time Machine, the new Finder, and a number of other features — are pretty nice. I do have to say, that with all the hype that has been going on apple.com over the past several months, I just wasn’t as impressed as I thought I might be.

Cover Flow
I’ve given Cover Flow a try and have to say that for photos, it’s nice. It’s a nice way to breeze through a voluminous array of photos to find the right one — probably the same for some other files as well. But what kinda trips me up about it is the file navigation below it. It’s the typical expand/contract, accordion-style directory structure browsing. Personally, I’ve come to like the paned method of sifting through deep layers of folders. It just seems to work quicker for me. I’d love to see them give you options of customizing the Cover Flow directory browsing. Give me more options. I like options.

In addition, Quick Look (a feature that allows you to browse your documents) ought to have a feature that allows you to “quick look” through a folder in Cover Flow. Currently it doesn’t offer that sort of feature.

The Desktop
…is pretty nice, but nothing dramatic has changed. I don’t really care for the fanned out display, especially when you have a ton of things to fan through — and you can’t. What’d be slick is being able to scroll through that fan with your mouse scroller ball. Can we say “feature request?”

Time Machine
Haven’t used it. Can’t imagine using it until it’s too late. But it’s enabled anyway.

Mail
I tried it in tandem with Gmail’s IMAP capability that they just announced and hated it. It labeled my deleted item instead of just deleting them or throwing them into the trash folder. Plus, I’ve become accustomed to doing things directly within Gmail and its way of displaying things. I can’t say that I’ll ever go back to using a traditional mail application since I’ve started using Gmail.

Because I have volumes of mail in my inbox (over 2000 messages), it was a burden to have Mail sync up with all that mail. Not to mention I just didn’t care for the interface within the conversation view of things. I much prefer Gmail’s way of formatting conversations, allowing me to expand and contract instances in a conversation, rather than having to do all this double-clicking nonsense. Sorry Mail lovers…I just have no love for it.

iChat
Ewww. After having used Adium for the past several months, I can’t imagine using iChat instead. The bubble formatting of discussions is annoying, and the interface isn’t all that customizable. I do like that they support Gtalk now, but until they open it up to Yahoo and MSN protocols AND give me some chat formatting options OTHER than the annoying bubbles, I’m sticking with Adium.

Spaces
A nice idea, and I’m glad they integrated it. However (why am I starting to sound like I didn’t care for the Leopard upgrade?), if I’m working in one space and I have an IM notification in another, I can’t get notified in any of my spaces except the one that has the IM client running in it. A small detail, I know, but a big enough deal. But the ease of customizing your various spaces is nice. I’ll give them props for that. But for now, I’m just not THAT big of a multi-tasker yet to justify the need for more than one desktop space…yet.

Safari
One word…Firefox. I use it and only use Safari if I have to.

I haven’t used Boot Camp or the parental controls yet, so I can’t speak to those things.

On the whole, Leopard’s nice and has a few nice features and changes, but I’m just not so sure that I’m going to rush right out the next time Apple comes out with an upgrade to the OS. Leopard is worth waiting for the next update release.

OH…and I’ll have you know that you have to re-set up your printers, and my M-Audio MIDIMAN USB MIDI device doesn’t work now for whatever reason. I tried the latest drivers and it’s not working.

House stuff

Just a quick update on our house situation…we’re taking it off the market because it just hasn’t been getting any action; and we want to pay off our 20% mortgage before buying again. The irony is that this weekend we’ve had three requests for showings… even AFTER telling the real estate company that we want to pull our house off the market.

October 28, 2007, 11:04 pm

Filed under: All Things Apple, Applications, General, Home Ownership

2 Comments »

1. Jamison said,

   October 29, 2007 @ 7:27 am

   Couple quick comments.

   Your problem with Mail is more a problem with IMAP and local e-mail clients, not specifically Mail. Thunderbird performs exactly the same way with IMAP and GMail as well. You’ve become a Google-whore dude

   Spaces: Ya I agree, though I work in some apps that require full screens. It will be nice to give each one it’s own space and keep my personal stuff on another screen. I wonder if Adium needs to update it’s code to get notifications across screens?

   iChat and Time Machine: Yep, agreed.

   I think you have a couple good feature requests there too. Might be worth submitting to their feedback section.

2. Jamison said,

   October 29, 2007 @ 7:32 am

   Oh, and you’re not alone in the M-Audio thing….

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