October 31, 2007

Leopard Notes and Thoughts

I just installed Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) on my G4 PowerBook and have made these notes as a type of review. I like it a lot but it feels like a .0 release. There are some odd failures, quirky stops and starts, rough corners etc:

- It is a bit pokey on this hardware, but acceptable for normal email and browsing.
- I hate that the "fan" feature of Stacks doesn't work when the Dock is on the side which is my preferred placement. It is pretty cool way of viewing files.
- I am wondering where the IP address: 172.31.129.148 is coming from in the Sharing Pref Pane ? Is apple maintaining a DNS system for screen and file sharing?
- I hate that custom icons don't show up in the Dock for folders(stacks), even the your home folder loses its "house."
- I LOVE Spaces...I had this on my Solaris thin clients in 2001, why did it take so long?
- I love Cover Flow for docs, useful! Some docs that should work, but don't work, I'm wondering what their issue is.
- I Love the dedicated Downloads folder, I've been doing this manually for years so it is nice to see it built-in.
- I LOVE the automatically listed network servers, if this turns out to actually work reliably, it was worth the upgrade price by itself
- I think I'm going to LOVE screen sharing, can't wait until my new iMac is delivered to test it out.
- I think I'm going to LOVE Back to My Mac, can't wait until my new iMac is delivered to test it out.
- I LOVE Quick Look, who wouldn't?
- Like the new Notes and To Do's in Mail but why won't they sync to my iPhone yet? Impatience is a recurring problem of mine.
- Data Detection is cool but not perfect, certainly saves some typing!
- I Love the way Safari and Dashboard are working together in a really cool way, select part of a web page and create your own custom widget. I just took my Google Photo Gadget and turned it into a Mac widget easily. There are a few issues with how links work from the widgets but still, very nice.

Comments, answers, me-to's, and insults welcome.