Leopard Reviews

Jacksloadedgun · #1 June 21st, 2007, 06:21 PM

Just kinda curious if anyone got a copy of the leopard beta (outside of developers) and what was their general impressions of it were? how stable is it? what older programs can be run on it? how do you like the new features?

gibbsj · #2 June 24th, 2007, 11:37 PM

I know one of the people that does dev work. He got a copy at the apple 07 thing. It will not install on a 544 mhz dule g4. Other then that, it works very nicely with a 64 bit computer. Anything less, it chugs sorta slow.

**fryke** · #3 June 25th, 2007, 07:33 AM

That I gotta counter. My MacBook ain't 64bit, and 64bit has basically got _NOTHING_ to do with speed, rather with RAM bandwidth, and since most Macs *I know of* don't have much more than 4 GB of RAM, it doesn't matter _zero_.

On the MacBook, it runs quite nicely. Definitely quicker than Tiger. Haven't timed anything, but everything feels a tad snappier. Of course, that's often the case with a newly installed system, but I've actually _upgraded_ from 10.4.10 to the beta. (One problem: I seem to have the Safari beta for 10.4.x now, because the installer naturally assumed that 3.0.2 was newer than 3.0. So no webclipping for me. Bleh...)

Most of my apps seem to run quite well already. I haven't encountered any problems with MS Office, Adobe CS3 etc., for example. However: Linotype FontExplorer X doesn't want to start, says something about a permissions problem. That'll probably take an update on their part, although I will try to get rid of its prefs and start it again.

I'm sure there are still a lot of smaller and bigger bugs that I won't even notice, but all in all it feels good and quick.
Of the new features, I'd say the menubar has to be revised. It doesn't "get out of the way" anymore. Its transparency is one of those "oh, look!"-features that get on the nerves over time. TimeMachine seems nice, although I've yet to lose an actual file to see whether it'll be easy to find it again. (What about stuff you're not sure where it actually was etc., me hating Spotlight etc.)

bobw · #4 June 25th, 2007, 09:38 AM

Quote:

It will not install on a 544 mhz dule g4.

Apple never made a 544MHz machine.

Veljo · #5 June 25th, 2007, 09:50 AM

Heh, I wish I could get my hands on a copy.

Ferdinand · #6 June 25th, 2007, 10:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fryke

That I gotta counter. My MacBook ain't 64bit, and 64bit has basically got _NOTHING_ to do with speed, rather with RAM bandwidth, and since most Macs *I know of* don't have much more than 4 GB of RAM, it doesn't matter _zero_.

On the MacBook, it runs quite nicely. Definitely quicker than Tiger. Haven't timed anything, but everything feels a tad snappier. Of course, that's often the case with a newly installed system, but I've actually _upgraded_ from 10.4.10 to the beta. (One problem: I seem to have the Safari beta for 10.4.x now, because the installer naturally assumed that 3.0.2 was newer than 3.0. So no webclipping for me. Bleh...)

Most of my apps seem to run quite well already. I haven't encountered any problems with MS Office, Adobe CS3 etc., for example. However: Linotype FontExplorer X doesn't want to start, says something about a permissions problem. That'll probably take an update on their part, although I will try to get rid of its prefs and start it again.

I'm sure there are still a lot of smaller and bigger bugs that I won't even notice, but all in all it feels good and quick.
Of the new features, I'd say the menubar has to be revised. It doesn't "get out of the way" anymore. Its transparency is one of those "oh, look!"-features that get on the nerves over time. TimeMachine seems nice, although I've yet to lose an actual file to see whether it'll be easy to find it again. (What about stuff you're not sure where it actually was etc., me hating Spotlight etc.)

Were you at the WWDC?

**fryke** · #7 June 26th, 2007, 03:29 AM

Not this year, no.

To add to my comment (and please don't quote whole comments if you only have one line to add which _doesn't_ actually need that comment to be quoted...):

Time Machine – Unnecessary eye-candy. Imho, is not exactly the best interface for a backup-app. I like how it backs things up, no doubt about that so far. But to bring things back... It works the way they demo it. If you really know what you're looking for and it's a file of three in a folder. Ah, there it is! There it pops up! But if it's a file of a hundred in a folder which, through time, changes a couple of times... Difficult.

Unified Leopard or whatever we'll call the "new desktop" etc., I'm also not sure whether I really like it. I *do* like that they got rid of two out of three looks, no doubt about _that_. I'm just not sure I'm down with the look we've seen in iTunes 7 for _everything_. I also miss the rounded edges on the menubar. My guess how they came to eliminate them: They're going with the _small_ rounded edges on every unified window. And those don't look good on the menubar (they're right about _that_). So they get rid of them altogether.
They've also "made it easier to spot the active window" by increasing the shadow. Argh... The shadow is *HUGE* now, and it kinda doesn't make sense optically. The huge shadow implies that the active window is far, far above the desktop, i.e. closer to you, but that kinda implies that the thing _closest_ to you should be _bigger_, which it isn't. When I have three or four windows open and click between them, it just seems kinda wrong how the shadows change... It's too strong for me. And I guess we won't be able to adjust that - unless _they_ do.

The translucent menubar – Unnecessary eye-candy. Well: No, Apple. It doesn't really work well. I've read somewhere the user can turn it off, but I don't find anything about that anywhere. What you _can_ do is put a desktop background in place where the menubar-part is of a different colour, like white. But that can't be the solution imho. It goes with the window focus shadow thing I guess. With a darkish or fully saturated picture like the grass picture they've used in the demos the frontmost window really _does_ come into focus. But that also means that everything else - the menubar with it - goes _out_ of focus. And I do have some things on the screen, on the menubar as well, that I want to have _in_ focus.
So I'm not sure about _that_ innovation either.

The new Finder – Unnecessary eye-candy. Yep. Cover Flow? Please... It's a nice idea for iTunes, and it makes sense there from an UI point of view. You _do_ flip through covers in a record store, so it makes sense to do so in an online record store. But for files and folders in Finder? No. No, no, no.
I _do_ like the Quick Look feature. The wording, though... "Quick Look of 4 items"? *cough*

The new Dock – Unnecessary eye-candy. You guessed right: I'm not so sure about that one, either. Yay 3D. Yay glassy effects. Yay screen candy, eh? Uuuurgh... Icons seem less distinct in the new Dock. The new "lightbulb" effect to show whether an app is active doesn't work - period. It's too subtle. Nothing wrong with the old black triangle in my opinion. Not after seing what they've come up with to replace it.

Then again: All put together, it _kinda_ works. It _does_ feel modern. And the graphics power _is_ there, even with my lowly MacBook's integrated graphics. But it _does_ feel like they've taken a page from Microsoft's Vista, and I'm just not sure that it's been necessary to do so.

So out of 10 points, if you want a review, I'd rather give them zero and go back to Tiger's mishmash look of 3 looks than give them 5 points for trying... Yes, they're halfway there, but if it doesn't work completely, I don't think they should release it. Apple is the company that once did Platinum, for crying out loud! A clean look that actually _worked_. They're the ones who did NewAqua in Jaguar! A modern look that actually worked. (You see I'm not a fan of the old Aqua in 10.0-10.1. or of Brushed Metal.) Now, right now in Leopard Beta, it really _is_ a look in beta. That's _not_ finished, and I hope they'll tweak it _right_ 'til release in October.

**fryke** · #8 June 26th, 2007, 06:53 AM

Addendum: The menubar's translucency really can't be turned off in the current beta. However, there's already a small hack, an application that puts a white bar _behind_ the translucent menubar of Leopard. This actually works quite nicely. My guess is that tweaking apps like TinkerTool will be able to turn the translucency of the menubar on and off as well as maybe tweak the shadow-intensity and size of windows.