The Leopard experience
I’ve recently upgraded to a Leopard and woooaaaahhhh! is the word to describe it. I’ve always been fascinated by the Mac, and I used to make my desktop follow the Mac theme when I was on a Windows a long, long time ago.
One day, I bought myself a new computer. I bought myself an Intel powered 13″ white MacBook, my first bought with my own money computer. From then on, I could never leave my computer alone. I’ve never felt so much fun on a computer, not even the PS2, Nintendo or XBox could compare to the fun I’ve had using the Mac.
Working on the Mac is pure bliss. I’ll be honest, it has hung before, but that was the first batch of Intel Macs, and after a quick fix with the Apple people, I’ve never faced much of an issue except those typically faced by laptop users with horrendous battery life after extreme charging and cosmetic accidents when working in fluctuating office temperature.
The only bane that has ever happened to me is the spending on all things Mac. I bought myself an extra power adapter, I bought accessories to connect my MacBook to projectors and other VGA displays, I bought myself legit copies of iWorks, I bought myself an iPod, and that’s really just the beginning.
I’m what you’d call an Apple Mac-niac. Someone who is obsessed with Apple products and worships Jobs and thinks he is hardly ever wrong.
So now that I’ve upgraded to Leopard, and it took about less than 2 hours to complete really, I took the cat out for a test drive.
The default Mac desktop background features a look at space
Upgrading meant that it kept every application in place. Some apps seem to appear broken like the XCode, Mac’s powerful and free programming IDE. I’ll post an update up later on how XCode users could fix this issue after upgrading.
Apart from that, non-programmer users would be thrilled with the pimped up Mac. I changed the desktop background to the new default so I could show you what a fresh install of Leopard will look like. Before Leopard, Apple ships Mac OS X with a different Aqua Blue background.
The new desktop background brings in a new era of innovative computing pioneered by Apple. The space image is used to link Leopard with a major new feature as well as its accompanying product, the Time Machine and Time Capsule.
Time Machine and Time Capsule
Time Machine would be something that Windows users may see in System Restore. But these 2 things are actually 2 hugely different things. System Restore resets your computer settings to the selected day in time which you had chosen.
My next purchase – a Time Capsule!
Time Machine however, makes a complete copy of your entire system everyday, and you can go back in time, to go through your system as it was in that point in time. It works together with an external hard disk, and while you can use any 500gb or 1tb external hdd, which I own, it’s recommended to get the Time Capsule, a much powerful and all rounder solution to backups.
My Maxtor 500gb hdd can only transfer files using a USB 2.0 cable. Technically, I can even run an operating system off it, but that would defeat the purpose of backing stuff up. Time Capsule is an external hdd which also acts as a Wifi base station. That means, you can backup your computer wirelessly! What’s more captivating is that you can also share Time Capsule with your Windows machine in your environment. So now, I’ve relegated my Maxtor 500gb hdd to an extra storage space for my podcast videos and raw files as well as my purchased movies and tv shows like my entire iTunes derived Ugly Betty series and moving on to buy a 500gb Time Capsule for backups. A 1tb version seems tempting, but I don’t want to overspend really.
Spaces, an old innovation, made better and cooler
Trying out Spaces for the first time
If you’ve ever been on Linux, you know that Spaces isn’t exactly a new innovation. Linux has had Space for a long time, and I loved it because it reduced clutter from my screen. But Apple has introduced Space and called it Spaces with a lot more added.
My experience with Space on Ubuntu Linux and Novell Linux probably didn’t make me wow so much on this new Leopard feature. But Apple added the coolness effect on Spaces that still made me wow anyhow! Pressing F8, gave me a Space environment similar to Front Row allowing me to see my Spaces in full view. Linux does not have these innovations, and it will be interesting to see how the Linux community might work on a similar innovation.
I was also able to move through my spaces using keyboard shortcuts, something that I wasn’t able to do on Linux. And I could also move my apps into a different space if I want to. Something which I found not easy to do on Linux. All in all, Apple has really made Spaces much easier and fun to use and gave me that extra inspiration when working on the Mac.
Coverflow in Finder and Quick Look
Finder, like all the other standard Apple apps in this Leopard release included iTunes style features like Cover Flow. Now, you can go through your files and folders as if flowing through a stack of documents, smoothly. But that bit of coolness is nothing much. But when coupled with Quick Look, Finder really rocks!
Flowing through my documents quickly
Quick Look allows a user to look into any document without even launching. You can preview anything, and not just a small part of the document, but everything in it all within Finder.
The following screenshots would allow you to see how you could preview a video in Finder, without actually launching it! Videos can even be previewed in full screen!
No more guessing what this file is, Cover Flow and Quick Look displays a Poster Image of each file
Mouse over the file and hit spacebar to activate Quick Look
Clicking the double arrows icon allows the movie to be previewed in full screen
And in full screen, the quality is as good as playing it in QuickTime without leaving Finder
These are just some of the 300+ new features in Leopard which I find interesting. For more, go to the New Features section in the Leopard website.
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