Whilst it’s nice to have a shiny new toy, for me operating systems come down to one success or fail, does it make a difference in the way I work and improve things? I waited a while to write this post as I have wanted to live with and work with Leopard the new mac operating system before coming to any conclusion as to whether it was an improvement for me or not.

Faster?

I feel I should make an initial note that although it does seem faster I can’t really comment too much. The reason for this is that I also upgraded to a Macbook pro at the same time. As a result, unless I sit here with a stop clock and quite frankly that isn’t going to happen - I can’t really comment on the increase in speed. I’d be comparing to a powerbook Tiger and that just plainly isn’t like for like.

Spaced out

When I first saw spaces I was impressed but wandering how on earth I would use them. On my desk I run a 20 inch apple display along with the macbook pro, to me I had enough space and didn’t see the need. It was only the past week when using my laptop alone a bit more I started to ‘get’ spaces. Spaces for me are one of those things I had to find a way to use. I find now I am using them more and more - putting a browser in one space, ftp in another and so on.

To do a mail

I’ve always been frustrated by the lack of organisation functions you can do in the mac plain operating system, you always had to either work around the issues or get a third party application. With the new friendliness between iCal and Mail - in particular the to dos - my work flow is being greatly enhanced. I always used iCal for my to dos - I find it the perfect solution for me. The only feature I can think of that would round up it perfectly would be to group up to do items in iCal so I can only see the high priority ones or any criteria I wanted rather than ending up with a to do list the size of a very large thing.

The downside?

So far, I’ve dealt with what is a success for me. I’ve not really touched on some of the major changes in Leopard. Look wise, yes it’s shiny and new and there was an initial oo and ah about the reflection in the dock. Yet, these all are now just part of it and no longer oo and ah me - this isn’t a bad thing though. Leopard and it’s changes whilst a bit of a shiny new thing to start off, now just work for me and that’s great as far as I’m concerned. I will note that for the first few weeks I had a range of ‘odd’ things such as when running any ftp program and streaming radio through iTunes I would get kernel panics. This like most teething problems has been fixed by developers of the applications I use updating their systems - I’ve been kernel panic free for over a week now.

One feature that really I don’t use and can’t think of how I will bar showing what Leopard can do is Coverflow for files. It’s not that I don’t get it, I really do and agree it looks good. There are 2 exceptions to this though where Coverflow is used for fonts and pictures - I have used that and really it is great. Otherwise, files and folders, not much point to me and it’s not being used. I feel the same about Quicklook - I liked preview and it doesn’t do everything but I’ve yet to find a need for Quicklook. Probably that is the problem and over time I may but for now I just don’t find these 2 features worth it for me.

So did it make a difference?

The short answer is yes. I’ve found several time saving things and been able to find new methods to my work flows - something I’m always looking to improve on. There are a number of features I always wished were in the mac os and I can see how some of the new features may develop and that interests me.