I just thought these threads should run together... Its rare to see a positive opinion thread on an operating system that just works. Sing your Leopard praises here!
Is it better than Tiger? Better question. If you have leopard for a year could you live by going back to Tiger?(A question from someone who tries to be financially prudent). If not would it be like going back to dial-up? And when Lion/Bengal/Cheetah/predatorial cat de jour comes out, are you going to upgrade to that?
for me, going back to Tiger would be painful. the lack of Time Machine would necessitate countless hours of manual backup (or paying for a third party program to do it for me). The lack of Spaces would get everything very cluttered. The lack of Boot Camp would be a serious PITA when i'm working on robotics and need a Windows environment - probably necessitating the purchase of a second laptop just for that purpose.
As a new user of Mac OSX, I've found Leopard to be pretty nice with a few minor, but annoying failings (including a really annoying bug in the way that X11 interacts with Spaces). Overall, it serves me pretty well and is the only real one-machine solution for what I'm needing to use it for (Unix-like functionality, plus Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.), but I'm seriously hoping that there are some improvements with the 10.5.2 update (since some of the more annoying things weren't fixed in 10.5.1). I agree with eagle about Time Machine; easy-to-use backup software is one of those things which you feel like software companies should have been able to figure out *ages* ago. However, it took Apple to do it really right. Actually, while I don't share all of his views, this guy nicely sums up some of my complaints.
As far as the performance and user interface, I liked Tiger just a wee bit better. Specifically, the dock was simpler in Tiger. HOWEVER Leopard has two things I would not want to give up: 1. Time Machine does backups without making me think about it or do anything after the initial set-up. 2. The random addressing stuff makes it more secure. And one thing that, while minor, is nice: Spaces. (For Windows folks, Spaces allows you to set up as many virtual desktops as you like. Open windows in one "space" don't get in the way of open windows in another. Basically, it reduces screen clutter. A small feature, but nice.)
Its just enjoyable to read a thread like this. When you have to invoke X11 to discuss a problem you know the fundamentals are taken care off. Vista threads have a lot of "I can't boot" or "BSD" threads... The previous posters nicely summarize my feelings about leopard. Just spaces is worth the upgrade. Cheers, Alric
Isn't "spaces" just the same thing as virtual desktops, which X has had for years now? . I'll save the rest of my leopard feedback until after I get my hands on the critter and get through locking it down *my* way. The stories about the ineffectual firewalling, for instance, are pretty disturbing [but I already know how to fix it, for the most part]. Gotta give the 'rents a nice secure environment, y'know, and 90% of that will be education [don't click on that, don't go to that .ru site, this is what spam looks like, keep javascript turned off no matter what the lameass site disclaimers say, etc etc] . _H*
The X11 thing is a real criticism, and not something that's "minor" for a lot of people who are trying to use MacOSX in a "professional" environment. One of the main features that makes OSX appealing to Unix-types is the ability to do things with X11 on the Mac; if this works poorly, then it's *much* less useful. And, as hobbit points out, virtual desktops have been around for a long time on various Linux/Unix/etc. window managers, as well as on Mac and even Windows (the latter two through third-party packages). I really have enjoyed most of my OSX experience so far, but these annoying things (plus some stability issues, which I've read is "new" in Leopard) keep me from giving it full-throated praise at this point.
Well, I'm still enjoying Jaguar. We've gone Tiger on the new desktops at school so I'll be using those and learning it. (But I already hate the dashboard and am disabling it on all of the student accounts. All they do is play with it.) I'll be replacing my laptop soon, probably after I graduate next May. When I do, that will have Leopard so I'll have a chance to evaluate. That's pretty much what happens. I skip an OS or two rather than upgrading to each one. I am looking forward to the Time Machine thing.
Leopard is fine, works well with most of my programs (but not with my Bible program, dang it). I would not want to go back; when I am going forward.
I have to admit that it has been a while since I looked at OSX in detail. But it strikes me that, in this thread, two "great new things" that are mentioned for Leopard are automatic backups ("time machine") and virtual desktops ("Spaces"). As far as I know, both have been around for more than a decade, and available on virtually any computer platform I know. So, what's cool and really new in Leopard? Apart from the looks. The looks are great of course, as with any product from Apple.
I find dashboard useful. At a click, I have a quick calendar, units converter, calculator, phone-book look-up, dictionary, post-it note, and two clocks, one local and one GMT. Faster than going to a web site for much of that stuff.
I agree with you on Spaces. However, Time Machine is way better (and simpler) than any backup software that I've come across. Now, admittedly, I haven't tried all of the backup software out there, but I have looked for good backup software (for Windows and Linux) and haven't found anything as good as Time Machine. Most of my experience (under Linux) is that it was very hard to get the backup software to do what I wanted (which was an exceedingly simple backup, but also doing incrementals).
I see. Simplicity is certainly a big plus for a consumers with limited interest in computer configuration. The easier to configure, the more chance people will actually use it. So it looks like this utility lies in the line of the best Apple tradition of making technology so simple to use that it almost seems absent. But personally I want my backup strategy to have a lot of flexibility, with frequent hybrid differential/full backups on a local USB hard disk to allow versioning and reverting to older versions of a file, combined with a daily incremental backup on a RAID-based NAS, and finally a weekly off-site backup on optical media. Many people forget that a good backup strategy has to have an off-site component. Remarkably, all these actions can be configured to be done fully automatically by a little freeware tool called Cobian backup.
To a computer professional who spends all day every day working with the deepest internals of their machines, I can understand how a mac doesn't look so wonderful. But there are many people who would rather just use the technology without having to learn how it works. Maybe a car analogy will help. I used to really enjoy working on cars. Bleeding the brakes, lubricating the chassis, changing the oil, heck, even changing the engine. It gave me a sense of accomplishment, and it was much cheaper than taking it to the dealer. But I'm really glad now that I don't have to do any of that. I just drive it.
None of which are necessary, useful or appropriate for the educational purposes for which the computers are to be used by the students. So Dashboard is just a toy to play with instead of doing the task at hand or listening to instructions. It will never be missed.
