Platform Peace

So I knew when I was buying my MacBook Pro that I was taking a risk of having to pay full price for Leopard.  At the time, the release date had not been confirmed and there were no announcements (at least that I was aware of) about upgrade pricing.  Thankfully, I timed it right and was able to get a copy of Leopard for $9.95.  Unfortunately, Apple did not give us users that acquired Leopard through the Up-to-Date program the VIP treatment.  I did not have the option of getting delivery on the 26th like the full-price pre-orders did and the copy I received did not include the retail packaging - just the disc in a paper sleeve and a small user guide / feature book.  Not that either really bothers me but I thought it was interesting.

I received my copy yesterday in the mail.  I went against all my instincts developed and refined over years of religiously upgrading to each new version of Windows (including many betas) and did an Upgrade install of Leopard and not a clean install.  I would never have considered this for a new Windows OS.  And, I have to say, I am pleasantly surprised.  So far, I have not had any issues at all.

As far as Leopard itself: it seems a bit anti-climactic.  The pre-release hype was pretty heavy but it definitely seems more like a point revision than a major new OS release.  I tend to agree with the reviews that this is an evolutionary upgrade as opposed to a revolutionary upgrade.  On the other hand, it could just be the fact that I am not noticing a lot of the smaller improvements since I have only been using OS X for a few weeks.  I definitely do not have anything negative to say about it and there are some great new features.  Here are a few of the things I like:

Finder - The Finder is much better than what was in Tiger.  But, honestly, that is not saying much.  The Finder in Tiger was pretty awful.  But, while still not as good as Vista’s file explorer, it now at least has a Path Bar (but why is it not on by default?) and icon previews.  Also, the Cover Flow and Quick Look features are pretty slick.

Spaces - Spaces is probably my favorite new feature.  I’ve always loved the idea of multiple workspaces but never found an implementation that worked really well for me in Windows.  So far, the Spaces implementation in Leopard is working great (including support for multiple monitors) and it quickly has become indispensable to me.

Time Machine - Time Machine looks fantastic but I have not had a chance to try it yet since I don’t have a drive that meets its requirements (as far as I know).  My existing main backup device is an HP Media Vault on my local network.  All my other external drives with enough space are formatted with NTFS.  Since external drives are so cheap these days, I’ll probably buy one specifically for Time Machine backups so I can give it a try.

A lot of the other features are nice but there certainly is not much of a wow factor.  Overall, it appears to just be a nice point release of an already solid OS.