Thoughts on Leopard

Would’ve bought it, but not doing financially too well right now. Probably worth the money, although I’m not happy with Apple splitting up the “Family Pack” (multiple license install). Not that there’s any difference between the two other than the box, the disc is identical. I happened across a copy anyway.

Am I happy with it? Sure.
Am I impressed by it? Far from it. The new features are nice, a lot of stuff has been a long time coming, like icon/JPEG previews in the Finder, but a lot of stuff still seems stuck in the 90s. Highlight 3 out 5 files in a folder and try and find out their total size (File > Get Info). Finder aside, graphically I’m far from impressed either. As cheesy as I think Vista is, I was expecting Apple to do something really extraordinary, something to make Vista look as out of fashion as possible. I was hoping that Apple’s “top secret” features included some kind of UI overhaul, maybe not to the extent of Illuminous, although I wouldn’t have been disappointed had that been the end result.

But a transparent dock and thicker shadows seems like half-baked attempt at sprucing up the now-aging Aqua interface. The transparent menu bar is also a complete waste of time, I’ve lost count of the number of Digg articles showing how to disable this or work around it.

All in all, it’s a good step forward, and I am happy with Leopard overall. I just would’ve liked to have seen that extra 1%. Maybe 10.6 will answer my prayers.