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The Mac OS X arrived with the sonic boom in the blogosphere. Did you hear that! It was expected though. So excited was everyone that you had the Leopard patched to run on PC DVD’s on the very first day of the launch! But makes my job difficult alright! There’s such slew of things in the OS that a small article won’t do. So here I go, *sigh*There are a lot of changes not only in the included productivity programs, improved security and improvements scattered all over the landscape. While there is no ONE compelling feature to run out and get the upgrade, there are so many improvement in the hyped 300 features( not everyone them of much consequence) in Leopard that many would consider upgrading. To them the 2.5 years wait, longest in Mac OS history, has been worth it. The stuff is selling like crazy already!New Look
Apple hypes the new interface as “stunning” and “eye opening”! Are they really so! Nah, it’s a mixed bag. Let’s start with the good news first. Apple has been experimenting with the user interface for sometime now and finally seems to have settled on something we like. A monochrome color scheme that uses shades of grey quite effectively. Contrast between the active window and the other open ones have been improved a lot. Increased drop shadow of the foremost window and lightening of the color of the inactive views have improved the contrast and consequently the viewing very much. The sidebar seems to modeled on the iTunes source list and is very well organized. More usable that that of Tiger any day! Stack is not a very useful view when displaying a folder with lots of documents. That’s kind of neither here nor there!
Some of the changes don’t mean anything much!
Menu bar is translucent. With an image with varying light and dark areas behind it, the effect is fairly stunning. But readability of the menu items suffers and can only hamper productivity. OS X’s program launcher, the Dock has been modified. Program icons sit is a reflective glass tray when the dock is positioned at the bottom of the screen. It could be placed anywhere earlier. On the sides of the screen the dock used to appear as semi-transparent gray. A pleasant light appears next to the running programs. This is a bit too subtle at the bottom of the screen.
Apple seems to have realized the metaphor of dock falls apart when you are allowed to place it on the sides.Dock’s stack feature is a little mixed up. Used to be that folders could be stashed on the dock and clicked to open and click & hold to see the contents. Fairly utilitarian. However the snazzy version this version pops up a window with a stack/grid of icons. Ability to drag an arbitrary collection of documents to the dock, so called temporary stack, did not make it to the final version looks like.
Performance
There was no significant changes in the performance, just about 2 to 3%. That is kind of our margin of error. So the verdict is- no noticeable improvement over Tiger numbers.! Some applications may not be up to speed completely with Leopard yet. For example, our automation routine on Photoshop CS3, which typically runs fine under Tiger, had problems with Leopard. As such, we were unable to complete our Photoshop CS3 test on Leopard. Adobe’s website indicates that Photoshop CS3 should be compatible with Leopard–other than the automation snafu, Photoshop CS3 appears to operate normally. FileMaker is warning users of FileMaker Pro 9 that there are some compatibility problems with Leopard. However, FileMaker expects to have an update available by November 19.
Boot time (In Seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Multimedia Multitasking Test (In Seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Note: Apple QuickTime 7.2.1 and Apple iTunes 7.4.2(4)
Quake 4 Performance (In FPS)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Security
Firewall control are more intricate, hence you are likely to be quizzed more when attempting downloads. Sandboxing mechanism is supposed to prevent hijacking of your applications.Parental control will let you keep tab on junior by way of content filtering, time limits and internet activity logging.
Service And Support
Support options remain same as with Tiger, 90 days standard warranty but help beyond that period would cost $49 an episode. So considering an extended warranty may actually work out cheaper.Help menus have been tweaked but the help on the website by way of forums, knowledge base and the message boards give you better insights.
Tags: Apple
