Let the
Most releases of the OS X family of big cats from Apple introduce a few interface features and some applications that permeate the OS world. Now that there’s one such release on our hands let’s look at the features and compare how do the
Step Into the Time Machine
Most Leopard reviews go gaga over the new automatic back up called the Time Machine. The application automatically backs up changes to files on a drive designated for that and typically is a drive added for that purpose. Browsing is convenient through a 3D interface.
Go Back in Time With Shadow Copies
Microsoft’s probably is a little ahead on this game. Their shadow copies feature saves previous versions of files and makes roll back from unintended edits or a recovery of deleted files are a snap! Snap of the right mouse button that is. One of the reasons it is not so well known is that Microsoft loads this feature in the premium versions of Vista such as Ultimate, Business and
Safari and Web Clippings
There are quite a few interesting features in the Apple’s Web browser. This is the Safari 3 browser that has been in the beta for a while now. One of the nifty things is web clips by which you could mark up an area of text of a web page. The browser checks that section in the OS X dashboard, you could then check in any to find out if there’s been update to that specific web page.
Easy Dashboard ‘Apps’
Here’s a simple Web clipping showing the latest posts on PC World blogs. Once a clipping is added to Dashboard, you could access by keyboard shortcut or go to the screen corner the dashboard is stored in.
Firefox’s Best Marketing Tool: IE 7
Microsoft did make some progress with the IE7, RSS handling in particular is nice. But then the audience have m0ved, moved quite a while ago to Firefox. And some of the other ones.
Gadgets and Sidebar
Most OS’s have these gadgets/widgets/whatever!. MS calls them gadgets and remain housed in the Widows sidebar. You could use them to subscribe to RSS feeds and the headlines appear on the Feed Headlines gadgets. Still, these gadgets are not as simple to use as the web clippings in the Leopard!
Leopard’s Finder Takes a Cue From iTunes
Altered Finder adds quite a value to Leopard. Finder now includes ITunes Cover flow interface. You can now thumb through icons of folders, photos, videos and so on. While this is interesting as is, some tweaking would help. For example all folders look alike despite differing contents in them. Performance of Finder on the older systems aren’t great either.
A Nice Take on Folders
Quick Look: Live Previews in Leopard
This close-up illustrates the power of Leopard’s Quick Look, a universal file viewer that lets you see the contents of documents and videos without opening them. After finding a PDF document (shown here) in the Cover Flow interface, you could page through it by clicking the
Previews Through Small Apps
On the
Automatic Listing of Shared Folders
Leopard can find shared folders on other machines over a network and shows the icons on the Finder’s sidebar. On earlier versions you had to ask your machine to go out and find these shared folders for you.
No More Network Neighborhood
There’s nothing called a Network neighborhood on the
Searching Leopard With Spotlight
Improvements on the searchlight feature that you have speedy search and well categorized list of relevant files. That you could do a little bit of calculations on the search box is incidental.
Enhanced Searching in
Though the search feature in
Stacks of Files
Stack of files does not have an equivalent in
Too Many Apps for One Screen?
If you wanted to cut out some clutter on the desktop, a set of applications can be grouped into a virtual desktop. So, create several such virtual desktops for set of applications you work on at any one time and the clutter is taken care of.
XP’s Multiple Desktop PowerToy
You could have similar features through some free add on available from third parties. MS itself had built a PowerToy for XP by which you could manage up to four virtual desktops. On the
Task Switching the
Expose has been a classic feature of the OS X for a while. Press a hot key or wing you mouse pointer to a screen corner that brings up a set of icons indicating active applications. To bring one of them to the front, simply click on the icon.
Microsoft’s Flip 3D takes a different approach to task switching, arranging application thumbnails in 3D so you can flip through them.
Related Posts:
Share This Post:
November 8th, 2007 at 9:43 am
It will be definitely apple.
Microsoft cannot make better software by imitating apple.
It will always be buggy and unstable. I feel my Windows XP with vista pack is better than original vista.
November 17th, 2007 at 9:05 am
I think that windows vista is a heavy thing for our PCs. Why? We talk about speed while we work on it. Not to take all memory as much as possible just a little. maybe if Microsoft could make to assign intelligently about charging services and just activate like it does on 2003 server maybe their system will pass the ok class. I start to say when the beta versions called longhorn were started heavily maybe in that moment they could take another way to recreate the start menu like a circular access or changing the presentation of they logon more animate or making explorer more slided. What I mean no just create something new copying the same and put a lot of additions i need to say is to thing in no use a higher memory just a little and all users I mean will thank to them. :thumbs:
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:11 am
I’m running vista now & when you mess with aero, you can loose it and the only way to get it back is to go back in time which I might have to do now or get WindowBlinds and make it look like Leopard etc.