10.5 First impressions - post yours

Just look around the forums, too many bugs. Some things were better in tiger.
A lot of people said the same thing about Tiger. (I know I did!)

From what I've heard, Leopard seems better in comparison to Tiger than Tiger was to Panther. 10.4.0 was horrible, and even 10.4.10 is a step back from Panther in many ways (most notably, Spotlight is a giant pain, especially when compared to Panther's inline search).
 
Spotlight is greatly improved in 10.5, mikuro. although not back to panther style searching, the addition of proper google-like boolean, the addition of some context is something they've not really shouted about enough... for example, if two identical results come up, the main location difference will appear after in in grey, like this:

Images
rainbows.jpg - Macintosh HD
rainbows.jpg - Photos Backup

also, the speed and accuracy is MUCH improved over tiger. 99% of the time now, i type in 3 or 4 letters and hit enter straight away without looking, as it will have found what i wanted that quickly. it's brilliant.
 
Spotlight is greatly improved in 10.5, mikuro. although not back to panther style searching, the addition of proper google-like boolean, the addition of some context is something they've not really shouted about enough... for example, if two identical results come up, the main location difference will appear after in in grey, like this:

Images
rainbows.jpg - Macintosh HD
rainbows.jpg - Photos Backup

also, the speed and accuracy is MUCH improved over tiger. 99% of the time now, i type in 3 or 4 letters and hit enter straight away without looking, as it will have found what i wanted that quickly. it's brilliant.
Yeah all of that is definitely true, but I feel that Spotlight has actually taken a step back from Tiger in the sense that it doesn't even look into the Library folders. Now I know that this isn't an issue for most people, but for those of us that really like to dig into their systems and get their hands dirty, this is an astronomical setback. I actually have to navigate in Finder to the Library folder in order to search it. I really wish Leopard wasn't dumbed down like that.
 
have you tried adding a library folder to the omit list, then removing it again (the way you force indexed a folder in tiger)?
 
I've heard a lot of good things about Leopard's implementation of Spotlight. I look forward to putting it through the paces as soon as I upgrade. I was just talking about Tiger's implementation of Spotlight, which was a big let-down for me.

Axlin: Apparently you can get Spotlight to search through Libraries and system files, but you need to go out of your way a bit. See http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/mac911/2007/10/spotsyssearch/index.php
 
have you tried adding a library folder to the omit list, then removing it again (the way you force indexed a folder in tiger)?
Hm I never would have thought of doing that. I omitted the System folder, /Library, and ~/Library and then removed them from the omission list, but now it's only looking in my ~/Library folder, and even then it's coming up with incomplete results. It's still completely ignoring my /Library and /System folders.

Edit: Mikuro, I just saw your post and I looked at that link. While that is a workaround, what I want (and expect) is for Spotlight to just... find the files I want. I don't want to have to pop open a new window, select System Files from a drop-down menu, and then select Include in another drop-down menu. Spotlight should just find these files when I press Cmd-Space and type them in like it did in Tiger. I really wish Leopard didn't make it so incredibly inconvenient for the people that know what they're doing to get things done.
 
OS X can be a pro OS, but at the same time is a consumer level product that needs to be idiot proof. denying access to critical system files out of the box goes a long way to maintain this.

for the pro people, it's not impossible. you have the choice.
 
ok, i've installed it on 2 g4s. one is the one in my sig. it doesn't like my flashed 6800. it hangs for 6 min when booting. the installer did it too. but after the 6min wait, it does load and works (and looks)fine. i like stacks, and the the glass like dock. but i don't like the glowing blue triangles they use to show a launched app. they are next to impossible to see in the reflection in the dock. if i could keep the reflections, but make the triangles darker, that would be cool. and speaking of color, tell me why after 6 revisions, they still only have blue and gray for the menus?!?! that is my longest running gripe with os x. even vista fixed that in windows. it can't be that hard to add the other basic colors like os 9 had -red, orange, yellow, green, purple, and brown. thats all i ask, give other basic colors for the menus.
i also installed it on an ibook g4 with 1ghz cpu. that went flawlessly and doesn't seem bad at all. but because it is my school computer, and i need 100% reliability, i'll wait till the semester is over before going to leopard. that should give time to make sure apps i use are 10.5 compatible, and 10.5.1 or 10.5.2 be out.
i'd go ahead and use it as my main os on my desktop if it wasn't having issues with my non-apple 6800, but i'm too impatient and don't want to wait 10min to use my computer after turning it on. so if anyone knows how to fix that please pm me. also, if you know how to add other colors to the menu highlight besides apple's blue and gray, pm me too. i want to keeps apple's look, but just with other highlight colors.
 
ok, i've installed it on 2 g4s. one is the one in my sig. it doesn't like my flashed 6800. it hangs for 6 min when booting. the installer did it too. but after the 6min wait, it does load and works (and looks)fine. i like stacks, and the the glass like dock. but i don't like the glowing blue triangles they use to show a launched app. they are next to impossible to see in the reflection in the dock. if i could keep the reflections, but make the triangles darker, that would be cool. and speaking of color, tell me why after 6 revisions, they still only have blue and gray for the menus?!?! that is my longest running gripe with os x. even vista fixed that in windows. it can't be that hard to add the other basic colors like os 9 had -red, orange, yellow, green, purple, and brown. thats all i ask, give other basic colors for the menus.
i also installed it on an ibook g4 with 1ghz cpu. that went flawlessly and doesn't seem bad at all. but because it is my school computer, and i need 100% reliability, i'll wait till the semester is over before going to leopard. that should give time to make sure apps i use are 10.5 compatible, and 10.5.1 or 10.5.2 be out.
i'd go ahead and use it as my main os on my desktop if it wasn't having issues with my non-apple 6800, but i'm too impatient and don't want to wait 10min to use my computer after turning it on. so if anyone knows how to fix that please pm me. also, if you know how to add other colors to the menu highlight besides apple's blue and gray, pm me too. i want to keeps apple's look, but just with other highlight colors.

A lot of people have problems with flashed graphic cards during/after the upgrade to Leopard. I read about a quite easy solution regarding the problem, unfortunately it is ATI specific. But maybe you can achieve something similar with your nVidia card (requires Tiger backup or another Tiger machine):

From another message board said:
Hey there everyone. This is just a turnaround for those who are in trouble with the new OS X 10.5 with G4 mdd and a PC flashed video card (mine is a Sapphire X800xt) In order to boot from the Leo DVD installer I had to replace the card with the old OEM 9000Pro or machine won't work. Everything's fine with the old card during install and after reboot the Mac
works stable. But when replacing the X800 only grayscale screen, unusable at all. So just go in >place-your-boot-drive-name-here</system/extension/AppleNDRV/. Now copy the AtiRomXtender file (installed by Ati display) to the same location in Leopard.
Now my video card works perfect in Leo.
 
anyone know how i can get .ai files to preview in quicklook or coverflow? they're all just standard .ai icons...
 
Various expiriences with Leopard so far:

It behaves very differently in our working environment at University compared to Tiger. LDAP authetification is somewhat broken, it's no longer possible to login via network accounts. Tools like NetInfo Manager are gone, it weird to look in different places for the functions. Good it's only one of four Computers I have at my disposal...

A friend bought it, and installed it right away. Many problems, as he has to use stuff like Photoshop and so on for a living. He's back to Tiger since last night, which works a lot better.

I have it at home since yesterday, works like a charm so far. I do not use special software though, only the standard (Adium, Camino, Vienna, Mail, iTunes etc). It's sad there are no sub-layers in Stacks, but they are quite nifty and useful IMHO. I thing I closed the system as good as I could, with the fully functional ipfw configured and running, in combination with LittleSnitch. What really pisses me off though is that I'm asked for my password or any other security related thing basically every two minutes. Why did Apple advertise with a Mac/PC-spot where they mock the Vista Firewall, when they introduce something similar (and annoying) with Leopard?

But apart from that, I really like it. Behaves well on my single G4 MDD with a RADEON 9800 Pro. It's at least as fast as Tiger.
 
Having used Leopard for the last week or so, I offer the following critique:
1. Quick Look is wonderful but has two deplorable flaws: a) it gives you no way to set a default window size for the preview (which is initially too small to be legible on my large screen); and b) it resizes most files sensibly, but makes an exception for MSWD files, which when resized maintain their initial font size and just fill differently.
2. Cover Flow is also wonderful, but please tell me
o why can't I drop a file onto a folder icon in cover view?
o why did Apple decide to maintain a global view setting instead
of remembering the view I last used on a given window?
(so when you change view, the change applies to all non-open windows)
o why not generate a cover for a file that has an overridden icon
rather than blow up a tiny icon to make a dumb looking cover?
3. The new dock looks great on the bottom of the screen, but not so great if you put it on either side.
4. New finder windows won't allow you to narrow the sidebar so that only the icon shows. 10.4 did allow this. Allowing you to change the sidebar width to make it WIDER than the icon plus name strikes me as useless (can anybody think of a use for this feature?).
5. The idea of representing shared devices in the dock as piles of their icons is poorly thought out, since many of these will consist of nothing but piles of folders -- so they will all look the same. Since I had a unique icon for each of mine and they all looked fine in the old dock, I'm underwhelmed by this "improvement."
 
I do not have it personally but I have used it.

I have many problems setting up a network.

The connection is in and out and sometimes does not even exist. The WEP Key changes. I have called Apple Support on this subject and have talked all the way up to Supervisors and Engineers. They cannot figure out the problem

There are over 1000 Laptops on this network for a school, macbooks included. This should not be an issue.
 
Further expirience with Leopard and Networking:

Got Leopard talking to our LDAP-server at work. It can only use it when the connection is not SSL encrypted, though the Tiger Macs can. Which is kind of a bummer, but better than nothing.

On the other hand, Leoapard with an Active Directory is working like a charm. Tiger was always hit and miss, and about 80% of the time it did not work. But Leopard integrates perfect, authenticating the user, automatically mounting the AD storage server where the home directories are located - all how you wish that it would work. Nice, especially as we are in the transitional period of migrating from Novell NetWare to AD.

If the Leopard Server works as well as Leopard Client does so far with the AD integration, this could take a huge rock from our backs in IT
 
Time for it now that it'll go public ...
Your first thoughts and impressions using it - post your.

The short story: Two of five installs done in our household so far. The first one scared the hell out of us: crashed the hard drive on the iMac G5 (2 MHz, 1.5 Gb), after two hours on the phone with Apple we took it to the genius bar, Applecare covered the cost of a new hard drive (plus $60 out of pocket to transfer the data), tried a simple install again. HORROR SHOW. Time Machine wouldn't work, didn't see the Mighty Mouse, froze ten times a day, on phone with Apple for hours. Did every version of archive and install (preserve, don't preserve, etc.) and finally have Time Machine working, but forced to use a corded mouse - bluetooth is not seeing the mouse. Many, many lines of detail omitted, let me know if you want to know and I will turn my son loose on you for the gory details.

Next was my daughter's 1 Gb 15" iBook G4. It worked! One persistent challenge - doesn't seem to want to play videos in Quicktime. All she gets is the Q with a question mark blinking over it. Reinstalled QT and Macromedia player, no change. Fixed the Quicktime issue with this from one of the other threads:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread....44398&tstart=0

REALLY not looking forward to putting it on my 1 Gb 17" Powerbook G4 currently running 10.3.9 quite happily. Working w/new 500 Gb external drive to transfer music and backup all files before I do that.

As for what is incompatible, aside from the bluetooth module, Mediafork keeps crashing while ripping DVDs. Previewing JPGs in full screen crashes the Finder consistently. Multitasking in iTunes crashes it, such as playing a song and deleting a playlist. Actually, cannot delete a playlist at all. Finder crashes daily, but it reboots in 10 seconds. And we can't seem to repair disc permissions.

Still beats the pants off the problems my neighbors are having with Vista.

23 years on the Mac and still loving it.
 
Wow, I honestly can say:

I have not yet met someone who had that severe problems with installing Leopard... this sucks. :(
 
REALLY not looking forward to putting it on my 1 Gb 17" Powerbook G4 currently running 10.3.9 quite happily. Working w/new 500 Gb external drive to transfer music and backup all files before I do that.

OK, so here is the story with the 17" G4. The install took a little over an hour to get to reboot. Looked good for a heartbeat, then it refused my password. I'm the administrator - foreboding development! Fortunately my kids have user accounts on this machine and I remember one of their passwords. So now I am in, searching these forums, find a few links to the Apple support pages, and find I cannot boot from the install DVD (is holding down C during boot up my only option? Cannot change start discs - can't authenticate admin, remember?) and I cannot seem to log on as a single user to reset the password that way (numerous restarts while holding down command-S, all to no avail).

So now I am looking through any and every reference to Leopard permissions while I wait for one of you who have many more experiences than I to share the wealth. I will keep coming back to look, as I have no access to my email.

Thanks for any and all ideas!
 
This is a spontanious and possibly far fetch, but:

Can you boot one of your other machines with the DVD? Maybe you could link the Powerbook via Target mode to that Mac and try to reset the password on that way. I never reset my password that way, so I don't know if you can chose the installation to debug/reset the password on. Maybe someone else can comment on that one (no means to check it as I have only one Mac here).
 
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