Leopard Reviews

The Platinum theme looked great compared to Windows 98-2000 but its time has past. I enjoyed the different themes that were introduced from Mac OS X 10.0 thru Mac OS X 10.4 and the new look in Mac OS X 10.5. I think Apple has transitioned to this unified look because of the highly critical user base. Professionals will salivate over this grayish interface, with the graphite buttons, and that gray desktop that came with all Macs in the 1990s.
The next generation of the user interface is simple and dark. That's right, you know it, I am talking about Front Row, Time Machine, and Dashboard.

p.s. This is not a review and please don't quote me on this.
 
Does anyone know if the theme shown here http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/ in the image with the grass desktop background is going to be how Leopard actually looks? I really don't like the tapered dock, REALLY. Also not that sure about the semi transparent menu bar.. Please tell me this is jut a mock up!

EDIT: Just spotted those little blue dots below launched apps aswell. Once more, please tell me!
 
It certainly _is_ how things look in the current beta build. But that doesn't mean it's how it'll look at release time. But I'm not sure that's what they'll be working on 'til October.
 
i put the big cat to sleep about a week ago...

i got sick of having to deal with restarting my computer all the time. It did run a look quicker on my powerbook g4 but the heartache it was giving me was not worth it in the long run.

i loved the way the dock looked though.
 
I picked up my copy at WWDC and had been using it since then. I still have it running on my iMac, but I took it off of my Macbook Pro (2.16ghz, 256MB VRAM, 2GB RAM, 1st gen). The reason was that the system idling was taking up so much CPU cycles that it constantly had the fans whirring on the MBP. Mail and Safari both would routinely consume 100% of the CPU resources, making the fans go beserk. The same behavior didn't occur on the iMac.

Once they get the quirks worked out (it is BETA, and they do have 3 months after all) it is going to be a great release. You can moan and groan about not liking this or that, but the entire OS feels more polished, all of the apps have some really great additions, and once you use it, you will hate going back to Tiger.
 
serpicolugnut said:
I picked up my copy at WWDC and had been using it since then. I still have it running on my iMac, but I took it off of my Macbook Pro (2.16ghz, 256MB VRAM, 2GB RAM, 1st gen). The reason was that the system idling was taking up so much CPU cycles that it constantly had the fans whirring on the MBP. Mail and Safari both would routinely consume 100% of the CPU resources, making the fans go beserk. The same behavior didn't occur on the iMac.

Once they get the quirks worked out (it is BETA, and they do have 3 months after all) it is going to be a great release. You can moan and groan about not liking this or that, but the entire OS feels more polished, all of the apps have some really great additions, and once you use it, you will hate going back to Tiger.
Click to expand...

Is iChat as nifty as it looks?
 
I agree with most of the points you've made, but I've actually enjoyed coming back to Tiger for two main reasons (besides quirks and bugs that are going to get worked out 'til final):

1.) The Dock. It _really_ isn't an improvement whatsoever in my opinion. It doesn't look or feel more professional, it just looks overloaded and intrusive.

2.) The transparent menubar. It feels _wrong_. The little utility that put a white bar behind it had its own problem with full-screen VLC (i.e. it was in front of that...), so I had to constantly quit and relaunch that utility.

The rest of the look I'll enjoy, quite probably.
 
I'm hoping that once the final version of Leopard is out, the menubar stays solid or at least give you the option to change the level of transparency. The new Dock is pretty, but I don't see anything that fantastic over the old one (excluding Stacks, of course).
 
serpicolugnut said:
I picked up my copy at WWDC and had been using it since then. I still have it running on my iMac, but I took it off of my Macbook Pro (2.16ghz, 256MB VRAM, 2GB RAM, 1st gen). The reason was that the system idling was taking up so much CPU cycles that it constantly had the fans whirring on the MBP. Mail and Safari both would routinely consume 100% of the CPU resources, making the fans go beserk. The same behavior didn't occur on the iMac.

Once they get the quirks worked out (it is BETA, and they do have 3 months after all) it is going to be a great release. You can moan and groan about not liking this or that, but the entire OS feels more polished, all of the apps have some really great additions, and once you use it, you will hate going back to Tiger.
Click to expand...

I've been using my WWDC copy for about a week and a half and no problems so far like you have, on my MBP too.

I think Apple has done a good job with this so far.
 
Jacksloadedgun said:
Just kinda curious if anyone got a copy of the leopard beta (outside of developers) and what was their general impressions of it were? how stable is it? what older programs can be run on it? how do you like the new features?
Click to expand...

I tested Leopard for a few days... It's really more stable than all other builds before 9A466. The only applications that don't run on Leopard are applications that were made with REALbasic and REALbasic it's self. (Other applications I haven't found yet... ;) )

Some of the new features are really cool and helpful. Most helpful is TimeMachine I think... But it's interface is a bit eye-candy. (Some of you already said.)
QuickLook is helpful, too... I used it very often since I installed Leopard on my Mac.
And the entire system is much much faster than 10.4.10! The speed is really really awsome! Some Applications (like iTunes) bounced more than 5 times until it was opened under Tiger... Under Leopard it bounces 1 time until it's opened and ready to use. :)
Safari 3 is as twice as fast than Safari 2. The Web-Pages are displayed pretty fast. (Now it's really fun to surf the net. ;) )

Now... Enough of "pretelling" about Leopard. :D

My impression: Apple has done a really good job I think. Leopards new design is cool... (It's somthing new... And a bit eye-candy.)
And I think I'll buy the final version when it releases! :)
 
Exebit said:
The speed is really really awsome! Some Applications (like iTunes) bounced more than 5 times until it was opened under Tiger... Under Leopard it bounces 1 time until it's opened and ready to use. :)
Click to expand...

Just had to say, my iTunes opens in one bounce and ive not got the fastest iMac going. Im going to get leopard solely because i like to be up-to-date though.
 
My friend let me try out his developer copy of Leopard yesterday. I'm not allowed to say much, however...

The active window drop shadow is HUGE. The transparent menubar is *not* a good idea. The new dock is pretty spiffy, but it's really distracting unless it's either on the side of the screen or set to auto-hide. The seemingly superfluous CoverFlow is actually pretty nice for sorting through files, however, the sidebar items are far too small. I hate having to click within a 10pt box to get what I want.
 
Qion said:
(...) the sidebar items are far too small. I hate having to click within a 10pt box to get what I want.
Click to expand...

Yes, you're right! I tryed to change the size of the icons but there are no settings for that... :(
I hope that Apple fixes this "problem"... ;)
 
Hi there!

I really like Leopard! (You know from my posts.) ;)
But... I tryed to connect to my WLAN network (for uncountable times)... But Leopard doesn't find my network called "WLAN-network". But it finds it when I installed Leopard and it wants to connect to Apple. (When I choose it, it says "connection failed".)
I disabled the password in my router... But that doesn't help!
Can anyone help me? - Or is it a bug of Leopard Beta?

(BTW.: Under Tiger 10.4.10 it works fine!)

Thanks for help! :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top