So the first part of our Leopard review is up; my thanks to those who read it and left their comments. The second part will cover the Finder and Spotlight, and should be posted tomorrow (November 1). To hold you over until then, though, here are some more observations on some of the smaller changes made to Leopard.

It brought up the right card!!

Here’s an awesome little touch. Mail in Leopard has a feature called data detectors that recognizes various sorts of information like phone numbers and addresses. My brother had moved, and a few days back I emailed him asking for his new address. He replied yesterday with his new address. It was a perfect time to test out data detectors. I moused over the address he had given me; as expected, Mail recognized the address and put an outline around it, along with a down-pointing arrow indicating a pop-up menu. I clicked the arrow and selected “Add to Existing Contact...”. I fully expected to be presented with a dialog box or something asking me to pick a contact, but Mail saw that it was my brother and pulled up his address card automatically, giving a preview of the card with the new address. Sweet.

Pick a network, any network

Mac OS X has always had the option to let you know about WiFi networks in the vicinity if it can’t find any of your preferred networks. Leopard improves upon this feature by listing the available networks when notifying…
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Ah, at long last, we get to review Leopard! Leopard, of course, is Apple’s marketing name for Mac OS X version 10.5. If Apple didn’t opt for keeping the OS X moniker, we’d probably be up to version 12 or something by now. But I digress.

We plan on offering our review in multiple parts, since there is a ton of material to cover. And no, before anyone asks, we’re not planning to out-Siracusa our friend over at Ars Technica, whose gigantic Leopard review went up Sunday night. This review will be targeted towards the enthusiast: someone who is a very tech-savvy end user but doesn’t necessarily need to know extensive under-the-hood minutiae (besides, it would be foolish to go up against the likes of Siracusa--his reviews kick ass!).

This first part will focus on the most immediately obvious changes to Leopard: the user interface. There is a reason why I start almost every review I write with a discussion on the user interface. If you’re going to stare at a computer screen for hours on end, you had better enjoy the software you’re using, and much of the enjoyment factor rests on the interface. Does the interface enhance or detract the software’s usability? Is it ugly? Is it attractive? Are there areas that seem awkward and need tweaking? Why should I care? These are the sort of questions I hope to address in this first part of our review of Leopard.

A quick note about the score at the bottom…
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Dear Apple,

Last Friday you launched your new operating system, Mac OS X Leopard, a.k.a. Mac OS X 10.5. I was expecting that those of us who have purchased a Mac in the last few months would be allowed to upgrade at a discounted or free price. However, it appears that I am wrong. From what I can find all that you offer in this realm of customer service is a free upgrade to those who purchased an Apple computer after the first of October, 2007. This I find completely unsatisfactory, as I have owned my Apple computer for less than three months as of the date of this writing (ordered August 23, 2007 received August 31, 2007). I am appalled by the fact that the common customer should have to pay for an operating system upgrade within three months of purchasing their system. There is no reason not to allow customers from as far back as the month of August to freely upgrade to OS X Leopard. This is in my eyes a despicable move to drain the money from our pockets and drain the love of all things Apple from our souls.

I respect that Apple is attempting to keep the price of the upgrade down to a reasonable price. However I do not feel that allowing two twelfths of the over 7 million Apple computers sold in the last year to be freely upgraded is going to damage the revenue of Apple in any way. Furthermore I see…
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Now that I have my mitts on the big cat, I have to say that by and large I like it a lot. So far I haven’t run across many bugs, and it seems plenty responsive. The first part of our Leopard review will be posted tomorrow or Monday. Until then, though, here are some little quick notes and observations regarding Leopard.

I can see right through you--sort of

Leopard fakes the menubar transparency!

I first suspected this when I invoked Exposé (F11 - clear the Desktop) and the windows were not visible through the menubar. Instead, I still saw the desktop background. It turns out that this is actually the case, according to the Many Tricks blog.

Shocking!

Icon tomfoolery

Mac OS X now supports icons up to 512 x 512 pixels. However, outside of CoverFlow and Quick View, the Finder can still only display icons up to 128 x 128 pixels.

Feed me!

Safari now supports multiple RSS feeds. Just click the RSS button in the address bar and select the feed you want to read.

Don’t stick your tongue out at me!

iChat’s smiley looked better in Tiger. That is all.

Best new Leopard feature

Alert the media! Leopard does not lose its lunch when it loses a connection with a network volume! That’s right, if Leopard loses a server connection, it will inform you of the disrupted connection and allow you to disconnect without forcing you to stare at a spinning beachball.

Not to be snide, but…
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It was cold, drizzling lightly, and windy on the corner of 5th Ave and 58th St in New York City, but that didn’t stop the Apple Faithful from congregating in front of the monolithic glass cube of the Apple Store. Because in less than 30 minutes, the store would open its doors to receive them, and they would enter to buy Mac OS X Leopard, Apple’s newest operating system.

Maybe it was the weather, but the line wasn’t as long as I expected; the lines for the store opening and for the iPhone launch both stretched all the way around the block after doubling back a few times, but this line was quite short, only extending to the side of the nearby FAO Schwartz store, about 150 people deep. But as time went on and the 6pm hour approached, it continued to grow.

In truth, the line was quite uneventful. Those in line were content to huddle up and try to get away from the biting drizzle, while the rest of New York hustled by on their collective way home. Looking down inside the store, employees could be seen loading Leopard onto the in-store Macs, and at 5:55, they assembled for a pep-talk, minutes before they would accept the throng of customers.

At last the hour came. The doors were opened, a (largely manufactured) cheer went up, and customers were allowed inside to purchase their copies of the software. For the most part, the line moved swiftly; once it began moving,…
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