Rob Wilkerson

Like most technology enthusiasts, professional and amateur alike, I love to play with the newest toys.  My girlfriend would probably argue that I live to play with the newest toys.  For that reason, the last week and a half has been, um, difficult.  I've had my shiny, new, still-wrapped-in-plastic copy of Leopard sitting on the desk right beside me with no time to, you know, play.  Argh.  It was a remarkably difficult week and a half, but through a spectacular demonstration of iron self-control I persevered and, just last night, was finally able to get Leopard installed.

After spending the better part of the night and all day configuring, customizing and even doing a little work in my new world, I thought I'd scribble down a few initial thoughts about my experience so far.  Because I'm such a sunny, positive-energy kind of guy, I'll start with...

The Things I Like

Finder

Oh my.  There are lots of changes in here and damn near all of them are for the better.  Some dramatically so.  It seems to be blossoming into a usable application (Look, Gepetto, I'm a real, live boy!).  Seriously.

1. Cover Flow rocks.  Cover Flow itself isn't new if you've been using iTunes for a while, but it's new to Finder and is a nice visualization tool.  Maybe a little on the eye candy side, but still.  And, while using it, I noticed something I thought was really cool.  I dragged a file into a folder that happened to be front and center in my Cover Flow pane and the folder pulsed to tell me something was going on with it.  A nice touch that I didn't expect.
2. Network shares are detected automatically.  When I first opened Finder and saw other systems on my network appear under the Shared header, I did a double-take.  Where the hell did those come from?  Then I remembered reading that this was a new feature.  I love having resources I need at my fingertips without having to actually do anything.
3. Quick Look.  Not having to open a file's assigned application (or any other application) to preview a file is very handy, indeed.  And quite speedy.  Not sure if the file selected is actually what you need?  Hit the Space bar.
4. Renaming a file.  When initially clicked, the file is highlighted.  A second click or hitting Return/Enter on the keyboard triggers the rename functionality that  selects the entire file name text.  Except it doesn't any more.  Only the file name text itself - not the extension - is selected.  It's a little thing, but it makes the process so much less cumbersome.
5. Smart Folders.  I honestly don't know whether they were available in Tiger, but they're loud and proud in Leopard.  Right there in the sidebar.  Love those things in iTunes and in Mail.  I hope they're as useful in Finder.

Printing

I guess Apple included more print drivers in Leopard because, using Tiger, I was never able to connect to my old HP LaserJet 2100.  And I tried. I tried a lot.  Out of curiosity (and because I'm a glutton for punishment), I thought I'd try connecting in Leopard and was shocked to find that my printer model appeared in the list.  And that it shipped with 3 separate driver offerings.  They didn't all work, but I don't care.  One of them did.  I can print.  And I was able to do it without spending an extraordinary amount of time and without going to any extraordinary effort. 

That particular capability inspired a certain level of giddiness around 1am this morning when it was discovered.

Spaces

Spaces itself...no big deal.  I've been using multiple desktops on Linux for years and have been using VirtueDesktops since joining Switcher Nation.  I even tried Microsoft's abortive attempt at providing this feature for a while. 

What I do find myself entertained by, though, is the animation when switching desktops, nay, spaces.  Visually, spaces are arranged in a grid that can be as large as 4x4.  If I'm working in Desktop 1 (dammit!  I mean Space 1) in the top left of the visual grid and switch to, say, Space 6 in the lower right of a 3x2 grid then the animated change is as though a camera is panning diagonally down and to the right.  The way your eyes would move from one space to another in the grid is how the animation rolls.  A nice contextual touch.

Font Display

I can't be sure of this, because if it's true I can't believe more people aren't talking about it, but fonts seem much more...crisp.  Especially in my browser.  Text always felt slightly blurry before.  Maybe I'm imagining things, but if I am I hope I never come to my senses. 

I wonder if this is how people who've had Lasik eye surgery feel.

Finding Text

This is kind of a silly, whimsical addition to the list, but do something for me.  Find a text document with a reasonable amount of content and open it in TextEdit.  Now, hit Command+F to launch the Find dialog.  Type a word that you know exists in the document and press Enter.  Did you notice?

And Now, The Things I Don't...

The Immutable Guest Account

I love that Apple introduced a guest account and I love that it completely resets itself each time a guest logs out.  What I don't love is that I have absolutely no say in what that guest has access to while they're on.  Don't get me wrong, I don't anticipate any major security breaches, but I'd like to be able to limit what's available on the dock.  In fact, I'd just like to limit any visibility at all into the system beyond that which I think is necessary for a guest on my own machine.

The Active Application Indicators

Much ado has been made over the new dock (and many of the new UI changes in general).  I don't mind it (or most of them).  Maybe that's because I have virtually nothing in my dock, keep it hidden and use Quicksilver to launch applications.  Nonetheless, the little glowing active application indicator dot is damn near invisible.  And it's more invisible for some applications (e.g. VMWare Fusion, TextEdit), than it is for others.  I find that kind of weird.  I assume it's related to the degree of reflection in the dock.

Stacks

One UI change that I do have a problem with is Stacks.  Not Stacks itself, mind you, but how a stack's icon is displayed.  The decision to display, not the folder icon, but icon of the first item contained within the folder (depending on sort order) was a bad one.  A really bad one.  A monumentally piss poor one (am I making myself clear, here?). 

Yeah, I know there are workarounds and that's great, but that, ahem, feature should have never been implemented in such a way that a hack is required to make it usable, un-confusing and un-annoying.

That's all I have so far.  Further bulletins as events warrant...