magazine - Jonathan Hoyle

According to Hoyle...
Looking Forward to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Part I
by Jonathan Hoyle
jhoyle@maccompanion.com
macCompanion
August 2007
http://www.jonhoyle.com
Last month, we covered the 2007 Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference which featured the
upcoming new operating system Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. This month we will detail the changes
that you will see with this new operating system. Since I believe pictures speak louder than
words, I have tried to be very generous with screenshots.
Leopard Desktop
Several things can be
seen about the new
Leopard desktop.
First note that the
sidebar has been
enhanced greatly. It
is more visually
appealing and has a
hierarchical nature.
Plus at the bottom,
note the extremely
useful new Search
For entries, that
allow you to see
what has changed
recently. The Dock
has gone 3D, with
reflections below the
translucent shelf
holding up the icons. Folders have been upgraded with subtle etchings on them, whilst new icons
adorn the Finder windows with new functionality.
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Finder changes
include a
consolidation of
window types. Gone
are the distinction
between Aqua, metal
and the iTunes-like
window. Apple has
chosen the best
features of each and
made all windows
appear consistent.
Apple also improved
the distinction
between active and
inactive windows,
with deeper shadows
on the active one:
The biggest negative about the Leopard Finder is the return of
the old 10.0 translucent menu. This is particularly noticeable
when a menu with grayed-out menu items overlays a text
document (as seen below). This was a major concern at the Aqua
Feedback Forum at WWDC, so it's possible that this may
change.
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Cover Flow
Those of you who have used iTunes (and who hasn't?) have already seen the Cover Flow feature
that allows users to pan through their music by album cover. This feature is now added as a
fourth Finder view, allowing you to scroll through your applications by icon:
Application Compatibility
As you might expect, the preloaded Apple software seemed to work just fine. There was an
occasional quirk with the new Safari, but I am confident that Apple is on top of the matter. As
for 3rd party software, compatibility was fairly good for the latest software, but was hit and miss
with older applications. Applications that ran without a hitch included: FireFox 2.0.0.4, Graphic
Converter 5.9, KeyNote 3.0.2, Acrobat Reader 5.1, LimeWire 4.9.30, REALbasic 5.5.5, and even
the now defunct CodeWarrior 9.4 and Windows Media Player 9.0.0 seem to be fine. The evil
AOL 10.3.7 seemed to work okay, although upon quitting I still got the "unexpectedl quit" crash
that I get now in 10.4.10. To my surprise, Microsoft Office X failed to run, crashing during
startup. (I do not have a licensed copy of Office 2004 at home to try.) FileMaker Pro 6.0v1 also
crashed shortly after launch. Since there are newer versions of each of these, a fairer comparison
would be to test with the latest. Strangely though, the latest version of Google Earth crashes
upon startup as well. Why this should be escapes me, since Google Earth is a Cocoa application
written according to the latest standards. Old creaky Carbon applications like Office X might
have an excuse, but I cannot account for Google's stumble.
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System Preferences
The new System Preferences
look very familiar, although
the window is cleaned up and
the headache-inducing
corduroy lines are finally
gone. New panels for Spaces
and Time Machine have been
added, whilst a few older
panels have been updated and
improved. We will examine
some of these preferences
now.
Wither Classic?
For those still using the occasional Classic application, you may be wondering if Mac OS 10.4
Tiger will be the end of the line. This is a good question, and one I do not have a definitive
answer for. As you can see in the new System Preferences, there is no Classic panel displayed. If
you install this prerelease version of Leopard over top of a Tiger installation with Classic,
Classic still fails to work properly. At a WWDC feedback forum, the question of Classic was
asked directly to the panel, who honestly didn't know. They suspected it was gone but couldn't be
sure. We will know for sure when Leopard is released in October.
Sharing Preferences
Leopard's Sharing
Preferences has been cleaned
up by making accessibility of
shared folders a bit easier to
understand:
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Spaces
Leopard's Spaces, the ability to
create virtual desktops, is added
to the Expose preference panel.
With a simple and intuitive user
interface, the user can quickly
and easily add/remove spaces
and configure how switching
takes place:
Network Preferences
The confusing Network
Preferences from 10.4 Tiger has
been completely overhauled in
10.5 Leopard. As you can see
below, gone is the confusing
Show popup menu, and replaced
with a sidebar, allowing you to
configure the network on a perconnectivity basis:
The right group box changes
depending upon the selection of
the left sidebar list, so that you
can easily switch between, say,
Airport connectivity to Ethernet.
Coming Up: We continue our
look at Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. See you in 30!
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