So here we are, 26th October that is… We’ve waited for this for a long, long time. Unless you’ve been locked up, everyone should know what I’m talking about. Before I do, let me make it clear that i’m using a white macbook. I say this because it has been pointed out to me that there some substantial differences between using Leopard on a macbook compared to say, an imac. BIG is generally better people. Ok, let’s make a start.

The Box

I received the package this afternoon with freshly brewed Mac OS X Leopard. Fresh and hot Leo blew a breeze of innovation and progress towards my nostrils. The box itself is a small, cd album sized package. It contains 1 dvd, a manual (more a “show-off booklet”) and of course 2 Apple stickers. Nothing impressive? Take a closer look at the box. It has this holographic effect mirrored around the huge familiar “X”. Amazing effect.

Desktop

Installation (well I upgraded my Tiger) took about 40 minutes and boom - a reboot. Login screen looks the same as in Tiger (aww, I was counting on something new from the beginning, even just a small touch would have been nice…), after a short while system loaded up correctly and finally I could try Leopard on my own!

It’s easy to see, the desktop has been designed to match all the new Apple products (the ilife & iwork suite.)

Menu

Can you see what i’m getting at here? I’ve no doubt it was a hard decision for Apple to make the menu semi-transparent. I can see it has changed from the early beta shots as it’s now more solid. Works really nice with darker pictures, getting worse with light or highly saturated images. Anyway I do love it! Although i’m sure some people out there would have wanted Apple to simply give them the option of transparent or not. But hey, the reason I switched to Macs not so long time ago was the fact that I hated everything about Windows’ design and colors. It was really distracting and full of contrast, nasty colors etc.

The new system has probably every kind of window, menu or dialog toned to one shade of matte grey which is fantastic. It’s even less distracting than Tiger and lets you focus on your work easily, although on non-native mac apps such as firefox & flock the difference is styles is pretty noticeable…but i’m sure these will be updated in no time.

The drop-down boxes in the menus have rounded corners at the bottom which just give it a nicer look and not much else - but it’s the details people, it’s the details.

The other thing which was fortunately added to the menu look is the ‘engraved’ effect. Now each application has that Garageband window look which means the title looks like it’s been literally engraved into the aluminum window. The text gains sharpness, it’s easier to read it and it looks sweet, voila.

Dock

Let the battle begin! I can see the fights between Tiger Dock Lovers and Leopard Dock Lovers already… This is a really hard point to write about. The dock itself looks slick, classy and it’s more or less cover flow added to the dock. The 3D look gives it more ‘gadgety’ feeling and ok the mirror effect does it as well. I guess this is the only aspect of the Leopard UI that could distract the user. The small arrows indicating is the application running have been replaced with these bright spotlights. Not the best thing to have done… Say what you like but I’m more than sure that the mirror effect is using a good chunk of memory and it’s another process for your cpu to think about. But yeah… Apple likes to improve the design for the cost of performance. It’s not their first time they’ve this. Second thing are the strange shadows behind the icons in dock. Is there 2 of them?

Ok I assume its to give the user a stage light experience? If you want to get rid of the stage, then take a look at this. It works great!Icon one! Finder! Number one file managing application, bravo! Works great, design wise…boring & far too itunes like. The folder icons Apple have added to Leopard are dull blue - boring hospital blue. It looks like Candy Bar are going to be profiting from this over the next few years, once they update it!!The stacks? They’re definitely useful and they do look good…well, almost. Could you also please tell me what that blasted light line is doing there to the bottom of the dock?

Coverflow

Ok, Apple really can be proud of this. I was amazed at how quickly Coverflow works in Finder. What’s more important - How beautiful it is! Icons in Leopard are extended to 512×512 pixels and all of OSX’s native icons are upgraded to that size too. They are sharp, crisp and oh so yummy. Browsing through them is pure pleasure. It works smoothly even on my MacBook, the files are pre-cached in fraction of a second. Great functionality…

Front Row

Heavily disappointed. The zoom out effect which was present in Tiger when starting Front Row is gone. Now it just fades out to black. Bottom-line it’s basically Apple TV layout and design.

Other Worthwhile Mentions:

 

• You’ll notice the top window, i.e. the window you’re currently using, is slightly darker a matte grey than the other lower windows. You’ll also notice a more prominent shadow over the windows underneath…Worth a mention.