Apple Otaku A Flavorful Blend of Apple and Japanese Culture

Last friday night, I dropped by a Mac store in Torrance and picked up my copy Leopard. The store was kind enough to cut the price by 20 bucks, threw in a Leopard t-shirt, and gave me a cup of nacho-flavored popcorn on the way out.

Installation

I chose to do an upgrade install on my Core 2 Duo Macbook. Normally, I prefer to do a clean install but I was curious to see how well Leopard works when it’s installed on top of Tiger. I also felt particularly lethargic that day.

No blue screen of death. The upgrade process went smoothly and most of my settings were migrated perfectly. Even minor stuff, like the backlight settings for my display were retained. From my experience doing Windows upgrades, I expected some degree of slowness and weird behavior.

No such thing occurred. There was an instance where a window froze when I tried to minimize it, but it eventually did minimize. I experienced zero operating system crashes. Overall, the OS feels faster than Tiger. The boot-up feels faster and once I login, the desktop pops up faster. Shutting down my Macbook also feels quicker.

Aesthetics

I’m glad they got rid of the ugly brushed metal look. That has now been replaced by a more subtle grey. The menu bar is now translucent and the dock has a new intergalactic aircraft carrier look. I’m not crazy about the change but at the same time, I have no problems with it.

Application Compatibility

I tested the stuff in my Applications folder and most of them worked fine. I didn’t have a chance to run each application extensively, but most of the third-party applications I tested didn’t exhibit weird behavior. There were problems with a few apps where they would crash immediately after launch such as Google Earth, but those problems disappeared once I updated to the latest versions.

Gripes

I’m sad to see that Apple got rid of the Internet Connect application. I used this to connect to T-Mobile HotSpot access points via 802.1x. Those settings are now in the system preferences under network. I’ll have to make a call to T-Mobile tech support since the 802.1x section in my network preferences is now more complicated.

Apple moved its software firewall to the security section of system preferences. Even though I have the firewall set to allow for incoming connections to iChat, I still get an occasional warning when I launch this application. I hope they iron this out in 10.5.1.

When I launched iTunes under Tiger, I would see the watch icon and after a short while, the application would pop up. Under Leopard, I would see the watch icon, then a rectangular box with a progress bar, then the app would pop up. Not really a gripe since I don’t think Leopard is any slower at launching iTunes. It’s just an observation.

Conclusion

I think this is a solid upgrade. I didn’t experience any major show-stopping bugs and my Macbook feels a bit quicker. If you spend as much time as I do behind a Mac then this is a worthy upgrade. Casual users or power-users responsible for maintaining production machines would do better by waiting. If you already have Tiger and don’t need the latest and greatest, then just hold off until you buy a new Mac with Leopard already installed. People responsible for production machines should obviously wait and see as any major OS release can be fraught with bugs and compatibility issues.

For those without such responsibilities, I can strongly recommend Leopard. The installation went without a hitch and the resulting OS now residing on my hard drive is a joy to use.

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