Is it just me, or is there no “archive and install” when upgrading to OS X Leopard? It let me select extra packages (Fonts and X11 are important), but there was never an option (that I saw) to install a “fresh” copy, moving the old one out of the way. No matter, as everything went smoothly, and all my apps work. First impressions:
* The translucent pulldown menus are a bit annoying.
* The network file share code has been TREMENDOUSLY IMPROVED! I can now connect to and disconnect from flaky Windows-style network shares without having to way 30-60 seconds for the rainbow beachball.
* Spaces is kinda cool, but not enough to justify an OS upgrade.
* Time Machine won’t work with my 1TB network attached storage device.
* Tabs in terminal are quite cool. I feel that I am going to have to remap keys here or at work, as the OS X Terminal and the Linux/KDE Konsole use different shortcuts for switching tabs.
* I haven’t yet opened Mail to look at the notes or RSS stuff and probably won’t. It’s all about Google Apps for Domains these days.
* iCal requires two extra clicks for me to change an event’s category. This is important because events created on the iPhone get dumped into “uncategorized.”
* I don’t know about screen sharing or “back to my Mac” yet, as it has only been installed on one machine.
* The automatic green-screen technology in PhotoBooth and iChat is SUPER COOL!
* iSync kicked in and wanted me to resolve a bunch of “conflicts” with my nonexistent Palm smartphone.
* There is some app called “Podcast Capture” that won’t run because it requires an OS X server running Podcast Producer. Huh?
* The new speech synthesis voice “Alex” is scarily not very computer sounding.
Overall, it’s an evolution not a revolution. We’ll see how 3rd party apps change that, once more of them take advantage of the Core Animation fanciness. I anxiously await the new Delicious Library.
