Leopard Impressions

Leopard is up and running on both my Mac Pro and trusty old PowerBook G4. Installation went very smoothly on both machines. Remember when you'd have to budget an entire weekend for a Windows upgrade? Oh, maybe you still do with Windows? Just be on the safe side, I did make a fresh bootable backup with SuperDuper prior to pulling the trigger.

With Leopard running since Saturday, there's still much to learn, but here are my initial observations:

The MacPro is noticeably faster, particularly while running Photoshop and Aperture. I guess all the Multicore technology is really starting to mature. And the laptop certainly isn't suffering from a slowdown. Typically, an OS upgrade just doesn't run as swiftly on an older machine. Sure the eye candy features aren't as punchy, but all in all, the PowerBook is running just fine. No slower than before.

Mail and iChat are much improved! To Do and Notes are built in to Mail. And it even recognizes appointments and phone numbers within a message - very intelligent.

I was interested to give Time Machine a try, but it appears Apple has got some work to do yet with Aperture's compatibility with the new feature. So I'm going to hold off for now.

Spaces has taken me all weekend to get the feel of, but now it's starting to click. Perhaps the best way to think of it is as separate configurable desktops. Select the applications you want viewable in each space and go back to work. So I might have Aperture in it's own space with Mail and Safari in another space. With Aperture in it's own space, I can focus solely on the images without distracting windows in the background. If I need to flip back to Safari or send a message, then I slide back to the other space with a key stroke. I think I'll really find this feature handy. One odd thing I've noticed is that I can't seem to shut it off - maybe a bug...

Screen Sharing is one of the more radical changes in the OS. I can connect to the MacPro via the PowerBook with complete control over the entire system. It's almost spooky. If I need an image out of Aperture while sitting on the couch, I just call it up, export the image, and then pull it back to the laptop. All without getting up. Apparently this also works over the Internet with a dot mac subscription.

In my opinion, the upgrade is more than worth the price. I'll save you the full review and just point to two solid reviews.

David Pogue of the NY TImes

Andy Ihnatko of MacWorld