Apple has just announced a new operating system, and it comes with both new attractions and new headaches. The new version of Apple's OS X, called Leopard, replaces the previous version, Tiger. (Apple has named all versions of OS X after large cats.) Unlike the leap from Windows XP to Vista, the jump from Tiger to Leopard is relatively painless; Apple has not made any huge changes to the operating system. Although, in Apple's characteristically arrogant Apple way, they claim it is because they did not need to.
Apple claims there are around 300 changes in Leopard, but some of these changes are completely unnecessary and, in some cases, represent a downgrade from the features offered by Tiger. These gratuitous changes include the new folder icons (that don't look as cool as the old ones) and the translucent menus that did not work in Vista and do not work here. As always, Apple graphics upgrades are both pretty and pretty useless. The dock, for example, now looks like a shiny silver platter with icons placed upon it.
One new feature that I found to be a little half-baked was Stacks. Stacks makes folders placed in the dock more useful, because you can see, open and drag the files in the folders without having to go to Finder. However, Stacks doesn't handle a large number of files well because you can't see all the files at once, and you can't navigate through multiple layers of folders as you could in Tiger.
Apple indicted Microsoft for copying many features of Tiger in Vista, but Apple has committed the same crime with Spaces. Spaces provides users with multiple virtual desktops that one can navigate among and even move windows. Sounds exciting, except it has been available to UNIX and Linux users for over a decade.
Leopard's new Finder, one of the larger changes Apple made, borrows features from another one of Apple's programs: iTunes. Apple redesigned their file manager in iTunes' image, right down to Cover Flow. Yes, now you can get Cover Flow for your documents, which lets you scroll through graphic snapshots of your documents the same way you scroll through album covers on iTunes. I'm not sure anyone requested this feature, but it's available now. Another brand new feature is called Quick Look. When you hit the space bar, almost any selected document is opened instantly, which is a very useful feature for quickly looking at Word documents or PDF files without having to wait to fire up Office or Adobe Reader. The new Finder is more useful overall, but the navigation still leaves a little to be desired.
One of the biggest new features of Leopard is Time Machine. Time Machine is an automatic backup software that backs up all your files every hour. You have to have a second hard drive (either internal, external or networked) for it to work, but besides that, it's dead simple to use. Apple has gone to great lengths to make it very visually appealing, but the cosmic background might come across as a little over-the-top and cheesy.
For most students, Leopard will not be a must-have upgrade -- particularly because eTokens and GreenPrint do not work with it. The freshmen who bought Macs through the College get free copies of Leopard, so their decision to upgrade is a lot simpler. Though Leopard provides some nice new features, it is not something I would pay for; as nice as Time Machine looks, it cannot take you back to Tiger.
