Yesterday I finally got around to installing Leopard (OS 10.5) on my Macbook Pro. Well, not exactly on my Macbook Pro, but on an external hard drive connected to it. I decided to test drive it this way, mostly to be sure my software and hardware is all compatible, before taking the leap and wiping out Tiger.
So what do I think of it? The box it came in is really cool. It's got a neat holographic image on the front. I'd post a photo, but it wouldn't do it justice and you'd just think I was crazy. Not that you don't already think that.
I guess you have to wonder about an OS when the first thing that comes to mind to comment on is the box it came in. But the truth is that I didn't get to really explore the new features last night. I can say I'm not delighted with the visual changes to the OS - the transparency of the menu bar and the changes to the sidebar of the Finder, for instance. Stacks leave me cold - in fact, I removed the two default Stacks - Documents and Downloads - from my dock. I keep my dock on the right, where the whole 3-D thing doesn't happen, so I'm not bothered by that.
Tonight I'll install Office and Dreamweaver. I know I'll eventually need to upgrade both of those - neither is intel native right now - but I don't use them that often at home so I'm hoping they'll chug along well enough with Leopard. I also want to make sure that iChat works well when connecting to Tiger users, as I don't expect Louise or Tom to upgrade any time soon. Then I'll start testing things like Cover Flow in the Finder, and Quick View.
Stay tuned.
Update: Played some more last night. Office and Dreamweaver act the same as they do on Tiger/Intel (i.e., OK, but DW crashes when you try to ftp within Sites). I explored Cover Flow in the Finder and was underwhelmed. We'll see if it helps someday when I'm having a hard time finding a file - but generally Spotlight works really well for me so I'm guessing I won't have much use for it. Quick Look could be useful. I'm getting used to the transparency of everything, but I'd still prefer more opacity for menus, etc. So far everything seems stable, so I may just bite the bullet and switch over this weekend. I have a disk image of my Tiger drive ready, just in case.