Customer Reviews

Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6 Retail

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

There's been lots of reviews about Leopard so I'll try to cover some aspects from a practical point of view.

First is stability; I decided to do a clean install; I've upgraded a couple of times before for Panther and Tiger (without problems) but have also migrated from Power PC to Intel so I felt a clean install would blow any potential glitches away. I'm glad I did as Leopard runs far more smoothly than Tiger ever did. I reckon it's about 25% quicker on average. I know it depends upon what you're running and your spec etc etc, but to give a simple example, my Macbook used to start up in about 20-25 seconds on Tiger; it took just 15sec the first time I restarted with Leopard.

Cover flow is not a useful as I thought it would be. Yes it looks fancy but I prefer to have overall visibility of my files within a folder and whilst it might look fine on a 24" iMac on my 15" Macbook I just find cover flow view a little too restricted to see quickly what files are present. Bottom line is I hardly use cover flow. Quick look on the other hand is excellent and I only open files when I want to work on them. Quick look is quick, easy and when combined with Spotlight is a potent search tool. I really notice the difference when using Windows at work.

Time machine is really really good but I'm not sure why it doesn't work with iTunes. To give you an idea of storage, I back up everything from my Macbook (about 60GB worth of files) and after a week Time machine has taken up nearly 80GB and it's going up and up. For 80GB of files I'd suggest a 320GB HD (a factor of 4) is a good rule of thumb if you're thinking of buying an external HD for time machine. That should give you at least a couple of months worth of back dating with room for comfort. Be advised though that Time machine doesn't work with drives connected wirelessly even through Airport extreme - a real shame, especially for laptops but one I'd expect to see remedied soon as Leopard was originally advertised to have this capability.

Spaces takes some getting used to. I tend to close or hide apps when finished with them and spaces can get a little confusing when working in multiple apps in different spaces. I'm using it more and more, and I'm sure with time it will be incorporated in to normal working routine. Stacks are good, but a slight shame they've removed the ability to right click a folder in the dock and access sub-folders.

I really like Safari 3 as it's much improved from the beta version. Having used it for a week it's really really fast, displays pages perfectly, and the web clip widget maker is great, although I don't see how to save a widget you've made yourself. A little frustrating as once you've closed it, you need to remake it. Maybe I'm missing something?

Front Row is a definite improvement, it's faster, slicker and miles more stable. The animation to access front row has gone, but I think this is a bonus - with dashboard and time machine it would be too many screens dropping away and being superimposed. I have a slight issue when connecting my laptop my my HD TV in that front row appear but doesn't pay video but it plays the sound. Might be specific to me but still a concern.

iChat is still limited. It works with google talk, AOL and dot Mac accounts - Apple in my opinion really need to expand this out for yahoo and msn etc for make it useful. I have a dot Mac account but I don't know anyone else who does so I can't chat with them. A shame really as it's a waste of a good app.

Help for spotlight is a really cool function. Just be advised that if you don't know the name of the command then it won't appear in your search. A little obvious really but typing 'justify' rather than 'align' might not yield the result you're looking for. But now I'm really nitpicking! The 3-rd party apps I've installed work well, a few (but only a few) are still incompatible but these are getting updated every week; and iLife 08 just purrs. The criticisms I've made are all minor and don't detract from the value of this well-built and thought through OS. It's well worth the upgrade, fast, slicker and more co-ordinated.

Don't get bogged down with the US/UK price comparison argument. Now one vetoes Levis jeans because they're cheaper in the USA. I'm happy with the price for the OS - it's a fair price for the UK, it's great value for money and is far far cheaper than windows. Definitely a good purchase.

I upgraded to Leopard from Tiger out of curiosity, and I have to say it looks pretty.

But that's not everything you expect your OS to be, and indeed after a while I decided to go back to Tiger. Why?

There was nothing fundamentally wrong with it, it didn't crash or anything like that. I just found it very annoying that it slowed down my Mac significantly (opening new folders in finder was a pain, I had to wait for several seconds to have folder contents displayed), and did various other things that annoyed me. I'm using my Mac for quite a lot of development tasks, and after I found out that the upgrade had messed up my MySQL installation and changed some Apache things which I had to work around I felt this was rather a burden than an improvement. I got it all working again, but not in a way that left me feel confident about the overall setup.

The positive things: Tabs in the terminal application, new finder views (cover flow), and ... that's about it. Multiple work places were nice if you have a lot of windows open (and most of the time I had) but I didn't really use that feature a lot.

After that experience I can't really recommend the upgrade. Leopard's really more about cosmetic changes and some additional gadgets. If you're happy with Tiger, stick to it.

It's early days I know but I thought maybe just a short first impressions review of Leopard might help people decide as to whether or not it's worth their while in updating to the new Apple operating system.

To go through all of the extra features included in Leopard would, to be honest, take a lot longer than this short review. If you want to see all the extra features together with a short description of each one then pop over to the Apple site.

Someone recently described Leopard as evolutionary rather than revolutionary. I think that, in my opinion at least, is pretty spot on. For me there is no killer application, no "I must have that" additional feature. Rather it's a combination of smaller additions, updates and features that, when combined together, have produced Leopard. This is all very personal to me and I realise that for some people Leopard is bringing to them something completely new and something that they have been wanting for a while. As I said, this is just my own personal opinion.

Apple have, as usual, employed the services of a Japanese origami master when it comes to the packaging. For me, part of the fun when it comes to buying an Apple product is the packaging. There's none of the usual bubble wrap and cardboard egg carton packaging here I can tell you. Just a simple and neat gatefold sleeve with your installation disk on one side and installation manual on the other.
Talking of installation, the next topic to cover is...how easy is the installation? In my case I'll answer that in one word...very. I simply unplugged all my peripheral devices such as hard drives, printer etc, inserted the Leopard disk, pressed a couple of confirmation buttons, such as where on my Mac would I like to install Leopard and that was pretty much it. The actual installation time took 120 minutes from start to finish. I should point out that I did let the installation disk check my CD / DVD drive first, an option that can be skipped should you want to. I was also given the option of customising what features I wanted to install ( I choose all of them) which would cut down on the time spent waiting for the install to complete. But let's be honest, hopefully you'll only ever have to do it once and you can always disappear and make a cup of tea once the process has started.

So with Leopard staring at me from my screen what do I think? Well irrespective of what you might think of Apple they do get full marks for producing eye candy and with this being their hammer they have made a big effort at hitting all the nails. The first thing you can't help but notice is the amount of eye candy. The dock icons appear to be sitting on a semi translucent glass shelf with just a hint of reflection beneath them. The menu bar is also slightly translucent with the desktop theme appearing beneath it. One thing that did need attention in the previous OSX was a windows makeover and at last Apple have got round to making all of the application windows look and behave the same. Anyone familiar with the design of iTunes will feel instantly at home. Both the Finder and Mail application have an iTunes based layout to them.
Of course none of this is going to make you more productive or suddenly inspire you to write that novel that you always knew was inside you somewhere but at least you've got something nice to look at whilst you stare at your screen.

Something which I did have concerns over before the arrival of Leopard was it's compatibility with third party applications. I've had a quick count and by my reckoning I've got over twenty five applications not released by Apple and so far only one (MailTags) has not worked with Leopard. A quick look at the MailTags site showed that, as yet, they haven't produced a Leopard compatible version but no doubt it's in the pipeline. Of course the real test will come over time as I use more applications and ask more of Leopard but initial impressions are very good with regards to the use of third party applications.
Something else that I know other people had concerns over was whether or not the installation disk would be DRM protected i.e would you need to register your copy of Leopard with Apple. Well thankfully the answer is no which means that I can install Leopard on my laptop as well without the need to buy another copy. Don't tell the Windows users, it'll only upset them!

So the installation process was very easy, the operating system looks very nice and, on my Macs at least, appears to be very stable and it works with third party applications. Question is, is it worth buying? For what I would call the average Mac user ( and I don't mean to sound disrespectful when I say that) my best advice would be to take a look at the Apple website, see the features that Leopard has to offer and watch the videos. After that ask yourself if Leopard is offering you an application or feature that you have always wanted. If the answer is yes then sure, go out and buy it. Once you start to delve into it you're sure to find plenty more extra's that you like.
If on the other hand you're someone that I would call a pro-user then, essentially, you're not missing out on much more than eye candy and some "nice touches" and chances are you already have third party applications that deal with most of the major new features that Leopard has to offer.
Do I think it's worth getting now rather than later? Let's just say that I'm glad I pre-ordered it rather than standing in the rain outside the Apple Store Regents Street waiting for the doors to open.

Leopard was delivered on the day of the launch and it operates like a dream. I purchased the family version to work on four Apple MACS. There were no installation problems - all drivers worked and the time machine just flowed.

Using Leopard you can install Windows - but why would anyone want to? Highly recommended - don't bother waiting. Purchase now (this is not Vista)!

I got this last night, and although I have not had it long I have to say so far it is living up to every expectation.

For the first time I decided to rather than wipe my old OS and then install just to upgrade straight to Leopard. Having made sure I did a system check first using first aid and repair privileges I then started the install. It worked perfectly. It kept all my old files and settings with nothing lost or altered. All my bookmarks, saved emails you name it they were kept just how I had them before.

At first look it does not look a huge amount of difference than Tiger. Just small differences in the main screen, brushed metal used more in places, Smokey glass effect in others. Black apple symbol rather than a blue one. I think it gives an already very professionally looking OS that extra boost in appearance with a clean but friendly look and feel.

I have no discovered yet all the little extra gems in it but will detail three of the things I am impressed with so far.

Stacks in the dock is very good. Can put a folder of applications or docs or movie files, pics etc and when you click on it, it either fans the documents up so you can see them all and choose which you use, or if there are a lot brings up a grid for you to select from. This added files showing mini previews when you look at the file showing the picture for example or a little movie you can play is very handy.

Next, and I have only just started to play with this, but I am probably impressed with this most of all and that is spaces. It allows you to choose from four spaces in which to set applications. (I think you can create more spaces if you like) You assign the applications to the spaces choosing from numbers 1 to 4 and it means when you open that app in that particular space it flips the desktop to the screen. It is like having four desktops in one. For example say I put ichat and second life in space one. When open they both show on my desktop there. Then I want to open a web browser. When I do so as that is in space 2 is slides the desktop into the second space where I can see my browser and nothing more. Second life and ichat are still running but just not in view at the moment. Then I want to view a mpeg and assigned QuickTime to their. It slides into that screen to my browser, second life and iChat all cannot be seen on the desktop but I see the movie. Then having watched the movie and want to see what is going on in second life I select that and it flips back into the desktop with second life and ichat. I am very impressed. It keeps you desktop from getting too cluttered. Means you don't need to hide open apps away when not using them you just flip between the spaces.

Time machine is a very handy automatic backup tool. I bought an external hard-drive to go with this. It automatically backups up to the external every hour. The real handy function is if you lost a file and know which folder it was in you can go into time machine and it shows the folder in current and all the backup folders behind it going off into the infinite. You can then scroll through the folders of the past until a time when the file you lost was still in existence then restore it back to your current folder. Its a very easy way to find lost things as well as keep a good backup.

I thought there might be one little drawback. Last night when starting up, switching between user names and shutting down it did seem a little slower than Tiger had been on these. However this morning it was fine and just as fast. I guess that was it just settling in and works like a dream.

I am sure I have a lot more things to discover in this but so far I am very very impressed and glad I upgraded. Once again I feel Apple is leaps and bounds ahead of its competitors when it comes to their OS.

Popped in the Leopard disc, the update went smoothly & was effortless. Booklet provided was easy to follow & offers a nice introduction to the new features. Don't want to read? Just pop online & watch the video tutorials. Leopard is a dream to use & it looks stunning. I especially love Time Machine & Spaces. The new mail is great, with some lovely templates & a nice little 'to do' feature. I could go on, but simply put, I love it.

I bought Leopard (1-user) to update from Panther and I am extremely pleased with it. No problems whatsoever in downloading- the whole operation took just over the hour. I would highly recommend this product.

The description above for Time Machine states...

Effortless meets wireless.
With a hard disk connected to your AirPort Extreme Base Station, AirPort all the Macs in your house can use Time Machine to back up wirelessly. Simply select your AirPort Disk as the backup disk for each computer and the whole family can enjoy the benefits of Time Machine.


Apple have now stated that Time Machine can NOT be used to back up to an AirPort disk.

There are quite a few forums with upset people that have bought an Extreme Base station for that very purpose!

Other than that Leopard Rocks!

I've been using Leopard for the best part of a month, so now it's starting to settle in.
The good - Time Machine is a useful back up tool, combined with either SuperDuper or Carbon Cloner gives you a bootable backup and a file backup which will protect you from any kind of local disaster (you'll need off site backup for fire, theft and flood though). Quick look is handy and spotlight has been improved. Stacks prevents your desktop from getting clogged up with files.

The bad - system stability seems to have been affected - I got two kernel panics in my first week compared to three over three years with Tiger. You'll need to download a 350Mb patch to bring you up to 10.5.2 immediately after installing - it would be nice if Apple would upgrade the discs to 10.5.2. Time Machine fights with your Anti Virus software slowing down backups and restores (sometimes horribly - make sure you've excluded the discs/ partitions from your AV scanning). Leopard also seems to be very RAM hungry, whereas Tiger ran happily on 1Gb, Leopard struggles with 2Gb.

The ugly - the new dock look really just gets in the way, it's harder to tell if the applications is started than under Tiger and every so often when my iMac runs out of memory I get a washed out negative of the dock where the downloads stack is unreadable. This can be fixed by a reboot, but frankly this shouldn't be a problem.

In summary, nice incremental improvements (Time Machine, Stacks and quick look), with some big problems - system stability prior to 10.5.2 is definitely worse than Tiger. On balance probably worth upgrading, but max out your RAM and patch the OS immediately after install.

**UPDATE**
Time Machine is really excellent, I've used it twice now and both times its recovered perfectly. The only problem I had is that sometimes you've got to delete the old file before you replace it (permissions). The second of the two attempts meant I could recover from a botched Office upgrade in less than 20 minutes rather than it taking all night. Strongly recommended! Buy an external Hard Drive and get it with Firewire if you can, your data is worth the £80-100 price tag.

Stability has improved with 10.5.2/3, I've had no further crashes.

It's hard to summarise the advantages of something as vast as an Operating System in a few short paragraphs, but here goes. Here's what I think are the highlights of Leopard...

Preview 4.0. The new version of Preview has some really useful features. You can do a lot of basic image editing within Preview, without ever needing something like Photoshop. For example, you can adjust the exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, tint, sepia, black level, white level and sharpness of images. You can rotate and flip images. You can resize multiple images to an exact pixel by pixel size, in a simple batch process! You can even isolate an object from its background using a feature called Instant Alpha! Preview 4.0 is also great for viewing and editing PDFs. With any PDF document open you can rearrange the pages, delete selected pages, insert blank pages, highlight strike and underline certain words, rotate the pages, and merge multiple PDFs into one! You can even annotate PDFs with your own notes, which are tracked by name, date and time added!

Finder 10.5.1. The new version of Finder is a massive improvement over the previous version. It looks and behaves a lot like iTunes, making it a lot of fun to use. Icon View now works for almost every kind of file: JPGs, PSDs, PDFs, DOCs, MP3s, MP4s, etc. Quick Look is extremely slick, blazingly fast and very useful in that it allows you to open and play files without having to launch an entire dedicated Application. You can Quick Look multiple files simultaneously, either viewing them on an Index Sheet or running them as a Full Screen slideshow. You can also zoom into images and PDFs using Quick Look.

Time Machine. Time Machine keeps hourly backups of your Mac's internal hard drive for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups until your Time Machine Backups drive is full. You can use the flashy animated interface to retrieve files, but you don't have to. You can browse all of the folders and files on your Time Machine Backups drive the traditional way, using Finder, where you'll find multiple clones of your Mac's internal hard drive. It's great because EVERYTHING is always automatically backed up, and the backup is ALWAYS perfectly synchronised with the original. No worries. The only problem is, if you have an external hard drive, such as a WD My Book, you'll notice that it powers off and on, off and on, throughout the day to save power, which can get annoying. However, this is apparently a design feature of the My Book drives and not the fault of Leopard. So choose your external hard drive wisely.

There are hundreds of other improvements throughout Leopard, most of which complete all the little things that were missing from Tiger. Having only been out a few weeks there are still quite a lot of bugs, such as WiFi being unreliable, shared folders not appearing, and various graphical glitches. But update 10.5.1 is already out, with 10.5.2 due out in February 2008. If you're thinking of upgrading to Leopard I'd recommend waiting until 10.5.2 is out, just to avoid facing these problems and dealing with technical oddities.