1. Please don’t let Windows XP Expire – There’s even a petition for those in this camp. And it’s getting press.
2. Mac Time – Enough said. Mac OS X 10.5 isn’t perfect, but is anything? It’s about as close as anyone has gotten.

It will be interesting to see the fate of XP.

Dear Apple,

Please kill off resource forks. They add an unnecessary complexity to data archiving and management that’s unneeded by todays standards. Since Mac OS X it seems only a few places exist where resource forks are actually used. For example the older pre-Mac OS X “font suitcases” used a resource fork, while the modern “Data Fork Suitcase Format” as it’s name implies, does not¹.

One could argue keeping resource forks is good for legacy purposes. But since Mac OS X 10.5 can no longer run Classic even on PPC systems, is there really a need?

If that’s really not possible, could you please make rsync suck a little less?

Ideally since rsync 3.0 looks like it will be a lot better, make it a high profile download for Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 similar to what was done to push Safari 3.0. That would be a nice stop gap solution.

I hope you’ll fix this since it’s a real pain in the butt for people like me.

Thanks,
Robert

1. 25251 Mac OS X: Font file formats

Why is it Apple Mail on Leopard doesn’t seem to allow me to view a few mailboxes nested under the inbox on an IMAP account? I haven’t tried under POP3, though I’d venture it’s the same limitation.

You would think they would at least show it linear if it couldn’t display it under inbox. Instead what it does is just not show it. Perhaps it’s important for me to be able to presort my inbox to make it manageable.

All of this in the first two weeks, and we’ve got fifty more weeks to go.

In all the keynotes I’ve followed, this was the most aggressive agenda. 2008 is going to rock for Apple products.

Leopard Was Successful

No kidding. Vista’s lackluster launch just made it look that much better. Almost 20% upgraded to Leopard. That’s pretty impressive. Especially considering it’s only at 10.5.1. Most don’t like upgrading until x.x.3 allowing for some bug fixes to be released first. Other than that, pretty uneventful.

Time Capsule

Time Capsule is pretty cool. Essentially just an Airport Extreme with a hard drive. Personally I would have liked to see it as two separate devices. So you could easily use it with any network, and plug into an existing Airport. It’s described as containing a “7200-rpm Serial ATA server-grade hard disk drive”. It will be interesting to see what that really is when people dissect them. Most interesting is $499.00 for 1TB. Considering it’s an Airport Extreme + 1 TB storage, that’s a pretty decent deal. I still like my solution better. Customization allowed and more redundant. Time Machine is awesome, so I’d suspect this is a great easy way to backup. Now why can’t apple get Time Machine working over SMB/CIFS?

iPhone

Sales were awesome, SDK still in the plans for late February. Maps with geolocation! Awesome in a big-brother-ish sort of way. Exceptionally awesome considering your iPhone can now be strapped to your dashboard [insert Mac/Dashboard joke here] and used as a GPS device. That’s a lot of value right there. Don’t forget it’s Google Maps too.

SMSing multiple people… personally? Don’t really care. Email, Web, Video makes the iPhone special, not SMS. In my mind it’s like bragging about an OpenSSH upgrade in Leopard. Cool, but isn’t this just expected?

No 3G. Sigh.

iPod touch

For just $20 you can be more like an iPhone and have mail and other iPhone apps! Or you can just use the hacked firmware. Despite the gain, it still feels like the iPod touch is the redheaded stepchild.

Movie Rentals

Awesome. Everyone knew this was coming, and now that it’s here: sweet. What makes it great is all the major studios are participating. Finally something they all can agree on. Unfortunately only becomes available 30 days after DVD release (suck). “Library” title is $2.99, new release is $3.99. Up to 30 days to watch, once watching must finish within 24 hours. Not bad. I expect in 12 months that 24 hours will extend to at least 72hrs.

DVD quality or (optional) HD with Dolby 5.1. $3.99 for library titles, $4.99 for new releases. No word on what “HD” is, but one would assume 720p since that’s all the Apple TV supports.

A big thing stressed is that it goes across devices. You can watch on your TV (via Apple TV), computer, or iPod/iPhone as the image above demonstrates.

Apple TV Take 2

Sounds like new hardware, but like the iPod, the Apple TV announcement is just software. Pretty much, a computer is no longer required. Can rent directly from the interface (which has been revamped). Still no 1080p, a major gripe with many potential buyers. Software available for existing owners (cool). Small price reduction also announced. I still wonder why they didn’t introduce a 1080p at a higher tier and give people the choice. Look at photos, videos all on your TV without using a computer. Very cool.

MacBook Air

What words should be used to describe the MacBook Air? **** awesome? Yea, that about does it. At 3.0lbs, and only 0.74 inches thick, how can you not be impressed? 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo. That’s not a Celeron or some other watered down processor. It’s the real thing. 4200 RPM PATA drive, or SSD. PATA and your going to feel sluggish with high IO activities, or solid state (SSD) and you’ll be speeding but broke. Even Steve admits it’s expensive. What a dilemma.

The micro-DVI port is a great touch. A 2nd USB port would have been nice, but considering it’s an ultra portable, no problem with only 1. ExpressCard would have been a major win. I would expect 2nd generation will include one as I’m sure it will be a major gripe among users. Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor was a good choice as well. That brings a good balance of performance and power consumption. Beautiful display. It has an audio out port, but no input. Audio in would be a nice addition, but you could use bluetooth or USB for that, so again not a deal breaker. Lack of a removable battery will cause some to be upset. I’m mixed on that. Not sure if I’d sacrifice size to add in the extra hardware to allow a battery to be secure yet removable on the undercarriage. 2GB RAM on board is pretty nice.

If I were Apple, I’d make a couple of changes:

• More choices in drives. Smaller SSD options going all the way down to 20GB (10GB OS X, 10GB user). I’m sure many would sacrifice size for faster and still portable. Also Hybrid HD’s (both SSD and mechanical) would be a major win.
• ExpressCard port. A staple for business use, a major win for upgrades and accessories.
• Either make the battery user-replaceable (even if it involves a screwdriver) or announce up front what replacement costs. Update: $129 for replacement according to Engadget.

Apple is seriously pushing this as a workable machine. It’s got a full copy of OS X complete with Xcode. That’s right, you can code on this sucker. How awesome is that.

Conclusion/Thoughts

Awesome announcements despite the lack of new hardware that’s so desired. I think there’s a lot more still coming. I expect the iPhone to get an upgrade soon (3G + more storage) and that will be it’s own announcement. Perhaps even next month with the release of the SDK. I also think we’ll see more hardware at WWDC (Mac Mini, MacBook Pro are up for a revamp by my count).

Fun day. I love keynotes.

Hardware images provided courtesy of Apple.

So I did a little sniffing around (literally packet sniffing), and here’s what I found. On load it sends the following (seemingly blank) request to apple for currency conversion info. The response is the exchange rate. I’ve got a copy for reference below for anyone who wants to see. Calculator seems to use CFNetwork to communicate (not surprising). What’s interesting is that this info doesn’t seem to be cached, every time you load calculator it’s requested.

So yes, it does technically ping the mothership, but no it doesn’t seem to send back any data worth being concerned about. The only thing noteworthy is the cookie. The cookie itself is characteristic of Omniture, an analytics company (who provides analytics services to Apple among many of the largest sites on the web). This seems like a side effect of the implementation (likely sharing stuff from webkit). I don’t think Omniture is pinged during this transaction, so unless Apple were recording that cookie and matching it against web analytics data. I’d consider that extremely unlike even if I put a tin foil hat on my head. I guess Apple could further neutralize any privacy concerns by modifying the implementation to not send a cookie. At that point they would only have your IP to go by (which could be behind a proxy and therefore isn’t very reliable). I don’t think think this is a privacy risk, but also don’t think it would be so bad for Apple to modify and drop the cookie to make it more anonymous. Or at least give the option to not request data every time.

The Request

User-Agent: CFNetwork/220
Content-Type: text/xml
Cache-Control: no-cache
X-Client-Id: -1509795197
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-us
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Cookie: s_vi=[CS]v1|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx[CE]; s_nr=000000000000; asbid=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Content-Length: 292
Connection: keep-alive
Host: wu-calculator.apple.com

< ?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<request devtype='Apple_OSX' deployver='APPLE_CALCULATOR_1_0' app='YAppleCalculatorApp' appver='1.0.0' api='finance' apiver='1.0.0 'acknotification='0000'>
	<query id='0' timestamp='1195332888' type='convertcurrency'>
		<from />
		<to />
		<amount />
	</query>
</request>

The Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2007 20:54:54 GMT
X-YSTATUS: 200
Cache-Control: private
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8
Content-Encoding: gzip

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<response>
	<result type="convertcurrency" timestamp="1195334294">
		<list count="45" total="45">
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>USD</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>1</convertedamount>
				<link />
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>AUD</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>1.1196329594</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=aud</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>BRL</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>1.7469999790</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=brl</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>GBP</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>0.4867370129</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=gbp</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>CAD</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>0.9739000201</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=cad</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>CNY</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>7.4257001877</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=cny</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>DKK</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>5.0836000443</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=dkk</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>EUR</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>0.6821979880</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=eur</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>HKD</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>7.7864999771</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=hkd</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>INR</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>39.2350006104</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=inr</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>JPY</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>111.0449981689</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=jpy</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>MYR</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>3.3459999561</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=myr</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>MXN</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>10.9315004349</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=mxn</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>NZD</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>1.3183920383</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=nzd</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>NOK</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>5.4686999321</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=nok</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>RUB</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>25.3402004242</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=rub</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>SGD</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>1.4494999647</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=sgd</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>ZAR</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>6.7150998116</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=zar</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>KRW</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>931.5100097656</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=krw</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>LKR</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>110.3750000000</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=lkr</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>SEK</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>6.3113999367</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=sek</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>CHF</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>1.1181999445</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=chf</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>TWD</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>32.3650016785</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=twd</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>THB</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>31.5000000000</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=thb</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>VEB</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>2147.3000488281</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=veb</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>BHD</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>0.3755500019</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=bhd</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>BND</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>1.4529000521</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=bnd</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>CLP</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>507.2999877930</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=clp</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>CYP</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>0.3995000124</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=cyp</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>CZK</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>18.1730003357</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=czk</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>HUF</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>173.6849975586</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=huf</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>ISK</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>59.8400001526</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=isk</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>IDR</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>9280.0000000000</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=idr</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>ILS</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>3.9275000095</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=ils</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>KZT</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>128.3500061035</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=kzt</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>KWD</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>0.2758750021</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=kwd</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>MTL</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>0.2924999893</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=mtl</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>MUR</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>29.8999996185</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=mur</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>NPR</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>71.0800018311</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=npr</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>OMR</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>0.3849500120</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=omr</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>PKR</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>61.1800003052</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=pkr</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>QAR</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>3.6367499828</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=qar</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>SAR</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>3.7300000191</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=sar</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>SKK</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>22.5949993134</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=skk</link>
			</conversion>
			<conversion>
				<from>USD</from>
				<to>AED</to>
				<amount>1</amount>
				<convertedamount>3.6549999714</convertedamount>
				<link>http://finance.yahoo.com/m3?a=1&amp;s=usd&amp;t=aed</link>
			</conversion>
		</list>
	</result>
</response>

Packaging

Apple’s packaging has always been known for being better looking and easier to use (no need to rip it apart, easy to get stuff out). Unlike Mac OS X 10.0 – 10.4, Leopard uses a new smaller box. It’s about the size of the DVD box Apple ships with the Mac Mini (and I believe the iPod has a similar box). On the front is an eye catching holographic cover. Inside is one DVD set inside the cardboard sleeve (rather thick) unlike the plastic/paper cover used in previous boxes. Also inside are the standard Apple stickers and a rather thick color book going over new features in Leopard. The photos are a little small, but good enough for the explanations. In an age where most manuals for software are in PDF format, a physical manual is a real luxury.

Install

I decided to do a clean install on my Mac Mini (rev 1 G4 @ 1.4GHz 1GB RAM) since I installed 10.4 on top of the stock 10.3, and lots of stuff has been installed over the years. I made two partitions one for Mac OS 10.3 (so I can try running 10.3 with Classic), and the main partition for Leopard and my data.

Install went very smoothly really nothing to complain about. The OS DVD has improved since 10.4. The first great enhancement is that it now can partition without reformatting (technology first seen with the Boot Camp public beta’s). I choose to zero my drive anyway, but it’s nice to know I can adjust partitions. Also interesting is that if you look at the top right side of the menu bar, you can see that WiFi is available on the installer. Not exactly sure what you would use it for, but you can connect to an access point. Overall it took over an hour until I was ready to restart into Leopard. Initial restart brought me to the first launch video “Welcome” obviously redone for Leopard. Setup went as expected an I was on my desktop without any pain. Afterwords I put in the Mac OS X CD that came with the computer and installed the apps that came with it (AppleWorks, iMovie HD, GarageBand). Also very painless So now onto the toys.

Finder

Overall the look and feel of the OS is great. The most obvious change is the newly remodeled dock. I personally think it looks pretty nice, but maybe that’s me. Since I’ve got a Mac Mini with an ATI Radeon 9200 (a mere 32MB) I don’t get some of the more fancy graphics/animations such as the semi-transparent menu bar that’s so controversial. Regardless it looks good. Rounded menu’s are a nice little bit of polish.

Coverflow is an interesting way of browsing media. I didn’t expect it to work on my Mac Mini because of the weak graphics card, but it actually works pretty well. It did however consume a bit of CPU, and disk IO was a little high so if you went to fast, the images weren’t always preloaded. Still handy.

Stacks are rather handy, especially for downloads. Not having them clutter the desktop is a major win. In just a few hours I can see how great this feature will be in the long term. Downloads are also tagged (similar to IE on Windows) so you’re prompted the first time you open them. I’d love to see the ability to turn a folder on the desktop into a stack (for easy access). The new sidebar is really good, it makes things even easier to access with less clicks. Notable is that it found my file server and make it a breeze to connect to. I can’t complain about that.

Scrolling windows that are not in the front is also a great usability tweak.

The Path bar, disabled by default (In the view menu select “Show Path Bar”) is great for keeping track of where you are. Adjustable grid spacing = awesome.

Quick Look

Really fast, and really awesome. I can see myself using it quite a bit. This is definitely a time saver. Ability to go full screen is just a bonus.

Fonts

It looks like Apple did some tweaks to how it handles fonts. Most obvious is that the default minimum for anti-aliasing is now 4px, down from 8px (which looked bad on a few websites with smaller fonts). The fonts look a little more crisp than they did before, but still feel much smoother than they do on Windows. I think it’s a significant win.

Spotlight

I didn’t really use Spotlight to much on my Mac with Tiger. With Leopard I think I will. It seems good enough to get rid of QuickSilver which I have yet to install. You can indeed use it to launch applications. Indexing didn’t take to long, search is pretty zippy.

Spaces

The one feature I really wanted most was Spaces. I love the feature of multiple desktops when using Linux and really love that Apple adopted the innovation. The spaces implementation is pretty good, it’s in the dock for easy access, also available in the menu bar and via key commands. Easy to use. The one thing I would like to see added is a graphical representation of what’s in each space on the icon. So I know what spaces are occupied and what are empty like Linux does. This is a minor thing. Overall it’s great.

Safari

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard ships with Safari 3.0.4 (5523.10) installed. Perfect for downloading Firefox. Kidding aside it’s fast and sleek. Nice additions include the ability to resize a text area on a form (Firefox extension will do the same). Also new (and very handy) is Web Inspector.

Dashboard

Dashboard didn’t change much, but there’s now a feature (in conjunction with Safari) called Web Clip which lets you select a piece of a web page and turn it into a widget. Not a bad idea, but I doubt I’ll be using it much since I don’t really use Dashboard that much to begin with.

Front Row

Front Row is now available for those computers that didn’t ship with it, such as my Mac Mini, but without a remote I’m not sure how useful it would be without the buying a remote such as the Keyspan ER-RF1.

iCal

Lots of little stuff, but until CalDAV is a more accepted standard and accepted by Google and friends, it’s mostly useless to me.

Developer Tools

I need to play with DTrace. Xcode looks good as usual, Dashcode is awesome, more polished than the developer preview under Tiger. Also noteworthy is Tiger includes:

• Apache 2.2.6
• Perl 5.5.8
• PHP 5.2.4
• Python 2.5.1
• Ruby 1.8.6
• Java 1.5.0_13

Mail

I don’t use Mail to often, but on occasion I play with it. Forward as an attachment is finally available. RSS integration isn’t bad, but not very powerful. In no way would replace Google Reader. Archiving mailbox isn’t such a bad idea. Could use that in Thunderbird.

Preview

Preview got a few nice little additions including a more polished UI that just seems more
intuitive. It also seems faster with large files. Lots of new features I’ve yet to play with.

Printing

I was able to setup my networked HP DeskJet without a problem. Wasn’t the greatest quality or the fastest but good enough. I wish HP would provide good drivers themselves, but they are still trying to push their overpriced JetDirect system. I can always use my Laptop to print so it’s never been an issue (can also print to PDF for easy transfer).

Terminal

The terminal now has tabs! My #1 request for a long time. Yes there are third party replacements that add this, but those are buggy at best. This officially makes Terminal cool.

TextEdit

Everyone’s favorite text editor now supports OpenDocument and Word 2007 Formats. Other than that, I don’t see anything too noteworthy, just polish (smart quotes, auto linking, etc.). All work very well.

Time Machine

I haven’t tried time Machine since I don’t have an extra drive large enough at the current time. I don’t keep much data on my Mac since my PC laptop is backed up frequently. As a result I mount the drive when I need something. Works well enough. This might change things though. So much for reviewing the most talked about feature right?

Performance

Overall the performance of Leopard on a 1st generation Mac Mini is extremely good. I personally think it feels more responsive than Tiger and Panther did. You won’t see the fancy animations or graphics (it still looks stunning though), but it’s very usable. I originally thought it might be a little sluggish based on the discussions of optimizations for Intel based Macs, but Apple seems to (for now) still care at least a little about PPC users.

Quirks

I did notice a few quirks with Leopard:

• Panther/Tiger let me put the computer to sleep and switch to the other computer on my KVM switch. As long as the switch was done pretty quick the computer just went to sleep. Leopard doesn’t like this. The workaround is to switch, wait about 10 seconds then hit the power button once to put the machine to sleep.
• When switching back to my Mac, Leopard doesn’t see a mouse and prompts me to connect a bluetooth mouse. Obviously my mouse exists, but it’s USB and my KVM doesn’t emulate hardware. Not a major problem, but a little annoying. See below for instructions how to disable this.
• Safari seems to have become a little more memory hungry. Might be a leak, I only have 1 tab open. See comments for instructions how to disable this.
• Time Machine doesn’t let you use network volumes to backup. Would be the best option of all.
• Not a quirk but something that’s “missing”: Still no ability to use iCal to write to Google Calendar.

So that’s all for my initial impressions with Tiger after almost 24hours. I personally really like it, a worth while upgrade. Can’t wait until I can upgrade at work. It’s by far the best OS Apple has ever put out. Having played with Vista I can safely say it is a much more functional, easy to use, and more powerful OS. It’s clearly designed with the user in mind.

Edit [11/4/2007 @ 10:15 PM EST]: There is a way to disable the bluetooth input device prompts.

Currently, there’s nothing other than PearPC that can run it (and PearPC is worthlessly slow). Hopefully VMWare will update at some point to support it. At that point, things can get interesting.