Kent

Well, I've had an entire weekend to play with Leopard, so it's initial review time.

So far, the migration has seemed both painless and pointless. OK, maybe pointless would be the wrong word - perhaps "without any compelling need" would be better. I have to admit, I've turned on cover flow for my documents, and I flipped through them. Dazzling, and I suppose it could be useful were I still generating a lot of PowerPoint. I like the new dock, although I'm a little sad that I can't use Fan view because I keep my dock on the left hand side. My main apps (NeoOffice, Visual Studio, World of Warcraft) all seem to run well. VMWare Fusion didn't hiccup in the least with the switch.

Despite there being "over 300 new features" in this version of the Mac OS, I have to admit that I really didn't feel obliged to upgrade. I definitely agreed with D'Arcy's conclusions. I don't use an external drive, so I can't use Time Machine. On the Mac, I tend to use fewer apps (typically just VS, Firefox and iTunes) at any given time, so Spaces is a bit of a wash. It's definitely not a revolutionary upgrade, I'd compare it more to Windows 98 than Vista, with the exception that it doesn't suck as much as Windows 98. I wasn't running APE, so no blue screen here.

On the plus side(s): I do like the new dock, and find it better looking than the old one. On Windows, I can frequently go for days without opening my full start menu. Instead I tend to rely on my Quickstart menu for the most commonly used apps (and I pin items to the top of the start menu for less commonly used items). The doc gives me that same Quickstart functionality, so I'm happy; and on the left means that I can still have full sized apps, without having to lose height from my screen.

The new look is also something I can get to like. A lot of people complained about the "cartoonish" appearance of XP, but I didn't mind it. I never did get into the red/yellow/green metaphor for the old Mac minimize/maximize buttons, though (don't start on the maximize). Changing them to candy-grey is a nice middle ground. Icons are clean and consistent.

As for performance: unlike the expected slowdown when you install a new OS from Mic some companies, it seems as zippy as Tiger. Boots to the login screen in about 40s (on battery), and it's usable within 10s later. Visual Studio seems to run as fast (although I'm only running Standard on the image) as on my older desktop machine.

In general, a solid B-. A few new features I may end up using, cleaner interface, no hiccups. Perhaps that is a lesson that others may learn -- don't reach for the sky, and perhaps it won't take so long to generate and start making money off of it. Worth USD129? Probably not, but I'm expecting Apple to start ignoring Tiger users real soon now.