Anyone else turned off by leopard?

I was looking forward to getting a Macbook after Leopard and the Refresh came around, but the refresh was so minimal, and after reading the review on Leopard that Sam has in the sticky, I am actually less keen on getting a Macbook now, because Leopard is all bells and whistles, and the Macbook got to major renevation...

Anyone else feel this way?

 

I don't much care for a lot of the stuff that came with Leopard. The two major things that would cause me to switch over are the updates to the kernal, and official boot camp. I might be inclined to use Spaces, but from what I've read Leopards implementation of it is somewhat sub par.

I was really hoping for an update to the OpenGL libraries, so that games would run better.

 

On the surface, Leopard doesn't seem like much. Sure, there are some vitally useful features (for me), like being able to scroll windows without actually having to focus on them, but most of the key changes in Leopard are under the hood. For example, the memory management has changed, and a number of very useful libraries have been added in the API.
Apple is not very much like Microsoft and will stop supporting Tiger very soon. In order to prevent your Mac from deprication, upgrading would be a must.

But yeah, I agree with the fact that now is not the best time to purchase a Mac. The Macbook update was very minimal, and Leopard is currently not a MUST have.
I'm hoping that Apple's going to carry out a big update when Peryn is released.

 

Not sure what you mean by this...

Leopard may be a disappointment in the sense that it may not have been as revolutionary an improvement over Tiger as some. However, it's not exactly a downgrade either.

In other words, there may not be an incentive to upgrade if you already have Tiger or get an Apple just for Leopard, but there's also no disincentive because Leopard's installed either.

Macbooks did get a refresh. If you're waiting for the next refresh, it'll probably be at least several months. Like everyone says, although it makes sense to time your purchases around new imminent releases, when the time gap is one of months (i.e. Q1 2008 at the earliest), it makes more sense to buy when you need it as opposed to always waiting for the next tech upgrade.

 

Absolutely love Leopard. Quick Look is one of the best features, with cover flow and fullscreen, it's awesome -especially for my pdf books.

Stacks is also nice for downloads and I've made myself a little "launcher" folder...

It also runs a lot faster than Tiger. It's not placebo, my teacher has a MBP, exact model as mine, running Tiger, and we messed around with it, and mine snaps faster than his.

I don't regret the $129. No way.

 

I know Macbook got refreshed. I said the refresh was minimal, didn't really do much.

 

I tend to get a feeling that Quick look is all eye candy and isn't really useful for viewing documents. Maybe it's good for browsing pictures?

 

My thoughts on Leopard are generally good. Granted, I've only tried it out a bit, but I still think its a worthy upgrade.

I mean, I agree, its not as revolutionary as Apple seemed to have marketed it to be, but its still a good upgrade with lots of new and useful features. Its definitely worth it to upgrade to it, if you ask me.

 

Not revolutionary, but it does feel faster in most things. And after reading the Ars review, it really sounds like there are a lot of under the hood things that make Leopard more of a break from the past that it appears visually.

Most of the "features" I don't see myself using that much: cover flow is dumb, stacks does not excite me, the sort of transparency stuff (ie menu bar) does not look elegant but rather kinda muddy, the folders are kinda grody, but it does feel fairly tight and responsive, which is something I appreciate constantly. I've always thought the OS X UI felt more sluggish than the Windows UI and Leopard is the first time I feel that there is parity.

 

well, apart from bad implementation of the, dock, stacks and menu bar, leopard fix a lot of issues i have with OS X. things like the finder "path bar" (FINALLY!!!), faster spotlight searches, empty/burn bar in the trash/brun folder, no lag when clicking/sliding between bluetooth/wifi/sound icon, uniform confirmation when emptying trash, there is a lot to say

a bit too much eye candy, although it does somewhat looks prettier... aurora background? who's copying who now? it does somewhat knocked off the elegant/professional look that the OS X used to have.

it is a bit bloated isn't it? just like itunes, increasingly bloated.. hmmph

oh, is it just me or leopard consume equal/less RAM compared to tiger? but it does eat up (about 3x as much) V-RAM

 

Well after about a week since my upgrade, I am still pleased that I took the plunge. The improvements to spotlight, mail, and iCal, which I use heavily everyday are for me worth the upgrade. Sure there are some minor problems, but on the whole this is an "upgrade" over tiger. It is better, by how much is debatable, and depends on your personal preferences. But I am glad that I upgraded and with news of 10.5.1 only a few weeks away, I am hopefully that any bugs I do have, will be quickly resolved.
If you want and need a macbook, now is a good time to buy. It will be close to a year before it gets any major update. However if you want a mbp or want to "wait" for the elusive mbp 12-13", then by all means wait.
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Agreed. The new folder look is stupid. I would rather it just be the old folder style with a new skin on it.

 

I think the overall visual aspect of Leopard [dock, menu bar, folders] are very subjective and would change from person to person. Apple can't please everyone. Dock is not bad, in fact I like it, the only thing I would change is, make the LEDs little brighter and probably enable the tiger feature where you could open a folder by clicking it through dock. Menu bar is not offensive, its alight – I have heard a lot of exaggerated comments about how illegible it is with some darker images [well I even use a plain black wallpaper] and it’s still grey with black text on it [so it’s not bad – its fine].

I use spaces a lot [just makes your desktop a lot cleaner] – expose works even when you are viewing all the spaces – that’s neat
Quick look is great.
Cover flow is very useful.
You can use 4gb of ram.
Leopard seems to be designed to take advantage of dual core processors.
Spotlight does so much more now – I don’t think I am using quick silver anymore.
ichat has improved

I could go on and on – its an upgrade and if you look at all the under the hood refinement [core animation ect] its worth it.

 

Completely in love with leopard.

 

I absolutely LOVE Leopard!

However, I do agree with Sam and about the new folder look.

Other than that, everything is looking great.

 

What you seem to be missing here is that leopard is not Mac OS11 it's still OSX & is effectively the same OS. Maybe OS11 will yield more.....

 

That's how I felt when I saw the Menu Bar on the demo MBP at a local Mac reseller. I mean, yes its a bit transparent but it works fine if you ask me.

Although if Apple added an option to adjust the opacity of the Menu Bar, that would satisfy everyone .

 

I was actually about to switch. But I have 2 friends that have macs. One of them lost all of his files (the tech guy told him he would have to reformat after he did that renaming of the home folder thing which he didn't know he did at the time).

My friend Jared had a lot of problems installing it on his 2 computers, and he tells me that programs seem to "quit" after around 20 minutes, and that its just not the great OS that Tiger was.

My other friend Mahan is also having a lot of programs that are crashing, he is experiencing slowdowns, and he just is a little flustered with it right now.

Even with these problems: I'm sure Apple is going to fix all of these problems in a timely manner, and end up with another great addition to the "10" OS.

 

Stone, those seems to be sporadic issues - I have heard a lot of people upgraded tiger just fine - I did a clean install and it went smoothly. I haven't lost any data - my machine froze couple of times and it asked me to restart but I guess those are initial bugs, which will be ironed out soon - looks like 10.5.1 is on the way !

 

i guarantee you any problems people are having are hardware related or committed by the user while still in Tiger.

the only problems I have seen at all are when someone does an upgrade and there were already issues with their tiger install or hardware itself.

and I really like the new folders over the old ones, the new ones looked very tacky and out of place to me, but i don't understand why they don't just offer a few options, it would be such a simple thing to do.

I tend to like overall completeness of the UI. if it all looks coherent and relative, I like it, and Leopard definitely does that well.

all of the complaints I have seen are completely personal opinion, which is a waste of everyones time really, unless they have no opinion of their own.

 

I read somewhere that the source of over 90% of computer related problems is the person sitting in front of the monitor.

I'm concerned with the data loss issue that has been in the spotlight lately, Apple chastised for ignoring two Mac data loss issues. This issue is not exclusive to Leopard though.

 

I am curious about what apple is going to include in the future updates other than bug-fixes. I don’t have much history with owning Macs, so not sure – I know apple is not shy of posting their updates but do they add features or just fix bugs. I know couple of screen savers didn’t make it to GM and were spotted in earlier developer seeds – what can we expect from apple ?

 

Usually, nothing significant. I mean, some of the features Apple demo-ed at WWDC that didn't end up in Leopard's release (for example, the hologram effect in Photo Booth and iChat) might eventually be added, but don't expect anything big to come through their updates.

 

Heh, just like the iPhone.

 

Haha! Maybe not though...hard to say...looking at what Apple's up to, it seems they've been deliberately holding back features on the iPhone, so they can release a substantial update like two weeks from now and cause media frenzy again around the new "IM features" and such.

 

I guess we'll see. I'm so tired of not being able to do simple things like send an email to more than 1 person.

 

Who's excited for what the iPhone 2 might have?

 

An espresso maker? A toaster? .

 

Naw, be more realistic...like a can opener .