Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Leopard
On watching Leopard's intro video
Apple has released another "guided tour" video, this time for Leopard. It's narrated by "John," a retail store employee who is evidently soporific enough to don The Black Mock Turtleneck and deliver a flawless demonstration. Seriously, Apple. The "uniform" thing is getting creepy. Even John's colleague Nicole was wearing one (though hers was a nice V-neck affair).Anyway, I jotted down some thoughts as I watched the video.
Stacks
It appears that I can only create a stack in the dock, not a folder (If anyone knows otherwise, let me know). This seems odd at first, but a stack is really just a folder that displays its contents in an atypical way. Still, people will complain, just as they did when column view was added to the Finder. Speaking of the Finder....
The Finder
I'm eager to watch my G4 iMac freeze solid when I try coverflow view. Talk about spinning beach ball. The movie and multi-page previews are very cool, but I suspect they'll require some horsepower to pull off nicely. Apple states that a Mac with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor is required for Leopard. At 1.25GHz, I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel.
The Desktop
The desktop itself is bare bones. In fact, no hard disks are displayed at all. The show up in the new sidebar, but I'm curious to know if you can activate them with the Finder preferences. When John found the beautifully laid out PDF he needed on his networked Mac and dragged it to his own, I assume it went to the "Downloads" stack, and that he could he have dragged it to the desktop.
A bit more synergy between devices. Many have noted that the iMac resembles the iPhone (and that the G5 model looked like the iPod). I noticed that the slider to enable Time Machine in the Finder looks much like a slider on the iPhone's UI.
Time Machine
Ah, Time Machine. People either love or despise that UI. I will admit that it seems heavy on the eye candy, but for someone like my mother (and the majority of computer users are like her), it's an easy-to-understand analogy. Geeks like you and me (if you don't mind the label) forget that most users don't read the websites, subscribe to the magazines and take part in the discussions that we enjoy so much. Time Machine's look may seem silly, but I believe it will make something that many consider tricky - backup and restore - understandable.
Mail
Oh, Apple. I detest bandwidth-hogging HTML email messages. Now you've given everyone and their brother the ability to create these time-wasting monstrosities...and send them to me. I'm not happy about this. The web is for "...creating stunning templates to impress your friends, for any occasion." Email is for simply pointing to those projects. You don't cram your museum's feature content onto the brochure.
On the other hand, data detectors looks wicked cool. I'm eager to try that out.
The notes feature could be useful, but the orange-on-yellow highlight scheme has got to go. Perhaps the idea was that my To Do's would be so painful to look at, I'll be more motivated to complete and delete them.
Consider this the observations of someone who hasn't used Leopard yet. What are you looking forward to / dreading?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
koreyel said 4:38PM on 10-19-2007
"John," a retail store employee who is evidently soporific enough to don The Black Mock Turtleneck and deliver a flawless demonstration. Seriously, Apple. The "uniform" thing is getting creepy.
Lol + yuck.
I wouldn't wear that to a dog fight on Halloween.
But then... I'm not a fanboy who has "think differently" tattoed to has ass either.
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Adam said 4:39PM on 10-19-2007
Will a new Intel IMac actually run things as fast as it seems in that video? I'd love to have a Mac that's that screaming fast (and Apple must be executing the demos on something), but I have a hard time believing it really is possible.
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jas said 4:50PM on 10-19-2007
HTML mail isnt exactly a huge hog of bandwidth is it?, time will tell how big the messages are but hey the odd little gif and some code?
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Metaphor said 4:50PM on 10-19-2007
OK Dave,
Got to pull you up on the HTML email thing. Most of us have broadband now and frankly receiving one is just as easy as receiving an iPhoto generated email with a ton of photo's in it. Its all about communication and not about bandwidth. My Mum (who has just got into computers via a MacBook) loves sending emails and the more creative they are the more satisfaction she gains from them. So in Leopard she gets to send a beautifully crafted email with miniMum effort. (yeah it gives me a little bit of a warm feeling inside to know my 63yr old Mum can do that kind of stuff. Isn't that what Mac's are all about?)
What's so wrong in that? If we were talking carbon footprint issues I may agree but come on bandwidth in this day and age, I don't think so.
Oh and lets talk about my namesake John. So he is soporific. Does he do a great job of talking about the key features of 10.5? Yes he does. Thats what they asked him to do (god forbid an employee in any organization that says no to such an opportunity). He is doing a job just as you are when posting on here.
Please try and remember that some people are reading this 'Blog/corporate vehicle' to gain an understanding of what a Mac can do for them.
When you have used Leopard and find faults with it (as many of us will) then write a critical post. Until then don't mock.
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Alex Bratu said 4:51PM on 10-19-2007
I'd like to point out how terrible Apple's new website design is for people using Internet Explorer 6 on Windows.
If you've ever used IE7, you will erase your entire computer to get IE6 back. It's that terrible (think Vista).
I can barely view the Leopard area of Apple.com. I can't believe it doesn't work (I've tried on multiple PC's with IE6) because there are a lot of people out there that would want to switch to Macs (I'm already a mac user). I can't even link the site to my friends who own PCs.
That said, the video is pretty cool. Too bad the site around it sucks.
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Macroy said 4:59PM on 10-19-2007
#5: Maybe you should link them to www.getfirefox.com ;)
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Chris said 5:04PM on 10-19-2007
i wouldn't say the site sucks. IE just renders CSS and HTML funny. Its never complied with W3C very well. it renders fine with a gecko- or webkit- based browser i might add.
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Metaphor said 5:06PM on 10-19-2007
try safari 3.0 for windows
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Kris Browne said 5:08PM on 10-19-2007
The new Apple site design looks clean and loads fast.
Microsoft's crappy 6 year old nightmare has held back web design far too long... Now that 7 is out we can't expect sites to keep things broken for 6 forever.
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adisor19 said 5:08PM on 10-19-2007
Ahahaha, you're using IE6 and at the same time comlplaining that it doesn't display properly ??!?!?! AHAHAHHAHAHAHAH LOL
Oh man, you're either a really good troll or are simply hopeles.
Here's a link that might change your life :
www.firefox.com
Adi
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John said 5:13PM on 10-19-2007
Is anyone else a little put off by stacks' 'fanning' of its contents? I like the idea, but can't it just be displayed in a straight vertical line? What's the slight lean accomplishing?
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lookmark said 5:13PM on 10-19-2007
That's correct, Dave.
You can only have Docked folders in Leopard - just Stacks. But Stacks replicate most of the functionality of Docked folders (and add some of their own), with a good deal more style.
The one thing that's sadly missing the ability to click a folder in a Stack and stay in Stack mode, instead of opening it in the Finder. That was the default mode in earlier builds, but Apple changed it. I think it should it be a preference, or at least there be some modifier key that allows it.
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A said 5:15PM on 10-19-2007
You should have named your entry "How much can I knit pick and bitch about features and complain about my aging imac"
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yash said 5:15PM on 10-19-2007
Did anyone else note the date of 'this tuesday?' I think its 9/25 so the video was made last month?
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lookmark said 5:15PM on 10-19-2007
^^^ canNOT have Docked folders, I mean. 'scuse.
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jonathan ober said 5:15PM on 10-19-2007
to the guy complaining about the site...I just looked at the site in IE6, IE7 and FF and everything works and renders correctly. Maybe it's just you.
Anyways, Leopard was what I needed to put me over the edge with going iMac! Now I have to convince my wife.
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Fritz Laurel said 5:15PM on 10-19-2007
At first, I wasn't going to watch it, but then you said there was a girl in it, so I checked it out.
What? This is TUAW? Oh, sorry, I thought this was the confessions website...
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Jt Hollister said 5:19PM on 10-19-2007
Dude, quit complaining about how your iMac is "scraping the bottom of the barrel". That is TOTAL CRAP. Your iMac is JUST FINE!!! The difference between 867=MHz and 1.25GHz is _MASSIVE_!!!! You are absolutely nutty to think that your iMac won't pass with flying colors.
More importantly, OS X isn't like Windows, where every new version runs slower. Some individual features might have difficulty on older Macs (like CoverFlow), but all-in-all, the OS itself, just as has been the case in the past, will run much, much FASTER!!! What a concept.
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Ben said 5:21PM on 10-19-2007
John's voice sounds strangely like Steve's...
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Blair Thiessen said 5:27PM on 10-19-2007
Anyone that uses IE6 by choice should be shot. With Firefox, Opera, and Safari all options on PC and Mac you have no reason to use IE6.
IE6 has screwed over the internet for a long time. It does not follow the standards but because it was the most used browser people had to have there sites compatible with it.
Now finally people are starting to use other browsers and IE is getting back on track. IE7 is not perfect but its a lot better then IE6 code wise. I agree that I don't really like IE7's look.
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