One of the first things I noticed when playing with Leopard were the new screensaver options. Now that I have seen the tip on other web sites, I figured I am not the only one who thought there were cool.
If you launch the screensaver preferences pane, and choose an iPhoto album, you’ll see a multi-selector underneath the preview pane:
That gives you the option (from left to right) standard rotation through photos, a collage-like effect, and a photo mosaic. The last one uses that trick where multiple images are used to composite a larger image. Read More »
For the first time in months, I have been able to hit the power button on my G5 and have the machine go to sleep – and stay in sleep. Even with a clean install of Tiger (10.4) on the G5 something would keep waking the computer every few minutes. The power consumption (165 W) and noise of the G5 is not inconsequential. It is nice to finally hear the silence.
I told myself as I prepared for the Leopard install that this time I would try to do an upgrade in lieu of a clean install. All of my data was backed up (side note rsync -Ea --verbose ~/ /Volumes/BackupDrive/26Oct2007/ is the way to go, in my opinion) and I was ready to roll. Head off to the Apple Store, pick up the Family Pack for $73 with the discount and my $100 Apple iPhone Price Shaft™ credit, get home, slap the DVD in the drive – and do a clean install. Old habits die hard and some folks over on Arstechnica forums have been reporting problems with the upgrade path.
Now that I have Leopard installed and am restoring my data, it’s time to go through my application list and decide what I really need to bring back over. I tend to try applications out and keep them if I think I might ever use them again. I use any time I wipe as an opportunity to clean out gunk.
I really debated on bringing over Microsoft Office as I have done quite well with iWork lately. Again, my sense of security kicked in and I chose to drag it back over to the Macbook Pro. Coda, Transmit, OmniGraffle Pro, OmniWeb, and OmniOutliner Pro were immediate installs. (Am I allowed to mention that I am also using OmniFocus?) I considered using Safari 3 as my RSS reader but decided NetNewsWire is just too good.
Firefox for all the sites that just don’t work on WebKit (Safari and OmniWeb). Adium for those IM services that iChat does not cover.
Photoshop CS3 was rumored to be beset with problems when installed on Leopard. To date, I have had no issues. Ditto the Cisco VPN client – and again, no issues.
Oh, and MarsEdit 2 for posting to the blog.
I just noticed that iChat now allows you to log on to several accounts at once – not integrated as with Adium, but definitely a step forward.
Playing with Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) in my office today. Thoughts as a co-worker and I did a quick overview:
- iChat’s interface is much improved with the drawer interface.
- Safari’s “Cut to Dashboard” is wicked. I cut the http://weather.com/iPhone to the Dashboard – easy. Ditto recent forum postings block on extremesims.com.
- Spaces is very fast.
- The Coverflow view in Finder is amazing. I dropped a number of Excel and Powerpoint files on the machine, and Coverflow was able to render them even though Microsoft Office was not installed. In larger and full page view, I was able to scroll and switch tabs. Slick.
- Mail’s interface is a lot more polished. I will have to test Notes and ToDos.
- Did I mention Finder’s Coverflow view is amazing?
- Terminal.app now has tabs a lot of nice presets. Minor thing, but still nice.
I am sure I will notice other things as I continue to play with the system.