Leopard - A Designer’s First Impressions
Posted by derekbender | Filed under News
Yes, Mac OSX Leopard was finally installed on my Mac Pro at work, about 3 weeks ago (I know I’m a little late). There was a ton of hype and talk leading up to its release so I had a lot of high expectations for Leopard. The features I was looking forward to as a designer were Quick Look, Spaces and the new desktop and dock, specifically the ability to make stacks.
Stacking, in theory seems like a great idea, and it is, but its not perfect. My main gripe with stacking is usability. It would have been nice to have an animation or rollover effect on the individual items when the stack is visible. Also, no custom icons? Kinda surprised by that one. And Leopard only lets you arrange items in a stack a few ways. It would have been nice to see a “customize item order” option.
The feature that I’m most impressed, and most disappointed me, is Spaces. I know, I know; Spaces has been around and its nothing new to Linux users and options have been around for Windows also. When you multi-task like I do with on average 15 windows and at least 7 applications open at once, things can get a bit crowded on a single desktop, even with two screens. The good; great functionality, animation, hotkeys and its super simple. The bad; a couple issues when you want to have multiple instances of an app on different desktops and opening new instances of those apps.
And there are even more new and updated features including Quick Look, Time Machine, iChat and the new Desktop which are all great in their own special ways.
In conclusion: Stacking-okay, Quick Look-pretty and useful, Spaces-cool but flawed and Leopard-worth the cash.
Already put on my desktop! Keep...