With the release of Leopard, I thought it would be safe to unleash a piece of history that was locked up in the dark depths of the insanelysecret article archives. This is an unreleased article that I had written right after the first WWDC06 beta/alpha of Leopard came out during the summer of 06. It's interesting what has changed and what hasn't since the original demo of Leopard way back two Augusts ago. Here's the original article, unchanged since when I first typed it up on build 9A241. Hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
It's no surprise that the WWDC copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has been floating around the usual places. Just for educational purposes (after all, what would a respectable news blog like this be doing if not covering the news), I decided to check it out and see what Apple has been working on for the past several months.
In the past 4 days I've had time to explore the brand new operating system and play around with its new state-of-the-art features. While there were a few features for which I didn't care, overall Leopard is a vast improvement.
Spaces
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m always running multiple programs that get squished together on one desktop. This is usually a big problem for me, especially when programming... needless to say I'm not a big fan. Spaces takes care of this problem for me. It allows you to make up to nine virtual desktops into which you can sort your applications. Looks like I can finally say goodbye to cluttered desktops.
iChat 4.0
I’m a big fan of iChat’s video conferencing abilities on my MacBook. I was exceptionally impressed with iChat 4.0’s new video effects. I was only able to test out the Photobooth effects in this Leopard build, but I was surprised to see how well they work over live video. iChat 4.0 has to be one of my favorite improvements in Leopard.
Time Machine
I know I’m incredibly bad (like most other people) when it comes to making backups. It’s a pain to sit there and copy all of your files over to another drive. Thanks to Time Machine, making backups is as easy as changing a file. With it you can actually go into the past of your computer and recover lost files with just a few clicks. When you’re looking into the past, it appears as if you’re flying through space and time. Backing up hasn’t been easier.
Spotlight
Back in Tiger, I would almost always use Spotlight when I wanted to find a file. Sure it was fast, but occasionally it would take a few minutes to find what I was looking for. Well, now in Leopard, Spotlight is instantaneous. It appears to be finding what you’re looking for before you type the entire word in. Spotlight in Leopard is a GREAT improvement from what it was in Tiger. Apple really won me over with this awesome new enhancement.
In conclusion
After trying out Leopard, I’d have to give Apple an enormous round of applause. Leopard includes many new features that we Mac users have been lusting after for years. From virtual desktops to dual booting with Windows, Leopard is by far the best Mac OS X operating system that I’ve used. I’m looking forward to trying out the final version of Leopard and all of its cutting-edge features when it debuts next spring. Keep up the good work Apple!
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