[owenink]

I agree that stability is worse in Leopard than Tiger. Just today my wife's PowerBook G4 suffered three kernel panics, and my Intel-based iMac has suffered more than a few inexplicable spontaneous restarts.

[owenink]

RhymingDesigner said:

Quote

Apple still hasn't figured out Finder window management

Agreed! Here's one I hate: If you click the eject button in the Sidebar for a mounted disk image, the Finder window closes when the disk image is unmounted. Why? All I asked the Finder to do was unmount a volume, not close the current window. Maddening!

[Martian]

I don’t recall anywhere near as many negatives on previous OSX releases.
So what’s different?
* Mac is finally winning in the marketplace
* Mac’s (big bully) competitor has finally produced a true dog in the market place—Vista
* Apple’s non-Mac businesses have grown explosively
* Apple has denied its core business (no pun intended) by dropping “Computer” from its name. Note that GE has maintained reference to its “Electric” roots throughout its huge and successful diversification.
Does this mean that Apple no longer thinks it has to sweat the details in its Mac shop? Has Steve been spreading himself too thin? Has Apple, like Spitzer, strayed from home and gotten into too many things?

[alansky]

Dan, can you point me to instructions on how to set up screen sharing over the internet? I figured out how to do it with iChat, but much prefer using the screen sharing feature. I got that to work over my home network, but have no idea how to use it to connect to a remote computer in another state.

[hillstones]

I have Leopard running on my iMac G5 (iSight 2.1 GHz), iMac 17" 1 GHz, and PowerBook G4 15" 867 MHz. All of them are rock solid with no crashes or freezes. Thankfully 10.5.2 fixed the Stacks disaster and annoying transparent menu bar. I never used Spaces and I gave up on Time Machine. I didn't like Time Machine because it continues to back up constantly until the hard drive is full. I don't need hourly backups of everything. It would be nice if you could change the settings to run once a week or once a month. So I went back to my normal routine of backing up my Home folder every couple of weeks. I will probably look into SuperDuper.

CandyBar is the best fix for the Dock and the terribly bland folder icons. CandyBar can give you a nice smoked glass Dock with the return of the Blue Triangles for open apps. As for folder icons, I used CandyBar to give me back the Tiger folder icons.

Prior to 10.5.2, I wasn't recommending Leopard to any of my friends or family because of the annoying interface issues that were resolved with 10.5.2.

[spinoza2]

I think someone needs to chime in and let Macworld know that there are people who really like the transparent Finder and 3D dock in Leopard; Apple must have done their research before implementing it and learned that a lot of us would like this enhancement. I attribute Macworld's continuing harping on these things to their being IT folks who don't see much value in design or aesthetics in improving a UI.

Also, I'm not having any problems with Leopard stability on my MB Pro, it's rock solid for me, so those with problems must be dealing with specific issues (customization? Third-party software? Hacks?)

[downdowndown]

Amazing that your 3D Dock Derangement Syndrome hasn't worn off. If you seriously find it so distracting, I think you might talk with a doctor: there are drugs that will help you focus.
For Spaces, I use an iMac, with a Mightly Mouse, and I've mapped Spaces to the squeeze (4th button). In that mode it's pretty wonderful. I pretty much let any app open in any window, and have only set a couple apps to be in a specific Space. I started out with 4 Spaces, but I now use 9. That sounds pretty crazy, but it's great. Squeeze, squeeze, I jump back and forth, good visual feedback, no need to remember what's in which space. Some things, like our server log (tail -f) I can evaluate even in 1/3 size without going to the Space. I don't use Expos?? so much these days because I always have at least one empty Space to jump to where the desktop is cleared out.

[Ciguatera]

Yes I too, am using 9 spaces, its great.

I will also chime in on the menu bar, I like the transparent. I was actually using a program to make it transparent before leopard came out. I always found it annoying that I would have some of my desktop background cut off by the solid white bar. The transparent bar allows me to see the desktop picture and still be able to use the bar. Thank you Apple for this, now I don't have to use the other 3rd-Party program.

I chimed in earlier about how I liked the spaces and new dock look. But Time Machine needs a little more work. I sometimes get the "Time Machine drive is Read Only" message. But ejecting it and restarting solves the problem, just a little work. But hardly ever backed up before, now I don't have to worry about it.

[DownLowSturgen]

10.5.2 automatically places a Time Machine item in the menu bar. From there, manually select Back Up Now. Leave Time Machine turned off. Two clicks.

[DownLowSturgen]

For those who've experienced stability issues following an Erase and Install from Tiger, has anyone tried a follow up Archive and Install from Leo? It's one thing to do a Tiger-to-Tiger or Leo-to-Leo "clean install" but it's entirely another from Tiger-to-Leo. I also did a Tiger-to-Leo clean install and, although I haven't had any kernel panics, I've been curious about improving speed and stability. I'm just a little nervous about doing it with a 10.5.0 disc. I'd prefer to Archive and Install using the latest version.

[sanjaymehta]

What about iCal under Leopard and its misfeature of "Delete and Notify" which can potentially flood your hapless colleagues with calendar cancellation notices. I've stopped using iCal just for this reason.

[DownLowSturgen]

OMG totally! I've suffered the same embarrassment! It's like, "I use a Mac which is cute cos it's got this little app on there called iCal - hehehe - which is like My First Outlook..." Yeah, needless to say, I stopped adding attendees. And that's not to mention how FRUSTRATING inline editing is... What was wrong with the old way? Nothing. Nothing was wrong with the old way.

[anothersite]

Thankfully, I have not upgraded a family computer to Leopard, because I would try to use the Parental Controls. I currently Managed Accounts on Tiger, and it works okay.

Along these lines, I think that it would be great if Macworld ALWAYS tested software and hardware about being a good citizen on computers with multiple user accounts and restricted accounts. I am tired of having to use Get Info to tweak Permissions, especially for games, or enter registration keys multiple times on OS X computers that are built from the ground up to support multiple user accounts per computer.

[Dan Frakes]

spinoza2 said:

I think someone needs to chime in and let Macworld know that there are people who really like the transparent Finder and 3D dock in Leopard

Whenever a Macworld staffer makes a negative comment about these UI elements, we get comments like yours here in the forums, so we know there are dissenters ;) This was an article about my personal impressions of Leopard after using the official release for four months.

spinoza2 said:

Apple must have done their research before implementing it and learned that a lot of us would like this enhancement.

Apple often makes UI decisions without focus groups and user research. Often those decisions are good ones. But I think the best evidence that this time Apple made some bad design decisions is the fact that 10.5.2 significantly changed some of these UI elements. For example, for the menu bar, Apple essentially reversed course by (1) providing an option to completely disable the semi-transparency; and (2) reducing transparency significantly even when transparency is enabled.

spinoza2 said:

I attribute Macworld's continuing harping on these things to their being IT folks who don't see much value in design or aesthetics in improving a UI.

If I don't agree with your opinion on an interface element -- one that violates Apple's own user-interface guidelines -- I'm akin to an IT guy who doesn't understand the benefits of good design to a UI? Au contraire, it's because I understand the benefits of good UI design that I disliked these features ;)