The Chris Gonyea Project

Here are a few first impressions on my experience of upgrading to OS X 10.5 Leopard:

• Make sure you do proper backups before upgrading. I cannot stress this enough.
• I did an erase and install. I hadn’t reinstalled OS X since I got my Macbook and just decided it was as good as time as any to do it.
• Did I mention that Apple doesn’t assume you are a thief? No serial code and no product activation. Breath of fresh air for sure.
• Installation on my 1st Generation Macbook took ~40 minutes.
• My Macbook definitely is a little faster, especially when I have several applications open and doing stuff in the background.
• The iTunes Artwork screensaver now works with album art downloaded from the iTunes Store.
• Any VBR AAC file encoded in Leopard now shows its real bitrate in iTunes.
• According to Hydrogenaudio, the AAC encoder also has sound quality improvements.
• Web Clip in Safari is going to get a workout.
• I am really digging Coverflow in the Finder. Makes me wish someone made a Windows version of it, I can picture my work using it.
• Speaking of the Finder, it is faster, beautiful, and much more functional.
• Time Machine is great. After the initial backup, the only time I have even noticed it was when I happened to look at my external hard drive and saw the disk activity light on. I think the “gimmick” UI actually makes more people want to use it, as it is quiet beautiful. It is simply as easy as backup can get. Try restoring a photo from your iPhoto library, it will take your breath away. Volume Shadow Copy in Vista cannot compare.
• Leopard seems very stable. No crashes or any noticeable first version bugs. Apple definitely did a lot of polishing work on it.
• I’m liking Spotlight much better this time around. Faster and you can do boolean searches.
• Grammar checking is a joke so far. If I can even get a sentence to show the green underline, I haven’t got it to offer suggestions on how to fix it yet.

I highly recommend this upgrade for Mac users.

For another perspective, Leo Laporte (of TWIT and TechTV fame) has a good first impressions review.