Life of a Technologist

While talking to a dear friend of mine, I was bought on the idea of upgrading my Macbook to Leopard, so lo and behold, I dived into leopard world per his word. While Apple has touted it as the biggest Mac upgrade ever, after reviewing most of the inch and corner of this brand new OS, I can tell you that Tiger still stands as the biggest upgrade. While those 300 some features that Apple mentions were something in my previous OS (yes you can hate me for it, but it was Vista).

My Dell 1505 still ran competitively quieter than my Macbook throughout the experiments.
Let me tell you, I dived into Leopard with the idea of becoming a convert - aka, switching to OSX full time. Mind you, my experience wasn't of the ad-featured "wow!!" of a brand new switcher. Reason being that I use OS'es for their features and a pretty face without a sound reasonable mind, is what we call a dumb blonde - although the leopard is anything but a dumb blonde, there are a couple smaller things which really annoyed me. Collectively, those minuscule things do pack a heavy punch. While I loved VMWare Fusion with its nice Unity feature, I had already setup my Ubuntu 7.10 desktop with a similar feature for using seamless rdesktop (seamless rdp) in a VMWare Player session. The whole setup was pretty much one-click setup using Nautilus scripts which is featured in Gnome, similar to the fancy robotic Automater scripts in Mac.
(Disclaimer: I will review both the hardware and software package since you can't buy one without the other anyways.)
In any case, here goes:

• In the past, I had used a full Qwerty keyboard, so I was used to the 'page up', 'page down', 'home' and 'end', but even the basic Dell M1330 features these keys. Even on my mac mini, I used a Windows keyboard which made me feel right at home. However, on the Macbook there were no pg up, pg dn or home and end keys. So another learning curve on finding out what the real key combo is for that - ok, fine I'll learn something new.
• Next up was the much needed 'print screen' button. To my horror (ok I exaggerated :P), no print screen. So I went about on google trying to find what the single button's equivalent was in the mac world. Its the shift + command + 3 (for full screen) and shift + command + 4 (select region, or press spacebar to select current application screen). These commands save to the desktop. So I gained some and lost some right there. No single button solution, but much like Linux, this saves screenshots on the desktop by default. Although, the screenshot option is fairly configurable in Linux, sadly, Vista doesn't do that. Although, the new snipping tool in Vista is configurable, but nothing right out of the box. I still liked my print screen button.
• Copying/Moving file horror: Ok this has got to be annoying. Let's say you have two folders/directories by the same name, call them "SampleDirectory" . One directory is on your 2nd partition, while the other one is on your 1st partition. Normally, in Vista, you drag and drop one folder on the other and it does a "merge" or better 'Asks you what to do' . In Leopard (or any past mac os), you drop from partition 1 to partition 2, asks do you want to overwrite and sure enough it overwrites! My original files in partition 2 are gone! Like WT^&%^*%&(^&(^& >_< . I certainly do not like this behavior, it is downright stupid and dangerous, no wonder Apple touted Time Machine as a major feature.
  
• Time Machine: I'm sure you have all watched this, well you know what:

1. It isn't turned on by default, unlike Windows Shadow copies which are turned on by default on XP and Vista (shadow copies are used by System Restore and Previous Versions as well), there was no such thing in Leopard. Ok, normally if I'm a newbie, would I actually click on the time machine unless I actually screwed up? When I click open time machine. It displays a nice empty screen.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   ....ok, so I know I'm screwed - let's see if we can setup time machine.
   I flip the switch to on and another mystery (empty screen for location ? 0.o)
   
   
2. Now what Charlie? Off to google! I came to know that backups can not reside on the same partition, well great, I think my grandma will know that for sure. So much for the idea of new user conversion. No, you're wrong Mr.Jobs, this has its flaws and this is a BIG one! Windows actually beats OSX flat out here. Shadow Copies, can be used by Previous version tab or System Restore, granted it doesn't allow individual applications to be restored to the previous versions, but that's what the 'Backup and Restore' application in Windows is for. Ubuntu in fact beats out both Mac and Windows in this backup department (without the fancy timelined windows in Timemachine) with its simple to use Sbackup.
   
3. So I go about using the Disk Utility (let's you resize your disks one the fly), which is similar across Windows Vista, Ubuntu Linux (what I use) and Mac OS X. Once I resized the main partition from a full 232gb down to 170gb, I had ~60gb for Time Machine. Now when I launch Time Machine, flip the switch to "ON" and choose select backup location, sure enough the new partition is listed there.
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   So that closes the time machine chapter.
   NOT quite. Turns out that the backup utility (Time Machine) actually does an exact mirror of your drive.
   
4. As it stands, there isn't a comparable feature in Mac such as Shadow Copies. I got the 250gb upgrade on my macbook for the sole purpose of being able to utilize time machine as a replacement for Shadow Copies. But for now, I'll live with partitioning the drive in half (although you should use a different physical drive altogether.

• Another neat new keystroke I learnt was the "alt" or "option" key. Select a file/drive and move mouse over text and hold this 'option' key and it lets you rename your file. Not too difficult a learning curve, but nonetheless F2 rename in Windows and Linux is much easily remembered. If someone even so questions that would people even use this feature - yes they do, a full blown OS has to be able to do this and more.
  (Update: Turns out if you highlight the icon and hit Enter, the name is editable)
  
• One button click: I still have to live with the single click. No, CTRL + Click is not the same. If you use a macbook and want to actually be productive, get a 2-button mouse that does not cost you an arm and leg (mighty mouse). I didn't get the mighty mouse because it only comes in white and well I have a black macbook, including all my accessories. Apple needs to show some love for their more expensive macbook, black power cables (instead of while) , black mighty mouse, etc.
  
• One feature in Leopard/Mac that bothered me was when I hold down shift and select a bunch of folders, right click (or ctrl + click) and choose more info, it pops opens each and every folder's properties!! I learned it the hard way after open 40 folder properties -_- . As it stands (correct me if I'm wrong) there is no way to find out the collective size of a bunch of folders/directories.
  
• So a single finger wouldn't do for Macs, no you perv, I didn't mean it in that way, I was talking about scrolling. To scroll, you need to use two fingers (arite, thats enough - I know your mind wandered elsewhere, and stop with the giggling), but the best part is, anywhere on the track pad. Use two fingers from top-down/left-right and the gesture is understood as scrolling vertically and horizontally. Although, I have yet to perfect the art of scrolling on the Macbook, I'll learn in time.
  
• Leopard's Smart Folders are nothing new to me, since Vista has featured this since the Longhorn days. But again, I'm glad this feature exists in Leopard as well.
• Ok some wise guy thought this was funny.
  
  ..see the blue screen of death icon, well that's a default Samba (Windows Networked PC) icon in Leopard. Oh well, perhaps I should use the beach volleyball (Dummy 101: Pun on Mac OSX's crashed app/OS) for the Mac AFP pc. But you gotta hand it to Apple, they do cater to their Fans really well :P.
• Media playback is similar to Windows Vista out of the box. Both Microsoft and Apple support their own proprietary formats just fine. To setup flv, mpeg(x), x264, H.264 (open source), FLV, AVI (all major containers) and .ogg's and a lot more, in Mac you can just get the Perian toolkit, whereas for Windows you install CCCP. Both do an excellent job, but CCCP comes with more features (making all those file formats playable through WMP and shell extensions). However, Perian does an excellent job of making all of those files playable from Quicktime.
• I also got the chance to try out Office for Mac 2008 beta (thanks to my MSDN license ;)), and I think I'll likely invest in that app. I personally think it is the single best suite of software on the mac. Yes, I've tried Logic studio and final cut pro, but none of those are a 'necessity' for every user.
  
• The iLife suite is truly wonderful, but iPhoto stands just short of Picasa in usability and features - unfortunately, I will have to live with this for now or choose to use Picasa with VMWare fusion Unity >_<
• Another new feature, Spaces (aka Virtual desktops). The configuration UI is standard Mac cocoa interface, clean, simple and straight forward. But this is not a a major feature. Virtual Desktops have been a freebie Windows Power Toy, and VirtualToy for 2000/XP/ Vista provided a similar to Mac Spaces 4 years back. Heck, Ubuntu Linux, comes with the 'exact' same Virtual desktop feature as Mac spaces. So this is clearly a rip-off from the AiGLX/XGL based desktop effects from Linux. And yes, Linux did it first! (at least the way its seen in Leopard)
  
• Parental Controls : Nothing to see here, again - freebies did this before, Vista Home Premium and Ultimate provide this option out of the box as well. So this is something that was expected. But much appreciated for previous mac users
  
• Quicklook : This honestly is more of a widget than a new feature.
  
• Rounded edges? Ok what is with this rounded-ness in Leopard. Everything practically had a rounder bottom (no, not what you thought) . I personally preferred the Tiger way.
  

Be a better judge of it yourself, utilize it and I'm sure you'll find your own quirks. This OS is by far anything from perfect. But it beats Windows Hands down on UI consistency. I also ended up with a bug, which I will post shortly - just need to reproduce it on a friend's iMac first.
Update: I managed to replicate it. A minor one it is. Create new partition and it shows up with a default "Macintosh_HDx_y", where x and y are drive number and partition number respectively, but change that name before creating partition and Disk Utility continues to use the older name. Not a nuisance but I would assume it would take the edited name instead.