Leopard
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 12.11.07This past weekend I upgraded to the latest Macintosh operating system; OS X 10.5, nicknamed Leopard. It’s been out for just a few weeks, and in the interest of not crashing all of my computers with an untested OS, I updated just my macbook with a cleaned HD and fresh install.
The install process is much like any other OS X installation. The disc checks itself to make sure everything is there and uncorrupted (important, since heavy scratching could cause parts of the OS to fail during install, as is the case with one of the old discs at work!), then it runs through the rest of the installation process. If memory serves me correctly, speed was comparable to both 10.4 and Vista installations, though because OS X includes drivers, much of the installation time is spent just coping files for various printers. Once completed, it plays the “welcome” video, with the word repeated in various languages. In 10.3 it was set to the music of Royksopp, in 10.4, the user was greeted with a series of roving spotlights and textures. In 10.5 it’s a fly-through of stars and nebulae… a theme continued through to the default desktop. Enter your information, and the setup process is merrily on its way. iChat is greatly improved, with support for Gtalk and Jabber clients, as is Mail, which helps simplify the process of adding email accounts (Gmail requires hardly any setup at all).
While I can’t say Leopard is truly revolutionary, many features are undeniably great strides forward. Spaces, for example, lets you organize applications into separate screens… the desktop, dock, and menu bar at the top all stay the same, but you can quickly manage large groups of applications without succumbing to window-overload (and eventually depraved confusion). Quick Look, Time Machine, and other improvements make this quite the upgrade to older OS X iterations. The Finder introduces a new cover flow style browser, and there are tweaks to security and network connectivity, amongst a host of other changes.
Interface design, however, is a bit of a touchy subject. There are both massive improvements, inconsitent UI design, and a pathetic attempt at Vista-like “pizazz”. First the good; the entire mac experience is a little darker. Gone is the brushed metal! Things are richer, smoother, and in some cases, shinier. It feels like a much better interface to work in, especially as an artist. Inconsistencies do still plague the platform to some extent, especially with the introduction of a translucent menu bar, repeated nowhere else. Thankfully the similarly translucent menu system is consistent throughout all applications, and also rather beautiful. While UI design is roughly homogenous, details such as buttons vary from place to place. Unfortunate, though understandable in same cases. The bad? The default dock style. It’s horrific, cluttered, hard to read, and almost impossible to use quickly. The reflections are undeniably cool (it reflects icons, nearby windows, live video, everything), but the application icons and indicators quickly blend in with those reflections, and there is a large distracting swoosh behind the whole thing.
Thankfully, there are already several programs written to aid in customizing the dock. OS X has always had features that were accessible only by command line or third party application (the debugging menu in Safari, extra interface animations, etc.), and Leopard is no different. You can switch between 3D and 2D dock styles, and using simple PNG images, you can even skin it yourself!
Introducing Iaian7gray, a simple, clean, and, I hope, elegant redesign of Leopard’s 3D dock. If you are so fortunate as to be using a mac with 10.5, enjoy! If not, you really are missing out on a cool OS.
27.10.09: the dock has been updated for Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6), and now includes an iContainer for Candybar and an image collection for the free Dock Library.
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