So we all updated Mac OS X 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 the other day.

Updated both my iMac and iBook, both weighed in at 180MB. Among the fixes are a couple of UI tweaks, one of these is the ability to return the menu bar to the good ‘ol opaque days. But can you see little snag in the screenshot above? The left and behind is the iMac’s desktop property dialog and to the right is the iBooks. Both are 10.5.2. Hmm, I guess iBooks have no business having opaque menu bars.

Hope that screenshot fits in my blog theme OK, it’s a bit large.

Susan gave me the lowdown on the heist, but hush hush, it’s strictly on the QT.

Pardon?  Anyway, yeah Mac Heist is on at the moment, not sure when it started but there’s only 13 days left Mr.  It’s a bundle of mac shareware apps for just 49 dollars and the collection is pretty good, there’s at least 4 i’m interested in that makes it a steel!

The apps you get are 1Password, CoverSutra, Cha-Ching, iStopMotion, Awaken, AppZapper, TaskPaper.

There are three more, CSSEdit, Snapz Pro X, Pixelmator which will only be unlocked once enough bundles have been sold, so please buy the bundle so the rest of us can have these three extras!    Please?

Oh yeah, and it’s all for charity.

I’ve been using Leopard for well over a week now, 11 days to be precise, so what are my thoughts now?

OS X is going the right direction for an OS, with this release Apple are empowering developers with great API tools for optimal FS management and easier access to OpenGL graphic manipulation. I’m really looking forward to what FOSS and shareware developers are going to come up with over the next year.

An example of what their enhanced file system services is going to help with is the Mozy online backup app which I use to ensure that I still have my files even if Sheffield explodes. At the moment when it does a scheduled backup it has to scan the whole drive for changes. With Leopard and with the appropriate changes to Mozy’s code it will only have to ask the OS what files have changed since the last time it backed up.

With the re-tooled Spotlight I haven’t once pined for Quicksilver, which I have to admit I pretty much only ever used as an application launcher. Not only is the new Spotlight much much faster but it behaves in exactly the ways you hope. For instance if I type “Command+Space…F…I…R…E…Return” in quick succession (probably less than a second for the whole sequence) spotlight won’t bother to try and catch up in the GUI but will immediately close and load firefox. Perfect!

I haven’t found stacks useful at all. In fact the only idea I’ve come up with for using it turned out to not even be supported. With spotlight now being awesome I suddenly wanted to create a smart folder that showed all documents modified today, similar to “Today” under the “Search For” section of the finders sidebar, but with a few extra specifiers to lose some dreg. Problem is, drag a smart folder onto the dock and it doesn’t become a stack. It just sticks there as an alias. Poo.

I love the transparent menu bar when I use un-saturated background, hate it when I use colourful ones. I’ve gone all black-and-white for my desktop, it’s actually pretty cool, very seventh seal. The leopard dock is still a mess to my eyes, my favourite oddity is that those orbs that show which apps are loaded aren’t even orbs, if you look more closely they’re actually supposed to be spotlights with a reflection going through the glass. But the design is so fucked up that no one has even realised.

Many hate the new folder icons. I actually like them, I didn’t think much of the old pin-stripe ones, they always reminded me of random linux distributions. I’m all for subtle standard icons.

It’s nice to have Apache2 and PHP5.2 as default now, still not sure why mysql isn’t installed by default. That’s probably a me thing.

I’ve barely had any beach balls all week. Bliss!

It just seems to do stuff the instant you want it to!

The only performance related issue I have had is a network one.  Apparently Leopard has some bandwidth shaping of sorts, it trys to priorities downloads and all that.  Well, I think they need to check those notes because if I have Azureus download a torrent it cripples all other internet activity.  Even if the torrent download is only coming very slowly and upload is capped at something like 5K it still fucks all internet activity up.

Really happy with it. Which is odd. When I was a windows user I would look forward to each new windows release even though expecting a slower system but hoping for lots of minor differences that I could explore and track down and go “woo that bit of text has changed.”

This is my first Mac OS upgrade (my first mac was just after Tiger) and it feels almost perverse for an OS upgrade to actually be optimized and faster. Those crazy 1 infinite loop guys.

In the first installment of what could be many Leopard updates…

Just had a Kernel Panic, you know this when a semi-opaque gray slowly comes down the screen like a curtain, and then a please hold the power button message appears in several languages. This doesn’t bode well, I’ve only ever seen what, 3, 4 max kernal panics on my mac the whole time I’ve had it.

At the time it occurred I was watching a 720p x.264 of the office on the second screen whilst EyeTV was recording Russell Brands Ponderland and I had just moments before unplugged my external DVD drive (it had no disk in).

Reason I had unplugged the drive is because Leopard seems to be pinging it (if pinging is the right word) around every 5 minutes whilst there is no disk in, the drive makes a faint buzz and then sighs, Tiger never did this. Anyway, i’m finding it mightily irritating.

It seems that any JPG which has been touched by lightroom will cause Finder to relaunch if you try QuickView on it. Very odd.

Any now for software compatibility…

Native-Instruments stuff is an issue because most of the update installers for their apps bomb out. This means that for many of their plug-ins I’m stuck with the original PowerPC versions, which don’t work in an Intel host DAW.

PictureSync is a great app for uploading to photo-sharing sites such as flickr right from such apps as aperture, iphoto and lightroom. Anyway, currently in Leopard you can’t license the app, nor can you authenticate it with flickr.

Popcorn 2 cannot burn a disk, tells you the drive didn’t respond. (External drive, haven’t tried the internal).

Received Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard today.

Actually I shot my wad prematurely on what was a dry run if you will. Um, I mean I got all impatient watching that count down timer on Apples site and ended up downloading it on Wednesday.

I did an erase install ‘cos I had all sorts of crap cloging my HD up and its nice to have a clean system now and then.

It’s taken till today (Friday) to get all my software and stuff back on here so in the end I’m only now getting the Leopard experience, on launch day so getting it early was fair enough in my book.

Still not sure what to think of it, it seems pretty fast, and it’s very refined. But I can’t help feeling a little underwhelmed by the new features.

And I’m having a hell of a time with Time Machine. The backups keep stalling part way through, still haven’t managed to do the initial run.

The box is awesome, it has a sort of hologram effect that’s really crazy. Probably been starring at it for hours. Simple things entertain me.

Update: After stalling again but letting it carry on the rest of the evening Time Machines first backup kicked off again and managed to complete.  Woo.