On OS X Leopard: First Contact

There have been screenshots and reviews galore all over the net. After the suspenseful buildup, a Leopard beanie baby, and a belly full of complimentary pizza from The Scholar's Workstation, I feel I've calmed to a state where I can pass quick judgement on Apple's latest and greatest.

What works right away in Apple's favor is the pure hype generated by the news, and by rabid mac fanboys. The sound of "Leopard Launch Party" made me cringe inside; Who's ever heard of a launch party for an OS before?

The cringing quickly stopped when I learned about the free pizza and cheesy beard at TSW. I've got a soft spot for cheesy beard...

What continued to work after the unchecked gorging of carbohydrates was the Leopard installer. I've gone through more Windows installations in my life than your average computer user, so the raw blue screen and cryptic messages don't phase me the slightest. In contrast, Leopard's installer manages to do the entire installation in circa 3 mouse clicks: Install, Agree, Continue. I chose the upgrade method for both my iBook and iMac, and neither had conflicts or complaints. It approaches the CBM-ness of 'apt', but hits the wallet a wee bit more.

After all the initial loading and indexing, a rigorously detailed BS performance benchmark was run on both Macs in question. The iBook came in at a whopping 63.5% slower than the Tiger version. What's even more painful is the noticeable hiccup whenever any form of eye candy is executed. It's borderline enough to render some features like Quick Look and Cover Flow useless. Wendy Tai is wise for not installing it on her iBook. The iMac is a completely different story. Using the same benchmark for the iBook, I'd say that Leopard has a gut feeling performance gain of 0% on my iMac. Fortunately, this discouraging figure is compensated by working features like Spaces (it recognized my dual monitor setup), and Quick Look. I can already see Quick Look adding 1 maybe even 2% to my productivity.

more later... (Time Machine. zomg)