Early Observations on Leopard
Here are some of the observations I’ve made while using Mac OS X Leopard this week:
Transparent Menu Bar
- Taking design cues from Redmond is rarely a good idea.
- Leopard’s Menu Bar looks odd and out of place on the Mac, as if it came straight from Windows Vista.
- Its hideous.
- Its ugly.
- Everyone knows it.
- Simply put, without Non-Transparent Menu Bar (which makes the menu bar opaque) I consider the Menu Bar unusable.
Above: Leopard’s Menu Bar + Non-Transparent Menu Bar
The Dock
- If you position the Dock on the bottom, the Dock convincingly pulls of its new 3D look. Apple was able to get the perspective right.
- If you position the Dock on the left or right, the Dock’s perspective looks totally wrong.
- The mirrored reflection of icons and windows is gratuitous, but its not to overt nor distracting.
- Icons sit too far above the bottom edge of the screen.
- Icons cast’s their own uniquely shaped shadow on the Dock.
- Those little black triangles that appeared under the icons of open applications have been replaced with blue spots that look like LED lights.
- I hate LED lights. I especially hate blue LED lights.
Above: Leopard’s new Dock.
The Finder
- The sidebar icons are to small for me to use. There is no way to make them larger.
- Yes, Coverflow can be useful. It may seem superfluous, but after using it to quickly browse 100 similarly named screenshots you realize why it was added to the Finder.
I don’t like the new folder icons.I think Apple was going for that ‘paper fibers’ look, because folder icons have been speckled with small imperfections (see image below).- I changed my mind. I like the new folder icons. The embossed effect looks great.
Above: Folder icons in Leopard
Windows
- Steve Jobs claimed that in Leopard it’s much easier to determine which is the active window.
- He’s right. It’s the one with the big ass shadow.
- Every time you switch windows, the screen appears to flash as the shadow moves from one window to the other.
- This is horribly distracting, and especially slow on my PowerBook G4.
- Switching from Safari to Transmit, it takes about a second until Safari’s shadow disappears and another two seconds until Transmit’s new shadow is rendered.
Above: Big Ass Shadows in Leopard
June 23rd, 2007 at 2:53 am
I have a G4 powerbook and the active window shadow makes me not want to upgrade. I could do without superfluous effects slowing down the UI.
So your overall thoughts are negative?
June 24th, 2007 at 7:07 am
Anyone know where I can get the Leopard beta? Will it run nicely on my iBook G4 1.33? I’ve heard Leopard only supports Intel based Macs.
June 24th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
I’m using 9a466, and I also hate the big-ass drop shadow (which afflicts the dock and menus too), the tall-ass dock, and the transparent menubar. I believe that there will eventually be plist keys to adjust most of these things.
I do love the new folder icons. No pointless perspective, or floating badges — just simple embossed icons. With them, the new unified windows, and the new NSMenu implementation (notice the rounded corners at the bottom), there are now no fucking pinstripes anywhere!
June 24th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
I’ve discovered many good things in Leopard and also many irritating things, so I’d say overall I’m neutral.
No, no, and no. Leopard is supposed to be for ADC member only. It may run well on your iBook, but unlike upgrading to Panther and Tiger, I have found that my PowerBook G4 is somewhat slower since ‘upgrading’ to Leopard.
June 25th, 2007 at 1:17 am
I’ve found that the development builds are always slower than the releases. Tiger was that way, and the last build of Leopard Server before this one was unusably slow due to silly errors and bugs.
Leopard does have a few more heavyweight services running in the background — securityd is bigger, the firewall is Application-Level and always running even if you don’t use it, and every box now runs LDAP now that NetInfo is finally gone.
June 25th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Andrew, if you allow me, I wish to suggest a look at:
http://macthemes2.net/2007/06/13/renato-valdes-olmos-thoughts-on-leopard’s-user-interface/#more-106
I think he looks at the interface related questions of Leopard in a refreshing new way.
June 28th, 2007 at 1:54 am
completely agree about the menubar, its awful.
“Icons sit too far above the bottom edge of the screen” - second most annoying thing for me as every time I drag an icon to reposition, if i drag it straight horizontally, it is removed from the dock. instead I have to drag down and over to reposition.
“The sidebar icons are to small for me to use. There is no way to make them larger.” - single most annoying aspect of leopard right now and i prefer tigers sider immensely.
about the shadows, that’s the third most annoying thing for me right now as its completely unnecessary.
p.s. love your site, been reading for a while, cheers!
June 28th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Hello Andrew, I’m André. lol
I fully agree with you regarding Leopard. I never comment, love this blog though. Keep up the good work. ;)
July 10th, 2007 at 5:36 am
I completely agree with your views on Leopard. I now know not to upgrade unless tons of this changes. Still, I’m perfectly happy with Tiger.
Also, what happened with all of these apps that were previously shown off on Apple’s website before WWDC. Dashcode anyone? Time Machine? Photo Booth? Frontrow? iChat?
July 19th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Andrew, how about Front Row & Bootcamp? If Leopard may run well on PPC macs, it means Windows & Front Row can run on PPC based macs too? Thanks
July 21st, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Komovschy,
Just because Boot Camp and Front Row are officially apart of Mac OS X now does not mean they will be available to all users.
Running Windows through Boot Camp will still only work on Intel based Macs.
Front Row will only launch on Macs that included an Apple Remote.
Mac Pros, PowerBooks, iBooks and other Macs that do not support the Apple Remote will not be able to launch Front Row 2.0 without Enabler.
July 27th, 2007 at 1:54 am
leopard is going to be fantastic if you look at really how good tiger alrady is
August 14th, 2007 at 11:55 am
You were right the first time about the Finder icons: I think they are cold and militaristic and have told Apple so. I hope I can write a script like your Mail Stamps to change them back to the Tiger icons.
I have gotten used to the transparent menu bar, but I use a subdued background image so it ends up being gray. I think it’s actually less distracting than the high-contrast white. I do not like it with the “grass” background. (Talk about stealing bad ideas from Vista!)
Nice site. I came here to get Enabler, but it looks like it doesn’t work on Leopard, which will ship with Front Row, but presumably will only work if you have the remote as is the current case.
August 19th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
trans. menu = hideous
dock perspective = hideous
neon dots on dock = hideous
dock shadows = Arrghhh my eyes!
new icons = hideous ( iconfactory Agua my choice)
new HP Bravada iMac 5320XT PRO II with aluminium = hideous
What’s going on at Apple?
August 28th, 2007 at 4:23 am
I think the new menu bar is important to battle the screen burn-in from the old opaque white one. Contrary to ppular belief LCD screens still “burn”. It’s happened on my iMac, and I used Menushade to stop it on my other ones. I agree there should be an option to turn it off, but remember they’re not copying Microsoft, that much is obvious. Why copy an OS that is absolutely terrible? OSX and Windows are far apart, even if some parts look similar it’s purely cooincidental. I think people focus far too much on the negative parts of the OS and not all the positive parts.
If you don’t like it then just don’t buy it. Some people are just far too scared of change.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:37 am
Andrew–
Just curious. Since you’ve had a chance to pound on Leopard for awhile I’m wondering if your Front Row Enabler patches Front Row 2.0 and works with other remotes (I use the Keyspan one and the enabler on my G4 Macmini).
Thanks!
Mike
October 26th, 2007 at 3:10 am
thats exactly my question as well: did you start working on a new revision of the enabler or will there be no chance to get them remotes work with the old ones?
Its a crucial thing for me, if it wont work in the next time (means development of the enabler :) i wont upgrade our g5, which is in fact an tv-set-substitute.
i really would appreciate a working version…
greets so far
chris
October 27th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Andrew,
the buttons in Leopard Mail are back to ugly. Please will you be updating Mail Stamps to change the buttons in Leopard Mail?
thanks,
Tom
October 29th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Leopard could have been so much better if they didn’t “try” and compete with vista. I mean, everyone knows Vista sucks, so why bother competing with a OS that doesn’t even work.
If you think about it, Leopard would have been just fine if it kept its trademark icons of an apple.
But, all in all - Leopard’s alright.
Gaz
November 4th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Folders in the Dock are now unusable - and surely contravene any HUIG. They change appearance according to changing content - or they take on a totally misleading appearance. I have a local Application folder in my Home folder. Guess what the Home icon looks like in the Dock - that’s right, the same as the Application folder!
Also, Folders in the Dock are no longer a quick-ish way of accessing files - there’s a whole new clumsy user paradigm in the way. All I wanted was spring-loaded folders!
The new folders look OK at large sizes - at small sizes, they’re indistinguishable. I’ve nothing against the simplified more ‘iconic’ representation, but it needs to be clear - like the ones in the top right of the menubar, for example, which sadly have also taken a leap backwards in legibility due to the now translucent menubar they reside on.
And to top it all off, the Non-Transparent Menu Bar app doesn’t seem to work on my Mac (Pro).
Really, all I wanted was 10.4 UI + Spring-loaded Dock folders and user Icon Grid Spacing.
Be careful what you wish for?