Since there exist innumerable, thorough, smart, capable reviewers of technology all over the internets and innumerably more assholes with opinions, my technology reviews are uniquely halfassed. I give a strong opinion, then back it up with a list. In this case, my recommendations are for people who don’t really want to know every little geeky detail about their computers, but may have heard this or that regarding the new operating system for their Macs (since everybody I know pretty much uses Macs). In short, the review is for people like my mom, who rocks an iMac and a blackberry, but who was not raised with computers and does not have that “intuitive” computer sense. Instead, for here, computers should “just work”, and this is what Mac OS has always been about. That being said, I will delve into some slightly geeky topics, so stick with me. My first statement is this:

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is awesome!

1. Time Machine is the bomb. I will still use SuperDuper! to back up a lot of my stuff and make bootable snapshots, but Time Machine is effortless, automatic and, hopefully, working just fine. So far, I haven’t needed it, but my tests have indicated it does, indeed, let me recover files that were lost.
2. The web works again! Websites use so much fancy scripting and whatnot now, that Safari on Tiger was having a very hard time keeping up. Safari 3.0 fixes this. Even if you don’t upgrade to Leopard, go download Safari 3.0
3. Cover flow is shockingly cool in the Finder. I read about it and groaned, but Cover Flow allows one to visually browse the files on one’s computer. It enabled me to very quickly clean up my old messes in folders where I had stuck stuff like, say, pictures my friend’s ex wife had sent me or crap I had downloaded from websites. Delete! What is more, I suspected Cover Flow would be painfully slow on my nearing-ancient iMac. It wasn’t. In fact, everything is just a bit zippier.
4. The firewall is better. But it’s worse (see below). Being involved in IT security, I love the fact that the new firewall does code signing and simplifies the setup for the user into drag-and-drop awesomeness. However, there are issues.
5. Stacks, the Finder and the Dock get a mixed review. I find Stacks useful and a cool idea. The Finder is better, but still far from perfect. The dock is cool-looking and stack-ability on the right side is a good idea.
6. Windows-like file and printer sharing that isn’t Windows-like.In short, it “just works”, unlike Windows. Seriously, I don’t know what they did, but the file and printer sharing stuff in Leopard is brain-dead simple and works flawlessly. I clicked “add a printer” on my iMac, it automatically saw the printer connected to my laptop and added it. I was looking for more buttons to click, but, nope. It was done. I could print: no drivers, no selection of “how do you want to add it, port, IP blah?” Bam!
7. Back to my Mac is a killer feature, as is screen sharing. Screen sharing may be big in the future as, say, I could log into my mom’s Mac and see what’s up if she’s having problems. Wow.
8. Downloads stack makes life easy. You don’t set it up, it’s just there, and it’s a great, great idea.

My recommendation: do not (yet) upgrade to Leopard. If you are buying new hardware, then you should, by all means, run Leopard. But if you’re happily in Tiger, I’d stay there until 10.5.2 at least (watch this website, and I’ll let you know when that is).

1. Buggy So far, performance increase on my iMac over Tiger has been noticeable. Especially pleasing is the fact that Safari is now much faster. Unfortunately, I have experienced numerous buggy behaviors that required techy and nerdy workarounds that you simply won’t want to manage.


2. Back to My Mac is not yet prime time because half of the time it doesn’t work right and troubleshooting it is a pain. The solution is usually to log out of and then back into .Mac (I suspect .Mac is building SSL tunnels or something like this, which is awesome, but needs improved stability), which is something my mom doesn’t know how to do.


3. Email security appears to be lacking in many respects. I have received far more phishing attempts in Leopard mail which Tiger mail seemed to detect and block. What’s more, I recently saw that a previously-fixed security vulnerability from Tiger is now back. In short, I worry about security in Mail.app right now, and I don’t want my mom to worry about it either.


4. .Mac receives a boost, but it still sucks ass. Seriously, what the hell is up with .Mac? Why does it behave like such a little trouble maker? I should turn Sync on and it should melt away and never bug me again. Syncing between .Mac and my other Macs should be effortless and “just work”. Unfortunately, I’m bombarded with sync errors. Twice, the thing has deleted my address book. When I add an address via the web, it never shows up on my Macs. What the hell is the deal with “Conflict Resolver”. Why is there a conflict? Apple makes the service, the hardware and the software—can’t it figure out which damned record was updated most recently?


5. The firewall is inflexible and breaks Skype. I know that the issue with Skype is bad coding on the part of Skype, which causes the code signing feature to kill Skype upon startup. However, the workaround for this is to turn off the firewall The firewall should have a “network only” mode that allows for protection on incoming connections while temporarily turning off code signing. Until Skype fixes their crap, I’m forced to run without a firewall.


6. Crashes were never a problem in Tiger. Now, with my laptop, I experience a full system crash once per day. What’s more, I used to take my laptop to work and show off how superior the sleep/wake features were on Macs compared to the hell we are in with Windows. No longer, it seems. Every time I wake my laptop up, it has lost its connection, crashes or, even more mysteriously, reports it has recovered from a serious crash and requests that I send the report to Apple. WTF?


7. Network amnesia seems to have afflicted my laptop, too. It no longer automatically logs onto my home wireless network, but asks me which network I want to join. Despite the fact that I say “save password in keychain,” it never does. My home network is first in the list of “join these networks automatically” list, and it still won’t do it. The way my Mac automatically and seamlessly handled wireless networking was one of the things I pointed to when showing off my Mac to poor Windows users. Damn.


8. Stacks, the Finder and the Dockget a mixed review. I find stacks useful and a cool idea, but why did the icons representing stacks and representing folders have to become inscrutable? I have to mouseover things to figure out what they are? The Tiger icons were awesome, these new subtle ones are just stupid. What’s more, stacks have a flawed implementation. What good is the grid view? It presents a jumble of icons that look like an unorganized desktop. Why not just open the damned thing in finder instead? There, at least, one could sort. Total crap.