OS X 10.5 Leopard - First Impressions

In this post I will talk a little about my first impressions of Leopard after upgrading my MacBook from Tiger this evening.

As a converted Mac fan (NASDAQ: AAPL), I pre-ordered Leopard the very same day that Apple spammed e-mailed me about it. That was a week or so ago, and sure enough it arrived in the post this morning, like clockwork, on the day of Leopards official release. So far so good….

The install process was amazingly simple. Once in OS X, I stuck in the CD, clicked an install button and then after confirming my admin password, it restarted the computer and began installing. Initially it said it would take 4 hours, but the time remaining quickly came down and in the end it only took about 40 minutes. However, I was surprised that they didn’t use this time to take you on a tour of some of the new features.

Once you’ve rebooted after the install, the improvements to the OS could be described as a collection of subtle improvements dotted with a few new core features (such as Stacks, Time Machine, Spaces and Quick Look).

Some of the small changes I have noticed so far are…

New wireless networks drop down

The new drop down for selecting a wireless network now shows you whether the networks are secure or not with a padlock icon:

Preview image resize / resample options

Now when you open an image in preview, you have the option to resize it. I’m pretty sure this is a new feature as I have always wanted to be able to do this!

Bluetooth Dropdown Menu

You’ll notice now in the bluetooth dropdown menu that you can see your paired devices and immediately click through to browse or send a file to them.