Here’s an update on the Mac OS X 10.5 experience so far. I’ll be posting a series of reports as I get fully set up with Leopard on my new Macs. The aim is less to provide a comprehensive review (plenty of very good attempts at that already available and I’m looking forward to reading John Siracusa’s review at Ars Technica which is, as always, always a must read) than to give you an anecdotal series of vignettes on how the newest Mac OS is working for me in my daily work as a blogger, consultant, and writer.
Background: I purchased two new Macs on Leopard Day – a 24″ iMac (pictured) and a new black MacBook. These will be my working systems for the foreseeable future. The iMac is the first desktop computer I’ve owned in 15 years – I’ve been a mobile kind of guy and as I work daily in both Mac OS X and Windows, the complexity of managing both a MacBook and a Tablet PC has always been enough to keep me busy. However, it’s time to send back the Lenovo X61 Tablet PC I’ve had on a long-term evaluation and I’ve decided that between the very positive experiences I’ve had with running Vista on my MacBook, the increased performance I expect to have on the iMac thanks to its higher memory capacity (4GB) and dedicated video card, and the relative lack of activity happening to push the Tablet PC space forward from both a hardware and a software perspective, a new Tablet PC isn’t a top priority for me. A nice big display and an always-on workstation I can connect to seemed like a better choice for the way I’m working these days (more on that below).
Despite the fact that I fully expect Apple will release new portable later this year or at MacWorld in January, I decided to pick up the new MacBook now for three reasons – first, it’s a known platform that has served me very well for the past year and one I have a number of peripherals for (spare battery and AC adapter, slip case, etc.), second my previous MacBook was a Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo) and I wanted the ability to upgrade it to 3GB RAM for better concurrent Windows performance and third, I was able to pick up both the iMac and MacBook for just a bit more than I would have spent on the MacBook Pro. I’ve been using VMWare Fusion for the past few months (after Parallels completely pi**ed me off with their greedy upgrade pricing - c’mon - $50 to upgrade an $80 app?) to run Vista on the MacBook and, according to Gina Trapani at LifeHacker, the performance bump going from 2 to 3 gigabytes is substantial for this virtualization.
Impressions: The iMac is a very impressive desktop PC. The 24″ screen is unbelievably bright and sharp and provides more screen real estate than I’ve ever had to work with. It’s currently running in its stock 1GB configuration but I will be installing a 4GB upgrade as soon as it arrives on Tuesday. I buy all of my memory from Other World Computing – they’ve provided excellent prices and incomparable technical support and customer service to me for years. The 4GB upgrade set me back a mere $170 including 2nd Day UPS delivery – I remember when I paid more than that for a 4MB SIMM!
The new Apple keyboard has been the subject of raging debate since the new aluminum and glass iMacs began shipping. Personally, I like it. It’s almost identical to the keyboard on the MacBook keyboard which I’ve come to find very comfortable for all day use. It’s a tiny sliver of aluminum but offers a full set of key, numeric keypad, and two USB ports. I went for the wired keyboard – nice as it might be to have fewer wires, the wireless model of this new keyboard is compromised IMO by the reduced set of keys available. When and if Apple comes out with a wireless equivalent of this wired unit, I’ll seriously think about upgrading.
The new MacBook has less novelty factor - it’s essentially a slightly faster version of what I’ve been using. The matte black finish is nice and Leopard is running very well on it. I became a big fan of the Marware protector for the MacBook and picked up a new back one at the Apple Store. It provides a nice cushion/heat shield on the wrist rest are and includes a chamois to wipe the screen and keep finger oils from the keyboard form transferring to the screen when closed. It’s a no-brainer $20 investment that keeps the portable looking new a lot longer.
I’m taking a rather conservative approach to installing software on both systems until I get the full measure of the enhancements and changes Leopard brings. For example, I’ve been a longtime user of Path Finder from CocoaTech as an alternative shell to the Finder because it has provided a much more useful, tabbed interface with a lot of nice productivity features. The new Finder in Leopard is so different that I’m going to see how the addition of Cover Flow, the new sidebar with Places, and other enhancements work for me before making a go/no go decision on adding Path Finder to the new machines. That approach is reinforced by the news that there are some small but annoying bugs that have appeared following the release of Leopard.
Similarly, I’m holding off on installing Adobe Reader or other PDF tools to allow ample time for investigation of the enhancements made to Preview. And I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude on enhancements to Mail to see how the new To Do and Notes features work to support my GTD practices. I’ve been using MailTags for a long time and am leaning toward installing that add-in because it is so powerful in making Mail a full fledged competitor to Entourage (part of Microsoft Office for the Mac) as a “dashboard” app for running my day. Update: I’ll have to wait for a compatible version apparently.
I deleted the Office Test Drive form both Macs. I’m keeping an open mind about Office 2008 which is supposed to ship in January but for the work I’m currently engaged in, Mail, iCal, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote all of my daily needs and I have Office 2007 installed on my virtual Windows machine when I need to use a modern Microsoft Office application.
Next: a look at the software applications I am using on my new Leopard systems.
