eWEEK Labs Walk-Through: Apple Mac OS X Leopard

As with previous OS X releases, upgrading was as simple as popping in the new DVD, restarting and next, next, nexting my way through the installer application. I was annoyed, however, when Leopard required me to register anew after installation.

Despite what Apple commercials suggest, Vista isnt the only OS with nanny-nag authentication dialogs. This pop-up was triggered by a file-moving operation.

Leopards dock has undergone a minor face-lift.

OS Xs most promising new feature is an integrated backup system called Time Machine. I didnt have an external hard drive handy to devote solely to Time Machine, and I couldnt get the feature working with an NFS or Samba share–even with the aid of some

Leopard sports a file preview feature called Quick Look. For supported files, such as this MS Word document, Quick Look offers a peek inside–in this case, however, the fonts were practically too small to read.

For file types that OS X doesnt support, such as this Open Document formatted spreadsheet, Quick Look offers up a bit of metadata.

OS X sports a slick new Finder preview option for shuffling through folder contents.

I was pleased to find that Apple has added a search function to Leopards Help menu.

I was annoyed to find that the Help window for which Id searched wouldnt allow other windows–such as the System Preferences dialog Id sought–to cycle to the front.

Long the province of Linux machines or of Windows and Mac systems with virtual desktop add-in software installed, virtual desktops are now native to OS X. I liked the way I could preallocate virtual desktops for my applications.

Suns powerful DTrace diagnostic feature now graces Apples OS. Here Im running a one-line DTrace recipe for listing open files and their host proce

I could open OpenDocument formatted files from within Leopards built-in text editor, TextEdit. The app also now supports Microsofts new DOCX format.

Leopards command-line application, Terminal, now sports a tabbed interface. Lack of tabbing in Tigers Terminal had prompted me to defect to the tab-savvy iTerm (as seen in the DTrace slide).

Leopards user account management interface now offers advanced options that indicate its Unix roots.

OS X users need look no further than Leopards Spotlight search box for their Pythagorean theorizing.

Leopard has picked up application-specific firewall functionality, although the feature doesnt appear to offer granularity beyond a blanket per-application permit/deny.

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