Views from the Ivory Tower March 2008
Following up with Leopard 10.5.2
By Ted Bade
I admit I was a bit annoyed by the first version of Leopard
that Apple released. However, in mid-February Apple released a large update for
it which resolved a number of my issues. Not all of them, but most. Because I
wrote so much about the complaints, I feel it is necessary to write about my
current satisfaction!
First of all there is the Dock. As you might recall I didn’t
like the extra steps involved in opening an application which was located in a
folder inside the Application directory. The icon view was nice eye-candy, but
added steps. If your Application folder contains folders, you would have to
select the folder of interest, have it open on the desktop, double-click on
the application icon to run it, then you would need to close that folder. Several
steps that in Tiger took only one.
With this update, Apple added several
options that make using folders in the Dock even better than before. First of
all, a “list” view option is now available. This view is similar to Tiger’s
hierarchal feature. If you have a folder of folders, you can mouse over
subfolders to open what is inside. I am pretty happy about the return of this
feature, except it is going to take a while to remember to left-click not
right---click to get the function to work ;-). Right-clicking brings up the
options for the folder you click on.
Also you might remember that the icon seen in the dock was
the icon of the first item within the folder, not the icon of the folder
itself. The new Dock controls have a “display as” section, so you can choose to
display it as a folder (showing the icon of the folder) or as a stack (showing
the icon of the first item in the folder). This means you get the best of both
features. If the folder icon works best choose that, or for a reminder of what
is in the folder, select stack view. Stack view is great for folders of images.
Another issue people had with the new Finder look was the
transparent men bar and menus. The menu opacity is now a lot less translucent
than before. If you enter the “Desktop and Screen Saver” preference pane, you
will see a button to click that says; “Translucent Menu Bar”. Click this off to
make the menu bar opaque.
Apple added a menu bar icon for Time Machine. Pull this menu
down to easily access Time Machine or to force a back up. Pretty nice.
While I didn’t see mention of a fix for Secure Delete, I did
test the feature and it doesn’t lock the Finder anymore. I placed one item in
the Trash, and selected Secure Delete. The window came up saying it was
deleting six items. Hmmm, well, this wasn’t correct, bit it did grind away, the
progress bar went away and then quit as expected. I can live with that.
How
many people actually look at the number of items they are deleting and more
importantly, does anyone care? (For all I know, the Secure Delete might have
been deleting some other items I had previously deleted.)
My test with running Disk Utility and fixing permissions
didn’t go as well. It still stays at one point forever for me. Perhaps there is
something wrong on my system that it cannot deal with.
There were a lot of other fixes and enhancements in this
update. Take a look at this document on the Apple site.
Even though I was annoyed by some of the changes Apple made.
I am really happy with Leopard overall. Thank you Apple for listening to our
complaints and fixing the issues.
They are really
switching, really - We see a lot of articles that are Pro and
anti-Mac. This is a world of choices and not every method suits every person.
Once in a while someone who wasn’t really sold on Mac OS X decides to make the
plunge. In one such case, Chris Pirillo,
decided to write a very nice article concerning the Mac OS giving 50 solid
reasons to switch to Mac OS X. It’s a great article and hits on a number of the
points we have all become aware of over the years. It is definitely worth the
time to check it out.
To quote reason #50,
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Windows users
need Apple’s software more than Mac users need Microsoft’s. That’s just a cold,
hard fact. And given my severe disappointment with just about everything in Mac
Office 2008, I’m even further driven away from Microsoft’s desktop software.”
Enough said, read his article, it will warm your little Mac
heart!
It’s the cat. not the
view people like - Yet another article that tells us how Leopard is
liked by those that have it and well, Vista, it appears that a lot of people
who use it aren’t happy.
According to an article located on the Redmond Channel (a
Microsoft Business partner) site, in a recent survey of computer users, Apple
got good scores while Microsoft didn’t. Let me quote the beginning of the
article.
“ChangeWave surveyed 4,604 consumers in the first week of
January and found that 81 percent are
"very satisfied" with the Leopard operating system,
compared with 53 percent for Windows XP Home edition and 51 percent for Windows
XP Professional. Only 27 percent of Vista Home Premium users and 15 percent of Vista Home Basic users gave their
operating system the top ranking.”
Well, I am stunned. Not so much by the results but the
publication that was presenting the information. Don’t believe me, take a look
for yourself!
Fore even more fun, follow the “more information” link provided in the article. Here you will find some interesting charts of how sales of
Apples are skyrocketing.
Not only does this article point out how people like Leopard
better, but it also talks about customer satisfaction. Reading the test, we see
that Apple averages about 79%, while it’s two closest competitors, Dell and HP
rate at 59% and 58% respectively. Not bad ratings, but Apple’s is excellent.
Well done Apple and keep up the good work!
So I wonder why the stock price has been dropping so much? I
really have no idea. Perhaps somebody is selling off large chucks (Microsoft or
Mr. Bill perhaps. Didn’t they purchase $150 millions worth of shares several
years ago when Apple Computer was on death’s door?) Or maybe the market is just
crazy (a fact which I believe must be true).
I will leave it to you to decide. In the meantime, Apple
Stock is a great buy. Scarf some up before it goes back up!!
As always, keep on using your Mac!
