[Big Mac]

It looks like my decision to wait until 10.5.2 to upgrade to Leopard paid off handsomely. I think the OS is awesome. The speed boost I have experienced on my G5 is nothing short of impressive. I like most of the major interface changes made (including reducing oversized interface elements), and most of my applications are running spectacularly. Those who have held off like I did should not put off upgrading any longer unless there's a compelling reason to do so. I love Leopard!

[tomrock]

I've been saying this since the day Leopard was released -- what took you so long?

[Big Mac]

I would have been thoroughly disappointed and exasperated by Stacks before 10.5.2 - it would have ruined my experience. I knew that, so I chose to wait.

[voodoo]

It's still a bit rough around the edges, features missing or incomplete oh and the Finder STILL sucks.

For nerds: I use the term Finder as I would have in OS 9. There is no one term over that in OS X, so the term Finder will have to do.

My verdict: Leopard is Good Enough to use.

[Big Mac]

voodoo, could you list the top 5 reasons why you think it sucks? I know lack of true spatiality is one problem, but I don't know of too many other reasons to continue disliking the Finder. Perhaps I have simply adapted to it and no longer find myself troubled as a result.

[TETENAL]

When voodoo says "Finder" he means what Apple calls Desktop plus the actual Finder. And he can't name 5 reasons that justify the statement "it sucks". Just minor nitpicking.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

When voodoo says "Finder" he means what Apple calls Desktop plus the actual Finder. And he can't name 5 reasons that justify the statement "it sucks". Just minor nitpicking.

I qualified my definition before and I don't need a Prussian to redefine it for me, thankyouverymuch.

[Big Mac]

wow, voodoo, there's no need for vitriol.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

wow, voodoo, there's no need for vitriol.

No vitriol, I corrected him. I even thanked him.. would you take offense being called American? He's German..

Where's the vitriol?

[Big Mac]

Okay, if I wrote, "I know what I wrote, and I don't need a Spaniard to redefine it for me, thankyouverymuch," would you interpret that positively?

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Okay, if I wrote, "I know what I wrote, and I don't need a Spaniard to redefine it for me, thankyouverymuch," would you interpret that positively?

No, I wouldn't take it *positively* nor was my remark to be taken positively. Nor was it vitriol.

I was telling Tetenal to butt out and stop putting words in my mouth.

Vitriol is a "Bitterly abusive feeling or expression."

[Cold Warrior]

Leopard is indeed awesome.

Let's keep the thread on-topic. However, it's realistic to expect to be asked for examples if one makes broad generalizations about the quality of a major OS component (e.g., Finder) in a fresh thread.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

I qualified my definition before and I don't need a Prussian to redefine it for me, thankyouverymuch.

Yes, you do. Nobody else shares your definition of Finder, not even in the OS 9 days. I'm just helping those who didn't read the other thread to understand your twisted mind.

[peeb]

So... What's wrong with the Finder?

[schuey100]

Since 10.5.2 I think it's fantastic. One of my only issues with the finder is this: If I have a folder open and delete 100 mb from it I want the bar at the bottom to update immediately so that it reflects the space gain. I know it's only a minor issue but important for me Tiger handled it fine so I'm not sure what's changed.

[Big Mac]

Ah damn, that's broken again? Tiger fixed that bug.

[Art Vandelay]

It will still update, just not as quickly as it did in Tiger. It updates in about 3-5 seconds now.

[mpancha]

I've used Leopard since 10.5.0, I never had an issue with Stacks (because I defaulted to Grid mode instead of Fan). I still prefer Fan mode personally to list, but who kkows, I might get tired of Grid soon enough. At least now I have the option of List mode again.

The transparency/translucency (I always use the incorrect term) of the menu bar never bothered me, in fact, I like it b/c it looked as if it blended in with my desktop. As steve said, we have gorgeous backgrounds, its great seeing all of it. Minor thing, but its the small touches Apple does that makes their products such a joy to use.

The dock shelf never bothered me b/c I always have my dock on the left hand side of the screen and hidden when not in use.

My favorite "fix" was putting the Time Machine icon in the menu bar.

Honestly, overall nothing is a major issue to me ever since OS 10.3. All 10.4 and 10.5 have done is improve upono10.3 (I'm not counting underlying changes that matter to developers, I'm talking about what I see as an end user), but there's been nothing that has vastly changed as far as the necessities goes.

The Finder has its issues, but is getting better as time goes. The fact that it doesn't uppate space gain over 100MB is a pain, but I can always relaunch the finder if I need to.

Quicklook, once you add the Folder and Zip file viewing plugins is such a useful addition.

The one concern I have is that ever since I upgraded to 10.5, I've lost about 45 minutes of battery life. I don't do anything that is more powerful thatn I've done in the past, Ii just seem to have less battery life. I always have Bluetoooh and Wireless, and am generally running at least one CS3 application, and have a few browser windows open at any given time. I've gone from usually having 2.5 hours of battery life (while using the laptop heavily) to having under 2 hours. This is a huge concern when I'm traveling. I'm actually hoping its a battery issue b/c I don't want to revert to 10.4 just to regain my 45 minutes. I've grown accustomed to the niceties.

[Mac User #001]

I'm going to try and explain an issue I have in Tiger's Finder, and see if you guys can tell me if it was fixed in Leopard. First there needs to be a lot of items in one folder, enough that there's a scroll bar. Then, select all of them but the first row. Click and drag all the way down, so you are at the bottom of the screen, again, with everything selected but the first row. Then delete or otherwise move all of that from the folder. The Finder screen will stay where it was, but now that there is no scroll bar needed, I can't scroll back up to view the items that are still in there. I have to exit the window and go back to it. Does this still happen? Or does no one have any idea what I'm talking about?

[mpancha]

MacUser #001 >> I've had this issue in the past, however, I've never had trouble scrolling back up to view the items I left behind. One workaround might be, instead of closing the window, hit Apple+UpArrow, it'll take you to the folder above it (so if you're in a folder on your desktop, and hit the key combination, you'll be taken to a Finder Window of the desktop). Then, just reopen the folder you were just at. At the least, it'll save you from re-navigating to a folder several layers deep.

Originally Posted by Mac User #001 

I'm going to try and explain an issue I have in Tiger's Finder, and see if you guys can tell me if it was fixed in Leopard. First there needs to be a lot of items in one folder, enough that there's a scroll bar. Then, select all of them but the first row. Click and drag all the way down, so you are at the bottom of the screen, again, with everything selected but the first row. Then delete or otherwise move all of that from the folder. The Finder screen will stay where it was, but now that there is no scroll bar needed, I can't scroll back up to view the items that are still in there. I have to exit the window and go back to it. Does this still happen? Or does no one have any idea what I'm talking about?

[Geobunny]

Originally Posted by mpancha 

MacUser #001 >> I've had this issue in the past, however, I've never had trouble scrolling back up to view the items I left behind. One workaround might be, instead of closing the window, hit Apple+UpArrow, it'll take you to the folder above it (so if you're in a folder on your desktop, and hit the key combination, you'll be taken to a Finder Window of the desktop). Then, just reopen the folder you were just at. At the least, it'll save you from re-navigating to a folder several layers deep.

You don't even need the command key and you can keep the same window open. Just hit the up or down arrow key and you'll select either the last or first item respectively (which seems kinda backwards until you've got more than one item in the window at which point it becomes apparent why the up arrow selects the last item and vice versa).

[TETENAL]

I can not reproduce this issue on Leopard. The topmost item stays out of view, but there scrollbar is still there to scroll it into view (at which point the scrollbar disappears).

[MartiNZ]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I would have been thoroughly disappointed and exasperated by Stacks before 10.5.2 - it would have ruined my experience. I knew that, so I chose to wait.

Personally I just modified my behaviour to match the stacks paradigm and then it was possibly even better than the old way. And the half-assed reimplementation of the old way for 10.5.2 really does not help. A) you now left-click to enter the hierarchical view, and have to cmd-click for 'show in finder', where a simple left-click used to do that; B) aliases no longer work in the hierarchical view; and C) it STILL isn't spring-loaded hierarchically, which would really rock.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by MartiNZ 

Personally I just modified my behaviour to match the stacks paradigm and then it was possibly even better than the old way. And the half-assed reimplementation of the old way for 10.5.2 really does not help. A) you now left-click to enter the hierarchical view, and have to cmd-click for 'show in finder', where a simple left-click used to do that; B) aliases no longer work in the hierarchical view; and C) it STILL isn't spring-loaded hierarchically, which would really rock.

Fan view is all but worthless, IMO, and grid is only slightly less so. The stacks view of folders makes me want to tear my hair out looking at it. As for your points about list view, A) try command clicking instead; B) they work fine for me; C) would be nice, but it's not like we had spring-loading before.

[turtle777]

There are things with the Leopard Finder that are annoying:

1) Why is the Path Bar located at the bottom ? The top would be the obvious choice.

2) You can't navigate by clicking on the Path bar. WTF ? How effing useless.

3) Why the fsck do Shared Folders display this useless dark grey bar on top, including the word "Shared" ?
An utter useless waste of desktop space.

4) The Finder has refresh issues. There is no built in support to refresh the windows; you need 3rd party apps.

Overall, I'm happy with the improvements. But the Finder still has ways to go.
I haven;t seen any revolutionary things being done to it.

-t

[Art Vandelay]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

2) You can't navigate by clicking on the Path bar. WTF ? How effing useless.

Double-click.

[mpancha]

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay 

Double-click.

really? that's awesome, and I can't believe I never thought to try that. Going to give that a shot at home tonight. I hate having to use a work issued Windows laptop at times instead of my own MBP.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

4) The Finder has refresh issues. There is no built in support to refresh the windows; you need 3rd party apps.

 
There may be some remnant of this behavior leftover, but Leopard is vastly improved
in this regard (over Tiger and its predecessors).

If need be, we can use an AppleScript:
[codex]tell application "Finder"
tell front window
update every item with necessity
end tell
end tell[/codex]
and call it with a FastScripts or Spark shortcut key perhaps.

[why do code tags here *still* filter out leading tabs and spaces? ]

[Big Mac]

Do you really think the Leopard Finder is more responsive to changes than Tiger's Finder? We see that new short delay in disk space reporting as one area where things have gotten a bit slower. But I would absolutely detest a Refresh window command in the Finder - it would really make things feel a bit more like Windows.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Do you really think the Leopard Finder is more responsive to changes than Tiger's Finder? We see that new short delay in disk space reporting as one area where things have gotten a bit slower.

Absolutely.

Space calculation is no worse than Tiger. Whereas, something like looking at a list
sorted by date in Tiger wouldn't change (if some item was resaved), until we clicked
on the item. Leopard updates it almost instantly (*without* our clicking on it).

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

But I would absolutely detest a Refresh window command in the Finder - it would really make things feel a bit more like Windows.

Then don't use it.

[Big Mac]

Just wanted to mention another aspect of Leopard that I love. Safari is now lightning fast. It feels faster than any browser on any platform to me.

Oh, and here's another - FUS caches are much improved over Tiger. No more waiting up to a minute for VM paging when returning to an account that hasn't been used for a few hours. Leopard is just lightning quick all the way around. It truly is the way OS X always should have run. I don't think I'd be very happy if I were to go back to Tiger now (but I will have to boot back into it on a temporary basis to run Dreamweaver 8).

And yet another - Activity Monitor shows pageins and pageouts in MBs, making it so much easier to compare the two.

[Mac User #001]

Originally Posted by mpancha 

MacUser #001 >> I've had this issue in the past, however, I've never had trouble scrolling back up to view the items I left behind. One workaround might be, instead of closing the window, hit Apple+UpArrow, it'll take you to the folder above it (so if you're in a folder on your desktop, and hit the key combination, you'll be taken to a Finder Window of the desktop). Then, just reopen the folder you were just at. At the least, it'll save you from re-navigating to a folder several layers deep.

Alright, thanks.

Originally Posted by Geobunny 

You don't even need the command key and you can keep the same window open. Just hit the up or down arrow key and you'll select either the last or first item respectively (which seems kinda backwards until you've got more than one item in the window at which point it becomes apparent why the up arrow selects the last item and vice versa).

Ah, that works even better.

[Big Mac]

Great new features in Preview I didn't know about:

Apple - Small Business - Leopard Quick Tip of the Week

[Cold Warrior]

Been using the reorder and rotate extensively since it was released. That was a major reason I upgraded.

[Da Moof]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I would have been thoroughly disappointed and exasperated by Stacks before 10.5.2 - it would have ruined my experience. I knew that, so I chose to wait.

Care to tell us why? How has stacks changed between 10.5 and 10.5.2? I don't see anything in the release notes that would point to your utter disappointment turning into total bliss...

[Geobunny]

Originally Posted by Da Moof 

Care to tell us why? How has stacks changed between 10.5 and 10.5.2? I don't see anything in the release notes that would point to your utter disappointment turning into total bliss...

The fact that we now have hierarchical menus back in the Dock. Apple removed them prior to launching 10.5 and, after hearing much moaning from the community, have finally seen fit to bring them back.

[harbinger75]

I'm loving Leopard so far. The only issue since 10.5.2 has been that the battery percentage on the menubar will sometimes hang, and it will say "battery not charging" somewhere in the upper 90% range. It has only happened a couple times, so I'm not too worried.

[Geobunny]

Originally Posted by harbinger75 

I'm loving Leopard so far. The only issue since 10.5.2 has been that the battery percentage on the menubar will sometimes hang, and it will say "battery not charging" somewhere in the upper 90% range. It has only happened a couple times, so I'm not too worried.

Curiously, that happened to my iPod touch the other day. The exact same thing, it was plugged in but didn't show the charging icon and was just sitting at 90% charge. A restart fixed it.

[harbinger75]

Curiously, that happened to my iPod touch the other day. The exact same thing, it was plugged in but didn't show the charging icon and was just sitting at 90% charge. A restart fixed it.

Yeah, at first I was pretty ticked off...I had only owned this Macbook for a few days. I just let the battery run down for a while (into the 80% range someplace) then plugged it back in. It charged fine at that point.

But, for that to be the only issue, I'm extremely happy. Granted, I don't have very much third party software yet, so that could all change as time goes on.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay 

Double-click.

Well, sh!t, I tried CTRL click, OPTION click and COMMAND click.

Why is it not just a single click ?

-t

[schuey100]

Talking of Preview and business, I found out last week that Preview doesn't handle files encrypted with the latest version of Adobe very well at all. I'm having a lot of issues with preview at the moment. The new features are excellent but in terms of business use, not being able to open encrypted PDFs is a pain. Oh, and it also has issues with PDFs created with Scansoft. I hate having to use Adobe and haven't had it installed for ages but I have to now in Leopard.

[jasong]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Well, sh!t, I tried CTRL click, OPTION click and COMMAND click.

Why is it not just a single click ?

-t

Because then we'd have to listen to you bitch about it being a single click?

[Geobunny]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Well, sh!t, I tried CTRL click, OPTION click and COMMAND click.
Why is it not just a single click ?

I've thought about this for a while and have come up with something which is at least plausible. Ignore column view and the Dock for a minute and remember that folders on a Mac will always require a double click to open them. Obviously, my reasoning breaks when you consider column view as it only requires a single click to navigate into a folder, however, you can simply scroll left and single click on any of those columns to go back up anyway, so the path bar is largely superfluous in column view.

[ghporter]

The ONLY negative I found with Leopard when I upgraded my iMac was that it wouldn't let me access my SMB-shared network drive, which had been easy to share under Tiger. 10.5.2 fixed that very nicely. As soon as my campus store gets more in, I'm buying another copy of Leopard for my MBP. That's how much I like Leopard now.

[kilechki]

Obviously, nobody is using Spotlight seriously here.
This a major step back in Leopard. Which is "good", of course, but nothing groundbreaking. On a G4, it's also quite a pain to use.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Geobunny 

I've thought about this for a while and have come up with something which is at least plausible. Ignore column view and the Dock for a minute and remember that folders on a Mac will always require a double click to open them. Obviously, my reasoning breaks when you consider column view as it only requires a single click to navigate into a folder, however, you can simply scroll left and single click on any of those columns to go back up anyway, so the path bar is largely superfluous in column view.

I disagree.

If you have folders in your sidebar to the left and you click on them, your columns view starts there as a baseline. No navigating back with the cursor keys. Navigation bar is the only means to quickly navigate up from where you are.

The double click limitation / implementation doesn't make any sense.

-t

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by kilechki 

Obviously, nobody is using Spotlight seriously here.
This a major step back in Leopard. Which is "good", of course, but nothing groundbreaking. On a G4, it's also quite a pain to use.

I don't know about Leopard on a G4.

I used to run 10.4 on a Mac mini G4 until I recently switched to an iMac Core Duo with 10.5. Spotlight is SOOOOOO much more useful on the iMac with Leopard. I know that speed of the processor plays a big role, so I can't compare Spotlight performance directly 10.4 to 10.5.

-t

[P]

I also upgraded now, but I have to say that I'm a bit underwhelmed - especially with regards to speed, which is more or less the same as ever (iMac G5).

The only big WTF for me is that fact that view settings are not saved on a window-by-window basis until you find that annoying checkbox. Who in the world could have come up with such a braindead feature?

[@pplejaxkz]

I must say that I absolutely love Leopard. I think it's one of the best OS's I've used thus far, including a view Distros of Linux. I definitely love Finder. I think it's very nice looking, and I've stuck with the list view for most of my folders. Unlike some people, I do like the professional grey look. It will keep me happy until Unsanity comes out with their new version of Shapeshifter. Leopard is the first OS I can honestly say that I bought and I think it was worth every penny!

My Verdict: Leopard is awesome, if you haven't upgraded yet do so.

[JKT]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Navigation bar is the only means to quickly navigate up from where you are.

Not exactly:
Command-up arrow.
Command-click proxy icon in titlebar.