Faster, Cleaner, Fun-er

So, you guessed it, I am still awake, working away here, getting things all lined up to bring the iMac back to full production status, I am about 1/2 way transferring back over from the Linux box 47.3GB of “Music” which includes iTunes purchases and such, slow going, but it’s going the big one to worry about is Pictures, lots of digital negatives there.

I have been playing with Leopard for about a day now, like most folks out there toying with new features, though unlike a group of folks out there, I can’t really say I have found any “quirks” that are show stoppers. Granted while copying from a NFS mount I can’t seem to unmount disk images of installs, so I have a LOT on the desktop right now waiting for the data to get copied over but so far everything is running smoothly, all my common apps like Textmate which I am blogging from, Transmit for FTP works fine, I have honestly yet to find a application that gives me any problems, and most folks report that CS3 is working fine, so when that bridge comes up here, I’ll cross it without fear!

New features are nice

• Spaces - It is pretty spiff, I enjoyed it on the MBP however on dual monitors, each “Space” is split into 2 sections (one for each monitor) so if I have 4, there are 8 windows to drag apps into, it’s pretty clever
• Stacks - Some people are finding this very troublesome, but I think its just another feature you can take or leave, and for me, I enjoy it, for downloads and documents (the defaults) it works great, but for me I also have my stock photo purchases, projects folder, and “Desktop” as files get dropped/saved there all the time, it’s pretty handy.
• Time Machine - While I don’t “hate” it, I am not 100% in love with it, the use of a NFS mount would of been better, but just means I need to get a good sized drive to use on my iMac, and I need to clean off the portable drive for the MBP.
• Mail - Lovely - the new features aren’t a “MUST” for me, granted the To-Do’s will most likely sync into the Dash via Missing Sync (or so is my hope) but it’s speed has greatly increased, so much so that I imported my Thunderbird email, and have 1 less app to install.
• Frontrow - Looks good, apparently it shares the layout of the AppleTV device, but it’s workable - not that I use it that much, as I tend to use VLC and full screen it on the secondary monitor, but its a nice touch up none the less.
• Overall UI- Seen a number of complaints about this, folks upset about the transparent menu bar, or the dock, “blah blah blah” people are entitled to their opinion, don’t get me wrong, but at the same time aren’t Mac folk supposed to be this super “progressive” thinkers I mean come on the ad is “Think Different” but instead some folks have been spooked by the new look - all I can say is, deep breath people, it’ll be okay.

But so far so good, I am sure there’s a slew of features I could go on about, and in time, maybe I will, currently doing Software Updates for iLife06, just finished the last one, but it all is looking super good, more later I am sure, more to do while the copy continues it’s long journey of copying