43 Folders

43 Folders feed subscription icon - Shiny!Time, Attention, and Creative Work. After 4 years and a lot of productivity pr0n, we’re shifting gears. Re-learn how to use 43 Folders. Then back to work. [»]

”What’s 43 Folders?”
43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

Should a non-Power User buy Leopard or not?

I just jumped back on the Mac bandwagon this summer picking up a MacBook Pro… It’s been a long time since I’ve owned a Mac, to be honest, they just cost too much to consider owning during my post undergrad years, and I managed to get by with crappy Dell laptops for the better part of 10+ years. My previous Macs were a Plus (with a whopping 20 meg external hd) and then a IIsi I overclocked with the crystal swap trick… My point here is OS X 10.4 is my first mac OS since 7.0… I’m only now sort of picking up the tricks for getting the most out of Tiger… Is Leopard really that amazing that I should pre-order it? I just have been out of the mac fold for so long that I just don’t know enough about Leopard to know whether or not it’s worth it for a user in my current position… Any thoughts??? Thanks in advance for your time.


Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
MEP's picture

Not right away...

I don’t personally think anybody should rush out and buy Leopard right away. It’s going to be buggy and unstable until at least 10.5.4 (just like every other OS X release). I didn’t upgrade to Tiger until almost 8 months after its release, and I’m not upgrading to Leopard until at least next year (probably).

As far as the long term is concerned, I think you’ll definitely want Leopard once the bugs settle down. Applications are going to start taking advantage of Leopard-only features in the Cocoa development libraries (some like Delicious Library already are, others like OmniFocus will in future versions).

It really doesn’t have anything to do with being a power user or not. Ask yourself what applications you use daily and whether or not they work better under the new version of OS X. If the answer is “yes”, then you want Leopard. If the answer is “no”, then you can wait a while. No matter what your answer is though, I strongly recommend waiting until the bug reports slow down and the new OS stabilizes, especially if you need your computer to function to get work done.

OS X is better than Windows when it comes to bugs, but any new release of any new operating system is going to have its fair share of bumps in the road. By waiting a little longer, you can also benefit from the experience of others who have found all the new tricks and hacks before you instead of having to discover it all on your own. (I’m hoping someone releases a free program to fix the newly-uglified dock and that it will be ready before I upgrade.)

sisyphea's picture

it's pretty...

I just checked out the demo on the apple website… Leopard is just gorgeous. The 3-d graphic scroll through… so pretty…. ! I’d like to see it in action on my mac (will it be agonizingly slow and suck every last bit of processing power?)

I got my current Mac and OSX when it was hot off the shelf, and had the double whammy of switch-over issues from PC, plus NOTHING ran on OSX - all the cute Mac stuff I was dying to try - the freebie apps and screensavers and stuff - nothing had caught up yet. So good advice to wait - thanks for that, MEP. I’ll wait and watch. Hang off till the new year for my new laptop, I think.

Oh and the new Mail app looks a lot like Entourage, with its funky note and reminder feature. Nice.

Helen

Wild Rye's picture

Bugs Aren't the Issue

I think a casual user will find a lot to love in Leopard. I haven’t had any problems with bugginess or instability.

The big downside comes if you have a lot of legacy apps that you depend on—some of these are going to break. And various vendors don’t have fixes in yet.

I will say that I’m disappointed in the implementation of Mail 3.0. I blogged my first impressions of GTD with Leopard here: http://wildrye.com/?p=350

The good news is that a lot of legacy apps still run— Office X runs, InDesign 2.0 runs, Quicksilver B51 runs.

Now here’s the bad news: Photoshop 7.0 is dead. Missing Sync just won’t. iGTD and MailTags are apparently also not playing nice with Leopard.

JamieKnight's picture

Re: Should a non-Power User buy Leopard or not?

I updated to leopard about 3 or so days after it came out and blogged about it at www.jkg3.com.

I have found the system to be generally fine, and time machine a lifesaver.

Though, all things considered, the thought of going back to tiger has briefly crossed my mind when some things stopped working as expected. i ended up changing to VMware fusion…

hope that helps,

^licks^

Jamie & Lion

sciamachy's picture

Buggy, but yeah

I’d go for it - there’s at least one “killer app” that works only on Leopard & gives sufficient functionality to consider it. Bento, from the Filemaker guys, is a seriously non-power-userish take on the database management system. It uses hooks that are only present in Leopard to pull in data from Address Book & iCal so you can mash these up as you wish. It’s not for people who like to write SQL queries, but it’s so intuitive for people who want a no-frills domestic/hobbyist database that does the job & looks gorgeous while it does it.

(That said, I’m a MySQL user myself but I can so see the need for a DBMS that’s simpler to use than MS Access)

About charliekwalker

charliekwalker's picture

Bio

My first computer was a Commodore 64. Back in the day I ran MacStation, the official BBS of RIMUG, the Rhode Island Mac User Group.

 
EXPLORE 43Folders THE GOOD STUFF

An Oblique Strategy:
Not building a wall; making a brick


STAY IN THE LOOP:

Subscribe with Google Reader

Subscribe on Netvibes

Add to Technorati Favorites

Subscribe on Pageflakes

Add RSS feed

The Podcast Feed

Inbox Zero

The original 43 Folders series looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way. Don’t miss the free video of Merlin’s Inbox Zero presentation.

Making Time

3-part series on attention management for artists and makers. Read Bad Correspondence, The Job You Think You Have, and One Clear Line.