Leopard: iLove and iHate
iLove
Movable tabs in Safari
Easy networking
It's fab. It was needed too. Back to Chooser ease of use!
Frontrow
It's like having Apple TV
can watch trailers and everything! I Can't wait to get a Mac Mini now, it'll be like having an Uber Apple TV.
Nicer menubar icons
Although I really thing it's time Apple put some draggable divider in on the menubar at the very least. If I set my server machine to anything smaller than 1024x768 (useful for sharing desktops), I lose some of the menubar icons on the right due to lack of room. You then have to change apps just to find one with less menus so you can access them! Bad usability.
No curved menubar corners
Why do I keep hearing comments from people, all nostalgic about their loss? Let it go, they were pointless. Especially seeing as originally they were supposed to be all four corners anyway!
Screen-sharing
Awesome, as well as easy to use. Amazing over iChat too. However you might have fun screen sharing two machines back at each other - they've not built in any check for that, it loops to infinity then crashes.
Spaces
A great addition which most people will be thankful for. I don't use them myself as of yet, but I'm glad to see Apple are starting to react to their OS in the way they did under the old regime. If a piece of shareware is being used by the masses, try and make the same functionality part of the OS. However personally I'd much rather be able to have the old Finder/Multifinder method of only showing the focused app, hiding others. I like my desktop to be tidy and focused on the app I'm using.
Webclips into Dashboard
A nice touch, however I'm a little disappointed you can't do the same with RSS feeds. I think that would be much more useful.
Coverflow and quickview
And now we can view movies without using QuickTime Player, and view them full-screen too! They've pretty much written a complete media viewer right into the OS. Great move. Also loving the smart folder thing.
Time Machine
Absolutely awesome idea. It's just such a shame that they stopped short of it working over a network. At least, I think they have...? They've obviously thought long and hard over how to create a backup system everyone will use without thinking about it. However, they didn't think as far as that a great deal of Mac users are laptop-based. None of us 'Book users want to be tied to sitting on a table top plugged into an external HD all of the time. Give us network backup please - yes it'll be slow, but slow backups are better than none at all.
Calculator
It's back! Thank God, no more waiting for the whole of Dashboard to load in order to do a simple quick sum. Mind you, even better than that is Spotlight's calculator... Any sum, complicated or simple, at the click of a button. One of the best and most needed features needed for a long time! It's just a shame they didn't go as far as to include unit and money conversions like Google
iHate
The all-new 3D Dock
Okay, so I don't hate it. Thanks to the 2D hack I'm a lot happier. Graphically I guess it's all down to taste, but I'm glad I killed the 3D version because it's loads clearer and more useable. I prefer the fact the icons fall onto a dark background rather than a light one, they stand out a lot more. I think they could tone down the rounded border on the alt-dock though.
Also, stacks are great, except the problem most people are finding regarding the stacked icons. All Apple need to do is bring in a tick box option for setting the icons back to the folders and they will be awesome.
Geeks amongst you may have noticed they have altered the dock rendering, possibly to speed it up... Now the icons snap to the pixel when moving and resizing... Probably using less floating point calculations and speeding the whole thing up. Unfortunately it makes the thing feel a bit less fluid which is a shame. You'll notice it more if you have dock magnification on, and also try shift-minimising/maximising to see the icons wobble as they shift slowly.
Drop shadows
Hideous, no other word for them. They're so huge they make me feel ill! It's like they were thinking of renaming OSX Photoshop OS. I wish I could find a hack for them.
The same goes for the alpha/blurring behind dropdown menus. And overly-bright highlights on 'embossed' text. Bleaurgh. It's time to stop throwing hundreds of filter effects on the screen just to show off, and draw back to simple, clear and nicely designed interfaces. It's a shame to have such beautifully minimalist hardware, only to have an OS filled with pointless 90s Photoshop plugin effects. Can't Jonathan Ive please also help out on the software side of things at Apple?
Folder icons
I have to say I agree with what people have been saying about the new icon design. They are insipid and difficult to compare. Thankfully they're relatively easy to hack. I'm really glad for the grid resize ability though, at last!
Active/non-active window states
They may be lighter, but they're no less prominent. If you want them to appear more background, how about greying out some of the components too, instead of sticking a 36-pixel drop shadow on the frontmost window.
They were saying they'd changed it as if seeing the front-most window was a major complaint from Tiger. I had no problems with it before... Please stop fiddling with things that work!
Movable tabs in Safari
Easy networking
It's fab. It was needed too. Back to Chooser ease of use!
Frontrow
It's like having Apple TV
can watch trailers and everything! I Can't wait to get a Mac Mini now, it'll be like having an Uber Apple TV.Nicer menubar icons
Although I really thing it's time Apple put some draggable divider in on the menubar at the very least. If I set my server machine to anything smaller than 1024x768 (useful for sharing desktops), I lose some of the menubar icons on the right due to lack of room. You then have to change apps just to find one with less menus so you can access them! Bad usability.
No curved menubar corners
Why do I keep hearing comments from people, all nostalgic about their loss? Let it go, they were pointless. Especially seeing as originally they were supposed to be all four corners anyway!
Screen-sharing
Awesome, as well as easy to use. Amazing over iChat too. However you might have fun screen sharing two machines back at each other - they've not built in any check for that, it loops to infinity then crashes.
Spaces
A great addition which most people will be thankful for. I don't use them myself as of yet, but I'm glad to see Apple are starting to react to their OS in the way they did under the old regime. If a piece of shareware is being used by the masses, try and make the same functionality part of the OS. However personally I'd much rather be able to have the old Finder/Multifinder method of only showing the focused app, hiding others. I like my desktop to be tidy and focused on the app I'm using.
Webclips into Dashboard
A nice touch, however I'm a little disappointed you can't do the same with RSS feeds. I think that would be much more useful.
Coverflow and quickview
And now we can view movies without using QuickTime Player, and view them full-screen too! They've pretty much written a complete media viewer right into the OS. Great move. Also loving the smart folder thing.
Time Machine
Absolutely awesome idea. It's just such a shame that they stopped short of it working over a network. At least, I think they have...? They've obviously thought long and hard over how to create a backup system everyone will use without thinking about it. However, they didn't think as far as that a great deal of Mac users are laptop-based. None of us 'Book users want to be tied to sitting on a table top plugged into an external HD all of the time. Give us network backup please - yes it'll be slow, but slow backups are better than none at all.
Calculator
It's back! Thank God, no more waiting for the whole of Dashboard to load in order to do a simple quick sum. Mind you, even better than that is Spotlight's calculator... Any sum, complicated or simple, at the click of a button. One of the best and most needed features needed for a long time! It's just a shame they didn't go as far as to include unit and money conversions like Google
iHate
The all-new 3D Dock
Okay, so I don't hate it. Thanks to the 2D hack I'm a lot happier. Graphically I guess it's all down to taste, but I'm glad I killed the 3D version because it's loads clearer and more useable. I prefer the fact the icons fall onto a dark background rather than a light one, they stand out a lot more. I think they could tone down the rounded border on the alt-dock though.
Also, stacks are great, except the problem most people are finding regarding the stacked icons. All Apple need to do is bring in a tick box option for setting the icons back to the folders and they will be awesome.
Geeks amongst you may have noticed they have altered the dock rendering, possibly to speed it up... Now the icons snap to the pixel when moving and resizing... Probably using less floating point calculations and speeding the whole thing up. Unfortunately it makes the thing feel a bit less fluid which is a shame. You'll notice it more if you have dock magnification on, and also try shift-minimising/maximising to see the icons wobble as they shift slowly.
Drop shadows
Hideous, no other word for them. They're so huge they make me feel ill! It's like they were thinking of renaming OSX Photoshop OS. I wish I could find a hack for them.
The same goes for the alpha/blurring behind dropdown menus. And overly-bright highlights on 'embossed' text. Bleaurgh. It's time to stop throwing hundreds of filter effects on the screen just to show off, and draw back to simple, clear and nicely designed interfaces. It's a shame to have such beautifully minimalist hardware, only to have an OS filled with pointless 90s Photoshop plugin effects. Can't Jonathan Ive please also help out on the software side of things at Apple?
Folder icons
I have to say I agree with what people have been saying about the new icon design. They are insipid and difficult to compare. Thankfully they're relatively easy to hack. I'm really glad for the grid resize ability though, at last!
Active/non-active window states
They may be lighter, but they're no less prominent. If you want them to appear more background, how about greying out some of the components too, instead of sticking a 36-pixel drop shadow on the frontmost window.
They were saying they'd changed it as if seeing the front-most window was a major complaint from Tiger. I had no problems with it before... Please stop fiddling with things that work!