Tiger has semi-translucent menus as well, and I've found them irritating (e.g., in the menu bar). I have been disappointed ever since I heard Apple has decided to make the menus even more translucent in Leopard.
With the thousands of hours of testing Leopard has undergone, you would think this complaint would have been addressed before. Now, in the days prior to its release, two major reviewers (David Pogue of the NY Times being the other) bring this up as a drawback in what are otherwise glowing reports.
I can't think of a good reason to have translucent menus. It isn't as if there is typically lots of action going on behind my menu that causes me to feel like I've missed something when I return.
Does anybody else agree with me?
You are absolutly right. Its ugly, irritates the users and me, and has no use.
I hope they make a checkbox somewhere where you can turn it off.
We are also using vista, also it irritates even our biggest fan of vista.
And true, this is not revolutionary, this should be 10.4.10, not 10.5.
The only thing that I am happy with is that the server version is changed a lot. They may call that 10.4.11
And who choose that silly map layout?
Steve wakeup from playing games with you mobile, start working again.
ArsTechnia has a long thread that claims they have disabled time machine from working over Airport extreme in the GM build. That is truly disappointing as time machine is the major feature I was looking forward to. It will certainly make me rethink my need to upgrade my little Airport express.
So who on Ars actually has the GM?? If true, that would seem pretty silly on Apple's part unless it was for some insurmountable technical reason. TM to AirDisk would provide a little extra incentive to buy 10.5 and a huge extra incentive to buy Airport Extreme.
Well done Moss! I hope Apple will forget about their secret features and start focussing on basic features like writing messages to each other (Mail):
1/ Please get rid of this (to do) notes idea inside mail if you cannot send them to your team members! Notes should be a different app. Or it should be part of the stationary template.
2/ How do I start a group discussion inside mail? vs Google groups
3/ Why can't we have apple chat integrated inside mail? vs Google chats inside Gmail
4/ When will I be able to tag my messages inside mail i/o creating alotof folders?
Is Google having an IP thing on "Groups", "Chats" and "Tags" inside mail? Can't Apple negotiate with Google? Why does Apple fail on delivering a state of the art mail experience?
Mailtags (a third party Mail plug in by Jonathan Paisley) is a great start. However I must say that I am not really tempted to use it. It is just too much.
Apple could draw inspiration from this. They allready have a great concept of the stationary menu that appears on top of your message.
I could imagine having a tag button next to your stationary button to activate the tag bar that appears on top of your inbox message. One can add as many tags as you wish. Your message will stay inside your inbox, but a tag folder will be automatically created on the (pale blue) side bar with an automatic copy af your tagged message.If I remove the tag, this tagged message would be removed automatically from the tag folder.
On a side note: these automatic generated "folders" could be just filters, getting rid of all the messages that do not correspond with the foldertag. So, no need of having duplicate messages.
Anyway, this would solve my hassle of creating folders myself and copy pasting my messages inside those folders (I copy paste them because I want to keep an overview of ALL my messages inside my inbox).
If icons look good or not is a matter of personal taste.
I don't like the old aqua icons at all and think the new ones are much better. Anyway, the look of folder icons is one thing that can be changed by the user (Panic's/Iconfactory's CandyBar) and I'm quite sure the transparency of the menu-bar will be modifiable too in some way.
I don't think it's just a matter of personal taste. I think more importantly it's a matter of functionality. The new icons in the home folder are horrible when it comes to recognition. If you squint with your eyes just slightly they look identical to each other. There is no contrasting details that show us what they are for. Just a diffuse shadow figure on the folder icon. This way we must read the text, and can't navigate by image recognition. The folder icon design itself I think is an improvement, it's now easier on the eyes to read the text next to the icon... though I never liked the metaphor of a paper folder in the first place.
And yeah, it's all up to the user to change the icons and stuff.
And true, this is not revolutionary, this should be 10.4.10, not 10.5.
The only thing that I am happy with is that the server version is changed a lot. They may call that 10.4.11
Leopard is the biggest update to OS X so far - Period! It has great under-the-hood changes and great usability enhancements. If we follow your logic, we should be at 10.0.65 or something. Most people agree that Tiger was a big improvement over 10.3. Leopard is even bigger.
BTW, the menu bar transparency is almost gone in GM (compared to what Jobs demonstrated at WWDC). I am pretty sure that there is a nice 'defaults write' command for both menu bar and Dock style. My advice - try it before bashing.
Whether it is revolutionary or evolutionary remains to be seen. Most people don't get it that the revolution is rarely understood immediately. Examples: mobile phones, www, iPod/iTunes (some may disagree here, but i think this duo changed the industry, although neither the iPod or the iTunes are something exceptional on their own), and even The Great October Socialist Revolution (1917) in Russia and the current economical and political changes in Eastern Europe were/are not well understood by the people in those countries. So is the EU, by the way.
I think that Leopard has the foundation for a revolution, and it is not in a particular feature. Most of this is in the underlying frameworks and new approach to common tasks. With Leopard you will need to actually open an application in some 30% of the cases you usually do. Most of the time you open Acrobat, TextEdit, Preview, Movie player, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Keynote etc. etc. just to read/view files. With Leopard, this concept is dead. You can select multiple files of different kind and view with Quick Look instantly - see my previous post on my experience with this. And there is a lot more of course. You will not need/like all the new features but only a small subset will justify an update - Spaces, iChat theater, screen sharing, greatly improved file sharing, Time machine, etc. etc. - it is up to you.
There are still changes which did not made it into 10.5.0: the user interface is somewhat unfinished (remains of the Aqua buttons and scroll-bars), the resolution independence is not a user feature yet, zfs is read only (RW for developer testing). But most of the work on the low level is done.
I am pretty sure that after the first few hours with Leopard you are going to love it!
Mailtags (a third party Mail plug in by Jonathan Paisley) is a great start. However I must say that I am not really tempted to use it. It is just too much.
Apple could draw inspiration from this. They allready have a great concept of the stationary menu that appears on top of your message.
I could imagine having a tag button next to your stationary button to activate the tag bar that appears on top of your inbox message. One can add as many tags as you wish. Your message will stay inside your inbox, but a tag folder will be automatically created on the (pale blue) side bar with an automatic copy af your tagged message.If I remove the tag, this tagged message would be removed automatically from the tag folder.
On a side note: these automatic generated "folders" could be just filters, getting rid of all the messages that do not correspond with the foldertag. So, no need of having duplicate messages.
Anyway, this would solve my hassle of creating folders myself and copy pasting my messages inside those folders (I copy paste them because I want to keep an overview of ALL my messages inside my inbox).
I have to say I never wanted any of the stuff you seem to want for mail. I like it clean and simple AS IS. And tagging every email?? Think about it, honestly, who will take the time and energy to do that?? I use and love gmail, but have never used the tagging system and I suspect 99% of users don't...
Smart folders make just way more sense, because you set them once and forget about it.
Don't get me wrong, I think using metadata is extremely usefull, but people will just not use it if they have to enter their metadata themselves.
I can't see any technical reason why Time Machine can't support SMB network shares. It can read and write to them perfectly. Time Machine is meant to be resilient to you unplugging your computer, so I can't really see unreliability as being an argument...
We'll see, hopefully someone can hack Time Machine to support SMB as I've got two 500GB disks attached to a cheap dell that I use for backup...
I'm surprised the media haven't questioned Apple about this. I wonder what the back-story is for the demise of this "top-secret" feature Jobs harped about.
I'm curious...
Get over it.
All Jobs said was, "?There?s some top features to Leopard that we are going to keep close to the vest and not going to show you today."
He never harped about it, And true to his word, a lot more features were released since then.
I'm over it but those 'top secret' features have been some what elusive.
Then compare the '10' features Jobs presented to the 300 now and tell me that none of the latter are worth the 'top' designation and/or worthy of keeping under wraps for the moment.
I completely agree, however I really did believe that there were 'secret features' that Jobs was talking about that just fizzled out and never ended up being included. I'm seriously considering whether this is worth my $70 (edu discount).
Yes, the 'secret features' are noticable by their absence aren't they? Nothing here seems worthy of the ''keep it from MS' level of secrecy that was joked about. Unless it was a load of leg pulling for MS. However it may yet come to pass that a secret ability is coming and one thing is for certain, it will require Leopard and perhaps even a new Mac we have not yet seen. Then there is always ZFS which is far from fully operational yet and may be the sleeper.
Regarding not upgrading, people said the same thing about Tiger and every up date including OS X from OS 9.
After a while with Tiger if you load up and run Panther is is amazing how old and clunky it seems. The same will be true with Leopard, after a few months Tiger will seem like a relic. Move on ... you will not regret it.
What I like is how Apple's updates are faster with more features, unlike a certain OS that bolts Mac like features on top of a 35 year old OS and simply slow it down!
I am very excited I must admit ... Tonight is going to be like Christmas Eve ...
ArsTechnia has a long thread that claims they have disabled time machine from working over Airport extreme in the GM build. That is truly disappointing as time machine is the major feature I was looking forward to. It will certainly make me rethink my need to upgrade my little Airport express.
Then compare the '10' features Jobs presented to the 300 now and tell me that none of the latter are worth the 'top' designation and/or worthy of keeping under wraps for the moment.
None were 'top secret' worthy IMO. I think everyone thought the 'top secret' features were going to be RI or ZFS but they apparently didn't make it in. At least not all the way in, in the case of ZFS. Exactly what features do you think were worth keeping secret until after Vista was released?
I'm not pissing and moaning over Leopard. I like what I see. But the 'top secret' feature promise was kind of a hoax IMO.
None were 'top secret' worthy IMO. I think everyone thought the 'top secret' features were going to be RI or ZFS but they apparently didn't make it in. At least not all the way in, in the case of ZFS. Exactly what features do you think were worth keeping secret until after Vista was released?
I'm not pissing and moaning over Leopard. I like what I see. But the 'top secret' feature promise was kind of a hoax IMO.
Oh, enough with the Top Secret already. Let it go. Top Secret was Steve Jobs marketing code for "not ready to be demoed yet." End of story. Had nothing to do with Microsoft. Microsoft takes seven years to come out with a new operating system. Jobs wasn't worried that they'd shoehorn something into Vista at the last minute.
And in any case, Back to My Mac was well worthy of the hype, if you ask me. I don't think anyone is giving credit where credit is due on that one.
Having a completely re-designed and multithreaded Finder is another feature not demoed that day.
And lets not even get started on all the cool stuff in Leopard server, which trickles down into the client OS as well. Like system-wide todos and notes, a very well-refined Dictionary app, iCal now being driven by a new standards-based format that will be a better alternative to small businesses than Exchange, etc. There are tons of features unannounced that day that made it into Leopard. They may not be sexy, but they're powerful.
You say ZFS would be worthy of being called a top secret feature? ZFS isn't even something you can explain to your average computer user, let alone sell to them. And it was rumored to be in Leopard weeks before Jobs' speech. Hardly "Top Secret."
Stop wishing for the Mac OS to launch the space shuttle. It's a computer operating system. And a very good one at that. Until someone replaces the GUI altogether, we won't be seeing any revolutions in the PC industry.
None were 'top secret' worthy IMO. I think everyone thought the 'top secret' features were going to be RI or ZFS but they apparently didn't make it in. At least not all the way in, in the case of ZFS. Exactly what features do you think were worth keeping secret until after Vista was released?
I'm not pissing and moaning over Leopard. I like what I see. But the 'top secret' feature promise was kind of a hoax IMO.
Again, Jobs never said, there were any "top secret features!"
All he said that he was, "There?s some top features to Leopard that we are going to keep close to the vest and not going to show you today.
There is a significant difference.
And nothing that the auto industry, electronics industry or the drug industry would do. Or for that matter that many moms and dads do to their parents before they announce that they were having a baby.
Look Abster and mrjoec123, if you guys enjoy the kool aid I don't want to ruin it for you. I'm not going to get into an argument about was or wasn't promised.
Let's just say that there were others that expected more after Job's comments than what was delivered. Some weren't even as nice as me in expressing that sentiment.
I like the review. It gets past Jobs and Apples marketing teams making things seem like the best thing since sliced bread. I do think his statement of "it boots so much faster than Vista" is worthless since he doesn't mention the specs of either machine though.
Edu price is $116. I'm a student and the Ed site charged me $116+tax.
Comments
Tiger has semi-translucent menus as well, and I've found them irritating (e.g., in the menu bar). I have been disappointed ever since I heard Apple has decided to make the menus even more translucent in Leopard.
With the thousands of hours of testing Leopard has undergone, you would think this complaint would have been addressed before. Now, in the days prior to its release, two major reviewers (David Pogue of the NY Times being the other) bring this up as a drawback in what are otherwise glowing reports.
I can't think of a good reason to have translucent menus. It isn't as if there is typically lots of action going on behind my menu that causes me to feel like I've missed something when I return.
Does anybody else agree with me?
You are absolutly right. Its ugly, irritates the users and me, and has no use.
I hope they make a checkbox somewhere where you can turn it off.
We are also using vista, also it irritates even our biggest fan of vista.
And true, this is not revolutionary, this should be 10.4.10, not 10.5.
The only thing that I am happy with is that the server version is changed a lot. They may call that 10.4.11
And who choose that silly map layout?
Steve wakeup from playing games with you mobile, start working again.
ArsTechnia has a long thread that claims they have disabled time machine from working over Airport extreme in the GM build. That is truly disappointing as time machine is the major feature I was looking forward to. It will certainly make me rethink my need to upgrade my little Airport express.
So who on Ars actually has the GM?? If true, that would seem pretty silly on Apple's part unless it was for some insurmountable technical reason. TM to AirDisk would provide a little extra incentive to buy 10.5 and a huge extra incentive to buy Airport Extreme.
1/ Please get rid of this (to do) notes idea inside mail if you cannot send them to your team members! Notes should be a different app. Or it should be part of the stationary template.
2/ How do I start a group discussion inside mail? vs Google groups
3/ Why can't we have apple chat integrated inside mail? vs Google chats inside Gmail
4/ When will I be able to tag my messages inside mail i/o creating alotof folders?
Is Google having an IP thing on "Groups", "Chats" and "Tags" inside mail? Can't Apple negotiate with Google? Why does Apple fail on delivering a state of the art mail experience?
Apple could draw inspiration from this. They allready have a great concept of the stationary menu that appears on top of your message.
I could imagine having a tag button next to your stationary button to activate the tag bar that appears on top of your inbox message. One can add as many tags as you wish. Your message will stay inside your inbox, but a tag folder will be automatically created on the (pale blue) side bar with an automatic copy af your tagged message.If I remove the tag, this tagged message would be removed automatically from the tag folder.
On a side note: these automatic generated "folders" could be just filters, getting rid of all the messages that do not correspond with the foldertag. So, no need of having duplicate messages.
Anyway, this would solve my hassle of creating folders myself and copy pasting my messages inside those folders (I copy paste them because I want to keep an overview of ALL my messages inside my inbox).
If icons look good or not is a matter of personal taste.
I don't like the old aqua icons at all and think the new ones are much better. Anyway, the look of folder icons is one thing that can be changed by the user (Panic's/Iconfactory's CandyBar) and I'm quite sure the transparency of the menu-bar will be modifiable too in some way.
I don't think it's just a matter of personal taste. I think more importantly it's a matter of functionality. The new icons in the home folder are horrible when it comes to recognition. If you squint with your eyes just slightly they look identical to each other. There is no contrasting details that show us what they are for. Just a diffuse shadow figure on the folder icon. This way we must read the text, and can't navigate by image recognition. The folder icon design itself I think is an improvement, it's now easier on the eyes to read the text next to the icon... though I never liked the metaphor of a paper folder in the first place.
And yeah, it's all up to the user to change the icons and stuff.
And true, this is not revolutionary, this should be 10.4.10, not 10.5.
The only thing that I am happy with is that the server version is changed a lot. They may call that 10.4.11
Leopard is the biggest update to OS X so far - Period! It has great under-the-hood changes and great usability enhancements. If we follow your logic, we should be at 10.0.65 or something. Most people agree that Tiger was a big improvement over 10.3. Leopard is even bigger.
BTW, the menu bar transparency is almost gone in GM (compared to what Jobs demonstrated at WWDC). I am pretty sure that there is a nice 'defaults write' command for both menu bar and Dock style. My advice - try it before bashing.
Whether it is revolutionary or evolutionary remains to be seen. Most people don't get it that the revolution is rarely understood immediately. Examples: mobile phones, www, iPod/iTunes (some may disagree here, but i think this duo changed the industry, although neither the iPod or the iTunes are something exceptional on their own), and even The Great October Socialist Revolution (1917) in Russia and the current economical and political changes in Eastern Europe were/are not well understood by the people in those countries. So is the EU, by the way.
I think that Leopard has the foundation for a revolution, and it is not in a particular feature. Most of this is in the underlying frameworks and new approach to common tasks. With Leopard you will need to actually open an application in some 30% of the cases you usually do. Most of the time you open Acrobat, TextEdit, Preview, Movie player, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Keynote etc. etc. just to read/view files. With Leopard, this concept is dead. You can select multiple files of different kind and view with Quick Look instantly - see my previous post on my experience with this. And there is a lot more of course. You will not need/like all the new features but only a small subset will justify an update - Spaces, iChat theater, screen sharing, greatly improved file sharing, Time machine, etc. etc. - it is up to you.
There are still changes which did not made it into 10.5.0: the user interface is somewhat unfinished (remains of the Aqua buttons and scroll-bars), the resolution independence is not a user feature yet, zfs is read only (RW for developer testing). But most of the work on the low level is done.
I am pretty sure that after the first few hours with Leopard you are going to love it!
Mailtags (a third party Mail plug in by Jonathan Paisley) is a great start. However I must say that I am not really tempted to use it. It is just too much.
Apple could draw inspiration from this. They allready have a great concept of the stationary menu that appears on top of your message.
I could imagine having a tag button next to your stationary button to activate the tag bar that appears on top of your inbox message. One can add as many tags as you wish. Your message will stay inside your inbox, but a tag folder will be automatically created on the (pale blue) side bar with an automatic copy af your tagged message.If I remove the tag, this tagged message would be removed automatically from the tag folder.
On a side note: these automatic generated "folders" could be just filters, getting rid of all the messages that do not correspond with the foldertag. So, no need of having duplicate messages.
Anyway, this would solve my hassle of creating folders myself and copy pasting my messages inside those folders (I copy paste them because I want to keep an overview of ALL my messages inside my inbox).
I have to say I never wanted any of the stuff you seem to want for mail. I like it clean and simple AS IS. And tagging every email?? Think about it, honestly, who will take the time and energy to do that?? I use and love gmail, but have never used the tagging system and I suspect 99% of users don't...
Smart folders make just way more sense, because you set them once and forget about it.
Don't get me wrong, I think using metadata is extremely usefull, but people will just not use it if they have to enter their metadata themselves.
We'll see, hopefully someone can hack Time Machine to support SMB as I've got two 500GB disks attached to a cheap dell that I use for backup...
I'm surprised the media haven't questioned Apple about this. I wonder what the back-story is for the demise of this "top-secret" feature Jobs harped about.
I'm curious...
Get over it.
All Jobs said was, "?There?s some top features to Leopard that we are going to keep close to the vest and not going to show you today."
He never harped about it, And true to his word, a lot more features were released since then.
I'm over it but those 'top secret' features have been some what elusive.
^^^^
I'm over it but those 'top secret' features have been some what elusive.
Then compare the '10' features Jobs presented to the 300 now and tell me that none of the latter are worth the 'top' designation and/or worthy of keeping under wraps for the moment.
I completely agree, however I really did believe that there were 'secret features' that Jobs was talking about that just fizzled out and never ended up being included. I'm seriously considering whether this is worth my $70 (edu discount).
Yes, the 'secret features' are noticable by their absence aren't they? Nothing here seems worthy of the ''keep it from MS' level of secrecy that was joked about. Unless it was a load of leg pulling for MS. However it may yet come to pass that a secret ability is coming and one thing is for certain, it will require Leopard and perhaps even a new Mac we have not yet seen. Then there is always ZFS which is far from fully operational yet and may be the sleeper.
Regarding not upgrading, people said the same thing about Tiger and every up date including OS X from OS 9.
After a while with Tiger if you load up and run Panther is is amazing how old and clunky it seems. The same will be true with Leopard, after a few months Tiger will seem like a relic. Move on ... you will not regret it.
What I like is how Apple's updates are faster with more features, unlike a certain OS that bolts Mac like features on top of a 35 year old OS and simply slow it down!
I am very excited I must admit ... Tonight is going to be like Christmas Eve ...
You are absolutly right. Its ugly, irritates the users and me, and has no use.
Didn't somebody else point out that already, "The most recent Leopard build (9A559) to developers has removed that feature."
ArsTechnia has a long thread that claims they have disabled time machine from working over Airport extreme in the GM build. That is truly disappointing as time machine is the major feature I was looking forward to. It will certainly make me rethink my need to upgrade my little Airport express.
I do not believe this for one second!
Then compare the '10' features Jobs presented to the 300 now and tell me that none of the latter are worth the 'top' designation and/or worthy of keeping under wraps for the moment.
None were 'top secret' worthy IMO. I think everyone thought the 'top secret' features were going to be RI or ZFS but they apparently didn't make it in. At least not all the way in, in the case of ZFS. Exactly what features do you think were worth keeping secret until after Vista was released?
I'm not pissing and moaning over Leopard. I like what I see. But the 'top secret' feature promise was kind of a hoax IMO.
OH JEEZE!!! all the time machine bashing! whatever. It works (albeit slow for initial setup) awesome!
My backup, for my laptop, is on a network drive via my airport extreme. after the initial setup, it works great!
You're a star - I was starting to worry there, I've got a bunch of Macs to back up and a 750 GB backup disk hanging off an Airport Extreme.
Thanks for posting that!
Cheers,
Martin.
None were 'top secret' worthy IMO. I think everyone thought the 'top secret' features were going to be RI or ZFS but they apparently didn't make it in. At least not all the way in, in the case of ZFS. Exactly what features do you think were worth keeping secret until after Vista was released?
I'm not pissing and moaning over Leopard. I like what I see. But the 'top secret' feature promise was kind of a hoax IMO.
Oh, enough with the Top Secret already. Let it go. Top Secret was Steve Jobs marketing code for "not ready to be demoed yet." End of story. Had nothing to do with Microsoft. Microsoft takes seven years to come out with a new operating system. Jobs wasn't worried that they'd shoehorn something into Vista at the last minute.
And in any case, Back to My Mac was well worthy of the hype, if you ask me. I don't think anyone is giving credit where credit is due on that one.
Having a completely re-designed and multithreaded Finder is another feature not demoed that day.
And lets not even get started on all the cool stuff in Leopard server, which trickles down into the client OS as well. Like system-wide todos and notes, a very well-refined Dictionary app, iCal now being driven by a new standards-based format that will be a better alternative to small businesses than Exchange, etc. There are tons of features unannounced that day that made it into Leopard. They may not be sexy, but they're powerful.
You say ZFS would be worthy of being called a top secret feature? ZFS isn't even something you can explain to your average computer user, let alone sell to them. And it was rumored to be in Leopard weeks before Jobs' speech. Hardly "Top Secret."
Stop wishing for the Mac OS to launch the space shuttle. It's a computer operating system. And a very good one at that. Until someone replaces the GUI altogether, we won't be seeing any revolutions in the PC industry.
None were 'top secret' worthy IMO. I think everyone thought the 'top secret' features were going to be RI or ZFS but they apparently didn't make it in. At least not all the way in, in the case of ZFS. Exactly what features do you think were worth keeping secret until after Vista was released?
I'm not pissing and moaning over Leopard. I like what I see. But the 'top secret' feature promise was kind of a hoax IMO.
Again, Jobs never said, there were any "top secret features!"
All he said that he was, "There?s some top features to Leopard that we are going to keep close to the vest and not going to show you today.
There is a significant difference.
And nothing that the auto industry, electronics industry or the drug industry would do. Or for that matter that many moms and dads do to their parents before they announce that they were having a baby.
Let's just say that there were others that expected more after Job's comments than what was delivered. Some weren't even as nice as me in expressing that sentiment.
Have a nice day.
Yes, hence why he says (edu) after the price.
I like the review. It gets past Jobs and Apples marketing teams making things seem like the best thing since sliced bread. I do think his statement of "it boots so much faster than Vista" is worthless since he doesn't mention the specs of either machine though.
Edu price is $116. I'm a student and the Ed site charged me $116+tax.